It is a sad evening. It's 11pm at night and I should be packing my bags to leave my host family's home tomorrow morning, but packing up would mean I'm leaving. We still have a few more days, and a huge farewell dinner to look forward to, but the program is winding down.
The last week has been a good stretch for the head and the heart. The highlights:
Garment workers union interaction: Leadership from one of the major garment workers unions in Bangalore came and shared their experiences of organizing labor, working a difficult job in difficult conditions, and generally complicating our ideas of what it means to be an American consumer. They adamantly stated that our protests to shut down shops with poor conditions is not what they want. When the orders stop coming in, they lose their livelihoods. They want better conditions and better pay.
Mysore/Mahila Samakhya: We took an overnight trip to Mysore and arrived in time to see the palace lights in the evening. After wandering the grounds for a while, we headed to a late-night viewing of Bollywood's number one film of the moment Chennai Express. If I closed my critical mind and tried not to think about race and gender politics (to name the most glaringly egregious representations), it was a fun movie. But still really stupid. The next day with met with Mahila Samakhya, a group that helps organize dalit women in communities around Karnataka. Their work includes educational programs around literacy, financial management, health, legal rights, and education. They do incredible work and function with the philosophy that the women in the communities they serve are the ones who should lead and guide themselves toward justice.
Lesbit/Payana: Yesterday we had interactions with two different groups who work around LGBT rights. They both emerged from the same organization, and both have very different philosophies of how to do their work. Talking about these issues, it quickly became clear that a western context and vocabulary do not easily align with an Indian context, vocabulary, and history. It was a nice reminder that, "oh yeah, we're not the center of the universe," (even though we kind of are). Did I mention that this work is complicated? Lesbit focuses on issues that surround women, and actively avoid the "NGO-ization" of their organization, while Payana is fully NGO-ized. (There are seeds of entire theses here.) The work these groups excites me because they push the idea of what it means to be Indian. They are working to bring these populations into the mainstream and fight for the rights that all individuals are promised under Indian law.
Indian Media: Today we met with an independent documentary filmmaker who brought some of his work to share with us. He began with his observations of how the media's representation of Indians has changed as the social, cultural, economic, and political landscape of the country has changed. He laments the homogenization of the ideal human being -- fair-skinned, unrealistically skinny or muscular depending on the gender, of a certain socio-economic status, a consumer. As he shared pieces of his films with us I was impressed with how critical he is about what it means to document and represent another person's experience. He takes the responsibility extremely seriously, and he believes that no matter how conscientious he is, there is always some amount of exploitation that takes place in documenting the lives of under-represented people. These are definitely issues that are on my mind as I write a blog about my time in India, and publicly display the photos I take while I'm here.
It was a long day with lots of thinking, so it was nice to be able to lighten the mood slightly with a surprise gift for the students. We had tote bags made for all of them. The screen printed design is a thali, which is a large steel platter loaded with smaller steel sides. These are eaten with chapati and rice. It's a nice metaphor for our group. We're lots of different flavors all coming together to make one, delicious meal.
When you're head and your heart are feeling a little stretched (maybe on the verge of being strained), there's nothing like some chaat. (I know that this picture is blurry, but the lovely chaat wallah took it for us. He was shy about using the camera, but Anu coaxed him into it, so when the shot came out blurry, we told him it looked fantastic. And it does.)
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