Saturday

       This past Saturday was a whirlwind of a day. We started out our morning with a class lecture in the hotel conference room. Our guest scholar, Anil Varughese, gave an informative lecture about Kerala. He discussed problems such as alcoholism and poverty, but he also looked at the positive changes made in the state. For example, there is now a much lower birth rate and infant mortality rate in Kerala as well as a much higher average life span. This is both in comparison to Kerala’s past statistics and to India’s overall patterns. This is particularly impressive when one considers how much lower the average income is in Kerala as compared to the United States.  The life expectancy rate in Kerala is 73.9 years and the infant mortality rate is 15. In 2001, Kerala ranked number one in human development index, out of all significant Indian states, at a level of 0.638.

      After our lecture we had a lovely buffet-style Indian lunch on the sixth floor of the hotel, with a beautiful view of the city of Trivandrum. We were overlooking a series of modern buildings juxtaposed with cute little gardens.  Then we packed up our trusty tour van, which our guide navigated out of the hotel parking lot like a true master of narrow spaces and headed for the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum. We took a tour of the entire campus with a focus on the library. It was a stunning seven-story brick building with a winding spiral staircase and an immaculate organization of the texts. Students engaged in a self-motivated study of a variety of documents and texts related to our environmental research here. At the end of our visit we visited the school cafeteria for tea, which was only six rupees a cup (quite cheap when one considers that forty-six rupees are in every United States dollar). Another student and I chatted with two schoolboys there who talked to us about their educational interests and views. The mission of CDS is “to promote research, teaching and training in disciplines relevant to development”. The architecture of the campus was created by Laurie Baker with the mission in mind to limit the cost of building, use materials from the local environment, don’t use a lot of energy, and don’t do damage to the environment.

       Next, we went to a temple and took a tour around the outside of the building where we discovered a man who specialized in the handicraft of carving animals out of sandalwood. Some of the guys on this trip bought matching traditional shirts for excellent prices! Then we were off to the beach in Kovalam for frolicking and a porch dinner overlooking the Indian Ocean. Prior to dinner, a bunch of us were approached on the beach and asked to take pictures with the locals. An onlooker, who was a native but spoke fluent English, explained to us that they were making fun of us, but that they were glad to see us. He added that they would probably treasure the photographs forever and show them off to all of their relatives. A few of us wandered farther down the beach where we encountered some very talkative teenage and adult men. They very politely asked us if it was okay for them to put their arms around us in photographs and we all engaged in a very extensive photo shoot. 


        We also ended up discussing a variety of topics with them, mostly pertaining to cultural differences. One man asked the females of our group if we were married. He then went on to say that marriage is no life for a woman. We asked him if he was married and he said that he was. We then asked him if he loved his wife. He replied “No, it wasn’t a love match; it was an arranged marriage”. While he misunderstood the question, taking it as an inquiry about what type of marriage he was in, instead of his emotional state, his answer revealed a great deal to us about the sad nature of a lot of marriages here in India. The women are not highly valued in certain Indian communities, particularly in rural areas. Consequently, there are high rates of infanticide and feticide, particularly with female babies. Girls who are given a chance at life often live in constant preparation for marriage and are taught stereotypically female skills such as cooking and cleaning. Then their fathers complain over how much their dowries cost, when they are sold off into arranged marriage. This certainly isn’t the case in every family and some arranged marriages lead to unmatched bliss because the marriage is based off of rationalized calculations. On the contrary, marriages centered on raw passion can often explode in a highly unfavorable way.  It was a very powerful experience for me to learn about both the positives and the negatives of having an arranged marriage. Getting out and seeing the Kerala model in action was all the more profound after hearing Anil Varghese’s lecture.

      

Sources:

http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/04235621/Minister-says-data-faulty-won.html

http://www.cds.edu/

The orphanage

            We pulled up to the orphanage and the women who ran the place were outside waiting for us. We took off our shoes and followed them into the building. A young girl maybe seven or eight with boyishly cut black hair and a tan dress with red trim walked up to me. I asked her how she was doing and she said good, she told me her name which I could neither pronounce or remember and proceeded to grab my arm and tug me around the two bottom rooms. She showed me to her friends and got me some cake. There had been a birthday celebration. I turned her down, she looked very upset, but I could not in good conscience take these peoples’ food.

            I pull out a big box of lollipops I got from my local BJs right before I left and started to hand them out. The kids didn’t seem as excited as I thought they would but then I started getting kids coming up to me asking me for “muton,” which means candy in Malayalam.  The older women were asking for them too and I was happy to give them to them. There faces lightened up just like the children, as though these women had not had a chance to be kids yet. One woman in a red outfit came up to me. I was not sure what she was trying to say and she took me away to another room. There sat an older woman. She was western looking but with darker skin, too dark to just have a tan but rather light Indian skin. Her eyes were a shocking cold blue. This is something that might not stand out as much at home, but I had not seen blue eyes in India. She sat on one of the two beds in the room, her leg and foot in a cast. The woman started speaking at her and she started to talk my friend and I in English. She explained that the women wanted the lollipops I was giving out and gladly I filled their hands with the. The woman then went over to a shelf and took out a loaf of bread and offered me some; I turned it down. In the room was another woman, this one wearing all tan. Her and the girl in red appeared to be good friends. They talked and giggled to one another, touching and hugging as they went. We talked to the blue eyes woman, Gale she said she had two British parents who had taught her English. Where they were she did not say and we did not care to ask. We asked her what had happened for her to be in a cast, she replied simply that she fell off the roof. The other student and I look at one another, seeing if the other had also read between the lines and wondered why someone would be on the roof to begin with.

The two pregnant women were very lively and playful chatting about everything even though we understood none of it. Sometimes we got the point, but mostly it did not matter what they were saying we just enjoyed one another’s company. Sometimes Gale would laugh and we would prod her to tell us what had been said. I pointed to an old Singer in the room, the woman in red said she sewed and tailored clothing for the woman and children in the shelter. She held some beautiful rusty red fabric up to me saying I would look nice in it. I wanted nothing more than to let her make me something just so I could give her money, let her earn it but I knew we were far from our hotel and I would not be able to get back, that was hard to explain so Gale helped me. There were shelves in the room that housed more exotic Indian fabric. I wondered to myself why anyone with such a great skill and the right tools could be at a lack for work, living at a shelter. I tried to ask her why she did not make clothing and sell it or tailor other peoples’ but all I got was that she just helps the people in the shelter.

            I was perfectly content to stand with these women for the hour I was there, wishing I could communicate better with them. The woman in tan had big beautiful eyes. She would look at me and when she caught my gaze would smile. The smile of the Indian women are the best smiles I have ever seen- so kind and honest. Her eyes would water and she would look away. Gale explained that she had a fever; only three months pregnant she was worried about her health and the health of her baby. This woman was so beautiful she could be a model on a billboard here in India. There are many billboards all over India, in the most bizarre places. Even out in the middle of rural rice cultivation there are billboards. Many advertise woman’s clothing, weddings, and gold. I tried to choke back my own tears as she was doing but it took everything in me to not hand her all the money I had, but that would not help her.

            Eventually other women came in, one of which had a baby. She saw I had a camera and she wanted me to get a picture of her child. I tried very hard but the poor like boy was afraid of the camera and I am pretty sure me as well. Every time I raised it he began to cry. The woman kept motioning for me to take pictures so I took at least twenty of her and her sad son. Another woman came in wanting the same thing; her son was much more calm so I got a few nice shots. Then a young boy in a bright pink shirt came in ushering me away telling me that I must follow him; he wanted pictures with some women as well. Then he said, “I would like to take just one picture please,” as he held out his hand for my camera. I said fine and then he ran off and took I am not even sure how many photos. He was very good.

            As I was outside running after the boy with my camera the little children were everywhere. Pulling on my clothing and raising their arms at me which is the universal sign for, “I want you to pick me up!” I was now the candy girl;  they all knew I had the lollipops. They kept saying that they did not get one even though their tongs were stained with the colors. I was in sensory overload. Our group was spread out among the children, four or five around each one. Kids on peoples’ shoulders, their labs, holding onto their legs. It felt sad that they were this attention starved but was very fun for us. We left reluctantly after making a donation and took their brochure with us. The woman who runs this place is called mother or grandmother by the people staying there. I can only hope that she will be able to help them all and get them all jobs. These women need more than just a place to stay, they need a way to make it on their own. Most were dependent on men. But it was the same men that they depended on that got them into the shelter. Now they need to rely on themselves. They need to teach their children as well as the orphans there- that women can have jobs and can support themselves. 

This shelter is run entirely off donation, and has already helped so many women and children. I hope they continue to do good things for many years to come.

If you’re interested to know more about the shelter visit their website: http://www.santhwanamkottayam.com/

The Journey

The sun began peaking over the horizon as early as 5:45 AM, shedding some light on the previously dark country we were driving through. As we whirred passed palm trees and crumbling homes, interrupted by the occasional mansion, the sun's early light began to illuminate some of what we'd come here to discover: the relationship between people and their land. First light saw the streets already busy, even on the day of a major strike, and locals mulled about along the highway we cruised along. Our taxi driver, perpetually on his cell phone, deftly maneuvered his crossover through the traffic of mopeds and rickshaws, narrowly avoiding a head on collision more than once. The roadside was filled with tiny shops opening for the day, temples, and homes, some of which seemed to be abandoned due to their state of repair. We weren't in Canton anymore.

The taxi ride wasn't even supposed to happen. We'd missed our flight to Trivandrum and had to fly into Cochin instead. The flight from JFK to Abu Dhabi was thirteen wonderful hours crushed in coach-class seating (my knees crammed into the seat in front of me), behind two babies that only communicated through incessant crying. I love flying. The airline, Etihad, had apparently sold our tickets to Trivandrum since we were delayed, and rewarded us with a luxurious business class upgrade for the final leg of our journey. It seemed like our karma had balanced out after all. We'd made a friend, Taj, who was born in Kerala but lived in the United States for the last fifteen years. He suffered the same fate as us and rescued us from the language barrier that now pervaded our every action. Mutual understanding was hard to come by, and Taj acted as our cultural broker. No one from the airline spoke particularly good English, and Taj made sure that we boarded taxis headed in the right direction. Without him would would have been flying blind, completely susceptible to any number of complications.

Compared to the stress of our flights, the taxi ride was a scenic tour. While Trivandrum and Cochin are bustling metropolises, the space in between is filled by small, poor communities that blend in with the lush green environment. Occasionally a gaudy house would interrupt the scenery and we would be reminded that modernisation on its way. When Arundhati Roy described Kerala as an "immodest green," she barely did the landscape justice. Fields of palm trees stretched to the ocean, their slender frames reaching up to the sky where coconuts hid in their frondy tops. Trees and birds that were new to me flew past our taxi as we sped towards Trivandrum. The foliage of the forests was so thick that, until we passed over a picturesque bridge, I had no idea we were a mere kilometer from the ocean. The river we passed over was serenely quiet, covered in the simplest fishing skiffs, powered by hand paddle, that the local villagers use to obtain their daily sustenance. To the west the river opened up into an ocean that stretched for eternity.

The roads were quieted by a nationwide petrol strike and we made the journey in four hours. Kerala, the state of unions and organized labor, was making itself clearer to us on our first day in India. The roads were nearly empty. At first we didn't understand the effect this strike had on the traffic, but in the days that followed it would become clear that the relatively open roads were not the norm. Traffic in India seemed to be a constant pile-up of diesel fumes, buses, and rickshaws, where lanes are merely a suggestion and over-aggressive driving is the norm.

We were lucky. The strike made the drive a painless four hours. Taj had warned us that it could take as long as six, depending on the traffic, and yet our taxi drivers got us there with speed and ease. As the day's heat escalated, we pulled into the Hotel Pankaj's tiny dirt parking lot, said our goodbyes to Taj, and our hellos to the beginning of our journey. The glimpse of Kerala we had been afforded had been enough that we all wanted to dig deeper, and dig we shall.

Kerala - Day No. 1

      Kerala welcomed us with the official strike of the transport workers that included even taxi and rickshaw drivers, what did not stop us from getting to our hotel. It is important to say that this strike is a display of Kerala’s reality – in which workers are united and not afraid of fighting for their rights. This is part of something bigger of so called Kerala model. This model is based on high social standards: life expectancy, literacy rates, accessibility to the health care and the education – yet, at the same time not supported by the economic growth (e.g. high GDP – gross domestic product). To say it simply, the GDP is very low, but some standards of living are as high as in the developed countries.

However, it is not always visible at the first time, not always when you see Kerala first, before seeing the rest of India. Kerala has 38 million people, the same as Poland or Canada, yet it is eight times smaller than my country. Here, you do not have many paths for pedestrians, the traffic is ruled by only two laws: “to die or to survive,” what comes to you extremely true when you find yourself surrounded by rickshaws, filled to a single spot busses, and cars as well as people trying to make it while crossing one side of the road to another. The trash can is a rare thing. Yet, people live as long as us, they all can read and write, and they are politically aware…

What was surprising to me – the number of Christian churches, when you drive you see them on almost every corner – this is not surprising, Christians constitute 18 percent of the local population – this includes the traditional Malabar Church which is believed to be established by St. Thomas. In the city center of Thiruvananthapuram there is a beautiful cathedral in a close perimeter of the local government headquarter – which is often inhabited by the Socialists majority. And to the Socialists that with off-s and on-s rule Kerala some people ascribe the social success of this land; others talk about diversity and the history of openness in Kerala for everyone, also for Christian missionaries who opened here schools and hospitals; also some say that all well-being of Kerala originates in the money which comes from migrant workers from Kerala to the countries of the Persian Gulf (1/6 of the total work force). Kerala for sure is inspiring, but for sure has also its problems – there is no a golden rule, but there are places that are precious for the change like the Center for Development Studies which is a home to the knowledge on different, also alternative ways of development. For sure the number of people who can write and read is extraordinary to an Indian state, with more than 90 percent of the literate people. Yet contrasts are everywhere: some of those educated people still for example prefer arranged marriages – when you ask them: “Do you love your wife?” they respond: “No! This is an arranged marriage…”


Lukasz W. Niparko

The market

           

After walking a kilometer from the hotel we saw a market. A big red arch shot into the sky above it. A man and a woman out front were making long chains out of fragrant flowers. Just in front of the entrance were communist paraphernalia, marking one unique aspect of the state of Kerala. The CPI or communist party of India was brought to Kerala in 1937 and is still strong. The CPI party was elected in 1957 in Kerala, which is often considered the first democratic election of a communist party. Though the communist party is not currently in power the influence has made Kerala a very socialist state, more so than any other in India.

            There were many booths inside the market. There was one with men’s dress shirts hung up at the top. There was a second with shiny metal kitchen utensils and another with fruits that were almost as fragrant as the flowers. The fruits were freshly washed; they looked like they were sweating and had flies buzzing all around them. My dry mouth craved the juice that would come pouring out of those fruits. As I turned a corner there was a row of booths selling women’s clothing. There were manikins outside with western dresses, sarres and salwar kameezes.

            The market was fairly empty which meant that all the venders paid special attention to us. Walking around with another student I began to look at clothing, a personal weakness. I asked the first man how much he was charging for his clothing- one hundred rupees for a dress. Not bad when considering the conversion rate is about forty-four to forty-six rupees to one American dollar.  Forty-six being how much our money is worth in rupees and forty-four being the rate one can actually exchange their money at. Then the next man came right up to the first one’s booth. “I give you better price, 300 rupee, nice dress, you come,” the man said. Coming to India I expected to not be shocked by the accent, I have heard many Americans speak with an Indian accent but all of them were Hindi speakers. Little did I know that that was not the language of Kerala. The language of the state is Malayalam. A wonderful musical language that sounds like the speaker’s tongue is doing a complicated dance that I could never replicate. Before I had had a chance to even look at this new booth a third man came up, “No no, you come with me, good price, please, come with me.” I followed him, he walked behind the counter of his shopping turning to the wall full of piles of bright colored clothing packaged into plastic bags. I was amazed at how quickly he picked up a package, slipped the garment out of the protective covering, unfolded it, and put it on display in front of me. “Very nice, see this.” He kept talking and pulled out another and another. I asked the infamous question. “How much?” It was one-hundred twenty rupees. I didn’t even have to bargain! The men had done it for me. I said, “I’ll be back. I think he did not understand what I said. I went to get the other girls I had come with and told them the price. We all went back and the man was excited; he thought he’d lost the sale but instead he had two more targets. The see-through counter became cluttered with a large pile of bright fabrics. Every garment was unique. They all had their own colors, patterns, decorations; it was amazing.

            We kept calling out colors or new articles of clothing and he always had more. Though his English was limited we were still able to joke around with him. One of the other girls gestured at a pink article of clothing at the top of a stack. “Too small,” was his response. Feigning being hurt I said, “We’re not small?” He responded with, “No no no, too small,” he pulled it out of it’s package, “child.” It indeed looked like it was for a five year old. Even though he was offering a good price we asked if he would lower it even more. He gave us the same response to every one of our offers. He would say no in a way that can only be described as similar to the whiny response a young child gives when he or she is told to go to bed at a family function and he or she knows that everyone will be up without them. But his no always came with a smile, a laugh, and a funny hand gesture. He pinched his fingers together and held them to his thumb, then put his hand up to his head and arched it outwards toward us while following the arch with his body. This I am sure to replicate in the future, though I am not sure why I thought it was wonderful. A student from my group and I picked out matching tops. They were made of white fabric and had flowers embroidered on them with white thread. The tops we bought were the top to an Indian outfit called the Salwar Kameez. These outfits have a huge amount of variety from piece to piece but to put it simply consist of a top that is a hybrid between a shirt and a dress. They go down to about mid thigh and have slits up the side. These are worn with a pair of pants under them and often a scarf work around the neck with the ends hanging down your back. The tops we bought had a small opening giving the impression of a collar with sparkling “buttons” that were hot glued on. They each had a patch of another color; the shape of it resembled a bib. Mine was turquoise with paisley and hers was a rust color. The sleeves were three-quarter length and made of a gauze white material. I also purchased pants to go with mine. They are big, white and baggy. The top of the pants has a drawstring that allows them to be worn by anyone. The loose fit is nice in the hot weather of Kerala.

            We tried to bargain until the last second. He wanted me to pay 320 for the pants and top. I had a five hundred rupee bill in my hand, looked at him and said, “Three-hundred?” His response was the same as ever. I feigned reluctance as I handed him the bill. He came back with two one hundred rupee bills and smiled at me. I knew he had mostly been nice because smaller bills can be hard to come by especially if not many people have bought from you that day. When I traveled to Senegal I was told that some shop owners will tell you to come back later so they can give you your change once they have enough. It is good to not have small bills because then the shop-keepers are more likely to round down to an even number so they don’t have to give you all of the change they have. But I still like to think that it’s just because he liked us. After we had paid he asked us where we were from and what our names were and told us to come back, I think we just might.

Greetings!

Hello, everyone.  Welcome to Green Elephant.  One week from today my husband and I will be wandering through Cochin's spice market chasing off jet lag and adjusting to the heat.  After a week of trekking through hill towns, lounging in old tea plantations, and eating hot food we'll be rested and ready to greet ten students and two colleagues, who will be coming in from Upstate New York, Thailand, London, Dubai, Poland, and Canada, all to embark on our quest and to seek answers to the question: how is the Indian Tiger, one of the fastest growing economies in Asia, changing the greenest pockets of India?  Who is benefiting from all this development?  Who is not? 

In our group we have environmentalists, English majors, global studies majors, peace studies minors, future farmers, future novelists, a writer, a political economist, and their friends.

We hope you'll ride along with us through Kerala, north to Delhi, into Jaipur, and on to Navdanya, Vandana Shiva's gorgeous organic farm and think tank for seed saving farmers and ecologists.  It will be very hot, it will rain, there will be bugs, and we are ready.