Happy New Year!

After visiting SEWA in Ahmedabad, I met up with a fellow volunteer for 3 days of sightseeing in Rajasthan. We started in Udaipur, continued on to visit a mountain fort and temple between Udaipur and Johdpur, and then I traveled to Jaipur on my own for the last day. Here are a couple photos:
The Lake Palace in Udaipur, now a Taj hotel (we did not stay here).

Kumbalgarh Fort - the journey there was as marvelous as the fort itself!


Ranakpur Temple, a 15th century marble Jain temple.


I know I know - I can't resist the food pictures! This one is of my extremely large and tasty Rajasthani Thaali.

I returned from my trip from to the north in time to celebrate the new year in Chennai with an evening of Bharatanatyam dance (traditional Tamil Nadu style) and a visit to my favorite South Indian restaurant, the Murugan Idli House, where a delicious New Years dinner for two ended up costing us the equivalent of $4.

Many people are asking me about the cost of living so I thought I'd write about that topic a little. The dollar goes a long way here. In general I find that most things cost anywhere between one-tenth to one-fifth of the price of a comparable product in the States. My observation is that agricultural products and goods and services that are labor-intensive cost more like one-tenth. Some examples: a good lunch in a nice, air-conditioned restaurant costs about 60 Rupees or $1.25. A small cup of chai or coffee is around 5 Rupees ($.10). My morning trip to the fruit stand, yielding two pomegranates, two guavas, one papaya, and 10 small bananas, cost 80 Rupees ($1.75). Rent for a "posh" two bedroom western-style flat is around 15,000 Rupees per month ($300). The only things I've found with roughly equivalent cost are: 1)dried pasta 2)cocktails at a fancy hotel bar (both are purchased almost exclusively by foreigners).

A few words also about what I've learned people earn: a well-paid domestic worker working every day 4 hours per day may earn 1000 Rupees ($20) per month (note this is far less than one-tenth the US equivalent wage). The college-educated coordinators at my NGO earn 10,000 Rupees ($200) per month. It is not surprising that many Indians see Westerners and assume that their big backpacks are stuffed full of cash. When discussing this assumption with some colleagues, they were genuinely shocked to learn that there are poor people and homeless people in America.

It's hard not to want to help people here by giving handouts when American dollars go such a long way. But is it appropriate to do so? My observation is that giving handouts has a number of adverse effects:
-perpetuates a mentality of dependence
-handouts actually reinforce social inequality because they are distributed unequally
-encourages parents to use their children for begging
-handouts may allow the giver to feel good and move on, while doing little to truly alleviate suffering.

I'm interested to hear others' views since this is a topic I've been thinking about quite a lot.

Ahmedabad

This week I joined the staff of my NGO on an exposure visit to Ahmedabad. We're visiting an extremely innovative and impressive NGO called SEWA (pronounced seva), Self Employed Women's Association. SEWA goal is to organize female workers in the informal sector. I was amazed to learn that only about 7% of the Indian labor force works in the formal sector, which includes government and private industry. The rest of Indians work in the informal sector which includes everything from domestic workers, to street-vendors, handcraft-makers, midwives, agricultural laborers, auto-rickshaw drivers and the like. SEWA's goal is to promote the self-sufficiency and self-reliance of female workers in this sector and much of their work uses a market-based entrepreneurial approach. For example, SEWA will organize agricultural laborers into a cooperative, which will buy the product from the farmers and sell directly to traders in the market thereby cutting out middlemen and supporting higher prices for the agricultural laborers themselves. SEWA also operates a highly successful bank and insurance company, both of which develop financial products to meet the needs of poor, working women.



I of course was very interested in the insurance products offered. (If you don't also love insurance, you can skip this paragraph) SEWA Insurance has about 120 agents which they call Aagewans, or barefoot agents (barefoot because the agents go directly to the customers' homes and communities, where shoes are removed, on average the agents visit the household 3 times to explain benefits before the policy is purchased). They offer several insurance schemes, all are packages covering many household needs. The products are available to SEWA members (women only), who can choose to extend coverage to their husbands and children. The most popular (91%) is the lowest premium/lowest limit combination: 400 rupees premium per year ($8) covers the woman, husband and one child for the following limits (in dollars): life- 10,000 rupees ($200) for wife and husband; health - 2,000 rupees ($40) for each family member, House - 10,000 rupees ($200), Accidental death - 40,000 rupees ($1000) for wife and husband. SEWA Insurance has over 103,000 women as policyholders. They have a staff of only 75 plus the 120 agents. SEWA has found that this type of micro-insurance scheme provides essential economic support to poor, working families. In addition to helping those with claims, insurance plays a important role in the communities SEWA serves because it encourages women to begin planning for the future, rather than simply living day to day.



In other news, tonight is Christmas Eve. So strange it is to be in a land where Christmas is a non-event. There are Christians here but Christianity itself is not highly visible, and certainly not visible in the way of an American Christmas. Actually, there are three Christians who traveled in our group of 17 to Gujarat. I was surprised that this trip was planned for Christmas week but no one else commented. I spoke with the 3 Christian ladies about being away from their families for Christmas and they were sad about it but each felt it was their duty to participate in the exposure visit. As someone accustomed to being a member of a minority religion as well, I empathized with them and helped them locate a church in Ahmedabad where they could attend services for Christmas eve. The gratefulness they expressed for this small gesture absolutely made my day.

Yoga

This morning I attended my first yoga class in India. It took a while to find the right yoga center but now I think I have it. All credit for finding the center goes to my clever and resourceful friend Debbie (and long-lost near relative), who pointed out that the ashram we plan to visit has a branch center practically in my backyard. Actually, I'm finding that this is a trend - things I desire that seem very far away are actually very close at hand. I was recently wishing there were a western-style coffee house in my neighborhood and BAM - my neighbor points out just such a coffee house on an evening walk. I needed to fill a prescription and asked a colleague where a chemist is located, expecting a trek across town. Turns out there is one at the end of the block that I walk past all the time. I think what's happening is that I expect a coffee shop or a drug store to look like a coffee shop or a drug store from home, but instead they look really different here.

Back to yoga. Class this morning was at 6AM. It was still dark out as we made our way over to the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre, located 1 block from the beach in an open-air gazebo-like structure. In the front of the gazebo, there was a puja area with pictures of various Hindu gods. The pictures themselves were draped in flowers as is the style here and there were candles burning. There were also pictures on the wall representing most of the world's religions. Instead of sticky mats people rolled out straw mats for their practice, although I did see one woman with a sticky mat on top of her straw mat. I think I might do that next time as I found the straw mat a bit pokey. Aside from a friendly German man who works for the center, we were the only western-looking people there.

Overall the class followed a pretty familiar routine. Class started off with Ohms and then breathing exercises. We spent quite a lot of time focusing on breathing and I found the breathing exercises pretty challenging. It was terrific to be able to hear the birds chirping and feel the sea air on my skin. By the time I opened my eyes after the breathing routines, the sun had started to rise and the lush greenery surrounding the center was becoming visible. Next we moved into sun salutations, followed by leg lifts, headstand, shoulderstand, fish, backbends balance postures and shavasana. Class followed a pretty mellow pace and lasted about an hour and a half.

After yoga, we walked back along the beach, buying fresh young coconut along the way. The vendor used his machete to cut off the top of the coconut and handed it back to us with straws. For breakfast we made a fruit salad from papaya, pineapple and bananas purchased the night before. I felt ready to greet the day.

Happy Birthday Mom!

In addition to being my mom's birthday, today was also Tamil Nadu's Hanukkah, Karthigai Deepam. (It's not actually anything like Hanukkah, except being a festival of lights.) In the evening there were special celebrations in honor of the Hindu lord Shiva -- the temples were lit up with thousands of small oil lamps and people also lit lanterns in front of their homes. It was really beautiful. I celebrated with my colleague Chitra's family and went to temple with them. Afterwards her kids set off a ton of fireworks which of course made me extremely nervous. Luckily we all made it through.

Routine

It's been extra-ordinary four weeks since I arrived in India. Last week Chennai experienced massive flooding due to monsoon. As a result I was house-bound with intermittent power supply but plenty of good company.

Now I am beginning to settle into a bit of a routine. I know where to buy corn flakes, soy milk and dried pasta, I have a favorite restaurant ("hotel"), and I know how to direct autos so they take me home. These things may sound trivial but they took a long time to figure out! There have been lots of pleasant discoveries. There is a terrific beach for morning walks less than a kilometer from where I am staying - a peaceful pedestrian street along the sea that fills up with walkers (human and bovine) around 7AM.


Everywhere in the city extremely comfortable lightweight cotton clothing can be found at very low prices. There's an ironing wallah (man ironing behind a stand on the street) a few doors down from my office who irons my clothes for 3 rupees (6 cents) per garment. There is tea each afternoon that is milky and sweet and sometimes arrives with a piping hot samosa. My office is very near one of India's preeminent dance schools, just gearing up for the winter concert series. It is a good life!

Ashtalakshmi Temple

Morning temple visit in the rain.

Adjustments

Today was a interesting day. It had it's nice shiny moments but overall, challenging. Day started off with a trip to Airtel, my mobile service provider (you may guess where this is going...). Airtel has been sending me automated voice and text messages saying that they need me to submit my identification documents or they will disconnect my service. Already I submitted these documents when I purchased the SIM card but apparently there is some issue. I try calling customer care, but each time I try "all lines are currently busy". So I go into the Airtel office in Besant Nagar with copies of my passport, visa and passport photo duplicates. I take a number to talk with someone and wait about an hour before my number comes up. Finally the number is called. I'm thinking this is going to be simple. Problem is, I purchased the SIM card at a different Airtel office and apparently the systems don't talk (in India? IT prowess!). The customer service rep who is helping me is clearly stressed out. But even thought I have a Tamil speaker with me, she prefers not to talk to either of us. She is looking blankly at the computer and fidgeting with a rubber band, the pen, her hands, picking at an adhesive. We sit there like this for another hour before she finally manages to get ahold of the other store on the phone. We learn that the documents are there but have not submitted them yet. The store confirms they will submit the documents today. Meanwhile, I've already received another threatening text message from Airtel this afternoon. I think there's about a 90 percent chance my phone will be disconnected.

After the Airtel experience I return to the office, where a staff meeting is taking place. The meeting is in Tamil so I can't really participate. I don't have any work that I can do independently at the moment, and I do not have nearly enough work to in general. I'm racking my brain to figure out something productive to do. Not a whole lot is coming to mind. I read up on another Indian NGO that we're going to visit in December, read the news and do some chatting. I am very disturbed that I don't have enough to show for my time.

In the later afternoon I attend a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new office of my NGO. We travel there on a divided highway and I spot a cow sitting in the median looking pretty blissful among the traffic chaos. The ribbon cutting was quite interesting and I really enjoyed meeting the community members in this area, which is a fishing village directly on the shore.

On the drive back from the ribbon cutting, we run over a dog. This was terrible. I still feel sick from it. I've never hit an animal in a car and I had a very strong emotional reaction. The whole thing was easily preventable - two dogs walking across the street in plain sight. The driver just did not slow down. Nobody else in our packed let on that they were particularly bothered by this.

I came home feeling dirty from the beach and the hot day, looking forward to an evening shower. Turned the faucet - no water.

Not that I'm complaining (even though it may sound like it). I'm happy to be here.