A Day in the Village

With all the Ashrams and the mind-body focus of yoga as well as the ancient sights, it seems to me, people usually describe India as a "spiritual" and "majestic" place. There haven't been many instances where I've seen this in my everyday life in Bangalore. Even at the Taj Mahal - which is both spiritual and majestic - it still felt like a tourist attraction. A beautiful, tangible site to see. But I feel like for the first time, I felt the intangible beauty and "spiritualness" of India (amidst the poverty, goats, cows, chickens) on my visit to three different villages.

I had given my email address to a bunch of different charities earlier this month and had gotten an email from one of them saying they would be arranging for a "site visit" for anyone who was interested. I didn't recognize any names on the email list but figured it might be a fun thing to do. As the week passed, the number of people on the email list (none of whom I know) dwindled until there were only three of us left who would be going. We were leaving Friday morning so Thursday afternoon I was drafting an email to cancel. The excuses were coming easily - we would be gone all day, I wasn't even sure what the charity was about, George needed Chandan in the morning for a doctor's appointment, it was Friday... But then I had a moment of clarity and realized those were very weak excuses. Just because I didn't know the two other people going nor had any idea where we were going was no reason not to go. So, I committed thinking it could turn into one of those days you think will never end.

The emails inviting us and with the itinerary were from a woman named Heena - who I assumed was the head of the charity. According to the email, we were to meet at this woman Saras's house at 8:30 and then all share a car out to the villages to return to Bangalore around 4. George's appointment wasn't until later in the morning so it was really no trouble for Chandan to bring me. When he's not sure where we are going but knows we are close, he slows down to a crawl which still makes me a little uneasy as the other cars go whizzing by, mere inches from us. Holding my breath, I tell him there will be no sign, we're going to someone's house. We find the right address but there is nothing to indicate I am in the right place. No one standing outside, no other cars parked in front, and for a split second, I think I'll just tell Chandan to forget it and take me home. But I decide the worst that can happen is I ring the bell and someone who has no idea what I am talking about answers the door and then I go home.

My second assumption was that I was going to Sarah's house who was another member of the OWC. When I rang the bell, a maid opened the door, yelled something in Kannada and ushered me in. A minute later, a large woman in a beige sari with green and purple trim, holding a bowl of oatmeal, introduced herself as Saras. She told me to have a seat, apologized for a messy house and asked if I minded if she ate while we talked. I told her I was sorry for coming early (but wasn't sure how long it would take to get there) so I certainly didn't mind if she ate and that I was messy too. "I hate when people come over and remark how 'comfortable' my house is. That's just means they think it's messy and cluttered." She had lots of books on shelves and nick-naks that look like they had come from all over the world - carved wooden statues, intricately detailed ceramic/porcelain dishes, wall hangings in deep red and orange. If I had one word to describe it, I would say it was "comfortable" but this had nothing to do with the stacks of newspapers and magazines cluttered on the coffee table. So we sat and she says, "So tell me. I know nothing about you other than you are part of the OWC."

I learn that she was a pediatrician in the US for 20+ years and that she and her husband moved back to India about 10 years ago because there was "so much to do here." She explained that she quickly realized she wanted to do more than practice medicine and had gotten involved in doing research about children and women's health. (This was the moment the last bit of doubt about my being there crept in - I thought I had neglected to realize this was one of the charities I had ruled out because it had to do with AIDS and other icky medicine stuff.) But she said she realized that research can only accomplish so much and she was really interested in doing something for these women and children so she and her husband created this organization called Belaku Trust. At this point, the two other OWC ladies had arrived. Heidi, a tall, thin, Swiss women with striking features and very short salt and pepper hair who has lived in the US for the past 25 years and Mona, an LA lawyer who was born and raised in Mumbai (Bombay) and has come back to India with her husband and two kids. Heena arrived a few minutes later and introduced herself as an intern helping Belaku for the next 6 weeks. Heena is a British-Indian who lives in London but quit her job as an accountant and is taking time off to travel and spend time with family in India before figuring out what she wants to do next. She looked like she might be in her mid-twenties. The five of us head out to these villages in a minivan still without a clear picture of what Belaku Trust actually does and what I was actually going to see.

The ride out took about 2 hours and most of the journey was on a paved two-way road. I saw lots of monkeys and enormous trees that had been cut down close to the road. Saras said that they have been cutting down trees that are thousands of years old because she thinks they are planning to widen the road. Although we didn't pass too many other cars and there was nothing besides fields beyond the road so why they need to widen the road is unclear. The Bengaluru suburban sprawl, I suppose. About 15 minutes outside the city, we passed a few buildings and she told us these were actually international boarding schools. She said there has a been a recent trend for Indian families who live abroad to send their defiant children to boarding schools in India thinking they will become more disciplined and get a better education. Saras knew someone who worked at one of these schools who said the kids are the worst behaved, most spoiled kids she's ever seen. But if your kids are driving you nuts, why not ship them off to India?

I also learned that Mona worked mostly on immigration law and human trafficking but is not working in India. She's emotionally exhausted. Her husband is working with some "start-up" company that has something to do with "outsourcing" and they are planning to go back to the states in a couple of years. Heidi used to work in the fashion industry, "working with textiles" and was first living in New York but (before coming to Bangalore) had lived in Houston for the last 9 years. We learned that essentially what Saras and Belaku is trying to do is to empower women from rural villages not to be dependent on their husbands (who've either died, abuse them or are drunks) and to learn a skill. From the research and field work they have done, they realized that improving health is only part of the big picture. To really improve "health," you have to improve every aspect of their lives including education, training and a sense of purpose. About an hour into the trip, I had no more doubts about coming and was very glad I didn't back out.

After about an hour and a half, we made our first stop at the "office" and were told that this was the last stop where we'd find a bathroom. The office consisted of a three room concrete house with a thatched roof that was about 3 feet from the road. Between the house and the road were 2 cows, a small stream and a handful of clucking chickens and roosters. Behind the house were two rows of tents. The tents were really nothing more than a piece of cloth hung of a couple of sticks. When we walked into the house there was a desk to the right with some papers and books piled on top but no chair. Directly in front of us were some shelves with a couple of drawings that looked like they were done by a child and a few pictures of women. There was a room off to the right that we did not see but in the room to the left there were about 6 girls all sitting on the floor surrounded by big books and notebooks. The bathroom was really an empty closet with a hole in the ground. We were told the girls were doing research. They were tracking 500 women and following them through pregnancy to figure out why India has the highest rate of women killed during child-birth and how to prevent this. There were no file cabinets, no folders, no computer, no supplies other than the books, pens and paper.

There were three different villages we were going to see and Saras kept saying we were going to see three "income generations." She meant that the first village we were going to see was the one they have most recently started to help and the last one would be the one they've been working with since they started. However, I think this also could mean a really, really, really poor village, a really, really poor village and a really poor village. The first village we went to was seemed to be the poorest and the most recent to be involved with Belaku. There were fifteen women and two small boys (one with a disfigured leg) in a one room concrete building with a thatched roof. On the floor were three long and narrow pieces of fabric stretched taught over three hollow tables. The women were sitting on the floor around the three tables embroidering thread and beads into the fabric. I don't have a picture of the women working but this is a home in the village. The room they were working in was similar though.


We were told that the saris they were working on were only for practice and they wouldn't be able to sell them. It was only until you really studied them that you could see some of their mistakes. The women here were pretty quiet but they seemed please to be able to introduce themselves to us in English, "Hello, my name is..." There was a man from Bangalore who was a volunteer of Belaku training the women. He said it takes about six months to train the women to the point where they could sell something and a year for them to really become experts. Knowing Saras was a doctor, we later found out the women with the boy whose leg was disfigured brought him so Saras could check him out. She said that he really needs surgery but will probably never get it.

From there we moved on to the next village that looked less poor. The houses were close together and some were made of what looked like adobe/mud and others of concrete.



In this village we went to a house where another group of fifteen women are learning to do block printing. When we arrived, they were working on pillows. A woman who owns a shop in Bangalore had placed and order for pillows. But they also showed us other work that they have done. They have made t-shirts and curtains, table clothes, place mats and had covered daily planners and journals with fabric. All of the samples we saw looked surprisingly professional. Saras had said most of the patterns are pretty basic but I don't think I would've called them "basic." This is the room where they work:
Again the only "furniture" was the table you can sort of see here on the left. We saw one women take a square of fabric, a large rubber stamp and a sponge covered in green paint and printing the pattern on the fabric with the stamp. She made it look very easy but the finished products all looked like things I have seen in stores. The Romans used to have holes like this in the middle of their homes for drainage but Saras didn't seem to think it serves the same purpose here. The women were complaining that roof leaks because the monkeys fight and make holes in the roof. I did not witness any monkey fighting.

We also visited a school for kids ages 2-8. Again, this was one room with no desks, no chairs, no paper, no books. The alphabet was painted on the walls in English and Kannada and numbers were painted 1-10. Someone had painted a map of India on the wall and some other rows of writing in Kannada. The students were sitting on the floor in two rows facing one another when we walked in but stood up when they saw us. They were very enthusiastic and sang "twinkle, twinkle little star for us." When we left, Saras was visibly upset. She said she can't get the teachers to actually teach anything. "Any parrot can sing twinkle, twinkle little star for God's sake. They can sing the alphabet but they have no idea about the concept of letters!" Belaku is trying to work with one woman from the village to be the teacher but has gotten another Indian volunteer to train the teacher but Saras admitted that both women probably only ever learned how to memorize. But still as depressing as it sounds, kids are kids and they were laughing and smiling and seemed happy.

Most impressive however, in my opinion, was the last village where we saw the women making paper and paper products - gift bags, notebooks, pens. In this house, there was a table on the side with an industrial sized paper cutter. Under the table were large boxes and at the other end of the room was another table with stacks of bags that they had made. On the right hand side of the room the women sat in a line against the wall - like an assembly line. The women who was introduced as the "leader," had a ruler, pencil and an Exacto knife and was cutting finished paper - dyed and embossed (some with leaves, some with wicker patterns) to be made into bags. Next to her was a girl rolling up long narrow strips of magazine paper that was cut by the girl sitting next to her. It was a Marie Claire magazine and she would cut the paper to make strips of long, narrow triangles. Next to her there was a girl whittling bamboo sticks and by the paper cutter were about four girls shredding paper into small squares. They paper is donated from companies in Bangalore. The women tear up the paper then soak it in water until it becomes like a paste. Sometimes they dye it and sometimes they add leaves to the paste to give the paper a "speckled" look. They then roll out the paste and let it dry. Sometimes, while the paper is still wet they'll emboss the shapes into the paper. Once the paper is dry they cut it. The bamboo is for the spine of some of the smaller pads they make. The girls with the magazine strips roll up the strips (on a string or piece of bamboo) and then dip it into a glue/gloss finish to make "beads" that they hang from the pads for decoration. Again, seeing the conditions and tools they have, all of the products looked surprisingly professional. I'm sure I've bought similiar gift bags. They were sturdy and pretty. Most of what they were working on was red and green because they sell alot for the holidays. They were particularly excited because some local winery has hired them to create bags for their bottles. This is a picture of the paper drying.
Next to the room where the women make the paper, was another school. This one was larger and actually had paper and paint for the kids to use. They were in the middle of finger painting when we arrived and later sang a version of "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes," which was acceptable to Saras because at least they were learning body parts. It made sense that this was the village that Belaku had been working with the longest, everything about it was more "sophisticated" than the other two villages. Even the women were more confident, talkative and assertive than in the first two.

We had lunch in this last village and learned that the caste system is still very much a part of village life. One of the women came in with bowl of rice and her two sons. When she came in two of the other women left because the women with the rice was from a lower caste and they would not eat with her. Women of the same caste will share food with one another but not with someone of a lower caste and some of them won't allow their kids to play with kids in a different caste. We also learned that in the villages, women are supposed to give birth alone and outside under the sky. There is one mid-wife whose mother died giving birth and has since made it her mission to make sure that women do not give birth alone but often can't convince the women to stay inside. There was another girl who did not introduce herself to us but we later learned this was because she was "deaf-mute." Saras told us that she once tried to get one of the village boys fitted with a hearing aid but he panicked and pull them out of his ears alarmed and frightened by all the new sounds. Saras said this girl was probably too old to be given hearing aids now. She was probably 15. These are the women from the last village.

Even though we saw lots of poverty and some deplorable conditions, I never pitied the women or felt bad for them. They all seemed very proud and happy. Most of the women if not widowed, had left their husbands and were either living with relatives or their in-laws. Saras had said that because of issues with dowries, most women are more welcome at their in-laws than their own parent's house. About half of the women were missing more than one tooth but they still had wide smile and laughed with one another.But even though we didn't speak the same language, you could tell that they were proud of the work they were doing (with good reason) and there was definitely a sense of hope and beauty about them.

Saras said that she thought when she started this in 1995 that the women would be entirely self-sufficient and running their businesses in 10 years. She said that their progress has much slower. She said they are fantastic at learning new skills but they don't yet get the idea of marketing and finding and outlet for their products. Saras said some of them are starting to understand the idea that the more they make and sell, the more money they will get. I still have lots of questions about where they get some of their supplies and ultimately, what are the goals of the women - to be financially independent? To move out of the village? To just have a job? But it was fun to be involved and to see another side of India so I'm going to stay in touch with Saras and find some other ways to help out.