Dance Parties on Field Trips

Yesterday I went on my first field trip since I was 17 years old. I got up at 4am and walked to the main road where the school jeep (circa 1960) picked me, some kids and teachers from the nearest village (Karumbapalayalum) and took us to the main village of Kaniyambadi to meet the other kids/teachers and the bus that had been rented for the occasion. The bus ride itself was incredible. We drove from the interior of Tamil Nadu where the village and school are to the Bay of Bengal. The bus's 55 seats were not quite enough for the assembled riders. As with all Indian buses the driver blasted Bollywood (or Kollywood as it's called in the Tamil south) music at ear-splitting levels for the entire trip there and back. The music's volume itself was an advertisement for the number 11. Halfway through the trip a dance party broke out. The instigator: the lead teacher. After the teachers had their day to much cheering, the kids - primarily led by the almost all girl 5th grade class - had theirs filling the aisles with Indian dancing and frequently falling on top of each other to much laughter when the bus driver braked suddenly (as he and all driver's in India are bound to). My job, when not dancing, was to block the kids from the stairs at the back 1/4 of the bus - where they were liable to ram against the door with every sharp turn - and spill out onto the highway.

After a while we stopped at a Hindu shrine so the kids could eat. I didn't realize we were supposed to bring food but I got one of the best meals I've had in India when plied with all the kids and the teachers home cooking.

The Bay itself was amazing. Some of the kids had never seen the sea. The tide is very dangerous so no one swam - but the kids were allowed in pairs to hold hands with us and walk out to feel the waves.  We would take them out to where waves would roll in to hit our bellies - a level at which the kids were completely submerged to much shrieking. After a while anarchy - as it often does - broke out and the "holding hands with an adult rule" was abandoned. My friend Mirza and I were reduced to standing in the ocean to pick up any 1st grader who got knocked over by the waves and constantly enforcing the kids into a line not too far beyond the point where the tide comes in.

After the sea we took the bus north to Chennai to see the local zoo. The kids got to shout out the names of all the animals they see if their workbooks - Tigers and Baboons and Elephants and Giraffes (which they and the teachers insist on referring to as a "jer-aff-ee!"). Throughout the trip we were constantly lining up and counting children to avoid losing one. When we were counting the kids right before leaving the zoo and spotted deer with giant horns walked up and added itself to the back of the line. Most of the animals were in cages but maybe there was a jail break in the deer cell.

The bus ride was sweltering after the bus had heated up all day and we hit Chennai traffic so there was limited wind. As we drove both the kids and my blood sugar/energy dropped and we were reduced to a sleeping piles all over the floor of the bus. In keeping with Indian bus form the volume on the dance music was never turned down and the colored lights kept flashing. Amazingly given that and all the biscuits (the ubiquitous cookie/cracker combination eaten all over India) that were consumed, only one child vomited - and he quickly rallied. We returned to the main village at midnight. The temperature had dropped to the 60's around that time. So the kids - as they often do - had earmuffs on to keep out the cold. Thankfully the one shop operating in the main village was our regular tea stand. Before we could walk with the kids and their parents who had come to pick them up to the smaller village of Karumbapalayum everyone had a cup including the first graders to - as their mom put it - warm them up.

Last weekend was Annual Day at the school - a day on which all the volunteers and supporters come from other parts of Tamil Nadu and honor the teachers and whatever project has been accomplished that year - which this year was the construction of a bamboo treehouse and meditation hall. Honorees were given a shawl and what is basically a male dress called a dhoti. After food and the program we retired to the field to play games. One "game" involved throwing rotten/moldy tomatoes at a person given a speech on a topic of their choosing about 25 feet away. The speaker stood on a raised platform and was given a plate to defend themselves. Ramu's teenage daughter Nile kicked the proceedings off with the perfect topic. Her speech's title: "You all are a bunch of losers." She then proceeded to denigrate our tomato throwing skills. Other topics including the superiority of Malayalam (the language of the neighboring state of Kerala) over Tamil - the language of Tamil Nadu - delivered by a Karelite grad student studying Malayalam literature. For my topic I chose to deliver the pledge the school children recite each day at their morning assembly. The opening line: "India is my country! All Indians are my brothers and sisters!". Which I hoped would diminish the barrage of tomatoes. It did not. And a counter-veiling factor was that I had stored my glasses for safe-keeping - so I couldn't actually see the tomato's being tossed at me to properly defend myself with the plate.

Also this week I traveled with Mirza and Ronald/Frances/Moselaus (the Khasi-speaking guys from northeast India who did the bamboo building) to the former French colony of Pondicherry. It was another early morning that had us walking to the main village at 5am. There was a full moon and we heard the call to prayer from a local mosque as we walked. There were a lot of people walking and biking by in the dark - due to the heat a lot gets accomplished at night. We spent some time at the beach and then this commune called Auroville. The commune itself is interesting in substance - adamantly internationalist - there are people from over 150 countries living there - and they make basically everything they consume. But at the entrance point there are shops that make you feel like you've been transported from the south of India to the Himalayan shops section of an outdoor mall in Santa Monica. When we visited the Tibet section of Auroville we ran into a monk that our traveling companion Kelsan had gone to high school with in the north of India where many Tibetans live. We saw high school students practice some amazing Tibetan dance to a stringed instrument.

Our guide for this trip was our friend Sheikh who grew up in a city an hour north of Pondicherry. Before we took the bus back we stopped at Sheikh's house for a delicious meal with his family (he has 7 brothers and sisters, 11 nieces and nephews, with 2 more on the way). I had the best tea I've so far in India made by Sheikh's sister in law with the perfect amount of cardamom. I had four cups in quick succession for our trip back. It was another night bus ride with not enough seats so I sat on the front steps. There was no door so the wind brought some welcome relief from the heat of the day. We stopped once in a five house village to use the bathroom at the local trash heap. There was a tea shop operating for travelers and an outdoor TV playing reruns of the cricket friendlies in advance of the world cup. We reached the main village at 2:30am. It was completely dark with the exception of the light of our regular tea stand. I was jittery and overtired but our excitement at being back at our place made one last cup of tea necessary.

I'll stay in this village/school in the south of India until Tuesday when we take a 60 hour journey to northeast India primarily by train. We'll go to the bamboo workers home village in the west Khasi hills of Meghalaya state which is right above Bangladesh. Ronald, Frances and Moselaus have described it as a hilly green promised land so I'm excited for the trip.

Bonfires in the City & Balancing Things on Your Head

Yesterday while traveling in the nearby city at sunset to witness another purchase of bamboo, I stumbled upon a scene of total anarchy. I walked into a crowd facing the street who were watching something that I could not make out, but what I assumed was the aftermath of a car wreck given the plumes of smoke coming from the street. Instead as I pushed forward I saw that a group of 40 men had made a bonfire in the middle of the main road in the city - and with huge sticks were beating it. While there were numerous television cameras filming the events there were no police about - even though a police station was no more than four blocks away. Men were waving red and black flags. Onlookers told me what it was all about: it's election time in Tamil Nadu. Members of the ruling party, the DMK, were burning an effigy of a leader of the main opposition party, the AIADMK. Evidently this happened all over Tamil Nadu yesterday. Here's an article and photo from another city: http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/10/stories/2011021062210900.htm The AIADMK leader had alleged corruption in the DMK's administration of public housing funds. Evidently the DMK's supporters (or cadres as an article endearingly calls them) disagree.

Much of my time is still spent at the school. All last week I attended classes with the kids to get a sense of what they were learning. This week I've transitioned entirely to play. This week the older boys set up some cricket "wickets" in the main field. I joined my first game on Monday after lunch. There was much lobbying for me to join each team. Little did they know that I had never before seen a game of cricket and did not understand the rules. My first day I inadvertently switched teams in the middle of play and began playing a wicket-keeper or "catcher" position against my own team. The second day was my first at bat. After we scored a succession of runs I succeeded in grounding out. In the outfield I hoped to redeem myself to my new 10 year old friends. A pop fly sailed directly to my position in the field. I looked up into the blue sky - and lost the ball in the sun. I caught site of it at the last moment and moved backward as it sailed through my hands onto the turf and I landed on my backside. Score one more run/wicket for the other team.

All over this village you see women carrying amazing things on their heads: bundles of logs, gigantic vessels of water, and bags of rice. How is one trained for that? Today after lunch I saw the coursework. A group of girls practicing running and then walking with their lunch plates on their heads (hair wrapped up and all). I joined in - and to much applause succeeded in running with a plate balanced on my head while carrying a 1st grader at the same time.

Respect at cricket lost. Respect at carrying a plate on my head gained.

I also saw my first Indian movie this last week: the movie Kavalan with the Tamil star Vijay (there is a poster of him in almost all the restaurants I go to. He, it should be noted, does have a mustache). My favorite part turned out to be the song and dance routines. One of which inexplicably moved Vijay and his love interest from a country manner to a circus. The movie itself featured dogs that chased grenades and returned them to owners, numerous gags involving men accidentally having to go into women's bathrooms and "little people". I question the plot but loved the music.

Also attended another meeting of the Rotary Club of Vellore where Ramu and I were the main speakers doing back to back speeches and then interview of each other on politics of America and India before taking questions. Again amazing for how controversial the discussion was. A lot of time was spent on the Naxalities - a Maoist insurgency that has taken over a swath of central India and is running a parallel government - and the social conditions that caused them to rise. 

This next weekend there will be a party at the school celebrating the completion of both the bamboo tree house and a bamboo meditation hall.

Ryan

P.S. Points to my parents/Catherine for correctly identifying the mysterious game with squares and skipping in my last blog as hopscotch.

P.P.S. Points to Gary Fuller for noting that the barber in the photo of my mustache being removed has wings. I didn't catch it at first but went back and yes - his head does have wings. (There is a rational explanation: there are lots of crows around here - they especially torment the chickens in cages at the adjacent butchers - one must have flown up right as my friend Rinjin took the shot. Perfect timing.)