India rocks!

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Wow where can I start! These last two months have been absolutely mind blowing and I’ve been so busy absorbing everything around me I’ve not had a chance to write anything down, and now the task seems phenomenal! The first thing that struck me like a great big hammer was the noise. Chennai is never quiet, the auto rickshaws blare Tamil uber-pop straight into your ears at a hundred million decibels a second and all the vehicles have snazzy little messages like ‘Be horny round the corner’ emblazoned on their rears. Indians take it seriously and sometimes the roads sound like an experimental brass ensemble from the sixties. Not even death is quiet here, on my first week I saw a huge procession of people banging drums and shouting while pulling a huge float decked out with flowers. Thinking it was a festival I got out my camera, only to put it straight back again when I realized there was a dead man on top of all the garlands! There’s the sound of calls to prayer and calls to purchase, “Madam, madam come into my shop, buy this, try this, best quality, best price!” And sometimes the two merge when over-exuberant priests, with shaved heads like eighties rockers, come bounding over rattling tins for temple funds.

India’s so familiar in some ways because so much of what you see could be a postcard of ‘colourful India’ - naked children showering at water pumps, multicoloured saris everywhere, slums and palm trees - yet somehow none of that recognition made me feel any less alien. I spent the first week feeling like I was a character in a movie, only I was in the wrong genre, like a Jane Austen character in a sci-fi movie. I got much more used to the culture when I started work in the school. Teach India, the charity I work for, provides free computers and computer education in about a third of all Chennai’s chronically under-funded government schools. These kids are the poorest of the poor and many of them give up on school as soon as they’re strong enough to work or beg. The idea with the program, and also with my art projects is to encourage these kids to stay on at school and give themselves a better chance to succeed.

My first project in Chennai was designing and making a mural out of recycled materials with some of these kids. Just getting to work was an experience as I battled with my extraordinary lack of spatial awareness to find my way around a city where all the streets look the same. A miracle I ever got to work considering I was so squished amongst Chennaites on the bus that I was lucky to be able to make it to the door before it sped away again, even if I knew where to get off! Thought everyone was being really rude to me the first time I got on a bus, they were all pushing me to one area, but then I realized I was the only girl in a whole gaggle of males and they were pushing me to the girl’s section. The segregation of the sexes was something I knew I’d find difficult here, it’s not just buses, it’s whole lives. The Teach India female teachers all retire to be housewives as soon as they marry. Not a long career considering they marry at about 23. Everyone asks you if you’re married here, they look at me pityingly when I say I’m not and when I explain we marry later in Europe their eyes say, ‘Poor spinster making excuses’! When visiting one headmasters house we all ate together but afterwards I found myself led into a room to ‘rest’ with all the other women and children. I felt like I’d just been excluded from a gentleman’s club, I guess I had!

Oh dear I’ve written lots already and not even touched some of the most amazing stuff I’ve seen and done! But its bedtime now, got to get my rest so I can brave the buses tomorrow to research for my new handmade cards project! Love to all x

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