Chasing the Solar Eclipse. August 21, 2017.

4.00am: The alarm rings and we jump out of bed.   Monday morning, the day of the eclipse!  We planned to leave early to avoid all the traffic.  No one knows how bad it will be.  Traffic was bumper-to-bumper in some eclipse-watching states as early as Friday.  And traffic was heavy when we drove down from Chicago to Springfield.  Everyone was heading to the eclipse.

We have chosen to watch the eclipse from Illinois, in the heart of the country.

5.16am: We are on our way!  Ani, Chris, Mary, John, and I.  All packed into the rental car, speeding down highway I-55.

7.00am: Things are going well.  No traffic so far and leaving early was a really good idea!  A quick gas stop for gas near St. Louis.  It is the beginning of a bright, sunny day.

I had first come across an article that talked about the eclipse in March.  It had immediately appealed to me.  A rare celestial event would be visible from a destination we could travel to.  How dark would it get when the sun was completely covered by the moon?  What would it feel like?

We studied the path of totality (the narrow band across the United States where the sun would be 100% covered by the moon) and picked southern Illinois as the destination. A primary motivation was Ani did her residency in Springfield in Illinois and had friends there.  Some of the total eclipse destinations were about a 2-3 hour drive from Springfield.  Ani talked to her friend Mary, who was not only happy to host us, she and her son were thrilled to join us.  Plans began to take shape.

After much deliberation we decided against Carbondale.  Carbondale was the city most talked about in the eclipse chasing community, and later in the mainstream news, as it was one of the locations with the longest duration of totality.  NASA was setting up there and the local Southern Illinois University was going all out to make Carbondale the “Eclipse Crossroads of America.”   (The path of totality for the 2024 eclipse once again runs through Carbondale.)   The country’s attention was on Carbondale, and a mega event was organized at the university stadium.   The concern was traffic would be terrible (Chris was particularly worried about smaller country roads).

Chris studied the map of the eclipse’s path of totality, pored over maps and road networks, and proposed Waterloo as our destination.   Waterloo was a small town, but not far from the highway. Getting in and out would be easier.  And Waterloo had an event planned for the eclipse, as he found out from Facebook.

Chester, a town further south and closer to Carbondale was also in contention.  The Chester Town Library had been organizing a variety of events in the weeks leading up to the eclipse, and one of the viewing places was in a park by the Mississippi river.  The thought of viewing the eclipse close to a water body was appealing.   But that would have meant an hour’s extra drive each way so we settled on the town of Waterloo.

7.28am: We arrive at the Fairgrounds at Waterloo, the location of the eclipse event.   We are the tenth car there.  Lots of volunteers are setting things up, and vendors are laying out their wares.  The fairgrounds are surrounded by corn fields as far as the eye can see.

We are very impressed with the town of Waterloo.  The population is about 10000 (roughly the size of Sargur in HD Kote taluk in Karnataka). They were ready to host 10000 visitors for the day at the fairgrounds.  This meant having enough food, water, parking, and of course special eclipse viewing glasses.  There was not a single pair of glasses to be had the previous week in stores. But Waterloo had ordered them ahead of time, and had a pair for every visitor, complete with a Waterloo logo.  Fantastic.  They had a guestbook for visitors to sign in, so that they could know where visitors were from, with a prize for folks who had travelled the farthest. We felt very welcome.

My friend Praveen had been intrigued that there was so much excitement among everyone in the United States about a scientific event.  He has been working on increasing interest in Science, with the goal of encouraging scientific temperament among school students, in the rural area around Sargur town in HD Kote taluk. So his observation about how the eclipse had become a cultural event in America was an interesting one.

Interest in Science in the United States is broad and deep.  In the weeks leading up to the eclipse there were events all across the country.  Public libraries hosted events by Science teachers.  Astrophysicists gave lectures at Science museums.   Magazines and newspapers published articles about how to experience the eclipse.  In the week before the eclipse it became the central event of interest in mainstream society. EVERYONE was talking about it.  Every news show had suggestions and tips on watching the eclipse.  And they were talking about it as a scientific event, not a mysterious one.  Something to be understood, experienced, and enjoyed by everyone, not feared and observed by a few.  Information about the eclipse was available everywhere: on NASA sites, local Science museum sites, news articles, TV programs.

America being America, months before the event the towns in the path of totality saw this as a great business opportunity.  Farms, wineries, restaurants and other businesses in the path of totality organized ticked events around Eclipse Day.  Towns created websites to attract visitors to their events.  Educational institutions organized a variety of educational events.  Carbondale, the “Eclipse Crossroads of America” and the home of the main Southern Illinois University campus, sold tickets for seats in their sports stadium (capacity 40,000).  Visitors could have a seat, listen to organized lectures and other events in the hours leading up to the eclipse, munching popcorn and drinking Coke.  Lincoln Land Community College, near Springfield in an area with around 95% of totality, had a live feed in its campus, with pictures and videos coming from a professor who had travelled south to be in the band of totality.  Schools suspended classes during the eclipse and created learning experiences around the event for their students.  If the parents wanted to take their children somewhere in the areas where there was 90-100% totality, it was an excused absence. 

8.15am.  We have scoped out the fairgrounds, and selected an area to sit in.  A wide swath of grass has been made available for people to sit on.  On the other side of the fairgrounds are picnic tables in sheltered areas.   It was going to be a hot and humid day, so we choose a shady tree.

8.30am.  Chris feels like pancakes, but decides not to move the car as it is in a really good spot. 

9.00am.  The pace of arriving cars has picked up.  Cars are lined up in twos up and down the field next to the fairgrounds.  The shady area we had chosen starts filling up.   It is to Waterloo’s credit that they keep the traffic moving, and the turn from the road into the fairgrounds barely gets backed up throughout the day.  We are very impressed with how organized the town of Waterloo is for this event.  Lots of townspeople are helping as volunteers and keep everything going smoothly. 

10.00am.  The fairgrounds is getting busy.  The sign in desk opens, with the guestbook, solar glasses, and other information.  A music band starts playing.

10.30am.  The fairgrounds is getting very full.  There are lines for icies and ice-cream and food.  Hot dogs, chips, burgers are all available, along with beer and other drinks.  Vendors are also selling trinkets, handmade clothing, and other objects.  Visitors keep coming, there is now a continuous stream of cars turning into the fairgrounds. 

10.45am.  People come fully equipped for an outside show on a sunny day.  Some have large tents that they can put up to shield the sun.  Some, like us, have lawn chairs and choose shady spots under trees.  Others choose a picnic table in a shaded area in the fairgrounds.  Everyone has blankets, snacks, water, and books or cards or board games for entertainment.  The atmosphere is like a carnival.

11.50am. Chris pulls us from under the tree to show us – a small dark semi-circle is visible on the top right corner of the sun’s circle.  The eclipse is beginning!   When we look through our eclipse glasses we can see the orange disc that is the sun and the dark disc that is the moon coming in from the West.  There is absolutely no change visible if we don’t look up wearing our solar eclipse.

12.18pm. The sun is about 20% covered now.  Absolutely no difference in the heat or brightness.   A hot and humid day it continues to be.

Photo by Andrew Nelles of The Tennessean

12.25pm. Am I feeling slightly cooler?   Is it a breeze, or the eclipse, or am I imagining it?  I rush out from the under the tree to take a look.  The sun is about 30% covered now.

12.34pm. No, we are not imagining it.  It is definitely cooler now.  “The sun is not beating down on my skin as it was a few minutes ago,” says Chris.

12.36pm. We notice a difference in the sunlight.  The sun’s rays are a little different, like it is 4.00pm in the afternoon.  I take a quick one-second look at the sun, but I see NO difference – I cannot see the black disk of the moon covering the sun that I can see through my eclipse glasses.  To the naked eye the brightness of the sun overpowers everything else and we only see the sun shining as usual.  

I take a picture with my phone (not looking at the sun), but the photo captures NOTHING.  I cover the camera lens with the special eclipse glasses and try again.  Still NOTHING, the photo only captures a bright sun.  At this distance, the camera lens cannot capture anything else.  It is a complete waste of time to take pictures without a special camera.  

12.57pm.  The sun is 70% covered now!   But there is no really difference in the amount of light or brightness.  It is not dark.  It feels like late afternoon.

In many ways it feels like the sun is setting, but it also feels a bit different.  To me it feels like the sun is fading away.  I think to myself, “One day, billions of years from now, the sun’s life will end.  This is how it will feel then, with the sun fading away.”

1.09pm. The sun is only a crescent now.  It feels like 6.00pm in the evening.  We are getting excited.  We watch as a smaller and smaller sliver of sun is visible through our eclipse glasses.   We must be at over 95% totality now but it is not really dark.  When will it get really dark?

1.16pm. There is a sudden eruption of crickets chirping.  Lots of them.  They sense something.  They are shrill, as though they are alarmed.  I feel goosebumps.  It is close to the time when the moon will completely cover the sun.

1.17pm.  I am watching through my glasses, and as I watch the crescent disappears.  I remove my glasses, and there it is.  Totality!  The sun covered by a black disc, with the white halo around it – the Corona. 

And there are the planets!   Venus on the right, Jupiter on the left.  We know the heavenly bodies are always there in the sky, day or night, but to actually see them appear is quite something.  It is like a reminder that they are all there all the time.  With the brightness of the sun temporarily gone, they appear in the sky.

1.18pm.  This is it.  Totality.  The sky is dark, like a late summer evening on a long summer day.  Like 9.00pm early July during long summer days in northern United States.  There is some light in the horizon, so it is not the pitch dark of midnight.   The sky is inky blue, not black.  It is eerie in some ways.

Photo by Andrew Nelles of The Tennessean

1.19pm.  A sparkle appears on the edge of the black disk, the “diamond ring” effect as the moon moves away from completely covering the sun.  This is the signal to put on our glasses again.  In that moment, when the Corona gives way to the diamond ring, the intensity of the sun’s light goes up 400,000 times and it is no longer safe to look at the sun with naked eyes. 

Photo by Helen Comer of The Daily News Journal

Everyone at the fairgrounds claps.   Nature put on this show for us, and we immensely enjoyed it.

1.20pm.  The sun is now visible again as a crescent through our solar glasses.  It is rapidly getting bright again. 

Totality has ended. Oh, it was so short, so brief.  That moment went by all too soon.  Totality lasted 2 minutes and 18 seconds in Waterloo.

Within 15 minutes or so, it is as though the eclipse never happened.  The sun is out, the fields are green, it is a blazing summer day.  It is all over.  The Sun is back.

We decide we should start driving out quickly, but several others have the same idea.  Bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to the highway I-55, and then slow traffic on I-55.  Everybody is leaving.  The two hour drive in the morning takes us four hours on the way back.  But we are happy and satisfied.  We had a great view, and a full 2 minutes and 18 seconds of totality.  As we drive back we keep looking up at the sun through the window,
through solar glasses – as the dark crescent of the moon becomes smaller and smaller and the orange disc of the sun becomes full again.

Dear old Sun.

We later discuss what we felt and observed during Totality.  Chris, the astronomer amongst us, had some interesting thoughts.  It felt like sunset, but there was a strangeness to it – the West became dark while the East had some light, the opposite of sunset.  He also noticed that the shadows were short.  With the sunset like experience just before totality his mind expected longer shadows.  But this was midday, and the sun was right above our heads.  The shadows were midday shadows.

It was not pitch dark, probably because the band of totality in this eclipse was 70 miles wide.  We were in a flat, farmland region.  We could see for miles around us.  The light we saw at the very edge of the horizon, during totality, was probably the edge of the band of totality.  We could probably see 30-35 miles in any direction because we were in a flat area.  The light beyond the band of totality, in the distance, meant that where we were did not become pitch dark.  How fascinating. 

Final thoughts:

Melli: We were lucky to be in a time and place where we could travel to see an eclipse. I am so happy to have seen it.

Ani: In the days after the eclipse I find that I pay more attention to the Sun now, and think of where it is during the day.

Chris: Where are we going in 2024?

Tequ’a and Umm al-Ara’is by David Shulman

August 2, 2014


David Shulman is a professor at Hebrew University and a peace activist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dean_Shulman
 

            Dizzy from the dissonance. In the felafel shop off the main street in Tequ’a, the TV is perched high on the wall in the corner. News from Gaza in Arabic. A mother lies on a hospital cot, her face pocked with a hundred tiny, and some not-so-tiny, red wounds, probably from shrapnel. She cannot speak, keeps fading off into sleep (let us hope it’s not death). Beside her, a two-year-old child is crying, hopeless, holding her hand, looking at her face. The young owner of the shop scoops balls of chick-pea mash from a vast mountain of it in front of him, sets them afloat in the boiling oil of a deep black cast-iron fry-pan. When they are ready, he takes them out one by one and, one by one, stacks them with precision in a row along the wide circular rim of the pan. He is an artist. He loves his work and he is happy to feed us. We have come back with the village elders from an afternoon in the newly stolen fields. He welcomes us with the gentle grace that defines Palestinian hospitality.

            It’s the best felafel I’ve ever tasted. Two tinted glass chandeliers hang from the ceiling over the white plastic tables and the black plastic chairs. Outside, on the main street, a tractor rolls past. Young men in black shirts come in to serve us. They carry themselves with the dignity of the Mediterranean male. They smile. When we are finished and ready to leave, I go to thank the owner, I tell him it was wonderful. “To your good health,” he says. “You must come again.”

            Peace. One hundred kilometers away, Jews and Palestinians are killing one another with the happy ferocity of hyenas and the gloomy self-righteousness of monotheists. The dissonance makes me dizzy. If here, why not there? “It could be there, too,” says Guy.

            Why Tequ’a? For the usual reason. After the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli boys, Israeli settlers, backed up by ultra-right politicians, announced the “appropriate Zionist response.” They have set up Tekoa V—three miserable caravans, a few flags. The caravans sit in the middle of what was once a cultivated field. To the west, hills of stone, a swirl of yellow and brown. To the east, the desert, white and gray. In the distance, the blue hills of Moab, across the river. What is left of the field is level and cleared of stones.

            It was hard work getting the owners of the land to come with us today. They’re afraid. These fields and grazing grounds abut on the settlements of Tekoa IV and Nokdim. It’s dangerous to come here. Guy and Ezra have both been savagely beaten by settlers in these parts. Ezra warns me today: there’s a 50% chance that we’ll be attacked by settlers or soldiers or both, anyway they’re all the same.

            We walk down the long rocky slope beside rusty barbed wire fences under a doomsday sun. We come to a halt a few dozen yards above the caravans. We know the soldiers will come, and they do, first one jeep, then two more. Two soldiers clamber up the hill to accost us. Ezra has ordered me to talk to them, to give them a short lecture about this place.

            “Who’s responsible here?” they ask.

            “No one is responsible, but I’m ready to speak to you.”

            “What are you doing here?”

            “We came with the owners of this land to see what is happening.”

            “You’re not planning to come down into the settlement?”

            “No. But you should know that it’s illegal, an act of state-sponsored theft.”

            “All I know is that the Supreme Court granted a two-week extension before demolishing it.”

            “True. That’s how all the settlements started. Just wait. And what do you think about all this?

            “Think? I’m wearing a uniform, so I don’t have to think.”

            But they’re not harsh or scornful or superior, just hot and bored. More keep coming up the hill. For once they make no attempt to drive us away. They tell us we can have our protest, they won’t interfere. Guy argues with them a little, but they don't seem interested. I talk with Daniel, who is studying philosophy at University College London; this year he took a second-year course in Ethics. I say to him that it must be interesting to move from that into Practical Ethics on the Ground. It’s all here, before our eyes.

            Maybe we’ll slowly persuade the owners to come back with their goats and sheep, to let us help them here and in the courts, and maybe they’ll even get the land back. We’ve had some luck before in Tequ’a. But you can already see, right here, the whole cancerous process at its initial stage. It begins with a caravan or two, and then the Supreme Court, responding to an appeal by right-wing politicians, lets them stay on, and the bureaucrats start funneling money, and before you know it they’re connected to the water and the electricity grid and they have their own little squad of soldiers to protect them and they can now proceed to bully and attack and humiliate the Palestinians whose land they have taken. Look at Tekoa IV, just over there.

            Meanwhile, there’s a war on; maybe it’s winding down, for now. Things are hot in the territories, and many places are, for the moment, out of reach. Nasser, from Susya, called this morning to tell us that under no circumstances can we go into Yata today. At Umm al-Ara’is the standard sequence played itself out. We marched with Sa’id and the ‘Awad clan to the edge of their fields. The soldiers produced their signed order and attached map of the Closed Military Zone. Amitai ignored it, boldly marched into the heart of the wadi and sat there serenely on a rock until the soldiers came to arrest him. One of them threatened him, saying that one day he’d rape him in a back alley in Tel Aviv. But most of these soldiers—reservists-- were relatively mild today. Gabi asked one of them if he didn’t feel something in the face of the women and children whom he was driving away. The soldier said: “I don't have feelings.” Gabi said, “That’s when you’re in uniform, but I’m sure when you take the uniform off you do have feelings.” The soldier said, “No, even when I’m not in uniform I have no feelings.”

            I guess that sums it up. The whole story of Israel is enfolded in that inner deadness. It’s evident in the way the war has gone in Gaza, too. You can do anything if you’re dead inside. You can kill children and not notice. What has happened to the Jews? Once we were light and witty and self-deprecating and terribly vulnerable and we used our minds and our hearts to survive, and now we’re heavy and earnest and speak mostly in the language of threats and coercion and, these days, revenge. There are huge posters in Gilo, as you enter Jerusalem from the south, quoting the bloodthirsty verse from Psalms 18:38: erdof oyevai ve-asigem ve-lo ashuv 'ad kalotam, "I will pursue my enemies and overcome them and I will not come back until I have exterminated them." I like some verses of the Bible better than others.

            Sometimes I weary of the whole sorrowful, surreal concoction. At Umm al-Ara’is, after the ritual was complete, Amitai played soccer with the Palestinian kids; the ball kept getting kicked downhill into the deep desert. Sometimes it also got kicked into the forbidden fields. No one seemed to care. Soccer on the brink, with everyone present, playing their part:  Sa’id, dignified as always, and the ‘Awad people, still fighting to get back their lands; the settler thieves who stole them, uphill in Mitzpe Yair; the soldiers who are there to protect the settlers; us, who have come to confront the latter and to help Sa’id and his people; the birds and clouds and the raging sun, watching from above; the goats in their pens, the wheat threshed on the old stone threshing-ground in the khirbeh, golden in the midday light; the ravaged fields in the wadi, by now, at the height of summer, baked to a crisp. I think the dizziness started then, before we left for Tequ’a.

            And then there are the not-so-small miracles that also happen. Some new volunteers have joined us, including a young woman, Noa, from a moshav near the coast who, I discover, has somehow found Ta’ayush and, more important than that, has found, against all odds (or maybe she always had), the unthinkable gift of thinking for herself, resisting the communal brainwashing at high tide now during the war. God exists.

Palestine: The Hatred and the Hope by David Shulman

I interrupt the India 2014 posts to point to two posts by a professor in Hebrew University, a Jew.   My father and he are professional colleagues.  It is so heartening to read this in the midst of the deafening narrative in the US media that has no room for nuances and presents only the war between two entities, in a tone that is partial to the Israeli right wing view.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/aug/02/palestine-hatred-and-hope/?insrc=hpbl

Prices

The Times of India I read on the flight to Bangalore discussed price spikes of onions.  The Star of Mysore I read on arrival in Mysore talked about increased price of vegetables.  They were all close to Rs. 100 per kg.   I bought some oranges and mosambies at Rs. 100 a kg each.   You get about 4 of each for half kg, meaning each fruit is about Rs. 12.50.

Later that evening I was in a department store A to Z.  It is modeled on department stores in the west, albeit in a much smaller space, and carries everything from soaps to packaged snacks to groceries.  I observed with interest familiar brands like Oreos, KitKat, and Knorr soup concentrates.   An Oreo packet with about a dozen of the well-loved cookies was Rs. 20.  KitKat had smaller sizes to suit varied budgets in India (exemplified in articles and books like ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’).  The typical size that costs 50 cents in the US cost Rs. 20, a packet half that cost Rs. 10, and a packet half that cost Rs. 5.  This meant that a maidservant’s daughter could probably afford a KitKat treat at times.  That's good.

It also meant that a KitKat indulgence was more affordable than an orange or mosambi indulgence.  A Knorr soup concentrate packet was Rs. 52 (with multiple vegetables, onions and tomatoes in concentrate form), the price of half a kg of one vegetable.

This was a real change.  When I was growing up, an orange was probably 25 paise, while a Cadbury bar was Rs 5.  Chocolates were expensive and out of reach.  Everybody bought vegetables and fruits for everyday use, and chocolates on rare occasions (maidservants not at all).  While fruits and vegetables (along with salaries) have gone up 50 to 100 times or more, chocolates seem to have gone up only by 4-5 times.  This seemed to similar to the situation in the US.  (I had been extremely surprised when I landed in the US to find chocolate prices on par with vegetable and fruit prices and the more processed food it was, the cheaper it seemed to be. It took me a long time to get my head around the fact that the poor are obese rather than being thin as sticks, and cheap processed food was one of the reasons.)  

Everything in India has gone up.   But processed and packaged foods seemed to be holding their own.  Is it because of efficiencies in production?  And that it is easier to maintain packaged foods when compared to fresh foods?  That is the explanation in the US.  But in India vegetables and fruits are local, don’t have to travel from afar, and don’t have to be preserved for a long time.  This is puzzling.  Was Cadbury that expensive when I was growing up because there was no competition, or are they keeping the prices low now because of efficiencies in production?

The impact of the high prices for pulses and vegetables is obvious when you order dosas at any small hotel – the sambhar has no toor dal, no vegetables.  It has some onions and tomatoes, occasionally potatoes, and I don’t know what is used to thicken the gravy.  The rava dosa price at these hotels has not gone up – a special rava masala dosa is still Rs. 45.   Is it the competition keeping prices down (there are tons of eating places of this kind) and they have to manage their margins by using less and less dal and vegetables?

First Impressions

This will likely read like fluffy and superficial to some, with the tone of a visiting NRI.  But I believe First Impressions have value, denoting the initial reaction to things we see and the people we meet (and of course, immortalized by my favorite Jane Austen).

By the time we travelled the distance from Bangalore airport to Mysore road, from outside the northern tip of the city to the south, I was tired of the traffic.  It was fairly early in the morning (around 7.00am), but the bustling and teeming roads seemed already full.  I was happy to think of Mysore, happy that it was a smaller city, and happy that I didn’t live in Bangalore and did not plan to do so in the future.

The Bangalore-Mysore highway was also very busy, and the road bumps meant many slowing downs and picking up speeds.   As always the highway was lined with plenty of eating establishments.  The smaller road side establishments were still visible, but more visible were larger, newer, establishments. One was a nice vegetarian restaurant called ‘Adigas’ proudly proclaiming that they were part a chain.  (What surprised me most was the ‘we are hiring’ sign out front looking for everyone from cooks to dishwashers in a new branch they were opening somewhere.  Surely finding people, especially unskilled workers, required practically no advertisement – didn’t the workers at existing branches have relatives they were desperate to get hired?  Also, the sign was in English.)  Most other newer establishments included ‘wine’ and ‘bar’ in their signboards.   There were also wine shops which I am going to guess sell alcohol (not just wine). 

As we got close to Mysore, huge billboards advertised a variety of luxury accommodations, appealing eating places, and jewellery stores.  After we got home to Kuvempunagar and made trips to shops as we got settled in, some of these themes were obvious.  Wine (alcohol), umpteen eating places, jewellery stores, a new store selling meat, lots of new bakeries (selling decent looking cakes in addition to the traditional vegetable puffs and sweets) summed up the businesses that thrived in Kuvempunagar.  All of this does indicate wealth and changing patterns of spending.   I think I was most surprised by the number of jewellery shops, all within a few blocks of Kuvempunagar.

We had dinner at a local small restaurant, with crisp rava onion dosas and Indo-chinese food on the menu.  Yummm.   There was what looked to be a head waiter, several junior waiters, and low down the totem pole, the table cleaners.  They took dirty plates away and cleaned tables, but only the waiters served food.   As has universally been the case the table cleaners are young.  The boy who cleaned our table would have been in class IX or X, if he had been in school.   He was probably from a nearby village, and had to drop out of school or was forced out.  To my eyes he was sad and tired, and clearly at the bottom of the hierarchy at the restaurant.  The tip was pocketed by the waiter, and we had no easy way to tip the table cleaner.  As I was leaving India after my last trip a year ago, I had eaten at a restaurant in Bangalore where the table cleaner was about 10 or 11.  In spite of everything including the Right to Education Act, the meal I had when I left and the meal I had when I came back had this in common with my restaurant meals growing up - young, overworked, underpaid table cleaners.  And this is in Bangalore and Mysore, two relatively well-to-do cities.

 

However prosperous Mysore becomes, the lower ranks seemed to be always filled in with people ready to do any job.  Though some people had probably climbed into the lower middle, middle middle, and upper middle classes and were frequenting the jewellery shops and bakeries and wine shops it did not translate to job vacancies at the lowest levels – people just came in droves from around to fill them up.  I don’t hear of any difficulties in middle class homes finding maid servants.  I doubt the restaurant has any trouble finding table cleaners (notwithstanding the ‘we are hiring’ sign at Adigas).  And, there seems to be always people in temporary blue tarp tents – I have not yet figured out what these migrant workers do.  The blue tarps are around in vacant lots (mostly public) for a few days/weeks and then they disappear.  One year I heard they were digging ditches for fibre-optic cables.

India 2014

At the suggestion of a friend, I decided to capture experiences from my visit to India in writing, as a blog.  I intend to share this only a small group of family and friends.   Some of my observations might come across as naive and inexperienced to folks who live in India; however, my experiences are valuable to me, and perhaps of interest to the small group I intend to send this to.

And I enjoy the writing. 

Shanta Bai

An article in the NY Times today reminded of an experience from 2004. Is it our limited view that makes us surprised when we meet people like Shanta Bai and Kakuben Lalabhai Parmar?

Shanta Bai


I had run into Shanta Bai in Barcelona, Spain, where I
was visiting for 3 days. It was of course unexpected
and exciting that I would run into someone who could
speak Kannada, and after exchanging the initial
surprised remarks, we exchanged information on where
we were from, what flight route we came on, etc. She
was from Bellary and I was from Mysore. Shanta Bai
had been in Barcelona for 20 days, and consequently
did not know the result of the Indian elections. She
had voted, and then left for Barcelona.

"What happened to the elections? What happened in
Bangalore?" she asked. I initially began to talk
about the central government (we had just heard that
Sonia was going to step aside and ask Manmohan Singh
to be the PM) and then realized she was asking about
Bangalore.

I had more recent information than her. "It is a hung
assembly", I said. "The Congress headed by Mr.
Krishna is out. The BJP, Congress, Janata Dal have
shared seats with no clear majority".

"Who got the majority?" she asked. "BJP or the
Congress?"

"The BJP, I said". I paused to recollect, because
experiences in Barcelona of the past couple of days
were clouding what I had read and heard about the
Karnataka state elections. "I think what happened was
that the BJP and the Janata Dal had formed an alliance
during the elections, but after the elections there
seemed to be a fallout. Thus the BJP could not lead a
coalition government, but the Congress could. I think
that is what is happening. I think it is doing to be a
Congress-led government."

She nodded with with general approval. "Yes, I think
that is good. They are better."

I was bubbling with the excitement of the Congress
winning at the centre and Sonia stepping aside. This
was exciting election news. I began to talk about
central government politics and she asked, "Yes, what
happened in Delhi?"

"The Congress got a majority. It is excitingly
unexpected. The BJP is out". I added the last bit a
little cautiously because I am often unsure about
people's reaction to my feelings about the BJP. I did
not want to quarrel with her about the BJP in
Barcelona of all places.

"I heard that in my constituency a BJP MLA has won. I
felt really bad", she said.

"Yes, I don't like the BJP at all", I said, still
cautious.

"I know", she said. "Ever since they came to power
there has been a lot of strife and
conflict. Lot of fighting. Nothing has been OK."

That was very pleasant to hear. "Sonia is stepping
aside. She doesn't want to be the prime minister", I
continued.

"This is the second time she is doing this", Shanta
Bai said. "She has done this before. It might be good
to have her as the prime minister and see what
happens. It would be a change. We could try her".

I didn't fully agree, and felt my usual cynicism about
Indian politics. "I don't like any party", I said.
"But given the options we have, I am glad Congress won
and the BJP lost."

"Well, we will have to see", she said. "They might do
something good. You never know, they might do
something good¡¨.

¡§If the Congress wins¡¨, she continued, referring
back to Bangalore, it is good for girls. They could
come up in life. If the BJP wins, it is the boys who
benefit all the time".

"In all likelihood Manmohan Singh will be the Prime
Minister", I said, again shifting the conversation to
the exciting politics.

She paused, and thought. "Is he from Punjab?"

"Yes", I said gesturing with my hand a turban to
indicate he was a Sikh.

She nodded with general approval again. She could not
recollect bad things about him, and was in general
reasonably satisfied with the state of affairs. "But,
I can't stand the fact the the BJP MLA won in my
constituency. It is all because the BJP has more
money. I felt really bad", she said again.

A perfectly normal conversation to have between two
Indians in the middle of election results being
announced and governments being formed. So, why do I
write about this?

Because I am a product of middle class India,
volunteering for Asha for Education, to "educate
underprivileged children for socio-economic change in
India". Shanta Bai is a Lambani tribal woman, from
Susheelanagar village near Sandur in Bellary district,
who was part of a Samiti formed by an NGO to produce
and market exquisite hand-made embroidery that seemed
to be part of their traditional craft. (the craze of
the west and westernized India). She was in Barcelona
as part of the micro-credit booth at the Universal
Cultural Forum (see note at end for details). By most
indicators the Lambanis are "backward" and are poor.
(by the standards of the modern economy). The mines
in Bellary district provide some employment, and the
men work there for about Rs. 50 a day. "There is work
for us if we are ready to work", she said. The women,
atleast in her village, seem to be mostly associated
with the NGO and worked on embroidery. Shanta Bai
probably had never gone to school, might have been
made "literate" by the NGO. (I did not know how to
ask whether she was literate since we were conversing
as friends, as fellow Kannadigas who had run into each
other in Barcelona.) Yet, contrary to my expectation
as a volunteer working to educate "underprivileged"
children, she was fully aware of the political
process, knew about the political parties, knew more
politics than I did (I could only vaguely recollect
the first time Sonia Gandhi had passed up a chance to
be Prime Minister). She was not only aware, she was
interested, and keen to see a government in power that
would benefit her. She was interested in the local
MLA, in the state government, and the central
government in proportion to how each would affect her
life. She clearly knew who she was voting for and
why. She was eager to know the results, and asked
about election results within minutes of me meeting
her ¡V the first Kannada speaking person (and probably
the first Indian) she met after she came to Barcelona.
Clearly this was noone from a "remote" village who
thought Indira Gandhi was alive.

My education continued.

"What about the children?", I asked. "Do they go to
school?"

"Not really ...", she said. "In schools our children,
Lambani children are treated as stupid and good for
nothing and seen as children who will not learn much.
So most parents don't send their children to school".

I digested this. This was in keeping with what we
hear from our projects and issues tribal children
face.

"How did you get selected to come to Barcelona?", I
asked.

"I own the national award for embroidery last year",
she said, and then took out a copy of the award and a
photo of receiving the award from President Kalam
which she proudly showed me. "Our NGO was contacted
when the Barcelona event was organized and Mr. V
selected me to go. I went to Sweden last year for a
similar event. The Government of India paid the
travel expenses."

This was an interesting piece of information. I had
not realized that marketing of handicrafts made in
India and organized by NGOs had reached that level of
streamlining, that going to foreign countries to
display their wares happened periodically.

"My sister-in-law is going to .....what is the country
where the people are dark skinned?", she asked.

"Africa?"

"Ah yes! South Africa. My sister-in-law is going
there next month."

"When you get back will you discuss with the others in
the village about your experiences?"

"Yes, the NGO will organize a discussion session. In
my village of course like everywhere else, there are
people who are jealous, people who will be mean, but
people who will be nice as well".

She then began to talk about her experiences in
Barcelona. "To show affection the Spanish people
kiss each other on their cheeks. The NGO coordinator
with us tried to do that with our hosts, and I don't
think it went down very well", she giggled.

We were continously interrupted by Forum visitors who
wanted to take a picture of her, dressed as she was in
Lambani attire. I was soon happily joining her
indulgent giggling at the eagerness of the
picture-takers and the novelty in their eyes.

"Isn't this a nice idea?", she mused later. "We got
a chance to come here and get to know them, and they
got a chance to see us. People from all over the
world are able to meet."

"Yes", I answered. "I just saw the Moroccan acrobats
watching the Rajasthani dancers with great interest.
"Yes, it is truly fantastic."

"We have been busy since we came here. We get here at
around 11.00am in the morning and are here till
8.00pm. I haven't had a chance to look around the
forum. In Sweden, it was much better, in the sense
that we were taken to a lot of places. We ate at a
lot of hotels, and were taken to museums where we
learned how people lived thousands of years ago. We
learnt about adivasis there, and about history there.
It was very, very interesting". More stuff that she
had not "learnt at school".

"What did you eat in hotels there?", I asked.

"They took us to Chinese hotels. We would get rice
there, and it was very good. We could also get lots
and lots of fruits which used to fill us up. They
took really good care of us here."

"Where do you stay in Barcelona and how do you eat?"

"There is a house for the nine of us. We buy
groceries at the Indian store and cook our own food.
We bring lunch with us".

I was puzzled, intrigued, to some extent stunned, and
a whole lot of other things. Here was a young woman
who was well aware of the what was going on in the
world. I was not sure what more we could "teach" her,
that she could not learn herself. What more would
education have given her? How would it really have
changed her life?

The other aspect I was unravelling in my mind was that
the NGO appeared "successful", clearly had ties with
the Government of India. The Samiti seemed to be
doing well. Because of their support she could get a
national award from the President! Yet she only
seemed to be making about Rs. 20 a day. More to the
point, had her life changed socially and economically?
I suppose she was better off than before. What was I
expecting? A life where she would be able to zip to
Barcelona for a vacation? Or where her child would
go to the school I went to? I am not sure what I was
expecting. She didn't represent to me someone whose
"life had been socio-economically improved". But
perhaps that was just me being ignorant. Her life did
seem to have changed. Clearly she spoke well of the
NGO, so they had helped her. They had helped her find
a market for her produce. She seemed happy, though
she had to work hard for a living (as do many in this
world). Perhaps this was change, and I should learn to
understand that. If I wanted something more, maybe
this was the first step.

"Wasn't your family afraid of sending you alone this
far?" I asked.

"My husband and I are separated. There is only my
mother left, and she was fine with it. She is taking
care of my child. We have to work for a living, so I
could not pass this up. I hope my mother is doing OK
with my child. Only 9 days till I return".

Shahina Ahmed who was representing West Bengal then
joined us. In true Indian style within 5 minutes she
had discovered that I worked with computers, that I
was not yet married, and that the bangles I was
wearing were real gold :-) Shanta Bai greeted the
fact that I was not yet married with approval. "Yes,
sometimes that is best", she said.

She made one of her bracelets for me, "to remember me
by", she said. She also gave me the address of the
NGO in Sandur. Maybe one day I will meet her again in
Bellary and see whether her child is following the
same profession or has had more choices .... that is
if the child wanted more choices .....

------------------------

I met Shanta Bai at the micro-credit booth, a part of
the Universal Cultural Forum organized in Barcelona.
The NGO which had created the Samiti in her village
had been asked by the Indian government to send
someone to the Forum, and she had been selected. Her
trip was sponsored by the Indian government.

The Forum, as it is popularly called, was organized in
Barcelona, Spain, by the Catalonian Government, the
Barcelona government and UNESCO (Barcelona is in the
province of Catalonia in Spain). With a theme on
Peace, Diversity, and Sustainable Development, it was
started as an event to parallel the World Economic
Forum and the World Social Forum. They have done a
stupendous job in bringing people and their work from
all over the world, from those working in a charity
mode to environmental activists. Exhibitions included
"Education for All", "Fair Trade", "Ethical
Banking", "Community based city governments", "The
lives we live from an environment perspective",
"Micro-credit" (where I met Shanta Bai). Many of
the activities enabled visitors, especially children
to participate and experience diversity instead of
watching it from a distance. There was a strong
emphasis on children, because, as the brochure said,
¡§the children today are the leaders of 2015¡¨. Many
good ideas were displayed: filtering water through a
saree to protect against Cholera in Bangladesh,
Simputers developed in India, digital hearing aids
from Norway to name a few. Cultural diversity was
celebrated with shows from tight rope walkers from
Azerbaijan to water puppet shows from Vietnam to
workshops on Bollywood dancing (I am not kidding, I
have pictures of streams of young Spanish children
waving colorful chunnis in the air to the beat of
Hindi film music). There were hundreds of dialogues
and discussions on various topics from linguistic
diversity to objectivity in the media. The idea being
an emphasis on dialogue to resolve differences. All
against the backdrop of the oh, so blue mediterranean.
More information is at http://www.barcelona2004.org.
One of the goals of the Forum is to
let activists from all over the world know that they
are not alone. Or as the Argentine Nobel Peace
Laureate Mr. Esquivel, a Forum participant, put it,
"it is a place for optimists from around the world to
share different points of view".