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In the morning we went to the medicinal plants building where we were given a tour of their compilations of plant samples and recording of ayurvedic medicinal properties of indiginous plants into a countrywide database. Oustide there was an area of land where many of those plants are grown to be used for collecting samples and just to keep many species of plants from becoming extinct.

We checked out the fish farm and then head to lunch at the home of the local farmer who went with us to the music show the day before. In Karnataka we could not communicate with everyone as easily because many people did not understand Hindi or English. So I had not spoken much except smiling and nodding that we really enjoyed the music when “speaking” to him the day before, but he had communicated to Patilji that he really wanted us to come join him and his family for lunch. In a place where food can be difficult to afford for your own family, much less guests, I hoped they would enjoy the experience too.

It was a lot of fun. On of Patilji’s relatives who was nice enough to take us to the areas we went to that morning took us there with the driver of the jeep we had been riding in. We visited the beautiful farm, and the farmer and his family. His extended family was there and we tried to speak via our two friends who spoke Hindi and Kannada. They asked about farming in he U.S. and also about life. As usual we did our best to speak a little about farming and explained that we lived in cities, so could not answer those questions definitively. Still, it was good to just share. Sometimes sharing what you have or know the best you can is enough. We saw how they grind wheat and corn. There were mattes covered in fresh corn and red chilli peppers. We also say pan leaves being grown.

In the home we sat with the family and enjoyed a wonderful meal. We went into the kitchen and met the mother and wife. The didn’t have a chiminey or at least not an effective on, so the wood burning stove really created a horrible black smoke filled atmosphere. My eyes burned immediately, and it made me think about these wonderful women working there every day. I tried to ask why they did not cook outside and how it was really terrible for the women to work in there. This is where you are at the mercy of your translators. Sometimes people will just do their best to convey your sentiments, while others, well meaning though they are, paraphrase or answer your questions for you and thus you can’t really communicate as much as you’d like. Kristeen made friends with a small child with fancy footwear. While we drank tea outside the home, some more relatives came by and we talked again through our friends. An older man came by and invited us to his home after we had exchanged more smiles than words. We couldn’t refuse so we had more tea. It was really great to try our best to share experiences and get to know people while letting them get to know out world too.

That evening we went to visit another one of BIRDS’ many projects. This one was a dairy where women who had purchased buffalos via their micro finance program brought the milk in twice a day to be tested, recorded and deposited for sale through the collective. I can’t say enough good things about how kind and informative people were. Patilji Sr. and Jr. really welcomed us into their organization and everyone went to great lengths to share with us what they did, not with expectation, but with a desire to share. I truly hope that we can return that favor by telling others and connecting good resources and volunteers to them. Being in a rural area, though they have done a great deal, there is always a hunger for outside knowledge to continue. I feel people interested in agriculture and social work can gain a great deal by spending time here and giving back to the community in BIRDS.

We spoke to some of the women, particularly those in leadership roles at the center after they had finished with the evening milk aquisition. These are illiterate women, who run entire households and obviously always had the ability to do a lot, and now made good use of the opportunity and showed others. We spoke to them again through translation and learned a bit about how they were impacted by the programs. These were not public speakers or mouth pieces for the org. They live this, so unlike someone trying to sell you on the idea, they just talk about it matter of fact and don’t consider themselves all that incredible. It was fun to share some of what women deal with in the U.S. with them, good and bad, to kind of connect them, if only a little. I was also glad to tell them that we read about the work of women like themselves in other parts of the world like the U.S. and are inspired by what they are doing.

In the morning we learned about the composting methods used to reuse organic waste and create fertile soil.

It was a Sunday so the school was closed and things were quiet on campus. The younger Patilji took us, along with a local farmer and another man who knew many musicians to see a Shahnai (a high pitched wind instrument with a narrow mouth piece and large opening at the end) performance in a mandir in another village. We drove out to the Laxmi Devi Mandir. In the courtyard, children were playing around a holy tree with green bangles strung about it by grateful mothers giving thanks for their healthy babies.

The performance started with some drumming. We would write a word on a piece of paper for the drummer and he would drum it out for another young man to decipher. Simply by hearing the drumming he would speak the name or word with correct pronounciation. Then the rest of the group came together. Two talis (small cymbals), two shahnai and this incredibly double drum. They started with a slow drone on one shahnai then quickly picked up into a frenzy. It was amazing to see the energy and excitment they brought to the performance. I couldn’t help but sit there with a huge grin on my face, enjoying it all. Music is such a beautiful gift.

All of us enjoyed the performance then shared some bananas with the musicians, paid them as thanks in appreciation for their wonderful art before heading out. These are incredibly gifted and hard working, musicians who end up eeking out a living doing other work to survive.

That night we went to the inauguration of an NSS camp in a village mandir. The community was there to kickoff a series of community building workshops, street plays and clinics where volunteers and BIRDS staff work with the community to learn about them and educate them on social issues.

We arrived early in the morning with the Patils. We got off on the side of the highway and a jeep took us the rest of the way through crater filled roads. The sun was coming up and there was a beautiful orange tint to the green all around. The air was clean and it was very soothing. As we went through a small town and rural areas there were people going about their mornings. Many people were defecating by the roadside. They do so because there is a lack of information regarding sanitation, but more than that people don’t have and can’t afford toilets. They go by the roadside because they don’t have to be afraid of snakes by the side of the road, rather than in the brush. Besides this they don’t have enough area to dig and and cover their faeces. It’s very humbling to see how much of the world lives, without the everyday amenities we all take for granted.

We drove up down extremely bumpy, broken down roads and arrived at the BIRDS campus, where there is a social work college, school, nursery, fish farm, farming research lab, medicinal plants labs and so much more. That morning we visited each class and said hello to the children form grades 1 to 10. In each class Kristeen and I tried to engage the children in some conversation, with the teachers translating from English and Hindi to Kannada and back. The kids were really sweet and shy. They aren’t really used to having class discussions, so it was tough to get them to ask questions about the United States or to tell us about their home. The questions that were asked were mostly regarding crops in the U.S. and some of the older ones asked about the climate and price of land, so we city folk did our best to answer what we could. Mostly, I found myself connecting similarities rather than differences.

In one class I decided to make a contest out of it. Boys against Girls to see who would ask more questions. That helped a lot. We even had kids come up and draw on the board as did I. It was a lot of fun. There was one boy who could not hear or speak, and yet there he was in this class. I was told there were special needs teachers who worked with him. He seemed happy enough and when I asked what he likes to eat he told me and I drew those things on the board to show I understood and just to connect the whole class to it. It was all really simple, but fun. Shortly after we finished visiting classes, the bell rang and an army of children came running out to catch the BIRDS school bus to go back home.

Walking around the campus that afternoon, was very quiet. In the distance we heard some activity and walked to it. In a room in the college (which is next to the school), we saw some people through the window. The girls invited us in and we sat down inside where the social work students were rehearsing street plays on social issues like alcohol abuse, hygiene and women’s issues.
That night we went to a celebration of Hanuman, the monkey god in Hinduism.

We went to visit Patilji Sr. and Jr. of BIRDS, an organization working in rural areas near Belgam, in Karnataka. They were on their way back home and had stopped in Bangalaore where Kristeen and I introduced ourselves and they invited us on the spot to come see their work. Parmod Sharma of Yuvsatta in Chandigarh had highly recommended we meet with them, so we agreed to join them on the bus ride that very night. After the morning meeting, we visited a fair with crafts from all over India that Jayashree had told us about. There was live music, beautiful statues, paintings and all kinds of art and crafts.

That night we found ourselves on a bus to the countryside.

Flew in to Bangalore to visit my friend Jayashree; a documentary filmmaker I met in Los Angeles when she came for a screening of a film about HIV and Aids drugs and how companies are trying to create patents to prevent generic prescriptions. It had been over two years since we’d all seen each other, and I have to say it was great to see her, meet her other half and son.

Busy days finally took their toll and we rested up comfortably thanks to Jayashree’s wonderful hospitality. I visited a beautiful campus, a few places to eat, but mostly just the bed, food and bed. It was nice and warm and lush with greenery in Bangalore.

We visited an organization called Milana with Jayashree who is a board member. They are an amazing group of women both infected and affected with HIV and Aids. We sat down with them and spoke through Jyoti and Lilly who have made these women their family. Most of the women spoke in Kannada, and some spoke a bit of English and Hindi. Being in the south of India, there was more English than Hindi around. We spoke to the women who shared some of their difficult stories of not only being infected by their husbands who died, but then living with the stigma and day to day lack of understanding on top of financial hardship and health issues. Many have children of which quite a few are infected. This group is really like a support group. The women cook food, some create crafts and have a space to interact with people who understand them. It is a very small organization, but they work on awareness in the community as well as just working through the day to day difficulties. Many can’t work, and if they can get a job, it is difficult to get beyond the stigma as well as the fatigue and other health issues that prevent them from working more. Still, they were all strong, vibrant women, finding the will to smile in circumstances quite beyone my understanding.

More than all of that, it was fun to get to know them, and share of ourselves too. I tried to explain that though I could not solve their problems (nor had they asked me to), I would like to share art with them as a means of communication which is also a big part of our conversation. While there is a lot of attention on prevention programs and awareness for Aids and HIV (never enough), there is even less support for those who are living with it. With NGO’s focused on big picture issues and juggling large numbers of people, I guess it is very difficult to get in there and reach people on a personal level, by understanding their daily needs and struggles and working with that knowledge. There is a lot these women have to teach us and much they would like others to know. How does one tell a child that was born infected, but is now a teenager, that they can’t love and get married, or that they must simply deal with a stigma they have never even lived without. There’s a lot of pain there, and several of the women did break down into tears as they told stories of all manner of rejection, apathy and impossible circumstance. Yet these are all warm, loving people if those around took the time to know them.

So, I promised to return and do my best to share some ideas on how they can use art to communicate.

We visited a book fair afterwards with all kinds of books from around the world. We also visited the graduation show of Shrishti, a design college thanks to Jayashree’s friend and fellow documentary filmmaker Shabnam. She picked us up and graciously took us to the two locations. One featured installation pieces in a sort of jury rigged structure, while the other, on campus was full of inspiring and innovative ideas for positive social change through design and research oriented projects that focused on specific needs, like education, sanitation etc.

I went on the walking tour called the Ahmedabad Heritage Walk. We started in the old part of the city which I had yet to see at an incredible Mandir. The walk took us through old lanes, past people making kite string, beautiful old buildings with layers of history in their architecture. To me, the old parts of towns in Pakistan and India are the most fascinating. They may not have all the modern amenities, nor are they the best planned for modern traffic, but within that chaos is that unique indentity of that city as a sort of living culture and history. Dead culture can be found in monuments, but to walk down a street and look up at hundreds of years of architecture in a single glance, with laundry hanging across jury rigged electrical and telephone wires with children playing and all kinds of people passing through is truly breathtaking, while dodging motorcycles, bicycles and cars. It’s not all romantic. There’s a lot of pain and misery too, but it is all fascinating and bursting with chaotic life.

We went to a few Mandirs, including Jain Mandirs, walked past old city gates, and a street bard, old pigeon feeders, and all manner of activity before reaching the Jama Masjid there which is a beautiful combination of Jain Mandir architecture and mosque. On the way I saw two boys trying to set fire to a doll’s head and a little girl sitting beside them. While there is a lot of poverty and misery, even within that there is a lot to learn and much to be curious about and enjoy. These naught kids were hilarious and got all shy when I asked them why they were burning the doll’s head.

Things were kind of tense in the city that day and we later learned that it was the anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhia and the brutal massacre. Before knowing why things were so tense in town, we left the old city and went back to Manav Sadhana to join the wonderful people there.

That night a bunch of us volunteers from outside Ahmedabad cooked food for the some of the volunteers from Ahmedabad who do this work every day. It was a beautiful evening. I was really exhausted from the many workshops, and yet I felt really satisfied as well. We cooked a few dishes and sat together and ate. Afterwards I shared my short film “Gul (flower)” with the group and we all had a long and lively discussion afterwards. I feel really grateful to all the insightful interpretations people have come away with. Each one is an insight into the viewer and their own life experiences. I could not ask for more.

The next day Kristeen and I went to the community center/school to do a workshop with a class there. We were greeted by the sweet kids and hard working teachers. One of the children gave us sandhur as a way of welcoming us into class. The kids were amazing as usual and it was a tiring, but incredibly rewarding experience. I jokingly said invited myself to come eat lunch at one of the children’s homes as we were leaving after the workshop and she was walking home for lunch. She said she’d ask her mom what she cooked. So many dimples and funny little toes. After that we ate and went to another slum that was more recently adopted by Manav Sadhanda. The look and feel are completely different. There is not yet a sense of community. The first tikra that was adopted by MS has more of a community feel. There has been a great deal of work by MS and people of the community to really make it a home. The other slum is much dirtier, and doesn’t really feel safe. We had Jagad bhai with us, but I don’t think we’d come alone. Of course these are people who are squeezed harder day by day and things are unimaginably tough. We made our way through to the school that MS had started there. We climbed up a ladder to a floor with all these children sitting there. It’s a little nervous to start these workshops, not because I am shy with the kids, but because I feel some pressure from myself to do my best to give these wonderful children my very best and I hope that they will feel good afterwards. These kids were just like others I have met at earlier workshops.

Next we walked to Indicorps offices to visit, then had some lunch at a cafe and made our way back to the Gandhi Ashram.