Lost and found

The autorikshaw's in Hyderabad/Secunderabad have been on strike for about 36 hours. Yesterday morning I took the bus entirely incident-free (I take the bus home, but hadn't yet taken it in the morning since I carpool in an autorikshaw with my roommate). So this morning I waited at the theoretical bus stop (which actually involves less of waiting at a bus stop, and more or waiting in a general area and trying to spot the right bus number then chasing it down as it comes to a moving stop, depending of the traffic) and hopped on several 250's, and each of them told me no, we are not going to Rail Niliyam. I didn't understand why, but finally got on one that said although they were not going there, they would go to Secunderabad. 'Oh good,' I thought, 'I know how to walk to work from Secunderabad bus station.'

So I get out at Secunderabad, and find I don't recognize anything... I walked around and headed in the direction I was pointed by several bus employees. I saw a bunch of vacant auto's lined up along a busy road, and then about 50 men on foot holding red signs, formed a huge circle at the large intersection, and began chanting. Moving away from the striking auto drivers' movement and traffic-blocking tactics, I walked some more and found myself at - Secunderabad railway station. I was nearly late for work, and so I asked an elderly gentleman where was Rail Niliyam? He said, "wait a few minutes and I'll drop you there." So we waited for his daughter and son-in-law to arrive on a train, then they drove me to my work neighborhood, and I arrived only 10 minutes late to work.


I also lost my wallet last weekend, or the change purse I was using as a wallet so as not to lose all my important cards, so I only lost a bunch of cash and my Debit card (I'd visited the ATM to get money the day before I lost it).

A couple photos

One day near the end of the workday, a bunch of my coworkers asked to see photos of my family and school. This is about one third of the women who work in my office.




This is me on my first day in India, wearing my two backpacks, which is all that I brought to India

Maybe TV is right, TV is always right...

We have a TV in our office, though it's covered with some cloth and I didn't notice it until last week when several women turned it on periodically to check the score in the cricket Australia vs. India games.

Just now, they turned it on again, and everyone who is in the office (several women are out today on various trainings) came and crowded around. I inquired about the commotion and someone explained that it was a wedding of a famous Telugu movies star's second daughter. I was confused as to why this was exciting to them, let alone newsworthy. The wedding wasn't particularly glamorous, and I thought perhaps the lines of squiggly Telugu going by on the news screen might have offered some sort of explanation (but alas, my Telugu training does not start until next week).

After several minutes of watching, they turned of the TV. One of them noticed my bewildered look and said, "that is the daughter of a famous movie star. She is getting married... against her parent's wishes." I asked how they knew that, and they said why else would it be so sensationalized by the press?

My knowledge of arranged marriages is still quite limited. I know that it is quite common in India, and seems to involve parents choosing a match for their child based on various factors. The divorce rate is much lower; however, divorce seems to be heavily stigmatized here, and the blame is placed largely on the woman (regardless if she left an abusive relationship, she is criticized for not having been able to take care of her husband). Of the various married women in my office, many of them had arranged marriages. My supervisor had a 'love marriage' also known as a 'choice marriage'; my counterpart (who is my age) said she would never have an arranged marriage. Someone from Shlayma's work asked me if I would have an arranged marriage or a love marriage, and I tried to explain that arranged marriages aren't really something we consider in my culture. One of my roommates said a woman in her office told her about her arranged marriage. She said that she was too shy to speak to her future husband, so he would come over and talk and she would listen. She never spoke to him until their wedding day.

I'm trying to be aware of the fact that I am in a different culture where they have different customs and beliefs that are informed by different values, call it being culturally sensitive or having an open mind. I like the fact that I am working with an Indian NGO that is working on issues they see as important for women in India; I don't know if I would be comfortable working for a Western NGO that was intent on making change in some foreign country, imposing our views on them. Us vs. Them. The civilized vs. the Other. This way, I know I am working alongside 20 individuals who believe that we need to change the position of woman in India - and each of these individuals are female and Indian, and are educated in fields related to our work.

Getting set up

My towel had ants on it so I threw it in a bucket with some soap and left it overnight, and then rinsed it for about an hour but it was till soapy, so I let it try and it is now a cloth-rock. So I bought a new pink fluffy large fancy towel, which only cost me about $6.00.

We have two bathrooms in our flat. The water doesn’t work in one bathroom, the one that has the Indian style toilet and shower head and sink. We shower with a bucket which we take from the tap in the other bathroom or from the tap on the balcony (where we hang out laundry). We have no form of hot water besides boiling some on the stove and mixing it with water from the tap in a bucket. We have a tank that we need to turn on so it fills up, and turn off when it was full. When it is full, it overflows through a tube into a large bucket in the bathroom.

We do laundry in a bucket. Packaged Tide here has directions for doing bucket laundry.

We don’t have AC (nor do we need it right now since it is Monsoon season which equals extremely nice weather). We have two fans in the living room/dining room area, and a fan in each bedroom.

Sometimes the power goes out randomly (this happens at work, too). It usually comes on after about 20 minutes or so. Not always. We keep flashlights, candles and matches nearby so we are can continue cooking or eating when the power goes out. It sucks when the power goes out on a hot night (this happened in Delhi) just as you are trying to fall asleep, and you try and ignore the happy heat taking over as the fan slowly winds down and turns off.

No one seems to refrigerate anything here. When we were refrigerator shopping we couldn’t find any used ones, and all the new ones were really expensive. In this country, electronics can be a lot more expensive that the USA, as opposed to food and clothing and other things, which are a lot cheaper.

When we arrived in Hyderabad, someone from Lily's work collected us from Secunderabad train station. We took cabs through horrendous traffic and finally arrived in Tarnaka. We went to the wrong apartment building and terrified several tenants by knocking on their doors and asking if we were living there - turns out we were about a block and a half from our place. Below is several of us Southerners in the rain, wearing/carrying our luggage and looking annoyed as we searched for the correct apartment buildings. Also below is Lily, Shlayma and I after being caught in monsoon rains after grocery shopping:


Last weekend my roommates and I went to Osmania University and walked around. We found a nice building and a garden:


There is a park near my work. This is a photo of it; as seen in the picture, there is frequently garbage on fire in this park:


These are the signs outside my work. On the second sign, the characters below the English are Telugu:


Per request of my lovely uncle, I have added some photos on previous entries (such as the train journey) – see below.

Working hard or hardly working?

Our Hyderabad flat is nice. It’s a 2-bedroom, and Shlayma and I each have our own room (Lily has shelves and a bed in my room, too – technically we share a room but she sleeps in the living room on the bed we use as a couch). We have been sharing cooking and cleaning. We’ve found various markets to shop, we buy fresh vegetables every other day or even everyday, and experiment with cooking, especially in our new rice maker. We also have an Idly maker, and have been making instant Idly – yum! We live in a residential neighbourhood in Tarnaka, in Secunderabad (Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities). Shlayma walks about 50 feet to her NGO; Lily and I carpool in the morning and she drops me off then takes the aoturikshaw to her work, about 40 minutes away. Mine takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on traffic. I have been taking the bus home for the past few days. We both use handkerchefs to cover our mouth during the autorikshaw ride so we don't have to breath in as much pollution.

So far I really enjoy my work. There are about 20 women in my office and they are extremely nice. There are no men in my NGO, with the exception of a boy who does our errands (locks and unlocks the office, goes to the post office, gets breakfast or lunch from a local hotel restaurant if we want it, etc). (I can’t help but wonder if there is something to the fact that we are an all-female organization, except for this boy, who is our bitch.) We have a tea lady who brings everyone their personalized version of chai at 10:30ish and 3:30ish. I always thank her, and she laughs and thanks me back, or does the traditional head-nod that means "yes" in India, particularly in the South (moving one's head side-to-side). My roommates and I are each getting quite good at he head nod, and even do it in answering each other.

We have the entire floor of an apartment building. When you arrive on the fourth floor in the lift (or stairs if the power is out), you remove your shoes and place them in the shoe stand. When you go in the bathroom, there are two pairs of communal shoes, one larger, one smaller, to wear into your choice of an Indian of Western stall.

At lunchtime, everyone in the office sits at a large circular table and puts what they brought in the middle of the table. “Take some and pass it,” they say to me every time they hand me anything. We eat with our right hand (never with the left hand, never with silverware) off of metal plates. There is always more than enough rice, and I get to try various home cooked Indian dishes, which vary every day. Things are spicy, but I have been OK with everything I have eaten so far here. Home cooked Indian food is very different than food you get in Indian restaurants in the states or even in India. I try and bring something each day, but so far have been a bit embarrassed by my cooking skills (in part because of my limited cooking experience, in part because I’m not sure how to cook with Indian spices, and in part because we just don’t have that much cooking stuff yet at our flat and don’t know the best places to buy food). One time I brought mango cornflakes, but everyone took some when I passed it. Today I brought banana’s and put in an order for a Dosa (a rice-flour filled with potato dish) from the hotel.

For the first few days I read the annual reports of my NGO and read an alternative report of India on CEDAW (UN Commission to End Discrimination Against Women) which has helped me better understand what my NGO does, and has made me more familiar with women’s issues in India. I went to two trainings: One was at a girl’s college for girl child day, and we did a photo exhibit on the girl child with these beautiful photos by this professional photographer, then screened a movie on the girl child (made by my NGO) and had a discussion and open forum with the students (about 300). The other was at a college near where I live, and we held an essay and poster competition on women’s issues. 50 participants came, 4 of them boys, and made 45 essays and 5 posters. Participants arrived at 10:0am and had 2 hours to write an essay or design a poster. They could write in English, Hindi or Telugu; I helped judge the 20 or so essays in English, and gave out the prizes to the winners.

For the past week I have been working on making a data base of women’s studies and gender issue articles that have appeared in Economic and Political Weekly in the past 20 years. This has also helped familiarize me with relevant issues specific to India as I read abstracts on many articles each day, then compile the title, issue and volume number, date, and keywords into an excel document.

Monday, I met with my supervisor. She has written with one of my favourite gender and development authors, Nira Yuval-Davis. She told me that the Indian government is forming an Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to deal with discrimination across gender, sex, class, race, religion, caste, and disability, as well as combinations within these category (double or multiple minorities). The UK and Australia have EOC’s but these deal exclusively with gender and sex discrimination. The government is putting together a committee of 7 experts to design the structure, functioning, issues, and remedial powers of this commission. My supervisor is the only woman on this committee, along with a Dalit man, a Muslim man, and some other representative men (though all men). Their committee meets today for the first time, and has about 3 months to come up with a report and plan for the EOC design. For the next 3 months, I am doing research on the EOC, and the intersection of multiple minority statuses, for my supervisor and her role as a member of this committee. So far this seems like the perfect job.