Week Four: Fuel Strike

July 5, 2010

21:44

Happy Belated Independence Day to the United States! I was impressed on how may people here knew the date and wished me, my family and friends a very happy and safe celebration. I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday!

It has been a busy several days here in Bangalore. I’ve been in almost continual meetings with John, the architect, computer programmers, mapping personnel, the Karnataka slum board, and an array of other folks. While continuing to collect data that will allow SPARC to map and document the remaining 400 slums (of 1000) in Bangalore, it is time to start narrowing down which projects to complete and which to either discontinue or postpone.

John does incredible work with and for the slum dwellers. He values justice above all else, but he also has little tolerance for requests for more than what is offered, especially if the situation is desperate. The individuals that he chooses to help should be grateful and satisfied for any offer of a brighter future. Any notion of greed is an invitation for dismissal.

In the moment, one of the chief dilemmas involves the Leprosy Colony. This is a large slum with 209 households. Two weeks ago, despite sever issues concerning equipment access into the area, John was set on beginning construction and completing the project consisting of a new housing complex that would be able to provide comfortable living accommodations for everyone, but he leaders of the settlement are requesting 4 additional houses for themselves. Now the project might be disregarded completely. After meeting with this whole community and witnessing their excitement and hope, the thought at leaving them empty handed weighs heavily on all of our hearts. The matter will be discussed further next week.

This past Thursday, John sent me to the Viniobha Nagar Colony, which is another large slum of 300 households. It was a place where a housing project was abandoned due to the people’s desire for ‘more’. I’ve mentioned before that each slum has its own energy and spirit. This place was no different.

It is almost ridiculous to aim to apply a wordy description of these places, but I will continue to try: By far this was one of the most crowded areas I have yet to visit. The lanes were smoky and the air stung the eyes and nose with an irritating vigor. The drainage system was simply a 6-inch trench carved into the middle of the pathway. The narrow alleys were swarming with women washing laundry, clothes-less children hurriedly doing chores, girls tying together blooms of jasmine and other floral blossoms into lays, ladies cooking and baking over wood fires (fuel is too expensive), and men sharpening tools or carrying hefty loads.

There were also people of all ages and genders bathing openly in these suffocating, constricted lanes. We passed as a large group of native Indian women with me trailing in the back. The procession was ignored by all; however, when the washing-dwellers caught sight of my foreign being, they turned in embarrassment. Walking through these streets and receiving such an alien reaction is the most ashamed of the color of my skin and light of my eyes.

Today, the whole nation of India held a Bharat Bandh or protest against a fuel price hike. On June 25th, the petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices in India rose 10 percent. There have been various protests, marches and demonstrations in various states across India for the past week because the oil price rise is expected to fuel inflation. The Communist party and other opposing political parties chose July 5, 2010, to be a national day of strike and protest, and it left the whole country at stand-still. There were no autos, no buses, no motor cycles, no airplane flights, no open shops, no venders, no school, no work, and no activity of any kind on the streets. It was a national holiday. Those auto drivers and bus drivers that decided to continue with business encountered sporadic incidents of violence. The reason for the price increase is being blamed on the increase in global oil prices, and the Indian state-owned oil companies were losing millions of dollars daily.

All else in India is great. I have adjusted reasonably well. I still have to actively be aware and flexible to acclimate accordingly to every moment of every situation, new or old. I’m always watching, observing and making mental notes on how people interpret, react, and speak. Very little is the same here and learning how to mold speech, mannerisms and habits to resemble those of individuals around me is an exhausting but necessary task. Daily, I still notice mistakes (hopefully more and more minor) that I make and strive to incorporate the changes into my physical and verbal expressions.

The above is one of the most difficult concepts about being in a place so radically different than ‘home’. Not another soul has any concept of the place from where I come. They do not know the magnitude of the effort that I put in on a second to second basis to blend in and understand the ways of whichever setting I am engrossed. I adore such a challenge and am thoroughly flattered when the ladies at work call me an “Indian Girl” and children in the slums and on buses shout “Aunty, Aunty!” and demand to know my name; however, I must admit that some nights it is a great relief to turn off the lights in my private room and escape the stares and attention that I am given all day, every day.

Ciao.