focus group and fabrics

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I was worried that I would be bored without all the other volunteers here to keep me busy and entertained, but that hasn’t been the case the past few days! After everyone left on Monday, I had a quiet morning mostly by myself just hanging around. Later in the afternoon, however, I decided that today was the day I was going to get my metal, mouse-proof bins from the Chowk market, and Casey and Anisha decided that they were going to come with me. Well, it turned out that Rachna, who works here at Sambhavna, needed to pick up a dupta that she had sent for dying, so we ended up meeting her in the market as well. We wanted to explore some of the areas that we had never seen before, and Rachna proved to be a perfect guide around the twisted and confusing streets of the market. She knew where all of the good deals and best shops were, and which materials were good for what sort of clothing and whatnot. I ended up buying two really beautiful scarves from this one store (which had some of the most fantastic fabrics and the shopkeeper spoke English!) for Rs. 50 each (about $1.25 CND). I had seen the exact same ones on St. Laurent in Montreal for $35 each!!! So you’re all getting one, whether or not you want it. I also bought a Gujarati-styled embroidered bed sheet for $10, and two pieces of really nice Madhya Pradesh-dyed fabric for about $3 to make shirts out of! However, in all the excitement over buying all of this fantastic material, I completely forgot about my mouse-proof bins! I finally had the courage to take photos in the Chowk though, so there are a few up here. I hope they’ll give you the sense of how completely tiny and small the streets and stores are. There are a million things packed into one little area!

Rachna had invited us over to her house afterwards, so I had a slightly hair-raising ride on the back of her scooter to her apartment. Rachna lived in the US for thirteen years, and actually worked at Dow for a year or two when she graduated from college. She is amazingly spirited and passionate about her work in Bhopal, and told us all the exciting stories from the fast that happened earlier this year in order to make the government concede to the Bhopalis demands. You could tell that she was very much in her element with all of the action and excitement, with the police chasing them down, and how they outwitted the officers! Rachna told us about a satirical awards show that they (some of the Sambhavna people) were going to in Delhi this weekend. The idea is to give awards to all of the people who have sold India out to corporate American interest, a la Yes Men style. So I decided that I would like to go as well, and Rachna has booked me a train ticket! So I’ll be in Delhi for a day on the 10th and 11th!

The next day, Tuesday, I ended up not doing too much during the day as well. Mostly I just typed up a chunk of the report for Rachna, and tried to do laundry, and farted around. I cleaned out the cupboard with all of the food in it, and much to my dismay, the mice had managed to get into a lot of things that we had thought was tightly sealed up!! They bit through the Styrofoam cups that Genvieve had bought with Cup-O-Noodles in them, and two bags of sealed pasta that I had bought! Anyway, this prompted me to throw out anything that I thought they might be able to get into, much to the shock and dismay of the cleaning lady, Chandra Kanta. Anam, Maya and Shaziya (the girls responsible for my makeover) stopped by early in the afternoon to bid me a happy friendship day, and Anam gave me a little gold bracelet with two little faux diamonds in it. It was really sweet, and I felt terrible for not having something noce to give them in return, so I went and got some bangles that I had bought a few days earlier from the Chowk and gave those to Shaziya and Maya, but I had nothing for Anam. I’m still racking my brain about what to get a nine or ten year old girl. She’s too old for kids toys, but I think she’s still a bit young for some of the beauty projects that her sisters are into…

Anyway, in the afternoon I decided that I would go back to the Chowk on my own in order to get those metal bins. Casey decided that she wanted more fabric and ended up coming with me. We got completely lost for a little while, but eventually found out way back to the shops that Rachna had shown us. I found some fabric that is very much perfect for Whitney and Richard, so if you are reading this, then be prepared to get something little in the mail from me! I also found three huge storage containers for flour and rice and whatnot, and got those for the mouse-proofing project! They only cost about $12 too!

Anyway, as soon as we got back to Sambhavna, we rushed out again to meet the translator that Anisha had used when she came here last summer, Aditi. We went all the way to Bittle Market, in New Bhopal to meet her, because she lives on that side of the lake. We had ridiculously sweet and decadent chocolate cakes and brownies at Café Coffee Day (also known as CCD by the locals), where we were joined by her cousin, Krishna. She invited us back to her parents house afterwards, where we were fed dried Poha (the non-dried thing that we are served for breakfast every morning), those cheese-looking sweets that I had at the other girls’ home, samosas and eventually chow mein that her mother prepared for her. I spent most of the time trying to talk as much as I possibly could in order to slow down the flow of food coming from the kitchen (although her mother’s chow mein was delicious and had no spice whatsoever so I had two servings). I was really nice to go to someone’s home and be able to communicate so easily. Her parents only spoke a bit on English, but seemed content to just hang out and listen to us. Aditi has an amazing amount of energy, and was totally full of life, chattering away the whole time we were there. Its too bad that she was leaving to go to a Master’s degree in another city the next day, because I have the feeling that she and I could have become fast friends.

We didn’t leave until after eleven, and her father insisted on driving us back to Sambhavna, convinced that we wouldn’t get an auto at that late hour. It was raining pretty hard, and Aditi told us about how the previous summer the bridge across the lake had been flooded (as was Sambhavna I was later reminded) and they were stuck there for a couple of days. Her father drove very quickly in the most ancient and bet up jeep I have ever seen. It actually looked like it might have been used in a war. Like a lot of the jeeps here, the front seat faces forward, but the back seats are just benches along the sides of the car, so it felt much more harrowing that it actually was. Anyway, we didn’t get back to Samnbhavna until after midnight (late by everyone’s standards here). The guard even told us we should be back by ten in the future because we worries about us! I collapsed into bed instantly and fell asleep with Harry Potter in my hand.

This afternoon was really fun. I went with Anisha and Casey to the community that they’ve been doing their surveys in so that I could see the focus group they were conducting about menopause. The women that came to the focus group were really animated and interested in the topic, and had a lot to say about it. I got to take photos, so make sure you take a look at them!

After that we came back to Sambhavna and Rachna told Anisha and I where we could go to get our shirts made, so we did that. Then two of the girls from across the street came over and did mehendi on my feet. Its still drying as we speak, but it already looks fantastic. As a side note, as Anisha and I were going to the corner store to get the mehendi we saw a goat that was practically decapitated lying dead in the street. A man in an auto stopped and picked it up, put it on the floor of the auto and drive off with it. It was most upsetting to see this little creature just lying in the street like that, after such a brutal death. I have become rather fond of goats, because they are everywhere here, and are do all sorts of strange and funny things. The other day when we were at the corner store, two goats butted their way under the awning with us to get away from the rain. The baby was kind of nuzzling up against my pant legs, and after a few minutes decided that it was going to try to eat them! It didn’t get very far, but I thought that it was pretty hilarious.

On that note, I think that I’m going to try giving Dan a wake-up call. Enjoy the photos!