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The last few days have been Depawali for India (the so-(cheesily)-called ‘festival of lights’), and for me?; as my mum put it, a respite. You may say that it is fortunate that it should fall after two weeks of my being in India, as it has been probably a more intense two weeks that I may have realised and so the rest is welcome, to catch up on thoughts and energy.

I’m in Udaipur now catching up with friends; I’m most blessed that Ash left behind him a genial group of people who all knew my name, and so I am bathing in Ash’s good wake. I’m sure the arrival in India would have been harder without it. I feel each time I come to India that in some ways it takes longer to aclimatise, which is perhaps counter intuitive. Certainly, my conscious mind doesn’t even skip a beat when arriving any more, but as I come to understand the culture more I live deeper in it. When before I missed things and so skimmed over the top like a stone, the change of pace required to adjust properly, post-superficially, enlargens.

Parso I’m going to Deepak’s house for a couple of days, then we will return to Swaroopganj together and resume Hunar Ghar on Wednesday. I plan to start construction on our vegetable garden, jump start the compost, put up the swing water pump (sorry I keep forgetting to tell you Ash, it arrived before I did), and start a couple of vegetable gardens by friends’ houses, watered using the household waste water. I will leave pedagogy and philosophy for a time where I am capable of debate in Hindi. Speaking of which, a collegue in India remarked some time ago that I knew as much as the books could tell me, so it was just then a matter of practice, so I haven’t looked at a Hindi book for over a year. Last week having been curious, I opened a book to discover that there are many things it can tell me! So I’ve been boshing it every day, and my grammar is now much better. It is in a kind of limbo;I’ve learnt so much such that I have lost the ability even to speak simple sentences. Experience tells me that the brain process has gone underground, is re-organising itself in the light of the new information, and should return with renewed skill and vigour after a couple of weeks, I ‘ope!

Today and yesterday were our Skills Festival. Originally the brain-child of Sunny, Deepak and I prepared example compost, local medicine, arts, crafts, music and food stalls, and spent several afternoons walking around the village to visit people at home and ask them to come, and share any skills that they had. It was to be a grand affair. Not a single person came. It was a totally fantastic sucess, but not as we had intended.

On the day of the festival yesterday, we invited the teachers and kids to get involved if they wanted. Unsuprising, the teachers all disappeared, but about 35 kids stayed on. It was then they who organised and did some art, others took up to playing misic and dancing, others fetched leaves and herbs and pounded it into medicine, and still others made coconut husk rope, compost and a posse of about 5 kids prepared, served and cleared up afterwards food for us all to enjoy at the end of the day. There were times when it was close to complete anarchy induced breakdown, but it held together in noisy high spirits. Bermused faces of passers-by stared up at the racket on top of our little hill. Perhaps some people did try and come but they were scared off!

Either way, the kids gave Deepak adn I a little glimps of what Hunar Ghar will one day become; considerate freedom of expression and a space where everyone is equal, we all work for one another, and each can engage, learn and create in their own time, in their own way. We were both shattered by the end of it, but thoroughly satisfied. The kids, un-marred by education, understand what Hunar Ghar is even if they don’t realise it. Today a whole bunch more children stayed on after (we cancelled today’s half of the festival, based on yeserdays’s lack of interest), and I found a teacher shooing off home some children reluctantly leaving the little clay models they had been making. The teachers, burdened by a mind that has been taught to copy and follow, don’t really have any idea at all.

As suggested last week, my arrival in India wasn’t what I expected it to be. Last week however was really great, and I really needn’t have panicked quite!

I mainly tried to learn the children’s names, and I have quite a few of them down, but many still to go. As my time here is, for most intents and purposes, unlimited, and knowing that after 8 months Ash will be here for quite some time, I have no inclination to hurry which is, as I have come to understand, the only genuine way this kind of undertaking can exist. I’ve learnt this before in my brief visits of just 6 months or 2 months when I come with a plan to execute and then cause no end of stress to myself, others and the world in general by trying to force things to fit my schedule. For all the talk of community led projects, when you set a time schedule it’s that you work to and not the community’s desire and ability to evolve. That is no longer a problem for us, and the benefits arisen are in definable, save to say they are significant and completely necessary.

With the lack of hurry in mind, I’ve had a lovely week getting to know the children and Hunar Ghar better – apart from a few all to brief and mentally clouded visits, I’ve never really seen it function before. And it’s function great! There is little point in dwelling on the fact that much improvement is necessary as that is a simple matter of allowing time and gentle perseverance, and dwelling on it wouldn’t improve the situation anyway. On the contrary, it would probably increase stress and decrease energy levels, and would be altogether quite negative. The teachers are much better than they were before; their initiative is on the up, ideas are starting to come from them and they are, of their own accord, starting to link up the various different concepts and methods of learning into one interrelated web, which is something of the root of the informal environment we wish to create. Once one understands that everything is related, one sees that every single experience is learning, and as such we don’t have to sit children down in neat rows to learn, nor make them recite like a parrot can.

We’ve been doing lots of art, making paints from different colour mud and crushed leaves and have been decorating the rooms according to a theme. We’ve also been making flowers out of scrap cloth, and have started a compost heap. The kids are so much more confident than six months ago, really full of beans and great at forming little groups that will start painting, playing games or music, or even practicing their writing. Their relationship with Deepak is really informal, but they are respectful enough to listen when he asks them not to do something, or to do such and such. It is a relationship based on love and understanding, not hierarchy or threat, and it is wonderful to see. Some of the teachers either also have this or are getting there, while another still is a bit more on the strict side.

So this week I will continue to get to know the kids, learn their names, and redouble my efforts to learn Hindi better, and the local language too. It also turns out there is a third language which I’ll need to learn at some point, so lots of learning for me there, besides the rest! I’ll take a while longer to learn how things are and the languages, and when I’ve done that I’ll then be capable of gradually shaping things in the most natural way possible, of little ideas that inspire people and supporting them through their learning.

Putputiya (putt-putt-iya) – Local language word for moped.

pre-script, this entry isn’t very brief!

So, I arrived in India via Kuwait where a lady told me off for massaging my bottom lip with my thumb and fore finger as I pondered over something on my laptop. I have no idea what she said. Differences in culture and be a funny thing to get a hold on.

Fortunately my grasp of Inidan culture is getting much stronger, so I was able to keep a cool head during a slightly traumatic few days since arriving. My flight got in at 5 am on Thursday, then I had to travel for a further 24ish hours to get to our home in Swaroopganj,  finally collapsing into  bed at 4am on the Friday having gone door knocking for an hour trying to figure out where Sunny and Deepak had moved house to. It turned out that we weren’t due to move for another month, so they where still where they had been 6 months ago! Oops. So I crashed at the RBKS office, and they woke me up with a cup of tea at 7am, but they are all really slow in the morning, so we left their house at 10am, and then hung around for an hour 5 minutes down the road as it seemed to require three of them to make sure a truck was loaded properly. Eventually I persuaded one to take me on a bike to Mandvar, the town a mile from Hunar Ghar.

It was great getting back to the village, I was so happy to see everyone, and see how it had developed. The kids were all smiles and playing, and it was good to see Bhuvnesh and and Nandlal, two of the teachers. Ajit’s father is ill so he was away, and Shantilal the fourth teacher hadn’t turned up. Some things haven’t developed.

It has been a festival this last week, so there were less kids, maybe 45 instead of 80, but generally they are all coming, at least when there is no illness in the family. Unfortuately Becca was also missing, and no-one had heard from here for a couple of weeks. She had left for a week when her boyfriend came, then come back just to pick up her stuff, leaving just a note, so we were a bit worried. Chris had gone by this time and we didn’t know if she was OK. Fortunately that evening she called, she was in Mt Abu and wasn’t planning on coming back. I hopped on the bike and diced with death riding on an Indian motorway, at night, going down it the wrong side as there are construction works going on. It was then a nice winding journey up into the cool mountains.

Becca has had a lot on her mind, has been tired, frrustrated and ill, and needs time out, needs to ride out time until her flight. It was great to see her, and we had a good chat that night and the next day. I was still wired from no rest since the weekend, so I don’t think I was as helpful to her as I should have been, I will see her again this weekend when she has had more time to rest and think.

Ther are many things to consider doing Hunar Ghar, it can be totally exhausting worring about the morality of building a school in the area. Is it really what they want, or are we just damaging their culture? We are also running and informal education that concentrates on emotional development, that of consideration and reflection, of responsible individuality, but there are schools of thought that suggest that all people need to go through the selfish individualism that the west is currently going through in order to get to that next level of human development, where the society is protected and cohesive, but individuals can also exist in more peaceful, equal ways. There is also the problem that the teachers are slow on the uptake of things regarding reflection and sharing. Theirs is culture that lives for that very moment, they will endure most anything pretty uncomplacently, eg kids sitting with infected eyes weeping puss, diligently trying to learn. They are not in the habit of reflecting, their creative capacity has also been massively stunted by a very poor quality of education that children in India are told to endure, so it’s relly going to be another 10 years or so when our current young kids grow up and start investing back into the school that we are really going to see it happen. For me and Ash we understand that and are willing to put that time in. 10 years, 20 years is nothing if it means a change that will benefit every subsequent generation in that village, and their families, and they are positive caring people growing up into the world. Becca is in India for 4 months, doesn’t see it as her baby, so questions how much good she can actually do in such a short time.

Getting used to Indian culture takes time, so she has been up against this as well. The little nuances of life that one doesn’t even notice onec you have lived here some time, can be utter frustrating to a new comer when you are tired, ill and low on energy. Becca has been our first volunteer, so we have also learned much from the experience. But I’m going on about why Becca has left, I must also mention what happened to Sunny.

To cut a long story short, in the Saturday meeting with the teachers, Shantilal turned up late, drunk, and starte abusing Sunny because he didn’t like him sharing personal things that were making him happy. He ended up shoving Sunny and and threatening to beat him up, prodding him with a bamboo cane and threatening to pull him outside to sort him out. None of the other teachers stood up for him, Deepak did, I was still with Becca in Mt Abu. It is a terrible, terrible experience that no-one in the world deserves. Sunny is nothing but love and kindness, and it is aweful to think how Shantilal took advantage of that. Shantilal has been told only to come back to Hunar Ghar if he appologises to Sunny. Deepak was so upset that he was weeping as Sunny left.

I found out Sunny was leaving when I phoned him I couldn’t make it to Udaipur with him, but didn’t then know why. I got back to Swarropjganj an hour and a half later with Sunny gone, Becca had gone, and Deppak nowhere in sight. I felt very alone and saw a big struggle ahead for the year if everyone was gone. My money was locked in the house and I had no key, my debit card wasn’t working and when I tried to phone Becca at her guesthouse, they refused to put me through to her as she was sleeping. I felt utterly alone. I didn’t have Ash’s number so I couldn’t phone him even. So I thought I’d hop on the bike and ride to say hi to Sharmaji, but I ened up going back to the house quickly, remebering what I forgot in my panic that I could gett eh spare key off our neighbours. I felt a little safe now I could get inside, and at least I could access some money, but I just felt so lost I felt like crying for a bit. I was without much sleep and everyting seemed to be collapsing around me and suddenly a year seemed very daunting, I wanted out! But that was going to get me nowhere, and really I’d only been sad for about 2 hours, so I told myself to sort it out and deal with the situation. Just as I was giving the key back, Deepak what there! The relief! Deepak was his usual cool self, and I fed off this. He told me what happened to Sunny that morning. We made an action plan, he to meet with the village tomorrow to discuss Shantilal, and me to go to Udaipur to talk with Sunny.

The long and short of the next section of the story is that Sunny needs some time to relax and think, about many things. I met his brother and talke with him, and he wants Sunny to settle and get a career, and his family don’t want him to go back to the village. The situation is tough. Becca needs time to think, Sunny needs time to think, I need someone to show me the ropes of Hunar Ghar. More importantly however Becca and Sunny are both wonderful people who are so good for the kids, so much love and creativity. I feel now I’m here I can organise things better and give them a bit of security in their roles and give them support and direction with running Hunar Ghar, but I may have come just a couple of weeks too late

That is the short version, tonight I’m going to stay in Udaipur with Lehru and Sunny, catch up on some rest, regroup with myself, then go to the village for the next week and see what is going on there. I’m going to keep my tasks small and easy in the beginning, to ease myself in and not take on more than I can handle while I pick up the language a bit more. My tasks this week; learn all the names of the children, and try and find us a new house.