Caste Away

While in Mumbai we visited the ghat where the dhobe -wallahs work and saw India's infamous caste system in action. For hundreds of years children have been born into this ghat, raised there, married other residents, and then set up shop as poorly paid washermen and women, just like their parents before them.

The caste system: Brahmins do the cool shit, Devadasis become hookers, Dhobes do the laundry and Dalits beg for change at intersections and get nominated for oscars.

Bollywood, here I come!

Upon my arrival in Mumbai, I discovered that simply by virtue of being white and speaking fluent English I am a hot commodity in Bollywood. Not that I wasn't already aware of how awesome I am, but it's nice to be appreciated.

I was quickly scouted to do the dubbing for the latest blockbuster, Ra One, a romantic comedy about soccer and robots and cell phone hacking staring two of India's biggest stars, Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

SRK- the handsomest, most totally not gay man in all of India.

My role was 'all of the white women'. I soon learnt that this covered not only white women but also non-Indian asians, black women and robots. I also learnt the reason that dubbed movies are so terrible- they don't give you a script. You would think that the logical thing to do would be for the screen writer to write down what they want the minor characters to say, have in translated to English, and then given to the voice actors. But no. For example, in a scene where I played a glamorous Japanese woman telling SRK how nice his painting was, I just had to look at how her lips were moving, think about the kinds of things people might say in this situation, and go for it.

This is where the magic happens.

Luckily, I have two thirds of an art history degree so I was able to think of some intelligent and insightful comments. I continued on in this vein for about the first three takes until it suddenly occurred to me the guys in charge couldn't understand what I was saying, and then I started saying stuff like "Holy crap, it's like you pissed genius all over the canvas, man!" I really hope they use that take.

In the zone.

And apparently they recycle good white people voices throughout multiple movies. So, next time you're watching a Bollywood film and there's an airport scene, and you hear a New Zealand accent making flight announcements? Totally me. Probably.

slumdog laissez-faire

Monsoon at the fabulously colonialist Gateway of India in Mumbai/Bombay.

Arts and crafts day!!

My afternoon class was doing a totally awesome job with their compound sentences, so I decided to reward them with an arts and crafts day. Yay!

Each of them made a poster with two compound sentences they wrote themselves about something they like and something they don't like; and then filled up the rest of the page with a collage from Bollywood magazines, because collages are awesome. Hit the jump to see the the completed masterpieces.

Burka

Burka, 9, standing in front of the field that separates her slum from the wealthier part of the city. Slum dwellers are not allowed to step foot on the field.

A wild RATTATA appears!

Hundreds of years ago the female prophet Karni Mata fell into the depths of despair when one of her favorite musicians died. She begged and begged the gods to bring him back to life, but to no avail. So she used her own mystic powers to make sure he, and every other member of her family who died from then on would be reincarnated as a rat and she built this temple to offer them all sanctuary.

 I've never had the same natural revulsion for animals like spiders, pigeons and rats that most people seem to have- in fact, I've always thought it was some kind of racism that a person will find doves beautiful and pay to have them released at their wedding but then declare pigeons to be diseased scum. Doves are just white pigeons. RACIST. So after my initial shock, I found it pretty easy to adjust to the teeming hordes of rats swarming in every corner and running over my bare feet. I wouldn't have a problem if it was sweet little bunny rabbits or even pet mice, so why should rats bother me? They're just another kind of rodent.

Pilgrims flock from all over India to pray at the temple and interact with the sacred rats- they feed them fruit and candy; and then eat what they leave behind- the rat-saliva drenched scraps evidently have healing properties. Babies are encouraged to join the rats in drinking milk from the big silver pans scattered throughout the temple; and everyone keeps a lookout for the extra lucky white rats that are said to appear only once a year. 

A Camel With No Name

Laura* and I went to Bikaner, a desert town up by the Pakistani border, to get our camel safari on. Although I was disappointed to discover it wasn't desert as in Aladdin desert, but more like The Hills Have Eyes desert, we still had a bangin' time

We rode out on camels in the afternoon. I figured since I can ride a horse, I'd be able to handle a camel easy- it's just like a slightly higher level mount, right?
Wrong. So wrong.
They are nothing like horse. They're just straight up murder machines. Every time you even try to steer them, like, a tiny big, they rear their heads around and try to rip your face off with their giant yellow teeth. Also, they kick you. While you are on top of them. It's pretty ninja.

We slept out under the stars; and when we woke up their were all these wild dogs curled up in our beds- It can't of been for the heat, so I guess they were just lonely. Aww.

I was going for the Laurence of Arabia look. Nailed it.

* Laura is a beautiful, sweet German girl who works in the same slum as I do. She's so beautiful and sweet, in fact, that I have an ongoing theory she's actually a live Barbie doll, like in that Tyra Banks- Lindsay Lohan movie

Nasty Gals Do It Better

Exactly one month till my 21st birthday.
You know what that means- time to order myself self-birthday gifts from the internet! Yay!
This year, I turned to Nasty Gal- which at the moment is my favorite of my top three online shopping trinity (The other two being ASOS and Urban Outfitters).
It's very surreal sitting in a basement in India flicking through photos of emaciated blogger/models in leopard print short shorts, trying to make decisions about platform heels, desperately ignoring the sporadic power cuts and ants crawling across the screen that are bigger than my thumbnail.

Melissa Brenzinger is the best person in the world.

I got home from work today and there was an exciting mystery package for me.

I opened it up crazy fast and it was a bottle of the most INSANE smelling Vanilla Birthday Cake Shampoo/Shower Gel- it LITERALLY smells like vanilla birthday cake. Not just vanilla; vanilla birthday cake. It smells more like vanilla birthday cake than actual vanilla birthday cake.

I was totally confused for about ten seconds until I found the card, which read:

"I read your blog and it made me sad to see that you fell in the gutter. Smell good soon! Melissa x"

Thank you, SO MUCH Melissa. You are lovely. I don't know how you got my address in India but I promise to think of you when I rub this stuff all over my body.

For, like, the two or three people out there who don't know Melissa yet, here is a series of photos to help you get to know her and how magical she is.

Here she is in my bedroom, defiling my throw pillow

Born this way.

WHICH ONE IS THE REAL LADY GAGA?????

Here we are casually drunkenly clawing at a fish tank.

Intimidating breasts is one of the things we have in common. 

ADORABLE!!

Technical Difficulties

My laptop is currently in pieces and my internet access options are limited*; so this blog is going to be a bit of a ghost town for a while. Hopefully only a few more days though- as soon as I get my precious apple-baby back I have about a million posts ready. So for all my adoring public, hang in there.

The lil' nugget above is my favorite Indian baby. Seriously, best baby ever. She comes to class every morning with her mom Sunita,  who breastfeeds her on demand throughout the class, without even glancing away from the whiteboard when she latches on- It's very impressive. Can't imagine getting away with that at Queen Margaret College.

*The internet cafes in Jaipur aren't cubicle type situations like they are in most places. You go into a private closet with a computer in it, lock the door behind you, and sit down on a plastic covered seat. And there's a box of tissues beside the keyboard. See where I'm going with this? I refuse to use them for fear of getting pregnant by osmosis.

Cow of the Week: Socially Progressive Edition

I wasn't sure how to delicately transition from my last post back to the general tone of the blog as a whole; so I decided to screw it and post these photos of bull on bull action instead.

bow chicka wow wow...

Kisses... It kind of looks like they're fighting in the photos; but I assure you it was a very tender moment.

I thought of some puns for this title, but they all seemed inappropriate.

This week in my slum a funeral was held; the ceremony went on several days and involved the whole community.

We were told the funeral was for an elderly woman who died of 'head problems'- we thought this meant a stroke or an aneurism. We thought wrong.

One of the older women in my class confided in me today, via a translator, that the dead woman had been a widow who lived with her son and daughter in law. She was too old to do any work and her son was very frustrated at having to care for her and bear the stigma associated with having a widow in the house- he and his wife gave her very little food and beat her often.

Last week, the old woman woke them up early because she was so hungry she was weeping. Her son and his wife were angry at having been woken and they beat her harder than usual- she sustained severe head injuries and died later that day.

Although everyone in the slum knows what happened, the police were not called (apparently they don't ever go to the slums) and the funeral service went as normal; with the son presiding at the funeral as is traditional.

So, essentially, there was a murder several doors down from my classroom last week, and everyones cool with it. I'm more than a little confused.

Coco the Hutt

Thank you so much to everyone who sent me lovely messages!
I have taken your collective advice and manned up. I don't know if it was the change in attitude or the copious amounts of antibiotics that made me feel better; but I do. Today was a really good day at work- we finally managed to get the morning class to understand lowercase vs upper case alphabets; and the afternoon class has truly mastered the intricacies of MS Paint*
Also, my dad sent me these amazing pictures of my cat, Coco Chanel. Coco is something of a local celebrity here in Jaipur because often animals starve in the dry season; so the concept of people cultivating something as bizarre and wasteful as this enormous cat is straight up trippin' to them.

Han my boy, you disappoint me. Why haven't you paid me?

And why did you fry poor Greebo?

*Ok, I know it's dumb for anyone to be using Paint in this day and age; but the younger ones like it and it helps their mouse coordination a lot, since a lot of them have never been near a computer before and handle it worse than your mom.**

** You know who handles your mom well? Me. Boom. Frances out.

Where my girls at?

Just to show you I haven’t just been running around having violent diarrhea and playing with elephants*; I thought I should post some pictures from my work area.

The women I’ve been empowering on a daily basis all live in the Kathputli Nagar slum; and range in ages from 11-65. The girls above are left to right- Pooja, Sapna and Deepa. Sapna is hilarious- her name is Hindi for dream; but we call her Bura Sapna; which means nightmare. She's best friends with Deepa; and always bosses her around but in a kind of sweet, protective way. Deepa is very bright and her English reading is amazingly good; although she's so quiet you have to lean in to hear her. I'm trying to get her to read out loud more to make her more confident.

This is Janki. She has three kids and sometimes they come to class with her. She's awesome- whenever the younger girls are getting fidgety and acting up she goes into this tirade of virulent sounding hindi and I don't know what it is she says; but whatever it is; it works She gave me a Rakhi bracelet for sisterhood and now her kids call me Aunty Ji; which I love. She's only just learning to type but her average has gone up from 1wpm to 7 which may not seem like a lot; but it's an improvement of 700%; so go Janki!

This is one of the boys that always hangs around outside the classroom peeping in the windows. He really wanted his photo taken; I'm going to give him a copy as soon as I find somewhere to print it.

* Upon re-reading that I realized it could be interpreted wrong. Just to be clear; the diarrhea and elephants were subsequent; not concurrent. 

White Whine.

I couldn't find a relevant picture so we're going with this one of 90's Gwen looking mournful in a Bindi. It works.

I’m lying on the floor of my room; just outside the bathroom door; because it’s just too much effort to drag myself from the bed to the toilet every time I need to be sick; and also because my sheets are soaked through with fever sweat and I don’t have the strength to change them.

My breasts and legs are covered in rainbow bruises from being groped on the train; my feet are blistered and dirty; I’m both pallid from illness and sunburnt at the same time; I’ve lost weight, and I only have one mouthful of bottled water left.

I don’t know how I’m going to get more since I’m too weak to walk to the shop; and too embarrassed to ask someone to do it for me since that would mean admitting I can’t stand the taste of the filtered water and seeming like a snob.

I miss my parents and my boyfriend and my friends and my cats. I miss feeling cold; I miss the wind; I miss going outside without being sexually assaulted or having money demanded of me because I’m white.

I feel guilty because I’m not at work and since I’m the only volunteer at my project area; that means there’s no class- and guilty because I should be handling these problems better; instead of just crumbling into a heap on the bathroom floor. I feel guilty because my parents will read this and worry; but I also feel guilty posting more hilariously captioned pictures of livestock when in reality, I feel awful

Even on days when I’m not as sick as I feel today I’m still not 100%- I don’t think I’m going to feel well till I’m home, in November, and it’s hard to imagine going that long feeling like this. I came here to focus on work but all I can think about is parasites and bacteria and fecal contaminants and people staring at me and touching me and taking photos.

I just feel so exhausted and I want to be home.