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.