Last day of shooting

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Yesterday was our second and last day of shooting. It was only yesterday but it already seems so long ago. We were at the academy by 9:30 to meet our crew and the hired van. Raj Kumar and I had each prepared some questions, and we got together and compiled a complete cohesive ordered list of questions for our main subject (Jayshree), her teacher-trainer, and her best friend. I was not sure how to approach the more personal topics, but I guess that's always the challenge: ask questions in a culturally and personally sensitive way, and encourage open honest answers, even in front of a camera.

We got there just in time for tea, and not long after, we set up our equipment upstairs to interview the teacher-trainer. this woman is in her late 60s, and the most lovely, distinguished, and yet casual lady you can imagine, with her silver hair and rich green sari. Her presence commands respect, and I automatically defaulted to calling her "ma'am" like the Indian crew memebers, and yet she'd ask, "How do i look? Is my hair ok? I have no awareness of what I look like, so let me know." She chatted comfortably with me, and off camera she agreed to tell me things about our main subject that she wouldn't on camera. This was fine. I'm not comfortable demanding personal information from her close friends, and then projecting it publicly. But it gave me better insight about Jayshree.

After this, we set up in Jayshree's office, and began the questions. Jayshree is open, but not completely so. It's hard to explain, like she has a public persona, and she is so giving, and clearly a bubbly person, but there was a little she wasn't quite sharing. I felt so bad when I got to the question about asking whether she had children, because I lost my place in the questions, and there was a big pause. She answered well, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. I struggle with the idea of how much I can ask the subject to repeat what they had told me before, or to repeat themselves with complete sentences.

Once we were finished with Jayshree's interview, we interviewed the coordinator, who is her best friend. We had only 6 minutes of tape left, so it was slightly rushed, but I think it will be nice.

When we finished, the crew got some lunch together. I think i've started to really get the hang of eating with only my right hand. Some of the crew is vegetarian, and some aren't, and when I asked about why, they said that it is because of their caste. The highest caste can't eat meat. The lower castes can. This lead to a fascinating discussion about the residual caste system, even if much of it is no longer an issue. In some places even now, a marriage between people of different castes will result in killing the couple. But in our group, Raj has a girlfriend (whom he intends to marry) of a different caste, and Shriram has a girlfriend (whom he intends to marry) who is Christian. Also, the original concept that caste would dictate profession and position in society is no longer in effect, at least in cities. These students are here all studying together, equally, and they say that a person of a lower caste can get a higher position in society. And yet some aspects are harder to shake, like whether or not they are permitted to eat meat.

Outside of the restaurant was a woman with a baby monkey on a leash. We took her picture and gave her money. Yes, I know it perpetuates this cruelty of trapping baby monkeys, or whatever it is they do. But sometimes it's ok to experience things without trying to change them.

On the van ride back, with becoming-common sounds of honking and the van driver's indian music, I had a strange but vaguely familiar feeling creep into me. It was happiness. Not relief, not escapism, not thrill, but just happiness. The kind where you let go of some kind of fear and just enjoy the honest satisfaction of the moment, the anti-thesis of stress. I feel that over the past 4 years I've been in NY, the stress of my daily life has increased and bit by bit has taken over and paralyzed sections of my spirit. My one and only new year's resolution was to worry less. I can honestly say that I have worried less since this year started than i did in an averge work day last year in NY. And now, here I was, doing pretty much all the things i love to do, simultaneously: traveling, working together with people and learning from them in a very open environment, and doing documentary work.

We took a break for a while and met up later to go to a school-funded party event at a nightclub. At first only a few people wanted to dance to the mix of american and indian club music, and the guys were told that men can't dance by themselves on the dancefloor, it's for couples only. but once we had gotten into it, there was no stopping the madness. It was a hilarious combination of demonstrating and copying eachothers' dance moves. Afterwards, in the auto-rickshaw, I had a nice conversation with (Essin?), who is Muslim, about culture and religion. I finished off the night with a lovely heart to heart with janardhan. The level of awesome of some of these guys is sickeningly high. I had a frustrating interaction with one American student, and he was there, and when we were alone, he said, "but that's part of life!"

I've got to check out of the hotel in 10 minutes, so it's time for this post to end. We'll be traveling to Madurai and Pondicherry until the 19th. More to come.

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