the poster-master and nothing exciting

My apologies for not writing as frequently as I used to – especially you Mel, since I know that you have been itching for more updates on the kids in particular! Things have been pretty busy for the past couple of weeks with the upcoming anniversary, and I have had trouble finding the time to spend an hour or two typing up the goings on here. That said, here are the goings on…

The goings on are not actually that interesting, now that I am thinking about it. The clinic has been making a poster display for the anniversary, which is going to be ferried around various hospitals and whatnot in Bhopal to try to raise some awareness about Sambhavna and the demands that the gas survivors have on the government and their hospitals. At any rate, Prabjit and I were elected to make some additional posters on water contamination and its effects, since that is an important aspect of the demands. After we started working on those posters, however, Jyoti, the yoga instructor quickly co-opted us to make some more posters with her. Prabjit soon managed to fall out of the running with the poster-making (mostly because I think that she despised doing it), but also because she was quite sick for a few days, and had meetings about her study going on. Sooooo… I ended up getting roped into doing quite a few posters about water contamination, yoga, etc. It was kind of nice to have something that actually kept me busy for a few days, but I think that I could have done about three fewer posters quite happily, since they quickly took up my entire week. I ended up spending several days listening to movies on my laptop while I outlined people displaying various symptoms of water contamination (think diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, abdominal pain, etc.). Apparently my drawing of “constipation” is a favourite among the staff.

During this time, I have also volunteered to help out at Chingari Trust on December 5th, since they are having their first awards ceremony! Every year they pick out a woman in India who is fighting against corporate crime, so I guess they need some extra hands for the event. I am also attempting to make a slideshow for them to use on the night of the awards that introduces Chingari Trust and explains a bit about the work that they are doing. I’ve been trying to work on it all week, but every time I thought I was finally finished the posters, another one cropped up. However, after two trips to Chingari to download all of their photos, and a couple of hours of organizing, I have finally put all of the photos of Chingari into some discernable order. I still have yet to actually make the slideshow, but I am two steps closer now!

The photo project is still not moving forward at all, especially because everyone is so wrapped up in anniversary plans. I spoke to Mel about it on the phone the other day, and I think that she had some good suggestions for which directions to move it in. My hope now is that in the next couple of weeks I will be able to find a good translator, and talk to Rashida Bi, Sathyu and Rachna about my plans so that I can, at the very least, get started as soon as I get back from my trip with mom and dad. I was a bit disappointed to realize that Micha, the French photographer who was here for a week, had already taken a lot of really beautiful photos of the kids with disabilities at Chingari. I know that Rashida Bi was enthusiastic for me to do whatever work I wanted to, but I think that I would simply be repeating work that has already been done if I was to do this again. It would be more useful for me to do work on their website, and to record the kids stories in some more detail. I’m hoping that once I find a translator for the kids taking photos project that I will be able to do this work fairly easily, but who knows. Part of me has given up entirely on actually completing anything of use while I am here. Le sigh…

This blog entry is becoming very boring very quickly… my apologies. I haven’t done anything that interesting this past week. I bought a 2gb usb key for the equivalent of $22, which I thought was a pretty good deal. The weather is slowly getting fractionally colder which I don’t mind except for the fact that there isn’t much hot water in the mornings, so showers are a bit unpleasant. I’m glad I bought that fleece thing…

Oh yeah! We went to see a Bollywood movie called Om Shanti Om a week or so ago, which was a lot of fun. Prabjit and I had been seeing ads for it absolutely everywhere in Delhi, and it looked really fun, so we were itching to go see it when we got back (we had to wait until both of us were clear of the diarrhea before we could sit through the feature-length 3 hours that is Bollywood though). Anyway, all of the volunteers went, along with Vikas and Satish. Luckily I was next to Prabjit, and she translated for me what I didn’t catch – although, as before, I was surprised at how much I could understand! Anyway, the basic premise of the film is that a guy who is obsessed with a Bollywood actress in the 70’s watches her gruesome murder and then dies himself. He is re-incarnated as a spoiled, famous Bollywood actor in present-day, eventually remembers what happened in his previous life and wants to avenge her death. Sounds pretty cheesy, no? Okay, but the amazing thing about this movie was the fact that the first half was a total satire of the entire film industry here, including all of the over-the-top acting, song-and-dance routines, and pointlessly-scantily-clad women! It was absolutely hilarious! Unfortunately not long after the intermission (yes, of course it had an intermission), the plot got a bit on the boring side, since they had to devise a scheme to get the murderous producer arrested. Anyway, thanks to the booming bootlegging industry here I have already managed to find a DVD-quality copy of the movie so we can re-watch all of our favourite songs every night… My favourite is the one called “Darde Disco” where Sharu Kahn dances sound shirtless and glistening with oil surrounded by a team of nearly nude women. Its frigging hilarious! Is it sad that the most exciting thing I have done in the past ten days has been to buy a usb key and watch a Bollywood movie?

Other exciting news… none, really. We had another dinner at Jehan Numa last week, which was nice. Mmmmm… pizza. Mom and Dad are coming very soon! That is exciting. They arrive on Dec. 8th, so it is only about ten days or so now! Yay! Fun times ahead! Okay, I’m going until I have something more exciting to write. Sorry for the lack of photos… I don’t have none.

delhi belly and other adventures

I started this entry when I had just got back from Delhi, thinking that I would write all about the fun and adventures we had while it was still fresh in my mind. I got distracted, and now it is a week later, so there you have it.

Derek, Prabjit and I all went to Delhi together on Tuesday night, catching one of the trains that makes the run from Bhopal overnight. Because it was a few days before Divali, about half the country is traveling somewhere to visit family, and the trains were really booked up by the time we got our tickets. We got ourselves two-tier A/C tickets, which is the highest tier that you can get on the trains here, and it was pretty luxurious, especially when you compare it to the train service between Montreal and Toronto. You get an entire little bed to yourself, complete with your own curtains, so that when you are ready to sleep all you have to do is pull them shut, and doze off. I do have to admit though, that I found it a bit hard to sleep very soundly through my vague paranoia that all of my stuff was going to get stolen while I slept… but I did manage to sleep for a while. Our train got into Nizamuddin station in Delhi at about 6:30am, so needless to say I was still pretty groggy when we got there. We took an auto-rickshaw to Pahar Ganj, which is the neighbourhood in Delhi (actually right opposite the other, New Delhi train station) where a lot of the backpackers and tourists stay.

Almost nothing was open because it was so early in the morning, so we went into the first guest house that we saw on the main street. It wasn’t very expensive - Rs. 496/night, which is about $12 for both Prabjit and I – and I was so tired that I didn’t really care where we went so long as it was big enough that I could lie down. Prabjit and Derek were wide awake though, and decided that they would go to the airport and drop off Derek’s extra baggage for storage there, so while they did that, I got caught up on my sleep. It turned that it took them about three hours to get there and back on a combination of public transportation and by rickshaw, so it wasn’t until almost noon that Prabjit got back to the room. We decided that for our first meal in the “big city” we would have no other than McDonald’s, more out of curiosity and than craving. There are no shortages of fast food chains in Connaught Circle, which is only a short walk away from Pahar Ganj, so Prabjit went over their for our McDonald’s fix, and then went on a little shopping trip.

Connaught Circle has a plethora of American chain stores, which aren’t terribly appealing, especially since the prices are about the same. I did, however, manage to find myself a newer version of the Lonely Planet’s Southeast Asia guide, and a pair of Converse All-Stars for $20, so the shopping wasn’t entirely wasted. I also looked extensively at a store called FabIndia that sells some nice stuff, but I couldn’t find any pants that I wanted, and since I’m all courta-ed out, I decided not to get anything there. The real shopping fun actually happened in Pahar Ganj, since most of the stores in the main bazaar cater to the massive numbers of tourists. I ended up buying more scarves thatn I know what to do with (so if you are reading this then you probably have a scarf coming your way), as well as a couple of pairs of what I would call “hippie pants,” since all of the dirty hippies in Pahar Ganj wear them. We also found this extremely cute little store in the lobby of one of the guest houses that sold adorable skirts, dresses and so on at pretty good prices. I actually ended up going back a second time I liked it so much and chatted with the Israeli girl that owned the place. She expained that she buys the clothes from the manufacturers in India, but that they are all brand names back in the States. Anyway, I bought a sweatshirt, a tank top and a skirt (none of which I can wear in Bhopal), and have promised myself a dress when I go back to Delhi with my parents next month.

I really liked Delhi, despite my previous misgivings on my previous trip (I’m referring here to the cab ride from hell). It was extremely easy to navigate by comparison to Bhopal – especially Pahar Ganj because of all the tourists. That was actually the weirdest thing about Delhi – all the white people!! There must be hundreds of them in Pahar Ganj alone! No one even looked twice at me, and only one kid called me “Angreezi!” during the entire trip. It was pretty awesome to go almost entirely unnoticed for four whole days☺ It was a nice break…

Not that Delhi was the perfect place by any means. On our last day there we went to South Delhi to explore a market that Rachna had suggested to us for buying granola bars and the like. While we were there four little beggar kids approached us, one of whose hand and arm had obviously been held over a fire so that her skin was crusted in huge black scabs almost up to the elbow. You could tell that someone had done this to her in order for her to be able to make more money while she begged, which is totally fucking sick. But I think that the thing that made it more disturbing was the fact that when we left the market to explore another store that the Lonely Planet recommended we ended up in a neighbourhood not all that dissimilar to Yorkville in Toronto. It was so ritzy and expensive, with shiny new cars and million dollar homes everywhere that the disparity between the rich and poor was really just a bit too much. After that we went to a restaurant in another area called Punjabi by Nature (which we were interested in mostly because of Naughty by Nature, but anyway), which turned out to be even fancier. It reminded me of the restaurants that you see in suburban malls - $25 cheeseburgers and ridiculously over-the-top décor. I paid the equivalent of $10 for a Corona (admittedly a splurge on a mediocre beer), and our meals all came in American-sized portions (ie. I ordered a chicken dish and got four leg and thighs of meat!). Anyway, it was all a bit much, but nothing quite beats the strip of stores that this restaurant was located in. Pretty much all of the stores were expensive American chains, and it was bustling with middle-class families and teenagers. I went to get my haircut (it only cost Rs. 500, or $12 but I’d say that it wasn’t even worth that) while Derek and Prabjit walked around the stores in a bit of disbelief. There was even this little gang of white teenaged boys wearing baggy jeans and Slipknot t-shirts that looked like they had been transplanted right out of an American suburb… so weird. Anyway, we went back to Pahar Ganj feeling a little disturbed by the extreme of rich and poor living quite literally side by side.

Contrary to my earlier statement that my plan was to shop and only shop, I did conceded to some sightseeing. On our second day we took a trip to the Red Fort, which was pretty neat (there are some nice photos). We also visited the biggest mosque (possibly in India although I always get my facts wrong about these things), and of course I can’t remember its name now either. I think its Jama Masjit, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, there were these two guys outside the mosque who insisted we pay Rs. 200/- to bring our cameras in, which I was not terribly enthusiastic about. Derek waited outside with our cameras and shoes, while Prajit and I took a look around inside. I know that im supposed to be all impressed with stuff like that, but it just looked like a really big mosque, and there wasn’t much else to say about it than that. The more exciting thing was while Prabjit and I were looking after Derek’s shoes outside this adorable little black cat came up to us and was soooo friendly! Against my mother’s wishes I gave the little cat a few scratches (she forbids me to pet any of the stray animals here and I don’t blame her because you can see the festering open wounds on a lot of them). As we were leaving we saw these boys trying to catch the cat, which really pissed me off because I’m sure that they were only going to torture the poor thing. I think it ran off in the end, but who knows… We also saw a Sikh Gurdwara nearby which was pretty cool. We were lucky that Prabjit was there to tell us what to do because they were doing a prayer service type thing, and there were several rules I wouldn’t have been able to figure out myself. For example, instead of just leaving your shoes in a giant pile in front of the door, you give them to these women who store them in a little cubby-hole and they give you a ticket. Men and women both have to cover their heads when they go into the Gurdwara, so there is this bucket of headscarves that you can borrow at the door as well, which was kind of neat.

After our day of sightseeing we took the newly-build subway back to Pahar Ganj. We had taken it in the morning, and it has been pretty quiet, and therefore significantly easier to manage. Firstly, because of terrorist threats, they have decided that they need to send everyone through metal detectors before they are allowed on the subway… so you can imagine the lineup of two hundred-odd men (and about five women in a separate line, surprise, surprise) waiting to go through. Of course absolutely everyone sets off the metal detectors, but they just glance into your bag and send you on your way anyway, making the entire routine completely pointless. Once you actually get on the subway, no one moves into the cars at all, but when you get to another stop, more people just push you mosh-pit style so that they can crowd on. I have to admit that after having my ass grabbed so many times here in Bhopal I was pretty uncomfortable with having that many men in such close proximity, especially without being able to see whose hands were where, but fortunately no one did any groping... maybe the illusion of security prevents men from being perverts on the tube here.


On Divali proper (which is the biggest Hindu holidy) we randomly met a guy from the UK who was lost in Connaught Circle and trying to get back to Pahar Ganj, so we walked with him. We ended up getting dinner with him at a rooftop restaurant in Pahar Ganj. The food wasn’t great, but it was definitely the best place to be sitting, since we could see all of the fireworks shooting up from every one of the narrow streets in and around Pahar Ganj. In addition to this, the restaurant owners were also setting off fireworks, or rather, they were allowing their five year old son to do so. When he was (to the great relief of the patrons) unsuccessful at lighting, one of the older employees/family members took over. My pictures of the fireworks really don’t do it justice, but the guy set off a number of those fireworks that just shoot a large shower of sparks straight up into the air. I don’t know what they are called, but from twenty feet away they are pretty impressive to watch. I should mention that Divali is the festival of lights, and, as far as I can tell, just an excuse for every man d child between the ages of five and five and forty-five to set off as many explosive devices as he can afford. The fireworks started at about 6pm, and they were still going strong when we left the restaurant almost two hours later. It was a rather nerve-racking walk from the restaurant to a bar that we thought would be open (oh my god, yes, Delhi does have bars and god I forgot how much I love them), since we had to dodge groups of rowdy men and excited children setting off more fireworks about three feet from each other. I was pretty sure that before the evening we were going to witness someone lose a limb or be blinded, if it didn’t happen to one of us. The bar we were going to was long since closed when we got there, and a walk in the other direction proved that pretty much the only thing open were the numerous guest houses in Pahar Ganj. We settled on another rooftop patio to continue to watch the numerous fireworks and drink a hot chai. We stayed up there for another hour or two, sitting in pretty much stunned silence as the fireworks just kept on going. I swear, whoever manufactures fireworks in India must be a fucking millionaire, since this went on long after we had gone to bed at about 11pm.

Delhi was quite a bit colder than Bhopal, particularly at night. Although I noticed it more during the day, because Bhopal still goes up to at least 25 degrees during the day because the sun is so strong, but what can only be described as the thickest smog I have ever seen in my life blocks out most of the direct sunlight in Delhi, making the days far less scorching than Bhopal. It should be noted here that although the smog in Delhi actually blocks the sunlight (you can actually see it as you descend into the city in the plane), I have heard from numerous people that Delhi has significantly lessened its pollution in the fast five or ten years since now the autorickshaws and public busses run on some kind of fuel. I also noticed that there is some sort of recycling system in place, since there are two separate dumpsters for biodegradable and non-biodegradable items… a far cry from the burning heaps of trash in Qazi camp. (Although I have seen a garbage truck twice in Qazi camp now, collecting garbage from one particularly overloaded garbage heap).

Anyway, I am now back in sunny Bhopal, which is hard to do after you have been having fun in tourist-ville for a few days, drinking beer and not getting harassed. Prabjit and I have had to move out of our private room since there is an older woman coming to do some work who takes precedence over us. It took me a lot longer to move out of there than it did to move in, since I have accumulated a large amount of stuff. I took the bed that I had originally had when I got here and just dumped everything into the two drawers at the bottom… until they were full, and then I dumped all of the clothes that I was actually wearing into one of the cupboards. I finally went through the drawers today (I couldn’t find my mosquito repellent anywhere) and packed all of the stuff that I’m sending home with mom and dad into my big suitcase…. And its full. Uo-oh. I’m lucky that they are coming or else there is no way that I would be able to get all of the stuff that I have bought home with me. Mostly it is clothes that I brought that I shouldn’t have, but there are quite a few books and a LOT of scarves for gifts.

Prabjit and I have both been feeling pretty sick the past couple of days. Late on Monday evening I had terrible diarrhea and fever and muscle aches. It went away overnight, and the next morning I felt better, but it keeps re-appearing in the evening every couple of days, which is kind of awful. I felt pretty shitty all day today, and spent most of the day sleeping and watching Superman movies in bed. Prabjit didn’t start feeling crappy at all until a couple of days ago, but has felt more consistently bad than I have… so who knows what is going on. I’m a little worried that I have malaria a second time, since my flu-like symptoms keep going away and then coming back, but I guess I will go get yet another malaria test tomorrow morning and find out.

There really isn’t anything exciting going on here other than that. There was an action against the gas minister on Wednesday, so we spent several afternoons cutting out people-shapes from cardboard and painting them. The anniversary of the gas disaster is coming up an a couple of weeks (Dec. 2nd) and I have been designated as resident poster-maker, so I am busy drawing pictures on poster board these days. There is also a new volunteer named Sara here from Italy for a month. She is living in the north of India (I forget the name of the town) doing work in a farm of some sort up there. A guy from Derek’s hometown, near Chicago, named Tony also arrived a couple of days ago. Tony was here for eight months, and had only left Bhopal a month or two before I got here in July, so it is kind of nice to have someone around who already knows the ropes so the speak. Eurig has hired two people to conduct interviews for his project here, and one of them has already arrived. His name is Darmesh, and he has been involved in the Bhopal campaign for quite some time. He’s not living at the clinic with us, but is around quite a bit, and has an apartment close by.

Anyway, I’m finally going to post this since it is now a week since I started writing it…

real cheese on pizza and adventures in model-building

Well, now that the malaria fun appears to have died down things are getting back to normal around here. I have been testing out ways to make my model for cervical cancer detection, which has been pretty fun. At first I tried using this stuff that I guess is essentially just mud. Unfortunately it proved not to be sticky enough, so all of the newspaper strips just fell right off of the chicken wire frame that I made. The librarian, Shahnaz, recommended that I use plaster-of-Paris, since the mice and rats won’t eat that either (which is the main reason I didn’t use the traditional flour-and-water paper-mache mix). Anyway, I tested it our to make sure that it would work, and it certainly is a lot studier than the mud that I was using before. On Sunday I spent a long time tearing up strips of cloth to use on the model, and experimenting with the plaster-of-Paris. Things to keep in mind in the future: it hardens in about a minute if you are not constantly stirring it. I lost a half of a bag of the powder because I let it sit too long while I rinsed off the sink… anyway, Chantra Kanta saw what I was doing, and showed me a much better method, that looks wayyyy smoother and takes about half of the time than what I was doing! Eventually I’ll get around to posting some photos of her showing me what to do☺

The post-malaria blues seem to have pretty much dissipated for me. I’m left, instead, with a kind of a dull ache of longing to get home again. I keep telling myself that the hard part of the internship is over; my parents will be here in one month (almost to the day), and I have plenty of work to do before they get here. See, I have somehow become the resident “artistic person” even though my drawing skills are pretty sub-par (or at least they are next to Dan’s), so Prabjit and I have been recruited to make posters for the upcoming anniversary of the gas disaster. I can’t say that I mind this at all, because it means that I have something practical and fun to do for the next three weeks. It also means that we got to go to the stationary store and buy a bunch of paints and markers and stuff, and we all know that I am addicted to buying stationary supplies, so this is good. I also have my model to finish, which takes some time as I have to wait between layers and body parts so that things can dry. Not to mention that I fully intend to get started on looking for a translator to do my photo project in the next week or so. I really want to get started on that before I leave in December with mom and dad, especially since when I get back in January, I really only have about six weeks left here in Bhopal before I can start traveling! Woo hoo! Oh yes, and of course Andrea will be here as of January eleventh or so, and Mel is returning in February, so I suspect that the rest of my time here is going to be pretty busy. Which is good, provided I don’t get malaria again. If I get malaria again I’m going to the fuck home.

Speaking of illnesses, Aio has still been pretty under the weather, and actually got a second malaria test on Monday because he was feeling so sick on Sunday night. The test came back negative, which is good. However, this begs the question of what exactly he is sick with… I feel really bad for him, since he has only been here about three weeks, and he has been sick for at least two of them now. Although, we did go to Jehan Numa Palace Hotel for dinner last night, and I think that did us all a world of good in terms of morale. Jehan Numa is the most expensive hotel in Bhopal (or at least as far a s I can tell), although the bottom end of rooms are less than $100 per night, just to put that into perspective for you. They have the only restaurant that serves Western food that actually tastes like Western food though, at their Italian restaurant. I actually (decadence of decadence!) have been twice this week, since Eurig, Derek and I decided to go and check the place out on Friday night. Derek, Prabjit, Aio and I went back last night, since it was Derek’s last night in Bhopal, and therefore his choice of whre dinner was to be.

I had spinach and cheese ravioli (and no, the cheese was not paneer thank god), on the first visit, and then peanut chicken satay, a pizza and lasagna that I split with Prabjit last night. We couldn’t resist but get a bottle of wine on both of our trips, particularly because so far as I know there is no other restaurant that serves wine in the city. Considering that this place is really about one of the priciest places that you can eat, it is still pretty damn cheap by Canadian standards. The bottle of wine (there are only two red on the list) was about $30, and the main courses are each about $5.00. This restaurant is actually quite a bit cheaper than the “mixed cuisine” (read: Indian food) restaurant that we ate at before. I wasn’t overly impressed with the Indian food that we got at the other restaurant before, so I would say that I win all the way around: Western food is cheaper! Yay!

I have been shying away from the food in the canteen lately, as I am getting thoroughly sick of rice, daal, subjie and roti two meals a day, every day. I know that it is about the healthiest food that I could be eating, but I’ve been craving a bit of variety lately, and I the canteen just can’t give it! I know that I can’t afford to eat Jehan Numa style for next three solid months, but I think that just knowing that the option is available once in a while is uplifting. I am heading to Delhi this evening with Derek and Prabjit, on a much-needed break from the clinic, and Bhopal in general. Derek is going to continue up to Shimla and McCleod-Ganj after Delhi, and then he will be heading back to Chicago… for which I am very sad. As I said last night on our second toast to Derek: “I wasn’t sure about you at first…but now I’m sure!”. I’ll really miss him here, and I just don’t think that things will be the same at the clinic without him. Anyway, our trip to Delhi will be a nice farewell. I am also planning on raiding the city for certain Western items that I haven’t been able to find in Bhopal – granola bars, mosquito repellent, several particular brands of crackers, red wine, and hopefully a decent haircut. Is it sad that I am more excited about visiting the McDonald’s in Delhi than the Indira Ghandi museum? Hmmmm…

Anyway, I don’t think that there is much else to report before the trip. I’ll be sure to write about Delhi once I get back, as I’m sure that this time I won’t get lost with an evil cab driver at eleven o’clock at night. And if I do I will be armed with Prabjit, Derek and a cell phone.