As Travel Maven, I would like to offer my apologies about the Large Jet’s long, land-bound stint and any inconvenience it may have caused. Normal travel activities will resume on 10 November, 2009 with an itinerary covering Delhi and Rajasthan.
In the interim, please accept this mysterious sighting on the streets of Hyderabad to exercise your sense of wonder.
Reminder : If fuzzy satellite images fuel your imagination, there’s this map.
The end of my October was tinged by sadness, because neither Halloween nor Dia de los Muertos has migrated its macabre way into Indian culture. Luckily for me, I roll with a crew of 80 who are always ready to celebrate.
We started out mixing up some spiced, hot apple cider, and then everyone set out with a paper plate to make themselves some fabulous masks.
Once everyone was tied up in masks and strings of crepe paper, the cider met with excellent reviews, and we all broke it down for a masquerade ball. This is what traditions are made of.
When I was small and complaining, my mother used to give me nux vomica.
It worked then and ever since – meaning in homeopathy that something in my nature is akin to nux, and in allopathy that something in my nature is akin to its placebo effect. Either way, it was an emotional moment when we happened across the undiluted, arboreal, and of course poisonous version on my tour of the APFA forest trails this Tuesday.
The Andhra Pradesh Forest Academy was established to educate forestry staff from the entire state, and has expanded to include participants from other states, impressive research into medicinal plants, and a division for Children And Forest Education (CAFE). I visited to establish some contacts as I’m planning out a unit that will address environmental sustainability & consciousness. Hopefully the future of my curriculum at Sphoorti will include a little CAFE.
Oh! What a coincidence - I mean, I wasn't expecting to see you here after all this time.
And you've brought your little friend, too. How nice.
I didn’t know if it would work until I heard the screams.
We started out our treasure hunt with the children listening slightly too carefully to instructions; I was asking them to run off (in the dark because of the way time flies) guided by strange, color-coded maps and imprecise suggestions like, “You have to figure it out!” The boys headed for their first clue while we talked through the map with the girls, and I worried that it would be too perplexing a process for everyone to enjoy. Then I heard victorious shouts from the area where the first boys’ clue was hidden, and the hunt was on.
We had so much fun.
Let me explain the atmosphere that surrounds Diwali here. It’s a riotous, jubilant day that inches up with masses of preparations, heavy advertising campaigns, and giddy anticipation; it feels just like Christmas in most of the Americas or like Thanksgiving if you run with the right crowd in San Francisco. It is loud, bright, and smoky. It’s the type of day when adults take an intermission from their self-imposed constraints and children are allowed unrestricted access to sugar and explosives. On a day like that, the best thing to do is give them a direction to run in, and then dash along behind.
I’m still not sure whether the girls actually found their prize or whether it remained in its hiding spot until hours later – there were some conflicting reports. Process took categorical precedence.
When the treasure hunt ended, everyone gathered together to set things on fire, for this is the festival of lights. It began with the tranquil smudges of flame laid in small dishes of oil, queuing along the walls and punctuating doorways.
Then the crackers, sparklers, swirlers, spouters, poppers, bangers, spinners. My favorite part was watching one little girl, who would run over and over again to light some small combustible stick or string, then stand completely frozen with an expression of absolute terror on her face until it finished burning.
This is the scene I woke up to in my bedroom this morning.
Of course, it’s my own fault. The students at Sphoorti have done a bang-up job of all the mapping projects I could ask, and late last night/now, I’m documenting our learning process by compiling the lot into clues for a great big Diwali treasure hunt.
I had the most incredible experience observing the children plan out their treasure hunt a couple days ago – those who were interested split into boy & girl groups to decide : A) Where to put two “clues” (which are big maps of the campus collaged out of their own work), B) Where to hide the prizes, C) What the prizes should be. The boys planned for the girls and vice versa, so that everyone can participate in the treasure hunt itself. They were so enthusiastic about creating something for their Sphoorti brothers and sisters, so careful about choosing an appropriate gift, and given the opportunity to pick anything at all for the prizes, both groups chose a big gift for everyone to enjoy as a group rather than individual items. I was blown away.
Happy Diwali! More details after the crackling holiday celebration!
The smell of flooded earth baking into chips in the sun was new to me yesterday on the route to Kurnool.
§
last week.
Andhra’s Kurnool town faces threat of submergence
Worst flood in 100 years; Kurnool devastated
Breaches in Krishna embankments flood more AP villages
Rain wreaks havoc in South India
§
yesterday.
Yesterday – went to Mennupadu with Manavata to distribute rice, dahl, saris, and dhotis.
We would be absolutely pleased to point out for our public : where we’re at. Hyderabad is right -
there.
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We start with all the supplies we can gather.
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We cut them and glue them and arrange the whole batch just right.
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After drawing our first maps, we’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with materials, scissors, and glue. We have layered fabrics, string, cellophane paper, origami boxes, magazine pictures, small drawings, bits of mirror, and Q-tips onto an assortment of handy canvases.
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After the amount of interest in the big map of Andhra Pradesh on the first day of this unit, it seemed that thinking about home communities would be valuable – maybe especially for the children still present at the Foundation over the Dussehra holiday from school. We spent one day displaying favorite things from home over the big map, and the subsequent day applying all these new ideas about materials to make maps of the Sphoorti campus.
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Eventually, we will use them for a treasure hunt. In the meantime, I think we’re finding something perfectly valuable.
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Today should be celebrated, did you know? In India, the founding father’s birthday is a national holiday; in the world, October 2nd is recognized as the International Day of Non-Violence. I’m becoming interested in Gandhian philosophy because I want to explore Nai Talim, his concept for universal and experiential education. So I wriggled my way into the day-long event held at the Hyderabadi place where some of Gandhi’s ashes were immersed in 1948, Bapu Ghat.
I’ve come to India asking for stories to be expressed through art; the technical title of my project is “To Tell A Story : How can small voices make themselves heard?” The group that gathered today to share the story of Gandhi included people from all over Andhra Pradesh (notably the Chief Minister and “Mr. India”, the no. 1 bodybuilder nationally, hm) who are interested in remembering the philosophies that formed this country. The story was told through ceremony, through discussion, and through singing, film, and painting – so eloquently that I don’t need to author the story at all.
I was told & shown -
Take the spinning wheel as representing Gandhi's views and ideals... they have already been forgotten to modernisation. Hopefully this painting can remind people.
“Bapu is the father of the nation and throughout the world; universal. Every painting here is showing the artist’s inner image of love & affection – each person feels differently, and the paintings show that.”
“Gandhi – as a central figure to the nation – replacing the chakra as the center of the Indian flag”
It is showing honor to make a portrait. Give what you have, right?
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A teacher here in Secunderabad was telling me about a time he was trying to explain Hinduism to a group of American children. “We have 3.3 million gods,” he told them, “because we see god in everything.”
“Is God in a football then?” asked a child – although, since it was an American child, he actually probably said soccer ball. Yes, there is God in a football. “So you kick God?”
The teacher laughed, agreed, Yes, we kick God. Monday, 28 September is celebrated throughout India as Dussehra, commemorating the victory of good over evil and considered a great day to start something new. I wouldn’t be surprised if God was kicked on such an important holiday in Hyderabad; no one would notice because Dussehra, like Ganesh Chaturthi, is celebrated here with immersions. Clay idols of the goddess Durga astride a lion (for Dussehra; other gods get their turns at other times), many-armed and much-glittered, are loaded into the open backs of trucks and all the space she leaves empty is filled by proud, cheering people. We watched these cargoes arrive at Tank Bund, the heart-shaped reservoir pinched between Hyderabad and Secunderabad, where the people who work on holidays were damply vending boiled peanuts, colorful balloons, young coconuts, chai from thermoses, and the services of massive cranes at the edge of the lake. Trucks pulled up on the road to wait their idol’s turn, and drummers thumped the piercingly addictive rhythms of a Hyderabadi celebration while they waited.
Each statue is wrestled out of its truck bed and onto a suspended platform by as many people as can reach their hands in to touch it, because these ladies are heavy. The cranes lift, and swivel dangling platforms holding the idols and a few young men out over the water and swivel, and lower them down to just tap the surface; the young men are there to shove and tip each idol into the dubious water.
Dussehra offered a three-day weekend this year, as a national holiday falling on a Monday, but the import of the days before is more than the build-up to a major annual event. It is that also : the city turns sparkling with strings of lights, not only illuminating storefronts and outlining temples, but arranged to form huge images of gods at bus stops and canopying entire streets jutting off the main routes. But for each of the nine days before Dussehra, women gather at each others’ houses to perform special pujas together asking the blessings of different avatars of the goddess. A pair of sisters invited me to stay for a day, or two, or three, of their puja, so I spent one day in each of the two houses to attend the offerings of small meals and incense, flickering flames wrapping the tips of wicks soaked in ghee and hands clapping to the rhythm decided by emotional songlets to Durga. In return come small gifts, kumkum between the eyebrows, a sip of rosewater, and of course, lunch.
At the Tank Bund, the monsoon rain splashed on and off and the people opened and closed their umbrellas, dashed in small herds searching for fragments of shelter, or turned their faces up to the sky and laughed for joy. I caught a bus home with a crowd that had been waiting for up to an hour, and another crowd blocked the way that would lead past my house so I was tossed out into the nearby night as the monsoon turned to drenching. I walked the last half a kilometer home with drums throbbing from the street and rain slapping my broken umbrella, with thunder chasing lightning and the waterline creeping up my clinging pants because the monsoon is able to rain from every direction, even below.
