Village Dispute

One highlight of our week in Kalleda happened while picking Ram's (Vandita's husband) brain about what the biggest problems in the village are, how they are settled, and who might be important people for us to meet. Ram was telling us about one of the village elders, Malesh, who used to be president and whose mediation skills are still sought although he no longer holds a title. In the middle of conversation, Ram pulled out his phone and called Malesh, then asked if we wanted to see a dispute. Two minutes later we were in the car and five minutes later we were sitting in Malesh's backyard along with everyone involved in the latest village scandal! I felt like I had stepped into a V.S. Naipaul book, beginning to comprehend what living in a village means and that I will be a part of this life (as much as a foreign, white girl can be) for the next several months. If you're wondering, the scandal initiated when a man's wife had an affair but the most recent development occurred when he abused her caste, an act which is against the law. The woman took her estranged husband to court but in order to avoid the high legal fees, jail time, and the price of bail, the two parties sought Malesh's assistance in a local settlement. When we arrived both parties and witnesses had just signed a document stating that they agreed to allow Malesh to oversee the dispute settlement.

The following day we met Malesh at Kalleda Rural School (KRS) where he had just finished final meetings regarding this particular dispute. The husband (I don't think they are divorced yet) had agreed to pay a certain amount of money in damages to the wife. In turn, the wife signed a document to be given to the court stating that she retracted her suit and wished to close the case. No mention is made of the local settlement because it has no legal standing beyond the village perimeters. Then she must go to the police station where they will receive her statement in person and ensure that the decision was made on her own without pressure from the other party. Now the settlement is entirely in Malesh's hands and he will actually front the money for payment to the wife while the husband raises funds from his family.

We thanked Malesh for taking the time to explain the process of dispute settlement to us and he agreed to call our mobiles as soon as there is another dispute so we can actually sit in and observe from the beginning!

Ready To Work

Our first week and a half in India was spent at Kalleda Rural School and it was very intense. Not only adjusting to new language, culture, food, and living arrangements; meeting tens of people a day, all with names that I could neither pronounce nor remember; but also attempting to take in all aspects of school life and determine where we would fit in. We met teachers; primary, high school, junior college, and alumni students; and village leaders. We sat in on classes and even led a few, participated in countless meetings, and sat in on even more. Coming from jobs in Seattle that required me to stand and move around all day, it was a big switch to be sitting all day long, cross-legged on the floor no less, and trying to stay awake and absorb useful information and make observations at meetings that were happening primarily in Telugu.

After a few days, Liza and I had our first chance to lead a meeting attended by teachers, high school students, and alumni. In typical fashion, we were informed only thirty minutes prior to the meeting that we would be running it. We quickly brainstormed a loose outline and started by introducing ourselves and giving a brief explanation of the program we hope to develop while at Kalleda. The rest of the meeting was initiated with the general question, "What do you think are the biggest problems in your community?" Silence. "No? No problems? Okay, we should go home?!" "Dowry," a young boy calls out, tentatively. "Child marriage," says another student. The floodgates had opened, students and teachers both called out problems faster than we could write, and the giant chalkboard quickly filled up. We asked two more questions based on our new list of problems which ran the gamut from dowry, to political corruption, to superstition, to pollution. First, which problems are new and which are old. Second, which problems did the students feel specifically affected them, as youth.

Aside from the list of community issues, the most important information I feel was gained from this meeting was recognising the difference between the views of the teachers and the students. The teachers were quick to impose their own opinions when they disagreed with the students. This came up a few times when the students called out problems that the teachers said didn't exist, and again when the students named problems as being new when the teachers said they were actually old. An example of this being the creation of a Telangana state which has been an issue since Andhra Pradesh was created in the early 1950s and was last a major political debate in the late 1960s. The teachers are right that Telangana is not a new issue, but it's important to understand the students' impression of the situation. After all, none of them were around in the 60s. What I learned from this meeting and will keep in mind during our future work is to pay close attention to where our information is coming from and whose opinion we are really getting, especially when we are subject to working through translation.

After this meeting I was feeling energized and inspired to start working with the students to develop skills they can use to tackle some of these community issues. But by the end of our week and a half I was also ready take a break, turn off for a bit, and re-energize. Unfortunately, due to a combination of bandhs and holidays, the well-timed break is becoming interminable and I find myself itching to return to Kalleda, settle into a routine, and begin our work in earnest. As it is I will have to wait until 24 January to initiate our program, by which time I will be well ready to get to work!

Cracking Indian Transportation

With three hours of sleep under our belts, Liza and I wake up at 5.30am to start our adventure. Our goal: to get to Varanasi as cheaply and quickly as possible in order to surprise my Mum, Dad, and sister. Our first step is to go to the airport, check all the airlines, and buy the cheapest ticket possible. When ticket prices to Varanasi proved exorbitant, we settle on a one-way to Dehli. A few hours later we arrive and go straight to the train station where, after at least an hour wait, we are curtly informed that there are no tickets to Varanasi that night. The night before we had been advised that if we couldn’t get tickets we should get on the train anyways and pay whatever necessary to stay on. With this thought in mind we wander the streets of Dehli for the day. Fortunately, over a mutton dinner next door to the Jama Masjid, we meet a man who warns us that if we are caught on the train without a ticket we will be charged 3 ½ times the most expensive ticket price. Hm . . . Plan B?

This nice man takes us to a nearby travel agent who, after much cajoling and many “No Madames, not possible” (noticing a theme, anyone?), walks us through the ticket booking process step by step. Train charts close four hours before the train and only one train to Varanasi is still open. This train, however, has only Foreign Tourist Quota tickets available. These tickets can only be bought at the station in the Foreign Tourist Bureau. The Bureau closes at 6:30pm. It is now 7:00pm. Time for Plan C…

Pick a station between Delhi and Varanasi that is night’s travel away: Lucknow. Make friends with the travel agents and pay extra to get two waitlist tickets confirmed. Book waitlist tickets from Lucknow to Varanasi for the following morning. Leave a healthy layover period to allow for the assured tardiness of Indian Rail. As the trip will take only four hours, take a chance and don’t pay to confirm the tickets. Share one berth for seven hours. Success! Fourty-eight hours, one taxi, one bus, one bicycle rickshaw, six auto rickshaws, one plane, and two trains later, we have completed the journey from Matendla Rural School to the oldest living city in the world, Varanasi.

The Great Escape

As Liza and I settled into an uneventful Christmas Day at the deserted Matendla School, we received a call from Vandita wondering if we were coming back to Hyderabad since there were no classes. We could leave?! Quickly, Liza and I tracked down Puroshatam and expressed our desire. After the requisite three “No Madames, impossible,” he made a few calls. “Okay, all arranged, thirty minutes.” Our persistence had paid off and would prove a crucial lesson as we began our first Indian travel adventure. We threw everything into our backpacks and climbed into an auto rickshaw that miraculously appeared outside our door and took us into town. The Indian club music playing from the tape deck was a fitting background as we joked about our “jail break,” giddy from the sudden turn of events and already making plans for the unexpected holiday. We arrived in town just in time to run and jump onto the already moving bus that would take us into Hyderabad.

Three hours later we were safely back at Vandita’s flat, just in time to change for the night’s events. First stop was a wedding celebration across the street in a beautifully done up house that felt like walking onto the set of Monsoon Wedding. This was the night before the wedding and the bride and groom were sat awkwardly upon a stage with cameras and bright lights trained on them, while the guests mingled and were served a steady stream of appetizers at our seats. The stage was later used for traditional dances performed by the bride’s family to songs that curse her future in-laws for taking her away from the family! The bride and groom had met face to face for the first time two days earlier and after the wedding she will return with him to the U.S. where he works. Apparently, this situation where the woman is married off not only to an unknown man but an unknown country as well, is increasingly common in the upper classes.

The second event of the night was - surprise, surprise - a Christmas party! Here we had the pleasure of mingling with people our own age, sipping dangerously colored cocktails, and eating delicious goat marsala (which the host jokingly assured us was proper Christmas turkey, despite the fact that we could see the entire goat, head and all in the massive pot). Meanwhile, classics by ABBA, Michael Jackson, and the likes played in the background. Merry Christmas!

House Arrest

For the second time since arriving in India, I am on “house arrest” due to political turmoil. The Centre has gone back on their promise regarding Telangana statehood and as a result a 48-hour bandh has been called throughout the Telangana region. School is closed, businesses are shut down, and public transportation is not running, everything has come to a standstill. From the newspaper reports it sounds as though areas of Hyderabad are quite volatile at the moment. The protests, which are largely student led, have turned violent in some areas, targeting buses and private vehicles as well as forcing shops to close down early. There is talk of possibly instating President’s Rule if the situation isn’t resolved and the U.S. has even placed a travel alert on the state.

Out here in Matendla village, we are relatively unaffected by the bandh. Liza and I have the school mostly to ourselves, along with Puroshatam who sleeps here, a couple alumni, and the kitchen help. We were reassured that as soon as the bandh was announced the kitchen stocked up on petrol and vegetables, so at least we won’t go hungry. Boredom is another matter, however, since we actually have five days holiday now: two days for the bandh, Saturday for Christmas, Sunday as usual, and Monday for a state holiday. I expect that Liza and I will spend the next days detailing our program for Kalleda School, initializing Operation GRE, improving our abysmal karam technique (a board game version of pool), and wandering the surrounding jungle in search of the ever-elusive peacock!

No “Thank You”

I can tell you how to say “thank you” in every country to which I’ve traveled. As a family it’s always been the first word we learn in a new country, and depending on the difficulty of the language, sometimes the only one. A simple thank you in someone’s own language is such an easy way to show appreciation. Along with “hello,” “thank you” was the first Telugu word I started throwing around at Kalleda. Over the last couple weeks my vocabulary has expanded but I still rely on “thank you” as my only way to express gratitude for the many tasks that others perform for us. However, last night Puroshatam (a teacher who has become our translator and cultural guide at Matendla) set me straight. As Ramesh (there must be some way to describe him other than as our “servant”) cleared our dinner table, I said “dunyevadum.” Puroshatam, who must have already heard us thank people on several occasions, then explained that we shouldn’t say “thank you.” The school community is viewed as a family and among family and friends “thank you” is considered to be very formal and is not used. So by using thank you with the people who serve us, help us, translate for us, etc. we are actually setting up boundaries and separating ourselves from them. This is definitely not the effect I was going for! I can only hope that the people around us will continue to notify us of similar cultural blunders as I’m sure that’s neither the first nor last.

Indian Time

We were invited to attend Matendla School’s equivalent of a PTA meeting this evening. The fortnightly meeting includes ten parents, two village vice-presidents, the head of Matendla, and a handful of teachers, students, and sometimes alumni. Although not everyone is involved in the discussion, there are many groups represented to maintain transparency. In accordance with the national law requiring 33% of seats be reserved for women, there are a few mothers on the committee. However, their attendance is hampered by the fact that when meetings are held during the day the women are usually working in the fields, and when the meetings are held in the evening the women are working at home. But the women are on the committee, so the law is upheld, and all is well . . .

I should preface this account with the explanation that RDF holds punctuality as one of its three core values. Having mostly experienced life within the RDF schools and organization, I had not yet been exposed to the phenomenon of “Indian Time.”

Tonight’s meeting was scheduled to be held from 7-8pm. As we are leaving our room at 7, Puroshatam tells us to come over at 7.30 instead. At 7.30 we arrive to a room with several teachers, a few students, and two villagers. Vishnu, the head of the school, is on the phone tracking down other committee members who have yet to arrive. By 8pm one more has arrived and two are on their way. Cue musical interlude. Tabala (bongo-type drums), cymbals, tambourine, and hand-drum appear out of nowhere and the entire group sings in call and response style for the next thirty minutes. When the meeting finally starts at 8.45, nearly two hours later than scheduled, I think to myself that this sort of delay isn’t so bad if there is a spontaneous concert every time!