What I will miss/not miss of India

I will miss the children at SISP school. Their expressive black eyes, their running around, their asking me to “tick” their notebooks when they do well, their efforts to speak to me in English and to teach me Malayalam. I will miss the kindness and hospitality that makes India a unique country. I will miss the food, so different from the European one but still so good, with so many ingredients never used in Europe, such as coconut (fresh, dry, milk, oil), pineapple, mango, yogurt, clarified butter and endless spices. I will miss the sun and the warm weather (it never really gets cold here). I will miss the green palms, the beach and the lights of the fishermen’ boats at the horizon in the night. I will miss jumping on a rickshaw whenever I want to. I will miss the chai!

I will not miss the heaps of garbage on the side of the streets and the stinky smoke that comes out of it when they are put on fire. I will not miss the spitting and free burping everywhere. I will not miss the stray dogs and their endless and loud barking (especially at night), the sticky humidity or the looks of the men on the street. I will not miss mosquitoes biting through your clothes (yes, they manage to do that) and the electricity going off every time it rains (but this is also charming actually).

I know that whatever “I will not miss” won’t ever be more than “what I miss”, so I’m sure that this is not the last time I come to India!!

Diwali

I recently visited a friend of mine in Mumbai during Diwali. Diwali is a Hindu festival that resembles European Christmas and New Year. It is the festival of lights and celebrates the victory of good over evil. People wish each other “Happy New Year”, exchange gifts and decorate their houses with candles and lights. The city is lit up and most balconies are decorated with strings of colourful light bulbs.

Several pujas (prayers) are made. A puja is made to the goddess Lakshmi: it is the goddess of wealth and praying for her will bring wealth for the coming year. This reminds me of the custom of eating lentils in Italy (lentils bring money) or eating 12 grapes corresponding to the 12 bell strokes at midnight in Spain and so on. I was also part of a ritual: my friend’s mother applied a paste of natural ingredients (I can only remember the poppy seeds as one of the ingredients) on my face and feet, then she applied oil and coconut milk on my hair and did a small puja. Then I took a shower and I had to break a small lime with my heel in the shower. This should give me protection and wealth for the next year!! I was part of another similar ritual but it was made by my friend’s grandmother. When finished, she kindly gifted me a small statue of the goddess Durga, the goddess of power that fights evil:

Another tradition of Diwali is the rangoli: a decoration made with colourful powders (a similar thing called atham is made in Kerala with flower petals, see the previous post Onam). My friend and me also made a rangoli: we took the pattern from a rangoli design book and then coloured it with several powders. It is more difficult than it seems (the powder never goes where you want it to), but the result is very satisfying:

Diwali, just like Christmas, is the time of the family’s get together. I was offered meals and gifts at several of my friend’s aunts and grandparents places and I had amazing home made food. We also fired some small fireworks and then watched the big ones from the terrace: from everywhere in the city fireworks were fired and the whole city shined in different colours, a great show! Happy Diwali!

Contrasts

So far I mostly wrote about the reality in Kovalam, where the school where I’m volunteering (SISP) is. In the last few days I visited Mumbai, where a friend of mine lives. Mumbai is a metropolis. About 12 millions people live there. There are skyscrapers, flanked by slums. Poverty is more evident in Mumbai than in Kovalam because there are people literally living on the street: during the day they sell flowers or other small things and in the evening they lie down and sleep on the pavements. Many children only know this reality.

Mumbai is also the city where the richest people in India live. Along the beach there are fabulous houses-palaces that are an insult to poverty and surely not very environment-friendly. The areas that I visited of Mumbai didn’t have heaps of garbage on the side of the street, nor cows in the middle of the street. The people that you can see come from any sort of origin: rich, poor, fashionable, working class, etc. The traffic is terribly noisy and congested.

As every big city, Mumbai is a melting pot, but it also feels impersonal. I lived four years in London and one thing I didn’t like very much there was the impersonality: it is very difficult to meet new people and most of the people don’t really care if you’re walking on the street naked/crying/etc. Kovalam, instead, is so small that within one week many people know you, and you know them. I came back after 5 days in Mumbai and within a few hours I met three students from the school and several surfers of the Kovalam Surf Club (which is also part of SISP) plus friends knocked at my door when they saw the light on. All of them welcomed me as if I had been away for a long time and was coming back home. Isn’t it nice when you are in a foreign country, to be treated as part of a family?!

Random curious facts

In my country, if someone accidentally hits you, he will say sorry. In the UK, both people will say sorry (which I always found very funny). In India, people will touch you with their right hand and then take their hand to their chest, and sometimes even touch their eyes. I’ve been explained that this gesture means asking sorry both to you and to God for having hit you… wow! Also, as a sign of respect towards someone older, like a grandparent, people will touch the feet of the person and then take their hand to their chest and forehead. I was shocked the first time I saw it but I now find amazing how differently respect is shown here.

While women must have shoulders and legs covered (but not their belly, which is not covered by the sari), men have no problem taking off their shirt if they are doing some hard work and they often wear the dhoti, a sort of long piece of clothe that they often fold as a very (sometimes too) short skirt. Moreover, I’ve seen quite a lot of guys peeing at the side of the street, bah! Also, when going to the beach, guys take bath wearing shorts and sometimes a t-shirt (but mostly they go bare-chested) while women have to enter the sea fully dressed. I tried once to go in wearing leggings and I felt so impeded by my clothes!

Generosity. I once shared a sweet between two little girls (I only had 1 sweet in my bag) and they both managed to cut out a piece from the two tiny halves to give it to me!! I was so amazed! Also, it is very common to see older kids helping out younger kids, and younger kids taking things to the older. For example, during weekends children attend free classes of skating and surfing at the school or at the nearby beach. Since sometimes the teachers are not enough to take care of all the children, the older students often help the younger ones, and they do this without even being asked to or complaining. Also, often older students ask the younger ones to bring them a glass of water or more food, and the young ones obey straight away. I tried to picture these situations in Europe and I could only see children replying “No way” or “Do it yourself” when asked to take a glass of water to their older friends!

Women are considered frail. If I’m seen standing for more than 5 minutes at the school, I’m always offered a chair, either by a student or a member of the staff. If I need to carry anything heavier than a book, I’m straight away stopped and a student will be called to help (I dared carrying a chair from a room to another a couple of times and I was promptly stopped and helped).

Religion is easily displayed. Christians often wear a rosary around their necks and Hindu paint a colorful dot on their forehead, which means that they have prayed or visited a temple. Muslims or Protestants are a bit more difficult to recognize because they mostly don’t wear ornaments.

Talking about ornaments, I wonder how long do women take here to get ready in the morning: not only they wear saris or long skirts and shawls, but every female I’ve seen here, from a little girl to an elderly woman, has her hair neatly tied or braided, earrings, bangles and bindi (a little colorful circle worn between the eyebrows) matching to the color of the dress and at least one necklace. I was often “reproached” by female students for not wearing well-matched clothes or earrings!

Some students are now studying a story where “autumn” is mentioned. I then noticed that they didn’t know seasons very well. Then I understood: in Kerala (and in South India) it is warm all year long. The only variations are the amount of rain, humidity and degrees, which are anyway always above 20° C. How can you explain to people who have only experienced “summer”, that during autumn it is cold and you need to wear a scarf and a jacket, that the leaves of the trees go orange and fall down, that days get shorter and nights longer, that then streets freeze, that noses get red and that snow falls from the sky?! Not such an easy task, I’d feel like I came from the moon!

Everyone is family in India. It is common to call friends “brother” or “sister” and elder people “auntie” or “uncle”. If an Indian tells you he has 10 sisters, don’t worry, he probably has 2 real sisters and 8 cousins or relatives.

Teaching

I never thought of myself as a teacher. The main reason probably comes from my insecurity, what would I do if I can’t answer my students questions?! But also, I don’t ooze self-confidence or respect, so teenagers would basically eat me. However, when I decided to volunteer in India, I thought I might try something out of my comfort zone, something that doesn’t require particular skills or strong spirit (like working in a hospital) or strong muscles (like building something). Teaching seemed a good option. Also, having lived in London for almost 4 years, I speak English quite well and I felt I could be helpful during English classes.

Here, I help the English teacher in his classes. We usually split the class in two groups and I help the students with a better level of English (who can, therefore, understand me when I speak, with no need of translation). Although I am not a teacher and this is my first experience of teaching, I find it highly rewarding. I feel so happy when a child understands what I’m trying to explain or gives the right answer! Also, I feel I learn something new every day. Be it a new word or concept, or be it how to handle a student or a situation in class, every day is a new piece of knowledge.

I never really thought of it, but the teacher role is extremely important and, in the right situation, it can be very rewarding. Unfortunately, teachers are not well treated in my country: it takes a long time to get a full time position and the salary is pretty low. This affects their performance at school. I think that this is a big problem because teachers, just like our parents, forge our lives. Therefore, they should be happy of their job and not frustrated. If you think about it, I’m sure each of us had at least one teacher who inspired us at school and made us improve a lot or made us choose a particular career.

For me, my Science teacher at high school showed us what a lab is and what kind of work a researcher does.. and bam! That was it, after working in a lab for one day with my classroom, I knew what I wanted to do at university! I’m still in contact with my teacher and it’s great to see that, despite the numberless problems of her job, she still loves teaching and keeps inspiring many students. Also, my Math teacher at elementary school taught me the basic Math that I still use every day and my Old Greek teacher taught me amazing stories from the Greek mythology that I still remember.

Being a teacher in the school where I’m volunteering is highly challenging. The students are often undisciplined because they know no rules at home. However, they often experience violence and lack of love in their family, so they need a friendly and loving environment in the school. Also, they are drop outs, which means that not only they dropped (or never went to) normal school, but also there is the risk that they might drop this school as well, should they find it boring or unsuitable for them. I once reproached a student because he was disturbing the class and I felt so afraid that he might not come back to school because of the way I treated him! Luckily he is still there.

So a teacher here has to mix teaching with discipline, fun and love. I think it must be really hard to know what kind of person to be in the class: maybe a student needs to be reproached in order to work well, while another was beaten at home and so just needs a hug, and another one watched TV all night and so needs some sleep, etc. etc. As I said, teaching here is challenging on the daily basis but if you think of it at a more general level, what a teacher is doing here is amazing: they’re not only offering education to the children, but they also give them opportunities for their future and a loving environment. Basically, they’re giving them back the life that any child deserves since he/she was born.

Picture kindly provided from Friends of SISP Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Friends.of.SISP?ref=br_tf