Celebrations

I have been thinking about transitions and transience lately. Just over a year ago, I began the transition from the structure and free time of school to the pressures and deadlines of the real world. Almost six months ago, I began the anticipated yet still jarring transition from the familiar--the smiling faces and beautiful places--of South Carolina to this foreign culture--also full of smiling faces and beautiful places--in South Asia. The work at IJM has taught me even more, as I have watched, wondered and written about the released laborers' transition from slavery to freedom. Reflection on transition inevitably prompts reflection on transience--the temporary yet significant friendships I form, the relative nature of time that shrinks or stretches depending on how much you want it to, or need it to. More deep musings later!

Yesterday was a double celebration for two friends I am blessed to know, even for a short time. IJM legal fellow and Explorer Extraordinaire Martine and her husband will be leaving soon to return to Oz. So Andy threw Martine a surprise Farewell, where friends and coworkers gathered to celebrate her with good food and send her off with scraps of fabric!

Andy cooked up a storm and we got to taste some Aussie dishes: mango-pork risotto, veg. lasagna, fresh salad with cheese and pears, rice and channa, homemade tomato soup, fried fish, lemon meringue pie, fresh fruit including papaya and starfruit, and homemade vanilla bean icecream. Yes, he made all of that by himself. Impressive, and tasty.

Saturday was also my friend and akka Lakshmi Priya's birthday. (Akka means older sister and is used as a term of endearment here) Festivities included dinner, dessert and lots of laughings. Fun fact of the day: Poo means flower in Tamil. I had the pleasure of explaining the irony in this false cognate to Priya!

Here: Chardaie, me, Priya, Kim, Martine.

After a tasty meal of idly and dosai with some of the best sambar I've had (two South Indian dishes: idly is somewhat like a small, thick pancake and dosai more like a huge fried crepe; sambar is the ubiquitous liquid-gravy seasoned with tomatoes, a few spices and the occasional extra vegetables) we taught Priya how to bake a cake. Here we are frosting the cupcakes.

I loved celebrating these two special friends on the same day!

Dakshina Chitra

Last weekend, Martine, Chardaie and I drove down East Coast Road to Dakshina Chitra, a non-profit craft village run by the Madras Craft Foundation. This hybrid marketplace-museum displays historic and contemporary crafts of South India. Despite the 110 degree Fahrenheit afternoon, I walked away with a few (okay several) scarves and a few other souvenirs.

Traditional loom for Ikat weaving, a particular type of textile with dyed threads woven into pretty, geometric designs. Interestingly, the finished product looks a lot like Native American designs.

The market. Local artisans set up shop in stalls of varying size. This couple treated theirs as a working studio of sorts.

Bangles galore.

Photo op: yoga pose with the multi-appendage goddess. Lakshmi Priya would be proud of us, Martine!

The village emphasizes the various architecture styles of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as well as their respective handicrafts. Tiny houses were reproduced, and in a few cases, the originals moved, to reflect development over time.

Kerala house. I love the thatched roof canopy bed and Sacred Heart of Jesus painting.

Peacocks are my favorite.

I'll blame it on the heat.

Shifting the flat

In British-English, to "shift" is to move.  Apartments are "flats."  In any English, dirt is dirty and packing is a pain.

Step One: Clean.

This is me cleaning the A/C. I am sad that this is what I breathe. But I am glad that we have air con in this crazy heat. 

Step Two: Get your friends to help move.

This is Vijay and Kim, packed in the back to keep an eye on the stuff.  I rode in the front with the nice man who helped us and seemed to have some difficulties with the stick shift.  Yikes.

Step Three: Repairs.

This is the electrician who tests the electricity by sticking a metal object into the socket.  He is wearing a lunghi.  That is his helper squatting below to help install the A/C.  Please applaud my picture-taking sneaky skills.

Step Four: Buy furniture.

This is Mani's.  The coolest second hand furniture store you ever did see.  Benches, desks, chairs, beds, dressers, sofas, tables.  Teak, rosewood, cherry. 

Step Five: Bring furniture home.

This is Nicolette and me bringing her cool desk chair home.  We got a lot of strange looks and long stares.  

Step Six: Get furniture delivered.

This is the man delivering two queen-sized mattresses.  Yes, on his bicycle.  Maybe we should have attempted another load on the scooter?

Step Seven: Unpack!

This is all of our stuff.  We are very proud of our hard work.  Slowly but surely we are settling in to our new home.

A few May memories

My roommate and I dubbed last month "Crazy Mayzy" because it was, well, crazy. Work was nuts and life was even busier.

To the first point, work has been the usual unending list of challenges and accomplishments--on good days in that order. I am reading through old case files and writing stories about rescue and redemption, lives literally transformed by freedom. I am attending meetings with various individuals from the community, which I'm slowly but surely becoming a part of. I am sending emails and stuffing newsletters. And on top of those normal tasks, I am a part of an exciting new project.

For the past couple of weeks, our office has been entrenched in planning and writing a proposal to effect change across the government, media and society at large. Our casework effectively brings freedom to individual laborer and their familes. But we are also seeking to transform the structures which allow forced labor to exist in a country--where it is illegal. As you might imagine, the layers in need of transformation are many in a land of one billion people. I have been inspired by my coworkers' creativity and practicality. I have been honored to contribute and put many hours into crafting so many thoughts into a single sentence.

And then there was life. About a week and a half before we had to vacate our respective apartments, Nicolette and I decided we should probably do more than check Craigslist and physically look for a new place to live. So we took our lunchbreaks and hopped on her scooter, criss-crossing town in search of the cute little flat we now call home [away from home, Mom]. You know when you accidentally shoot yourself in the face with a hot hairdryer? Multiply that feeling by forever and that's how hot it is driving around the city streets in the summer. And it is summer. Lots of sunscreen, some hilarious conversations caused by massive language barriers and two agents later, we have a lovely place on Nawab Habibullah. Say it like it sounds.

A few favorite moments from the move:

*Blitz-cleaning our new apartment for four hours with no A/Cs. Have I mentioned it's regularly hot here? It's even hotter when you're scrubbing bathroom tiles, dusty drawers and seriously thick grease coating kitchen cupboards (turns out the interior cabinets were white after all).

* Sitting at my desk in my new room trying to be somewhat productive in the midst of two men yelling/conversing in Tamil as they use a chisel and hammer to put in a new electrical socket in the cement wall. Afterwards, the electrician asked me (using gestures and grunts) to come examine his work. I innocently motioned and asked if the socket worked, assuming he would plug in a lamp or something. Instead, he grabbed his screwdriver and stuck it into the socket. The clear plastic handle lit up as the electricity coursed through the metal tool, which he was holding. He then nodded. Yes, the electricity works.

* Getting our two queen sized mattresses delivered on the back of a bicycle. Don't worry, I have a picture.

* After working late one night, Nicolette and arrived home close to 1. Ready for bed. I went to my bedroom door and it was locked. There was a key in the hole, which apparerently I had used unintentionally. The key would turn over, but the lock would not. We jiggled and struggled with the handle. Took a knife to the side of the doorpost. Tried turning the key with the back of a hammer. Removed the handle all together. All to no avail. It took three days, two nights and one non-English speaking locksmith, but I am finally able to sleep on my new mattress in my clean room.

Weddings

A couple of days ago, my walk home from work was interrupted by a wedding procession.  A hundred or so men in red turbans and women in brightly colored sarees marched along with the groom, who rode on an ornamented white horse.  These lamps were lifted on top of people's heads.  My camera was buried in my purse, so unfortunately I have no photo evidence of the white horse or lovely sarees.  And of course it's not the same when you don't hear the blaring music spurring on the festivities.

And last week, my friend and boss got married!  She was the most beautiful bride...

And I borrowed a gorgeous saree from my dear friend Lakshmi Priya.  Thanks to Nicolette for helping me get dressed!

There were hundreds of people at her wedding, including everyone from our office, a few of us pictured below.  There was also a 12-person band, a popcorn machine, and the traditional rice dish biriyani served on banana leaves at long tables where guests rotated and the banana leaves were folded up and the next line of hungry, happy people sat down to chow down.

Shout out to Meggie and Lauren: the past few weeks and months that Hephzibah has been choosing invitations, wedding sarees, house-hunting, etc has made me miss each of you but feel vicariously connected to your respective wedding/marriage/life planning!

A Sunday drive

I remember my mom telling us that when she was a little girl, she used to take Sunday drives. Sometimes ice cream was involved, but sometimes the six Glancy kids packed into the car, no doubt fighting for a window seat, and just drove. A Sunday drive. I thought about that this morning as I drove home from church. My auto driver chose to take some back roads, perhaps an attempt at a short cut. It definitely wasn't shorter, but it was unfamiliar and therefore I paid more attention than I often do when I'm rushing from one place to another.

Smoke and smells of idly and dosa swirled out of the tiny homes, patched together with slanty roofs and cardboard cross sections. We skidded on rocks and broken somethings as we swerved to avoid the young mother with a shorts-less baby on her hip and a plate of leftover cooking scraps. She tossed the rubbish into the thin river, adding to the trash lining the banks and adding to the confusing smell in the muggy air.

Little boys ran next to my auto, shouting in high-pitched voices and pointing and laughing at the strange girl passing through their neighborhood. We whizzed passed another woman bargaining with a man, his bicycle basket full of tomatoes and and an antique scale tied to the rusted sides. I made eye contact with a very skinny man in a plaid turban, who was leading a mud-colored and mud-covered bull down the middle of the tight street. Stray dogs yapped as a gang of preteen boys gathered for a game of cricket in the same street. A goat was tied to a post. A woman in a bright red saree walked down the street with tired arms hanging at her small sides and a large bag of rice balanced casually atop her head.

We pulled out onto a main road I half recognized and then approached an overpass I knew. A lorry in front of my tiny auto sputtered and threatened to cloud my driver's vision with an impressive puff of black exhaust. Men sat on top of the bags and boxes and loose trash filling the bed of the truck. Motorcycles and scooters competed with us for a front row spot at the starting line of the traffic signal. One little girl caught my eye, pretty jasmine pinned into her pretty hair, her arms wrapped around her father's waist. On my other side, a little boy in his father's lap, a mother seated behind them, and another 8 or 10-year-old girl behind--all on the same motorbike. I wondered if they were on a Sunday drive, headed to Greams Road Fruit Shop for a strawberry shake or sweet lime juice.

Shopping: just go with the flow

This weekend, my friend Priya took me and two other interns shopping, Martine and Kim. We got to experience how the locals shop: en masse. Put yourself in my shoes and watch this clip:

I took my first "share auto" with these gals; we hopped in a [slightly] oversized auto rickshaw with a handful of strangers and rode to T. Nagar, a part of town renown for its massive saree and salwar stores...and crowds.

Stacks of fabric for new salwar sets: top, bottoms and a dupata (or scarf). The men behind the counter pull down whichever set you want to see, then you buy and take to a tailor for the final product.

Shops line both sides of the street. Shoppers line the street.

Shopping in this kind of crowd requires some serious energy. Priya introduced us to sugarcane juice. Not my fave--very bitter and tasted a lot like I imagine a grass and root smoothie might taste. But I'm all for trying new things.

mmm, Samosas. Now here's a street food I like. Some sort of mystery mash with potatoes, lentils, maybe some veggies...all fried up in a poof of pastry-like dough. Martine, Priya, me. What's not to love?

Although I'll stick to sweet lime or strawberry juice, I do appreciate the labor-intensive process for juicing sugarcane. Check it out:

P.S. Where you able to view my video clips?