The mundane and the captivating

29th and 30th November 2011

I believe I will firstly have to apologise for the lack of further posts. This time the reasons were not lack of time, but rather a lack of inspiration. This can happen quite often when you start entering into a routine, and our routine has been our main occupation in the last week or even more. We wake up in the morning (first alarm Jess’ very nice iPad relaxing alarm sound), snooze once. 10 minutes later my more mundane alarm clock from my blackberry starts imitating an Asian morning and genuinely fails. This is followed by a very nice little morning schedule of shower, tea, breakfast, English lesson planning, with some electricity problems intervals.  At 10 am the first English lesson starts, normally this class has to cope with either our half sleepy brains or with the lack of security on how we should explain this grammatical form, a writing style or reading comprehension exercise. By the end of the morning we are slightly warmed up even if occasionally touched by a so called “coup de barre” in the post lunch lesson. After 3 o’clock we normally try getting some education on embroidery or just decide to eclipse ourselves in our suite at the last floor of the trust for the rest of the day and in some occasion have the possibility to practice our badminton skills which are not so bad in the end considering the last time we played it.

As much as every human being always wishes some stability, a so called routine to repeat the term, but imagining to have to be closed up in this trust and doing this everyday becomes a quite brutal thought in the mind of two girls having travelled all the way from over there to discover a new place. The new place is transformed in a routine and slightly looses the whole charme it had in the beginning. The first impressions and experiences fade in relation to this routine and an always more oppressing non-liberty starts troubling you as well as a sensation of imprisonment begins worrying your westernized liberty right. Directly the first thought is, we need to go and discover India! When will we be able to go on holiday on our own and experience crazy new things, be put in a new challenging situation, when will we be free to decide what we want to do? Go where we want to go?

It is very strange how we are in a completely new context, but in this new context we have a very stable, almost mundane existence. Everyday we see our students, sometimes they are just exhausting and literally annoying, and the next day you are in love with them and your teaching profession. In the evening you either are correcting dictation or homework, but what you always do is talking to your partner about the horrible or amazing day you just experienced. And I think this full immersion in a routine has in a certain way scared us, a sensation of un-liberty of limitation, of a boring routine, probably exactly the opposite you imagined from entering a completely new environment.

But I am not sure whether we can define what we are experiencing as being simply a dull routine, without being fed by this environment. Or in other words this routine is not as tedious as we are afraid of it to be. It might seem that we are not anymore in this crazy trip to India, but this is replaced by being always more part of this place. People are getting used to you, you are getting used to the people, you start being able to talk about work and you take slowly part in the general gossip which always decorates the work environment. You are always less the visitor and increasingly become a stable person here in Bassi Pathana/Chandigarh. But I believe that one of the main factors which still makes us visitors/tourist someone not totally from here is the language barrier, we are trying very slowly to learn Punjabi, but there is still a lot to learn to be able to form a proper sentence, hence communication remains limited apart with some occasional member of the Trust. And this language barrier will probably haunt us for quite a while. In the same way that we have trouble not being able to simply go around on our own to buy the very important candles which light our evenings or oranges and other fruits for which we always have to ask our host to bring us some. All these little things limit our possibility to be totally emerged in the new culture we are experiencing and make us feel like two hostages of the Trust. I don’t know whether it’s just very hard for us to be dependent on other persons to be able to do something, but through the fact that we can’t simply leave the room and have a walk, we tend to imprison ourselves in our room rather than having the impression to oblige someone to come with us to buy some fabric. I think we have trouble continuously having to ask someone to do something for us, to show us around, to take care of us, as nice as it is it becomes very difficult when you realise that you are genuinely dependent on this niceness of the others.

But all this difficulty to understand where your standing, if you are a tourist or not, whether you have liberty or not, does not eliminate all these little Punjabi inputs you receive everyday, all these little experiences and most of all of these little sensations. You still observe, discover and elaborate so many new things, as for example how a man greets a respectable man by touching his knee. Or have the possibility to explore Nek Chand’s Rock garden in Chandigarh (even if rushed by a mother and her daughter who were our accompanying couple on that day) and very important learn almost daily some new Punjabi words, that you actually quite often forget straight away if you don’t have a notebook and a pen 24/7 to capture them on a piece of paper. You still wake up in the darkness of the morning through the Morning Prayer, you still get up and can observe from the toilet window some wonderful scenes of the Bassi Pathana life and you still get to visit a breathtaking lunch palace (hence a small palace) which has something enchanting even if half abandoned and considerably falling apart as well as being inhabited by 2 families. And last but not least you still have the possibility to taste some incredible dark rum which melts your stomach through its delightfulness and is produced from the sugar canes of the fields you drive by on your way to Chandigarh (Or at least this is my romantic interpretation).

All the best from Bassi Pathana

"I like your nature!"

Hi. My name is Jessica. And I'm a pornstar.

(hiiiiiii Jessssssssicaaaaa)

By "pornstar" I mean I like to play badminton in a tee-shirt. A high-necked and half-sleeves, but not high enough, not long enough and not-sleeved enough. Turns out, my lower back was showing as I went to pick up the "shuttlecock", and this was a highly erotic moment for Bassi Pathana. Most of the people looking at us were kids meant to be playing hockey. But a few men were now all suddenly sitting the wrong way around on their benches, a young teenager thought it cute to take "a snap" with his phone, and more and more of these gentlemen seemed to have come play badminton. On a less sexy-time note... I could breathe! My Punjabi fag-rationing is allowing me to do fairly energetic exercises for 30min or more. Same girl who couldn't jog around the block a few months ago..... oooo jaaaaa! 

And yet, we're maybe not doing such a good job of rationing the smuggled-in Rum. We first had it in honour of my late-deceased grandfather, with buffalo milk and tea. I somehow had an inkling that this was the way he would have wanted me to do it....The tea for his life in England, the 50% rum for his Irish ancestry, and the buffalo milk.. well it's just pretty distasteful on its own. And yet this is a cocktail recipe  I intend on importing to Europe (although fresh un-pasturised buffalo milk may be hard to come by...). After that, we drank a little every time there was another huge party outside. So, I would say …approximately… every goddamn night. We have resorted to sitting outside on our terrace bench to watch the fireworks and listen to the music and the drums

We complain like grannies that the music is too loud and that they should really be turning it down by 2am. And then we moan and grumble like kids that we would rather be grounded. At least, when you were grounded there was some leeway for negotiations. If your chores were done, and you poured a few drops of wine down your mother's throat, or threw a few good grades on your father's desk and theatrically spat back a good old "work hard/party hard" moto at those who made the mistake of teaching it to you all those years back, you were good to go! Here... not so good. Still on hard-core house arrest. And unless we had a make-up kit worthy of Mrs. Doubtfire, some henna died extensions, some bangles, plastic gel-type shoes and a good old punjabi-suit we could not step out without being sent right back in. And this is assuming we have managed to bypass the "spy" who sleeps in front of the front door. We made the first step today by going out and choosing fabrics and designs. However, by the look the charity's designer gave us, we really have absolutely no taste in punjabi suits and would not last a second trying to "blend in" at any one of these so-called "religious processions".  This is not a religious procession. This is not a bunch of bold men swaying slowly down a street groaning. This... this is different. This is MC punjabi-style beats, M.I.A voices and the clink of bangles and bojangles sounding through the streets. Religion is sounding pretty awesome to me.

Indeed, religions here have nothing to do with their Western counterparts. I would like to call Hinduism and Sikhism "socialist" religions (in the Indian custom-limited sense of socialism). By socialist I mean that all religions are not only tolerated, but embraced and encouraged. They say that "God is light, God is one, God is everywhere". In other words, God is not this outside entity that you can question. And as such, there is no room for this Westernised paradigm war of to-god or not-to-god, because god is within you, not outside of you. It's an energy that you don't really have to accept or disaccept, it's just…well… there and everywhere. And God is a socialist energy. Not a protestant-save-yourselves character. Not a catholic-confess-yourself-my-child being. Not an Islamic-pray-to-me-morning-noon-and-night man. And not a Jewish-jealous-you-like-someone-else-and-shouldn't-you-feel-guilty-you-don't-have-a-country kind of God. God here is inside of you. He's the voice telling you to help the poor and give an education to those who need it. He's the force which makes all these people voluntarily work at "lungers"(community kitchens), cooking food 24/7, doing millions of dishes and boiling gallons of hot water for tea for the thousands who come everyday. God is a guide within you who makes you do the right thing and be true to yourself. This allows for all Gods to be accepted, as they are seen to be some sort of inside light to do good.

This, first off, shows how limited Punjab's knowledge is of some religious people (as far as I am concerned). And second, poses a problem for all those of us who do not have God inside of us. Ultimately, the Punjabis we have talked to cannot even fathom that we (or I) could not believe in God and do not feel him moving in our godless bellies. That we might actually believe, that the beauty of science and the wonders of nature may have bumped together in mysterious ways. And yet they see that we are here. For free. Always on time. Always helping. Always smiling. That we may not be religious, but the force is still within us. 

It is as volunteer Jedi-knights that we were summoned at 5am on thursday morning for a village roadshow. If you are picturing a huge parade, full of bright lights, with wild animals and women who can fit in boxes, then snap out of it. We got in a  plastic-topped jeep in this freezing foggy mysty air, so compact it felt like you could slice a slit through it like Will in Northern Lights. We roll down the empty streets with Indian rap blearing through the speakers. And we end up in this tiny little stone enclave, where we put up a big poster: Diabetes and Blood Pressure Roadshow!"And we wait. We wait for the old and the young, the healthy and the sick, to come pouring in one by one. And thanks to my god-given height, I was assigned to "weighing and measuring" villagers, while Alizé satisfied her genuinely sadistic tendencies by pricking people in the finger and pressing their wounds to make blood ooze out. I also reluctantly stepped onto the weighing machine and under the measuring stick to get my BMI calculated…found out that out of the 150 people who came that day, I was in the bottom 3 "underweight". Give me a few more months of chapatti bread and I’ll soon be tipping into “normal” I’m sure. All in all, the villagers were so kind, with that now familiar wide-eyed curious look stuck on their faces at our (very) pale skin and our pigeon Punjabi. And it was good to be out of the house. Although way too early for my liking.

We came back and went straight to class. This consisted of returning the dictations we had given the night before. Good times. We made a "Priceless mistakes" paper (I have always suspected teachers of owning one of these). This document includes afro-American sounding words like "Queezeens" for "cuisines", or "all ways" for always (wonder where they got that one from). Then "Italy" might become "Litly" and "Alpine lakes" might turn out as "Alphens legs". From "high art" to "hey art" and, best of all, "Southern Europe" could be mistaken for "Sadam Urope". Epic. We also had the most minimalist charades game in the world, so minimalist you aren't actually doing anything. Tired was depicted by standing with your hip a little bent. Singing was portrayed holding a whiteboard pen by your side. And crazy was acted out by throwing that same pen at someone in the classroom with a nonchalant look on your face. And yet, they all guessed it. Minimalism is in.  We need to get with it.

We also need to get used to the compliments. I would lay odds Alizé and I have heard some pretty odd compliments in our time, but neither of us were prepared for the level here. We collect comments like "you have a beautiful person", "you are very very beautiful maam teacher" or, best of the best, “I like your nature”. Awkward? Not at all….Worst of all these are genuine and sincere, but also imply that you have just become a potential wife (funny. I've only just rarely been a potential girlfriend back home). And yet, if you were to smile and say, I like yours too, you might be seen as trash.

There is also a quite different conception of sexy here. Our new friend who comes nearly every night and calls us dear at the end of each sentence admitted to us that she eats a lot because she wants to put on more fat. She needs more curves and so she used to take medication to make her breasts grow. Right, so I will not go into detail on my ever lasting big-bosom-reality-check campaign. But chest-growth hormones are just plain right stupid. But then what can you say? People back home starve themselves (on purpose. As opposed to this country), pump steroids and cosmetically "enhance" every inch of their body. But here, "au naturel" and slightly plump is sexy. And we have given them the hormones to induce it: a fairly sizeable pill of pharmaceutical globalisation to swallow.

However, gender expectations for men are quite the opposite. I could go on for years as regards the gendered nature of Indian custom, law, education, religion and tradition. But let's just stick to MTV for a second. Homosexual may be out. But homosocial is so in! The majority of male singers have mafioso sleeked back hair, rock the tanked-topped Boyzone look and dance like Michael Jackson on X. They might just be singing up on the wing of a moving airplane with their "homies" wearing turbans or with darker skin (read Muslim) singing a chorus of "My brother from a different mother", with vanilla iced rap breaks and all. And the girls? How come my lower back is so exciting when the saris on tv are very seriously sexy. With beautiful women belly dancing their way through clubs with the  lights shimmering off the glitz of their fabrics and the gloss stuck to their lips. As for Cartoon Network: amazing. The bad guy dresses like a Hindu God to dupe the people. There is a blue genie boy, who fits right into the secular humanoid primary school. And to top it off, Ben 10 is dubbed… in Indian-accent English! And so are all the American ads! Crazy... Just crazy....

This whole trip is.... We're finding ourselves buried neck- deep in a culture clash. But a wonderful one. Like Alizé said, you never ever feel like you don't belong here. Like you are not accepted. You are never ever looked up and down. You are just accepted because you are human, and because the God inside of them likes all humans. And that, is just revolutionary. I've said it many times before, and I will say it again, human interactions should always be a two way street. Our students come into our class with big smiles on their faces, screaming "byyeeeee maaammm" as they walk out, feeding off our knowledge and our differences. On the other side of the room, Alizé and I devour their religious customs and reluctantly get a taste of some of their gendered ideals. We've been here 2 weeks now. And this is already the experience of a lifetime. 

I hope I have managed to describe even half of the trip we're on ......

Yours truly, 
Jess and Alizé

From Bassi Pathana to Chandigarh

We are on the 15^th of November and it’s 10 to 11 at night.

We probably just had the most home feeling evening consisting of a couch, a laptop with a very cheesy movie (I will not even name the movie as it might put me into a certain embarrassing situation), some rum, sneaked in with our connection s (thanks to Jesse’s need of nicotine) and a little candle which actually transformed the whole ambiance! And I have to admit it kind of made me homesick, mostly of our uni days when Jess and me  used to have such  cheese moments together almost every evening. The only difference is that in England at the end of the movie we did not feel like it was to warm to be wrapped around a cover but rather wished it was warmer!

It was a big contrast in relation to our pretty hectic week, where even when we thought we would not have a plan  something came up and we would find ourselves in a bus full a children dressed in their hockey nursery team joggers (very orange by the way) and going to a museum dedicated to a very important Guru, sadly I have again forgotten his name and I am quite embarrassed about this continuous forgetting of Indian names. This happened on the day of Guru Nanak’s birthday (the day after we could not join the amazingly sounding parade in honour of this Guru).  And to top this day we ended up, on the way back to Bassi Pathana, in a community kitchen. I think I will have to describe you the sequence of this whole community Kitchen ritual. When we arrived with the bus everybody took his shoes off and left them on the bus. We were told that we should cover up our head when we would enter the community kitchen, you could see how everybody tried to cover up their head in every possible way, even just with a little handkerchief they probably had per chance in their pocket. When then finally entered the community kitchen and Jess and me felt like we probably were something like a walking zoo... People were trying to speak to us in English and introduce all their family to us. What I find fascinating is how, as much as we are foreigners, as much as we are a white English French Italian spot in the middle of the rest, you do not feel like you should not be there, on the contrary, people make you feel, as if it was a pleasure for them that you are here with them. We therefore entered the community kitchen where you could see rows of people sitting on the floor and drinking tea and eating some kind of fried bread. We washed out hands and then received a metal plate with different little sectors, we were then told to go inside and have a seat on the floor like the rest of the room was doing, so that we could finally be served by people going around and continuously serving dhal, chapatti bread and vegetables 24h  each day. I believe I never saw something of this sort, something this.... you would probably call it civilized. This was one of those strange moments where I feel like crying, in the same way as I feel like crying when I see the cars stopping on the side to let the ambulance pass by... Maybe it’s a feeling of amazement in relation to what we can be.

The rest of the working week stayed pretty normal within our routine as volunteers at the trust. A  combination of teaching English, trying to teach computer basic but ending in being taught Punjabi by our students, or being continuously visited by people from the trust in our room who are always very nicely asking us if we are happy or whether we need something. It is very strange how people here just come in in your room, sit down and tell you; “please have a seat” and try to start having a conversation with you. And I am afraid we might come across as being rude and not wanting to relate with them, but sometimes they just come in at the worst moments and you just don’t know how to tell them, or probably we are afraid to tell them, that this might not be the best moment to simply sit down on our couch and try to have a conversation. But I believe we will slowly get used to this entering of the private sphere and maybe even end up inviting them for nice Italian pasta or a cup cake and a cup of tea.

But on saturday night we where put on the trust mini bus so that we could go back to Chandigarh and stay a professor’s Mejie’s house  (the so called president of the trust), we hence had a week-end with his son who took care of us for the rest of the week-end by making us experiencing a whole different Indian reality. This started by having a nice south Indian dinner with some business colleagues, which we had met before on the same day at the trust, topped with a rum and coke for Jess and a gin tonic for, which was then prolonged with white wine and more old friend and business friends. For the next day the plan was to go to the “hills” for a certain show of the Mehar Baba hockey nursery in a school, there somewhere in the hills... What really happened was a three hours car drive, with Jess feeling sick in relation to the curvy road and arriving at a altitude of aprox 2400 meters (hence I have trouble calling them hills, even if it truly does not feel like being at that height). It was the annual celebration of the school, which as every school consists in incredible creepy but extremely amusing spectacles where you ask yourself how the kids can accept to be put in such costumes and doing those dances. What happened next was probably even more crazy, as when honour prizes were given, Jess and I got called on the stage to receive ourselves a “Guest of Honour” prize, as the head master of the school found it incredible that we were here doing volunteering and hence treated us as one of her best guest to the celebration of her newly created school. We both did not know how to take this, being unsure whether we should be honoured and whether this whole thing was simply ridiculous.

Our last evening in Chandigarh seemed like a pretty relaxed evening, everybody very tired even if the professor’s son invited us to join him to go to a friend’s house. As we always do since we are here we kind of say yes , even if we don’t really know in what the night will consist. And as always what happen never is what we expect to happen.  The night therefore end in a house dinner/cocktail party surrounded by a certain Chandigarh upper society which are drinking whiskey and smoking a narguilé, while talking about more business. Jess and I probably had to drink 5 classes of whiskey if not more by the motto of “sippy sippy sippy” and end up at bed at 2 in the morning, half drunk and not truly sure about what we experienced that evening, as well as knowing that we will have to get up at seven to go back to Bassi Pathana in the trust where we teach English and try to help developing this rural area of Bassi Pathana and the surrounding villages.

I am still not sure what to make about this contrasting experiences, but what I know is that I never thought I would experience within one week two completely opposing sides of India, I never thought that I would directly experience these two environments so closely. And the only thing I can say is that I think it’s amazing! My brain is simply being filled with new realities new encounters, new cultures and new languages and every time I realises or rather conceptualise that I am here and what I am seeing, feeling and experiencing I have this strange feeling of infinite happiness going through my mind. I would never have thought that within a week I would have the possibility to experience Punjab from so near.

The problem lies in the fact that our brain is so full of thoughts, feeling and even more little experiences, but as I am not a professional writer I find trouble in condensing thoughts, therefore if I would continue to write, this article would probably double its length or even be tripled. Hence I will stop here and wish you all the best and till the next time!

Good night from Bassi Pathana!

Dear Western World,

Sat shri akal!

How's cheese, tobacco and alcohol treating you?

Here I am, just as I expect the ideal-type blogger to be. Sitting at the dining room table, listening to Common' (not so ideally typically blogger maybe) while there is an extraordinary village festival going on for the first-ever Sikh guru's birthday outside (ok, so maybe not ideally typically blogger at all).

Ja. Alizé is on the couch doing her TEFL grammar module, while I sit here, looking out the window at the fireworks and millions of fairy lights draped around Bassi Pathana households. In tune, both of us regularly jump out of our seats at what genuinely sounds like we are stuck sitting outside in central-Blitz. For anyone who knows Alizé and I, we ought not to be here. We ought to be outside, partying it out Guru-Punjabi-style. Unfortunately, we're white, young, middle-class women, and while this entitles us to freedom and a quasi-perfect lifestyle in Europe, this confines us to the household in Punjab.

Indeed, as we were taught today by one of our intermediate-level English students who was forced into an arranged marriage by her family and beaten by her mad husband for 7 months, women are dependents here. Women stay at home. In the kichen or with the kids.They are not to walk out alone when the sun is down. They are not to get a job. And they are not to challenge the old ways. No, neigng, never.

And yet here she is. She left her husband and got disowned by her family. She attends the Mehar Baba Charitable Trust academy for an education, and truly, this chick is sharp. She has full understanding of the necessity of an education, but also of its limits in this part of town. She dreams of getting a job. But jobs don't pay enough here. It's called exploitation. It's called dependency. It's called sexism.
Damn right.

But the Mehar Baba Trust guarantee reasonably paid jobs to all those who make a real effort, who learn well and get good grades. She has a degree. She will hopefully get a job when her english and her sewing or embroidery skills gets better.

Let me explain.

We live in the charity's school. It has a classroom where students are taught English, and are now being taught Italian and French (hm. funny.), as well as a conference room, computer-skills classroom with approximately 15 old-school pcs, a hardware classroom, many offices, a kitchen and our apartment on the top floor. Most importantly however, is their women empowerment project which takes up most of the building. On the top floor under the dome-like roof sit the girls with their sewing and embroidery machines. Here, they are taught all different types of stitches, patterns, classic indian hand embroidery on wooden frames and machine embroidery (yes mother. promise). Under that is the design area, where clothes are patterned out, cut out and conceptualised. Below that again, is the boutique, where these trust-made clothes and rugs are sold, based on the fact that these are hand-made quality goods and have serious ethical value. Most of all, this place allows girls and boys to acquire certain necessary skills which may then allow them to get jobs or open their own boutique. Thereby escaping dependency. Thereby escaping oppressive traditions. Thereby making a small step in changing Punjabi  habits. This is the trust's main goal, and this is the hardest one: changing people's attitudes.

Don't get me wrong though, this is not a dreadful place where all men beat their women. This is only day 2, and I cannot speak for all of India, Punjab, or even all Bassi Pathana, but these people are so kind, so generous and so welcoming. We are treated like queens. We feel useless, but we are told that we can do many things. Get these kids used to accents, to different ways of learning, holding yourself. The simple fact that we were allowed to come to India on our own, that I cannot cook and that Alizé is a lefty (kaboo) is all extremely new to all of them, girls and boys alike. There is a clear bond forming, based on an exchange. We teach you English, (French, Italian) and basic computing skills (ha!), and you teach us punjabi, sewing, how to cook a good curry (for anyone interested, everything is still perfectly compact) and what your culture is about.

And we're doing pretty well for now. What was meant to be a computing class turned into a massive Punjabi drilling from our own students, who find our accents perfectly hilarious, our lack of memory pitiful and who at our age, get ridiculously giddy at the sight of a cartoon of a couple kissing.
If only they knew what we get up to. Let's hope they never ask...

Similarly, the boys are not particularly into english speaking, but are rather interested in what we think of Punjabi men, and are consistently told "no. you must ask sensible questions" as soon as a punjabi word leaves their lips. And yet, without this fascination for white western girls, who knows, we might never have managed to get here.

Oh yea, because while a very few amount of punjabi people say lefties are "lucky", we got especially lucky on the way here. We left sunday at 9.30am. We didn't sleep the night before... you know what with us not being able to drink alcohol, smoke (I'm gonna burst soon and ask Mr. Maan the english teacher if we can smuggle in a pag of fags), shag or wear low-neck shirts. We stayed up all sunday, (well I did. Alizé snored for a few hours). Had an 8h flight. Got into Delhi at 10am. Saw that for 2000 rupees (30e) we could get a nap + shower + massage for 3h in this spa at the airport. Figured, it's cool, we only have another 8h to wait before our next flight. We're young and exhausted. We'll be fine! 6h later, time for us to check in to our next flight to Chandigarh.

Oops. Um.. yea about that.. we over-booked it. If you like, we will pay for accommodation and you can (maybe) leave tomorrow night at 6pm. Orrr we will pay for you to take a 2h30-3h taxi ride to Chandigarh. Oh Ok. We will take the cab. Oh but wait we need to be able to call the trust and tell them we will be getting in late so they will come pick us up. So we call. But "No english""No English".  Oh, here comes the junior Punjab cricket club whose flight has also been cancelled. So happens, Alizé is cute, has a nice smile and a nice bum. "Excuse-me could you talk to the man on the phone in Punjab and explain the situation". Ha! After 4 phone calls. Sorted! Off to the cab. An Australian and an Englishman are waiting for us near the car, also on the way to Chandigarh. Our stuff is lifted in and above the vehicle, we get in, start rolling, oh btw, the ride is actually 5-6h. Ah. Awesome.

Not your usual highway ride either. Oh nooooo. Whole different code here my friend. We have established that if you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere. Here are the rules:

There are no rules. The white lines to delimit car space: optional. On the back of larger vehicles is written "Honk your Horn". Why? Because review mirrors are also optional, and seemingly unfashionable. So if you wish to overtake, if you can amongst the motorbikes, buggies, vespas and bicycles carrying side-saddling women and babies, you honk. So all the way to Chandi, the continuous symphony of honking horns (our driver had a particular honk-fetish) was music to our sleepy ears. Also, the nice australian and englishman? Yea, protestant Pentecostal pastors here to give a conference, check out an orphanage and vaguely attempt to preach to young volunteers. Again, Alizé's "kaboo" luck. Stopped off for our first (and last) left-hand-water-rinsed toilet break. I found it very wet. No drying equipment. Hm. Got there at midnight. Slept in Chandigarh. Left the next morning at 9am for Bassi Pathana. And here we are. Sitting in our lounge, with our shared bedroom and en-suite bathroom. Alizé and I will be sleeping together for 8 months. Might as well get married. Although here may not be the place....

All in all, I have hereby done my best to depict the beginning of our adventure together.

On a more personal-Jess note. I am finding it very hard being away from family, friends and special friend, all of which seem to be in times of hardship and sorrow. I don't think I can explain how much it deeply pains me not to be there to pay my respects, help, or simply feel like I'm helping. Admittedly, it has always been my biggest problem, not being able to say goodbye without falling appart. But right now, I'm finding it particularly hard.

Nonetheless, I adore this place. I am so privileged to volunteer in a place whose philosophy I entirely, sans-compromis, agree with (for now). Alizé and I are brought Indian food (which does not make us sick. Water sanitation is a big project for this trust) for lunch and dinner, as well as tea (tcha) while we give class. A woman sometimes comes in to do dishes and clean the kitchen-area (although we make a point of having it already done before she comes in, unless we have to rush to class). We are stocked up with westernised goods like detox-organic tea, oreos, toilet paper, chicken noodle soup and cornflakes (although the milk here.. ugh!). We have "the wifi". The admin-man, Mr. Gupta visits us in the evening for a small chat to make sure all is well and learn some French. We will be visiting Chandigarh this weekend. Genuinely, could not have been treated any better. Other than for the obvious house-arrest feeling whereby we are not to walk out the house without another "respectable" female presence, we are blessed (I mean that in the most lovely atheistic sort of way of course). And have been told friends and family who wish to visit are more than welcome. Have a look: www.mbtrust.org

So really, maanu passand hae, man!

Love to all,
Jess