Review of Week 4: Business as Usual?

For a few days this week I felt like I joined Corporate India. I bused to the office and then did research and wrote some of my report on my laptop all day. Except at this office I was frequently interrupted by the 7 year old who lives upstairs. Sambhav is always excited to run downstairs and practice a little English with me and then lapse into rapid fire Hindi that I just sort of laugh along with. The other day after lunch I played Snakes and Ladders with him for about forty-five minutes and I got to practice counting and losing gracefully in Hindi. That same day I was encouraged by my supervisor to take a nap on the floor, so I did. Then Thursday I had five cups of chai in one day! So my corporate India is maybe a little different from corporate America.

In addition to working with women and children through the Anganwadi Center system, my organization works with leather artisans in Jodhpur. Meera Sansthan is trying to organize the artisans into Self Help Groups so that they can apply for loans from microfinance organizations. They also organize trainings on leather design development and quality improvement. They also are trying to help the artisans find a better path to customers. In any case, one day this week to break up the monotony of office life (which is actually usually pretty eventful) my supervisor decided to send me off to the leather cluster to see the leather workers in action and ask them some questions. They really do amazing work--Jodhpur is famous for producing Jutis, which are leather embroidered shoes, and the designs are sometimes quite intricate. What blows me away is the price of all these leather products. The Jutis sell for about 170 Rs., or $4. Handmade, all leather, hand stitched--such a labor intensive product for so little profit. Which is a problem--most leather artisans are barely getting by, and the men I talked to said they weren't letting their sons go into the family business because it was so much work with so little return. However, somehow one guy had the time and energy to build the world's largest Juti! It was 8 ft long, three men can sleep inside, and 12 children can sit inside. He said his next project was to build an entire room out of leather.

As part of my host sister's 17th birthday celebration on Friday we went to the McDonald's which just opened in Jodhpur. I was pretty curious what would be on the menu since this country is mostly vegetarian and almost completely beef-free. There were a lot of chicken products and then three or four veggie or paneer options. The whole experience was a little overwhelming--there were a lot of people and I'm not sure how familiar my family was with the American fast food process. They asked me for recommendations and I just had to say that the entire menu was new to me. I didn't elaborate on the American version--the last time we brought up the fact that Americans eat beef they all seemed pretty scandalized. We all got the Tikka Burger which had a patty of potato masala. It was nice, but not as spicy as the name implied. About an hour and a half later we went out for real dinner (burgers are just snacks, I guess?) and the place knew my family so well that when we sat down we didn't even order. The servers just brought out "the usual"--onion salad, roti, dal, malai kofta, and then some papad at the end. Dolly said that the dal here was the best in all of Jodhpur. I'm not experienced enough with Jodhpur or dal to agree or disagree, but it was really spicy and had about a cm of straight ghee sitting on top. Even my host family agrees that the food there is really rich.

The interns got together to celebrate the 4th of July yesterday. We had some group birthdays this past week too, so we had birthday cake, biryani, mutton, chicken, egg curry, paneer, dal, salad, tons of fresh fruit which none of our host families seem to want to give us ever, and gaudy Indian birthday decorations. We even got some fireworks and shot them off in an abandoned lot across the street from the office. That attracted a lot of attention--a bunch of foreigners yelling and shooting off fireworks on some random night in July? But it was pretty exciting. Someone's hand almost got blown off (of course). And I forgot to take pictures.

Today was apparently the hottest day so far, and somehow we had decided to spend it outside touring Mandore Gardens. They are a popular picnic spot for Indian families, so on a Sunday they were starting to get a little crowded, even with the heat. Since Rajasthan is mostly desert, I was expecting the gardens to be sort of dried out. Instead everything was very green and lush with bright flowering bushes. We walked through some shrines to past maharajas, saw lots of monkeys, and wandered back to what we thought might be ruins of the original fort. One of the other interns also was accosted by a local old woman who really wanted to touch a white face.

I think this last weekend was my last quiet weekend. I have travel plans for the remaining three before I have to leave. Next weekend the interns are going to Mt. Abu which is a hill station not too far from here. Apparently it's a popular Indian tourist spot, which is intriguing. The following weekend we have an intern retreat in Udaipur. Then my last weekend another intern and I are going to try to make it to the Taj Mahal, which is about 12 or 13 hours from Jodhpur. And then the next weekend I fly to London! But it's India, so who knows what will really happen.