Go West

On the train from Itarsi to Delhi last week, my seat happened to be comfortably nestled amongst a throng of Mongoloid-featured folk. Mostly in order to distract myself from the dizzying 40-something-degrees heat, I decided to spend the morning observing them to try and figure out where they were from. Reminiscing my China days, I absorbed with amusement the orange-dye of many of the young men’s hairstyles, the multiple ear piercings, pumped muscles, and their decidedly un-Indian basketball jerseys. I came to the conclusion that they were probably Bhutanese, or Nepali. Yet the fact that their foreign-tongue talks would sporadically be interspersed with loud, heartfelt Hindi tunes perplexed me, and seemed to rule out any non-Indian lineage. I decided to observe the eldest amongst the group, a red-robed, bespectacled old man who would only pause his beaded-incantations to enquire about the price of a cold Coke or bottle of milk. He was too religious to be Chinese, I thought to myself, and the fact that they were traveling from Bangalore didn’t make it seem likely that he was Bhutanese.

After a while, one of the young men came and sat down next to me. He asked where I was going, what I did, why I got in at a godforsaken hour from a no-name station (only to have to kick one of them out of their seats). Next, it was my turn to ask questions, and I learned that they were Tibetans, traveling from their home (near Bangalore) to their schools (in Dehradun).

Tibetans? It had briefly crossed my mind that they could have been Tibetan, but I had quickly ruled it out, thinking that Tibetans would not behave or dress in the manner of these youth. His admission, to my surprise, shocked me. I realized that my perception of Tibetans had hitherto been completely shaped by Seven Years in Tibet, a biography of the Dalai Lama, and a random Tibetan-themed restaurant in Varkala. In seeming contrast to my co-passengers, the Tibetans of my imagination were all peace-loving, non-materialistic, deeply spiritual, traditional people. I turned to the red-robed elder, thinking that, like all cultural communities these days, it’s probably the elders that are the repositories of the age-old traditions recorded in history books.

Just as I turned, the elder picked up a half-empty bottle of water, felt that it was warm, and threw it out of the train window.

I thought about the fact that there was no running water left on the train. How the sweltering heat outside was only magnified by the hot air billowing through the coal-fired train. How I had slowly drank the warm water of my bottle, careful not to spill lest any drops be wasted.

How times change.

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From China, to Chennai, to Noida, I’ve creeped my way out west again. Though I would never have thought that Ahemedabad -- this land of sugaredeverythings -- would ever be ‘home’, that’s what it is right now.

I’m working here with Indicorps, an organization that aims to bring back people of Indian origin to India for service, for connecting back with a place that plays a large role in their identity. So far, it’s been a lot of fun. Last week found me at an Indicorps retreat in the hill station of Panchmarhi, Madhya Pradesh (the nearest train stop being Itarsi), taking a plunge in a not-so-clear lake, discovering the joys of eating freshly plucked sweetandsour mangoes, and learning from Indicorps fellows about the trials and travails of building entrepreneurs among slum youth in Kanpur, and building self-esteem of orphaned youth in rural Andhra Pradesh.

I don’t know for how long I will be here, or whether any of my crazy plans will materialize (the entrepreneurial bug still hasn’t left me). I do know that I have much to learn about the world around me, and about myself.

Hope you all are well, and am hoping that this magnet-spot will allow me to see many of you soon ;)

Sting

Don't believe in miracles? Believe this.

On a visit to a small town in Western UP called Amroha, my sister and I decided to re-visit the dargah of Shah Sharafuddin (also called Saheb Vilayat Saheb for reasons that I can't remember). Anyway, the place is famous for its 'ahimsa' scorpions: they don't sting people within the premises of the dargah.

Naturally, I was skeptical of the whole thing and wanted to try it out for myself. The pictures are proof! (The hand coming out of nowhere in the badly lit picture, yup, that's me). I held a big scorpion on my hand for about half a minute, and it just crawled a bit over my hand.

The story goes that two brothers got into a fight, and one brother put a curse on the other which held that scorpions and snakes would infest his home (now the site of the dargah, I assume). The cursed brother then apparently went to a holy person for reprieve, who then 'undid' the curse by saying that though scorpions and snakes would infest the place, they wouldn't bite.

Theatre for Change

Pandies, a theatre troupe that uses theatre as a medium of social change, recently held a theatre workshop at a slum school called Saksham in Noida. Started in the 1980s, Pandies has evolved into an activist and possibly the only feminist theatre group in North India.

After a few warm-up activities at the school, they arranged children in groups of 5. Each group was to depict a gender-based scenario, and the audience was supposed to guess the scenario being portrayed. Following each performance were debates and discussions on the theme portrayed. The second picture shows the kids in the audience, while in the first you can see Sanjay (founder of Pandies) and Ishaa (a member of the troupe) talking to the kids. In the third picture, the group depicts a girl being sacrificed so that the mother can have a boy-child. In the last picture, the team depicts a drunken man beating up his wife, while the wife's brother looks on and comforts the children.

The discussion sessions after each performance were eye-opening. One team had depicted a cricket match in which 2 boys were playing. In the background, 2 girls were begging to play but were being refused entry by the boys; another girl was cooking for the boys, preparing for their arrival at home. Interesting questions were being tossed around. "Can girls play cricket?" asked Sanjay. One boy confidently stood up to answer. "Girls can play but they shouldn't play, especially near the boys. They should play in separate areas." Another girl, with tears of defiance glimmering in her eyes, stood up to say, "Girls should be allowed to play if they want to!" After another performance, in which a typical Indian dinner-table scene (mother cooking, boys being served) was being depicted, Sanjay asked, "Is it only a mother's duty to cook?" After a few girls and boys nodded in assent, Yogesh stood up and said, "Mother should cook roti-sabzi while the father should be responsible for chai-paani. Everyone should have a role." Upon asking if it was right that the mother should always eat last, a boy stood up and said, "No, no, everybody should eat together. The mother should cook and keep everything ready for the father's arrival so that everyone can eat together."

Interesting stuff, no doubt. Definitely got me thinking about gender and society in a different way.

I intend to write about both groups for the Hindu sometime soon since they both do specacular work, but this will have to do until then!

Theatre for Change

Every alternate Saturday morning, children living in the slums of Nithari, in Noida, wake up in a state of frenzied excitement. They rush to their school, an NGO called Saksham, and wait patiently for its doors to open. While a curious bystander might attribute the children’s extraordinary zeal to a large coffer of ice-cream behind the school’s closed door, the truth is more surprising. The children are in eager anticipation of “Sanjay Bhaiya”, who, along with the rest of his theatre troupe, has been conducting three-hour informative, entertaining and thought-provoking workshops for the children within the school premises.

The Delhi-based theatre troupe, which calls itself ‘Pandies’ - after a derogatory term devised by the British to refer to the Indian insurgent Mangal Pandey – is, as its name suggests, not your ordinary theatre troupe. Pandies prides itself on being the first and only feminist- activist theatre group in the country that is, says its founder Sanjay Kumar, “committed to staging plays relevant to our ethos and time.” Speaking about the troupe’s origins and ideals, he adds, “Pandies’ theatre is from the margins and is a theatre of children, women, slum-dwellers, the homeless, and of vulnerable sections and subsections within those margins. We are feminist and proud of being so. The issues that we choose revolve around women because the group believes if our society is to head anywhere, it has to become more women-oriented and woman-friendly.”

On this particular Saturday, Pandies members are performing short skits specially prepared for the children. One of the skits, though complex, is particularly riveting. It describes the story of a young, pregnant woman who is convinced by her lover to leave their village for Delhi in order to, ostensibly, escape parental wrath and marry. After reaching Delhi, however, the man takes the woman to a park behind Jawaharlal Nehru University, rapes and subsequently throttles her. Fortuitously, the woman survives and is cared for by residents of a slum nearby, where she delivers her baby. Uneducated and without any vocational training, she and her son are forced into a life of destitution and poverty.

Despite the sensitive nature of the multi-dimensional plot, Sanjay and his troupe mince no words when discussing it with the children. “Do you think the man loves the woman?” he asks. “What do you think of love?” “Do you think the woman should have left her village?” And, most astonishingly to all of us present: “Did you know that this was based on a true story?”
Each question is followed by a thoughtful silence, after which both girls and boys venture replies. “I don’t think the man loved the woman. I think he just wanted to use her for fun, which is not right,” says Azharuddin, whose father is a tailor in a garment factory. 15 year old Soni, whose parents run a roadside tea stall, raises her hand shyly, but speaks confidently and with emotion. “The woman shouldn’t have left without informing her parents or discussing it with anyone. This is the reason why education is so important, especially for girls. If she was educated, she would have been able to make a more informed decision, and at least would have been able to support herself.”

“These workshops are a window into a different world for these children,” says Nadira Razak, co-founder of Saksham. “Simply encouraging them to think and giving them the opportunity to express themselves contributes tremendously to their personality and self-esteem. These children are normally never asked their opinions on serious issues; giving them this platform has inspired positive attitudinal shifts,” she says. Indeed, within the short span of two months, she says, the impact is already evident in the children’s increased confidence; they eagerly look forward to their first on-stage performance later this year.

Begun as a small university movement in Delhi in 1987, Pandies has since grown into a robust troupe with over 70 members, many of whom are college students interested in social change through theatre. Isha, a recent graduate of Hansraj College, has been an ardent member of the troupe for two years – and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. “Pandies gives us a space of freedom where we don’t have to worry about what we’re saying,” she says. “Not only do we get to voice our opinions, we actually do something about them as well. And because we all volunteer our time and skills, it is truly an activist forum.” The troupe has one or two major performances each year and in the interim, they perform at slums, schools, and colleges. They choose a topic and work on it over the course of a year; since its founding, Pandies has tackled issues such as rape, prostitution, HIV, the Mental Health Act and its relation to women, and the institutions of love and marriage.

In addition to their work in Delhi, Pandies has conducted workshops and performed in theatre festivals both nationally and internationally. In 2005, a year in which they had adopted the theme of “Anti-Communalism”, the troupe conducted a seven-day workshop in Gulmarg, Kashmir involving fifty-five children – Kashmiri Pundit and Kashmiri Muslim girls and boys - between ten and sixteen years of age. Says Sanjay, “It was a daunting challenge to put together a production in 7 days with children from these two volatile communities; in addition to their different religious backgrounds, many of the children were poor, some were orphaned, and most were traumatized by the violence they had witnessed. However, our methodology of individual and collective exercises, short story writing, creating twenty minute skits, and the final 90 minute production turned out to be extremely successful.”

At the moment, the troupe is rehearsing for their next performance at the Sri Ram Centre in Delhi, a montage of 3 individual pieces, each critiquing modern-day constructions of masculinity and the state from the perspective of a female protagonist. With elements from real-life stories and absorbing themes, the mid-August performance is not to be missed. For more information about Pandies, contact Sanjay at pandies@netscape.net