3 posts tagged “bangalore”
It's a curious phenomenon, really. More frightening than curious, but in my second trip to India I can both feel and see myself becoming slowly desensitized to the chaos around me. It becomes natural, and therefore one develops this skin built for protection against the sensory overload, the frustrating and backward politics, and the depravity of so much around you.
The first time I saw a beggar on the street was in Delhi, obviously, since that was the first place I went in India this time around. There are definitely more on the streets of Delhi than in Bangalore. I remember walking through a shopping complex with Tinku and Anand and there being an old woman on the granite footpath writing on the ground. I was mid-sentence through something inane, I'm sure. I couldn't speak for a moment, but we continued to walk, sidestepping the horrifying sight at our feet. In these situations, you feel helpless. Do you stare? Call for help? Continue walking?
At some point, you have to ask yourself when countless people come up to you, begging for money with their dirty, sleepy children thrown over their shoulder, what can I really do to help this person? Where is this money going? After a while, most people stop looking at them. You stare in the opposite direction, suddenly both blind and deaf to their requests. And I saw myself begin to do it too, desensitized.
Another example. On Monday night, we all went for a movie. For those of you unfamiliar with SUPERSTAR RAJNI (Rajnikanth), he is a fat, toupee-wearing, former traffic policeman now incredibly popular actor in South India. His newest creation that we saw, "Sivaji: The Boss," is about how this multi-billionaire wants to build a hospital and school with his money, encounters some troubles, tries to marry a "traditional" Tamil girl, goes bankrupt, etc. etc. Seemingly harmless plot, no? Well, the actual movie is impossible to give justice to. The traditional Indian bride spends the entire movie either crying or screaming, and while she is chaste and wears a nice braid and sari during the "Reality" portions of the movie, in the "Dream Sequences" or song-and-dance numbers, she sports ridiculous wigs, scandalous outfits, gyrating around like a robot and sexual object for the old, skeezy Sivaji. That's not a word, but I'm using it anyways. The entire movie was awful. Please YouTube it so I can stop trying to explain the inexplicable.
So, back to the point-- after the movie, I was horrified. Madhavi couldn't sleep for a while. I couldn't get Sivaji's idiotic catchphrase ("Cool!") and theme song out of my head. During the movie, I couldn't stand to watch most of the song sequences, so I took to watching the audience instead. The theatre was packed full of your typical South Indian families, sitting happily as the movie blared at the highest possible volume and displayed these vulgar scenes of scantily-clad women in black leather juxtaposed with traditional scenes of a Tamil family feeding their guests and offering them tea and coffee. Everyone seemed to have a pleasant, glazed-over look on their face.
But on Tuesday, I managed to go the entire day without thinking about it. That's desensitization.
There is a difference between being desensitized to the harsher realities of this country and being ignorant to them. I can no longer call myself ignorant, as a second visit has now begun with a better baseline of knowledge for what this place is all about, how it functions, and what its people are like. I find it harder to go to the school now, and see its problems continue for another year. But at the same time, seeing this thicker skin develop has only led more questions. The problems I encounter in the school, for example, may seem even more difficult to deal with, even more rooted in systemic or cultural issues, but now its time to put a more informed finger on where the problems lie and find out more deeply why they exist.
But I'll never understand Rajnikanth. I almost don't want to, and I'm glad that I've developed some sort of tolerance strong enough to let me sleep peacefully at night after four hours of "Sivaji: THE BOSS."
After about a year, I returned to Chandranagar Government Primary School today. Chandranagar is about 3 km. from where I live, in an urban slum. Last year, there were 280 students for 7 grades and 7 teachers. This year, there are 330 students, 8 grades, and 5 teachers? Maybe 6 1/2 (two have been recently appointed by another charity in the last few days). The children and the teachers remembered me from last year, and it was slightly surreal seeing all of these kids, one year older, slightly bigger, slightly rowdier, and still not learning much.
The situation at Chandranagar has been quite rough in the past year-- 3 Asha appointed teachers gone, one new headmistress come and gone in a month, another long-standing government appointed teacher switched out to another school, and then 2 recent appointments by the government for a school desperately in need of teachers. The 5th grade class is now taken underneath a tree. But apparently the tree causes a lot of noise blowing with the heavy wind at times, and the teachers are afraid that branches will fall on the children!
I was greeted with the usual "Good Morning Miss!!" and smiling faces. I was really surprised to have remembered the special handshake that they do at the end of the day. After spending less than an hour there, I was already left in a classroom of 8th graders, alone, and instructed to do some English with them. We read a story together, with the students competing for their chance to read, some struggling, some reading each word very well but having absolutely no clue what it meant. At times I would stop and ask the class, in either English or broken Kannada, what "ocean," or "frightened," or "peak" meant, sometimes having to draw diagrams on the board.
One definite improvement from last year to this year has been the nutrition and midday meals situation. Last year, the mid-day meals provided by the government came infrequently, if at all on time, and were typically tasteless and void of nutritional value. The teachers always brought their own lunch. This year, an NGO called Akshaya Patra, in conjunction with the Government of Karnataka (GOK), is feeding children through the kitchens of the ISKCON temple. The GOK only pays one rupee (~2.5 cents) per head out of the cost to feed the children through Akshaya Patra's Midday Meals, the rest of the cost is covered by other donors. Needless to say, these kids are now getting fed better tasting food in bigger quantities, and apparently even the teachers eat it as well.
These kids are absolutely adorable, of course, but it is very troubling to see just how much of the day was characterized by classrooms stuffed to capacity without teachers.
When I asked about advocating for more government teacher appointments, the HM told me that government teachers are appointed from a group of teachers that are interested in transferring locations. The teachers get the option of choosing which school they would like to work in, and often choose schools close to home. So, when the HM requested 5 new teachers from the Block Education Officer, they only brought in 2 because only two chose to work in Chandranagar School.
One of the most troubling situations, apart from the lack of basic needs in the school-- adequate teachers and space-- is the 3rd grade (III Std.). There are over 60 third standard students in one classroom, and according to the headmistress, maybe only 10 students are at the level they should be, the rest are quite far behind. This is apparently due to the chaos of this past year. When these children were in II Std, their teacher (Asha hired), left in October, and there was no new teacher for II Std. until the following February. The reasons for leaving were probably for the right reasons (see last year's blog for a full account of the drama that went down), but these children suffered a lot without a consistent teacher for so long. So many of these small children that used to be so quiet have now grown bigger and more rambunctious, certainly difficult to control all at once. The headmistress had to tell them, as I sat to visit their classroom, "Behave so 'Miss' can go back to America and say what nice children there are here."
The GOK has also instructed Chandranagar School to hold upper primary classes up to the 8th standard now, as last year only went until the 7th. To keep students from dropping out, an entire grade was added, and one additional teacher certified to teach upper level science and math was appointed by the GOK. When I was in the 8th grade class, I noticed that one of my favorite kids from last year, Selvakumar, was not in the classroom. He was a little troublemaker sometimes, but a sweet kid that had hopes to start his own business named after the headmistress, "Padmaja Electrics." I later asked the HM where he was. Apparently, his father had suffered from some illness, and is no longer able to work. Selvakumar has now left school and become the "working man." Apparently he is working in an aluminum factory. He is probably 13 years old.
I asked the HM what I could do for them, because apart from writing a follow-up report on the school, I'd like to spend my free time there doing whatever I can. Part of me feels helpless, yet empowered to do something for a school lodged in a broken system. The GOK has now established that English should be taught from the 1st grade, yet no one is currently teaching English to these children, with not enough teachers to go around. The HM gave me the new 1 std. English workbook and a teacher's guide to go with it, and got very excited at the thought of me teaching English to the tiniest of the lot. I'm not a teacher. I don't know a thing about teaching. But there is a need, so I'm reading the instructors guide and studying up. I also need to learn some more basic Kannada, fast. That would make things a lot easier. But still, I can't help but feel troubled by it all-- this school needs serious changes, not quick fixes.
Doing research on how NGOs should be investing in government schools, and then acting as an NGO player in a government school itself creates an interesting work dynamic in India. Many things are familiar from last year, and some of the same things I debated with myself then are just as relevant one year later. In a city and a country with an 8% growth rate, construction and development occurring rapidly from one year to the next, the middle and upper classes growing wealthier by the minute, it is also startling to see just how much things have not changed, even deteriorated, in the government schools.
After about a week in Delhi, I am now back in Bangalore. I had a really nice time in Delhi, since I last wrote, Neelmoy and I visited Old Delhi and got to see a lot of the more traditional sights and sounds of the city. We visited a mosque, the Jama Masjid, and climbed one of its towers. The tower had a tiny staircase twisting up hundreds of feet, and once you got to the top, there was a small area to stand and sort of hang on to the grated windows to see all of Delhi.
In Old Delhi we also got to ride the bicycle rickshaws. A guy literally has a cart attached to the back of a bicycle, and you are slightly elevated to have a nice view of the chaos around you. It's amazing how these skinny guys can pull so much weight biking around all day long. Neelmoy and I both think that if India recruited some of its athletes from this population, with proper nutrition, these guys would be winning medals. I read similar musings on a NY Times blog, "Two for the Road," where they wrote about bicycles in Africa, and how they are used for both transportation and income.
Yesterday I left Delhi for Bangalore. As soon as I got to the airport, I felt more at ease knowing that I was relatively familiar with the place, and maybe 10% proficient in the local language, Kannada. It's nice to be back though, in my old room at Mantri, and to see familiar faces again. The sounds of the city are also very familiar, as the nearby temple is now broadcasting vocal music and some sort of talking along with the typical clanging of the bells on the loudspeaker.
I'm also excited to go back to the school that I worked in last summer, but from what I heard, things have deteriorated and there are now more students and fewer teachers than before. I'll go on Thursday and report back after that. Until then... tata!
