anniversary and awards

I have to admit that I breathed a giant sigh of relief once the anniversary of the gas disaster was over. Not to complain, because overall the entire experience was good, but it’s hard to sustain yourself on that level of high intensity for too many days. There were actually several different things going on in commemoration of the people who died, and actions against Dow and the Indian government, condemning them for their inaction on the issue twenty-three years later. I have photos of everything, so I’m sorry but you’ll have to read through all of the explanations…

The actual gas leak occurred shortly after midnight on the evening on December 2nd, so there are things going on both the 2nd and the 3rd. On the 2nd Sambhavna had its action, which was attempting to make demands on the government concerning the treatment of gas-affected people – namely to have yoga taught and used medicinally in the gas-victims government sponsored hospitals. Anyway, the plan was to get as many Sambhavna patients as possible together outside of Kamla Park, near the lake, and form a human chain. I think that maybe about three or four hundred people turned out, which was pretty good. It was nice to see that the posters I had done such hard work on were going to use! The human chain didn’t last for too long before people got kind of bored and started wandering off, but there did seem to be a fair bit of media attention, which is good.

After that we all trekked up to New Market, about a half-hour walk away. There was a candlelight vigil for the people who dies, which the media went absolutely insane over. A local Bhopal rock band had written a song about the gas disaster, and they were to perform their first-ever show. Unfortunately things were a bit on the disorganized side; they couldn’t get certain equipment to work, and the lead singer kept starting the song, and then stopping because he decided it didn’t sound any good. The result was that it felt like I was at a practice for a high school band. The sound was pretty terrible, so when they finally did get the whole way through the song, I wasn’t terribly impressed.

After that we were all starving so we went to the Indian Coffee House in New Market, where we were ushered upstairs where “Ladies and Families” are seated. Weird. Anyway, we had a quick dinner since Rachna phone halfway through and said that the torch lit march to the factory had already started. It was only from a few blocks away from the factory itself, so by the time we got there we had actually missed the torch lit march. People had already gathered in a square around candles that spelled out “No More Bhopals” with large black banners. It was really beautiful, and very moving if it hadn’t been for the vast quantity of misogynist twelve-year old buys behind me. I was allowed to crouch inside the banners because I was taking photos, but the kids behind me kept poking, pushing and hollering at me. I couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t very many women around at all. Most of the vigil’s attendees were young men and boys out late at night in large groups, and spending most of their time hassling the white people from Sambhavna. I was pretty disgusted with their behaviour, especially because this was a memorial of sorts for many people who had died that night. It really pissed me off that these guys could have so little respect for their friends and neighbours.

We finally went back to the clinic around 9:30pm, completely exhausted from the day’s activities. However, before we could start relaxing, Rachna told us that we had to finish off some other signs for the protest the next day. We started a production line, and so we were lucky enough to finish up fairly quickly, or at least within the next couple of hours. The next day I slept in a bit, and by the time I was making my breakfast in my pj’s a small horde of children – Sareeta and people she had rangled together – had trailed into the clinic dressed in suits. They were supposed to be the CEOs and whatnot of corporations that are screwing India over. Unfortunately they looked more like a bunch of school children, so Rachna told us to hurry up and get dressed so that we could make them cardboard hats and briefcases with corporate names on them. The march to the Union Carbide factory was supposed to start at 11:30, so with little time to spare, Prabjit, about ten eager eight to ten year old kids and myself managed to churn out hats and briefcases for each of them. For young-ish kids, I have to admit that they were remarkably efficient, especially since they cleaned up absolutely everything without me having to tell them to do so.

We managed to get together two rickshaws, and all of the little boys piled, squealing with glee, into one, while Prabjit, the three other girls and myself got into the other one. I felt kind of like a schoolteacher as we herded everyone into the rickshaws and then piled out again at the meeting spot for the protest. There was a fair bit of waiting around before the protest actually started, but eventually we got under way. The turnout was really good for the march, maybe five hundred or more people, mostly women marched for about three and a half hours from just off of Hamidia Road to the Union Carbide factory. Admittedly I had not exactly been prepared for quite that long a walk, especially in the blazing sun and with more frequent that necessary stops to chant slogans against Dow and Union Carbide in Hindi. By the time we got there I was completely exhausted, and about ready to collapse. Luckly some chairs had been set up, so I nabbed one of those while the twenty-foot tall effigy of Warren Anderson (CEO of Union Carbide) was burned to the ground and his ashes stomped on. Then I realized that the terrible band was going to play yet again, although this time they were a little more together, so it wasn’t so bad.

After the band played and people started dispersing, every child in a fifty-foot radius around me moved closer so that they could stare at me. When an older woman came and sat next to me to get a better look and started asking me questions in Hindi, I decided I’d had enough of this, so I got up to look for some of the other volunteers. I ran into Eurig not far off, but he hissed under his breath “the creepy guy from the wedding is over there! Keep walking!!”, so we walked down Chola Road until we got to the gap in the wall and hid behind it… The creepy guy from the wedding, you may recall, was the one who told us that we were “enhancing the beauty of the evening” and that I was “helping the backwards people of India”. Euch…

When everyone reconvened at Sambhavna shortly afterwards, we discovered that no one had remembered to take the fifty-odd posters that we (mainly Prabjit) had spent the previous three days making. Arg… talk about wasted work. We all took showers and relaxed as much as possible for the next few hours, since the next day everyone was going to start getting ready for the Chingari Awards. I had offered my services to write up a short presentation of what Chingari had been doing since its beginning, and make a slideshow of photos to go along with it, so I had been working on this for the past few days pretty continuously, but hadn’t yet finished, so I spent a few hours that evening finishing a rough version.

Most of Wednesday was spent pretty lazily, since the Board of Trustees for Chingari had all shown up at this point and started taking command of the situation. They decided that instead of the ten-minute long presentation I had been told to make, they wanted something only three minutes, and that they would get Suresh to write the dialog. So I handed what I had over the Suresh, and he commenced work. At about 10pm, however, Suresh asked me if I wouldn’t mind copying all of the photos I had collected from Chingari (about 2 gigs worth), onto his memory stick so that he could start making the slideshow. I pointed out that I had already pulled out most of the really good ones, so why not take a look at what I had done already, but he insisted not. I spent until about 1:30am with Suresh and Biju trying to find the best photos out of what we already had, to go with about three minutes of text that Suresh had written out. I gave up at 1:30 because one or all of the four memory stick we were using had viruses on them and crashed both the computer we were using, and Suresh’s laptop crashed with the viruses, and lost all of the work we had done.

The next morning Shalini told me that Biju was starting all over again from scratch, since they hadn’t been able to recover what we had already done, so I spent the better part of the day in Biju’s office making the slideshow all over again (please note here that they had decided to trash having text all together, and were just making a collage of about ten minutes worth of photos). It went a lot more smoothly this time though, sine Biju and I seemed to have a fairly similar idea of what we wanted to show in the slides. Although we did have a scare when we stopped for lunch, and his computer crashed, but the show was recovered, so all was well.

The show was actually pretty good in the end, if I do say so myself. The one criticism I would have is that Biju wanted to put it to music, which was fine, but I thought that the music should only be instrumental since Rashida Bee would be speaking overtop of it. Our compromise ended up being that Biju took the first few bars of some classical song (I don’t know what it was called, but its really famous) and looped it over and over again. The effect, especially on an extra-loud style India speaker system, was a little jarring.

Nonetheless, the awards went extremely well. The auditorium was absolutely jam packed with women and children that Chingari has helped, which was really touching to see. I had misty eyes when Rashida and Champa were making speeches, even though I have no idea what they were saying. It just made me so happy to think about the work that they do, and how much the community supports them. I mean, they are trying to help the people who have been screwed over the most by the disaster; who have no money; who work long hours; who are trying to take care of severely disabled kids with the most meager of resources; who are blamed by their families and neighbours for their children’s birth defects. I think that they are possibly the most inspiring women I have ever met, or ever will meet. The entire awards ceremony just made me so proud of what they have accomplished in their lifetime.

Once again, having a vast number of people here from Delhi and other more cosmopolitan Indian cities made me realize the awesome fashion that exists outside of colloquial old Bhopal. After spending an hour trying on everything I own before the Chingari Awards, Prabjit and I both finally raided Tarunima’s closet, and that sealed the deal – I need at least one or two nice warm kourtas before I make it Shimla or Rajasthan!
Tarunima has absolutely beautiful, heavier kourtas from the Khadi Shops in Delhi, which I am absolutely set on finding when we go back. It has gotten cold enough here that all of the salwar suits I’ve had made are too cold on their own, so that is the perfect excuse to buy a couple of other things, even though I had already put the kaibosh (sp?) on buying more clothes.

The woman who won the award this year is a woman from Orissa who has been rallying people in her community to fight against a mining company for about fourteen years. Someone pointed her out to me at the march on the 3rd, and I have to admit that the first thing I noticed was he she and all of the women who had come with her from Orissa all had their septum’s pierced!! (I’m talking about a nose ring through the middle of their noses). I was totally dying to go up to them and pull out my hidden node ring and be like “hey!! I have one of those too!”. I did manage to contain myself though, so I narrowly escaped that particular embarrassment. Anyway, during the awards she was really nervous-looking on stage, until she got up to the podium in her traditional sari and started shouting slogans! Then you could totally see the fire in her eyes, and man, did she look pissed. I guess I would be pissed to if some corporation was mining my land and exploiting my family…

While I was off making the slideshow with Biju, you’ll never guess who arrived at the clinic!?! SHREE! I was so happy to see her, when I finally did several hours later. I didn’t really get a chance to sit down and talk to her until we all sat down together for dinner at Hotel Ranjit on Hamidia Road. We were a crowd of about twenty-five, so Sathyu forbade us from drinking alcohol (which is the point of going to Ranjeet, since the food isn’t great there), as he was concerned with the image that it would give of both Chingari and Sambhavna. I was a little miffed that I wasn’t allowed to have the beer I had been looking forward to, but I understand his sentiment: Bhopal is ridiculously conservative, and word travels fast about things like this. Unfortunately, this sparked a lengthy debate about drinking alcohol in the clinic at all, and why there was no official ban on it blah blah blah… Christ the politics of this place get to me sometimes. Everyone is into everyone else’s business and gossiping about everyone else behind their backs. Not that I’m not guilty of my fair share of these indulgences, but considering that the weekly staff meetings are supposed to air out the dirty laundry, so to speak, there sure is a lot going on under the surface that no one talks about up front. Anyway, I won’t dwell on it any longer, suffice to say that there are certain standards for some people, and other standards for everyone else. Ppppbbbtt…

Eurig left Bhopal for ten days yesterday evening, so Tony and I escorted him to the train station. It turned out that his train was almost two hours late, so we went to Ranjeet again and had the beer that had been forbidden to us the previous night. I had spent most of the day drawing up yet another project proposal to get the kids taking photos to show Shree, since I know that once she has a say in it, the ball will get rolling with great momentum. She has already helped Prabjit out tremendously with the study that she has been trying to start for the past three months, and I know that she will do the same for me as well.

I spent all day today finally wrapping up the rest of my cervical cancer inspection model in plaster of Paris-soaked cloth. I have to admit that I think it is starting to look pretty good. I need to go over it tomorrow with a thick layer of plaster to smooth it out as much as possible (right now it still has a slightly mummified look). But I managed to buy some varnish this afternoon, so as soon as I am finished with that I can seal it up so that it won’t continue to crumble away. Oh yes, and my mom is bringing an old thera-band to use as the vagina, so everything is falling into place. This afternoon the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) opened their offices on the second floor of Chingari Trust. They invited everyone from Sambhavna over, as well as a fair number of other people, to eat a quite delicious meal on their rooftop, which was pretty fun.

I think that about sums up the past week, although I haven’t commented on the vast number of people here right now. Sara, the Italian girl left earlier in the week. But gained what feels like about a million people in the meantime. Tarunima, who is doing the field work with Eurig and Dharmesh, arrived on the first; Shree and one of Sambhavna/Chingari’s trusteed, Mira, arrived on the fifth; two of Dharmesh’s friends from Chennai were here for a few days; two other Chingari Trustees were here; there was another couple from Chennai here for a few days; Shalini from SfB is here now; Dharmesh’s girlfriend Shweta is here; and a new volunteer named Robyn from Seattle came a coupe of days ago.

Anyway, the dorm rooms and everyone’s houses have been jam-packed with people, and the upstairs kitchen has never seen so much action – people making chai and French toast and coffee pretty much constantly. The bustle is nice, I certainly like having lots of other people around. It’s intense though, and there isn’t a whole lot of time for reflection or “alone time,” which can be a bit trying at times. To be honest though, I think I prefer the insanity of all the action around here. There is no time to be bored, or homesick or to feel as though you are being useless and unproductive. I think that the craziness actually motivates me to do more work…

My parents arrive tomorrow night! I don’t think I have ever been so excited to see them (with perhaps the exception of when I came back from my two weeks at overnight camp when I was eight years old). The hot water hasn’t been working here, since some asshole threw a rock at the solar panels that power the water heater, so I am fully planning on showering at their shwanky hotel! Okay, I’ll update again once they are here are we are driving each other nuts☺

p.s. i have more photos to post, but i haven't yet uploaded them on my computer... soon... sooooooon...