Serve in India
Service Corps Stories
Puja Gupta (Education – Bodh Shiksha Samiti, Jaipur)
When I first got accepted into the American Indian Foundation’s Service Corps Fellowship with a position at an education NGO, I didn’t know what to expect. I had no particular desire to work in education, nor had I any real experience in the field. But, the location of Jaipur, Rajasthan, my place of birth and home to much of my family, was too much of a pull. And so I accepted.
Bodh Shiksha Samiti introduced me to the subject of philosophy of education. I had never been exposed to alternative education, child centered learning, or whatever other term you’d like to place on it. Empowering children to question, to think, to use their mind as the powerful analytical creative tool that it is, versus a piggy bank for unprocessed facts, I think, is true education. The fact that Bodh was educating children in this way in slums and rural villages, in areas where the government and even the parents had given up, was amazing to me. And it was with these dedicated people, that I had the opportunity to have meaningful conversations on the nature and power of education.
When I started the fellowship I had no idea what I would do after the ten months had passed. However, now I am sure. Once I return to the states, I plan to teach for a few years and then pursue a masters or PhD in education.
Aditi Desai (Peace and Media Work, Utthan, Ahmedabad)
TDuring my tenure at Utthan, I've been working on a half hour documentary about Utthan's Peace Program (a program which began after the communal violence that occurred in Gujarat in 2002). The shock of being allowed to do this project wore off quickly, but the fright of working on my first documentary has yet to disappear. The film will be used as a tool to share Utthan's grassroots peace strategies with other peace building programs in other countries.
Needless to say, as the sole camera person, lighting person, set designer, script writer, editor etc. my hands have never been fuller. You name the worst situations possible to shoot in and I've attempted to do it. The organization wants a film, but not at the cost of disturbing the processes of the Peace Program. These minor worries aside, the field visits were amazing. I sat in on various meetings of local women's self-help groups and women's federations. These women are tough, smart and are facilitating change. They are also at the heart of Utthan's Peace Program in the Dahod and Panchmahal regions of Gujarat. They are now holding meetings in "mixed groups" as Utthan calls them that include Muslim, Hindu, Dalit and Adivasi women. They are the people breaching the gap between groups and are the strongest voices in this struggle for a united and peaceful community.
The continuous shooting in Dahod and Panchmahal was exhilarating, but there were also quite a few mishaps along the way. One of our consultants wanted me to shoot women washing clothes in the dhobi ghat built by Utthan (place designated to wash clothes in a flowing source of water). The various communities in this region have come together over common resources like this. The first dhobi ghat we went to happened to be dry, so nobody was washing. She then asked the women of Sant to take clothes to their local ghat, so I could film them. It was quite funny to "stage" this. Afterwards, the women thanked me because I had given them a reason to get their washing out of the way.
During the shooting of said activity, the sun was extremely bright. I asked Laxman, a peace team member, if we could film a front view of the women. He said, "Of course, but we'll have to cross the water and climb up a boulder". He thought I would say no, but to his surprise I said sure. I gave him the camera and he went ahead without one misstep. I expected as much because he is from that region and familiar to the terrain. I began walking and whoosh!! I fell on the moss covered rocks. One of the young girls washing clothes came to help me and fell right in along side me. We both barely slipped and slid our way to the boulder and I dragged myself up. With no dignity left and really it was funny, I knelt down and to Laxman's horror wiped my hands on his dry pant legs. He was wearing the only dry material around or so I thought. To my utter embarrassment, he offered me a dry handkerchief. I then began shooting, but I was so wet and cold that I couldn't stop shivering. Needless to say, the steady shot I was envisioning never quite happened. On the way down, Laxman again traversed the rocks without any problem, but I fell in thrice more. At one point, two young girls from the village took each of my hands to steady me, but we all fell in. The people watching us were in hysterics as was I. Laxman, who was too shy to speak to me before that, could not stop laughing at me after the dhobi ghat episode.
If that was not enough, that same afternoon I had another widely witnessed accident. I was shooting an interview outside a woman's thatched roof house. It was beautiful and I was actually allowed to direct where I wanted people to sit, where the microphone should be placed, etc. Suddenly, in the middle of the interview, "crack, thunk and bhoom". The handmade, wooden cot I was sitting on gave out beneath me. I was supposedly not sitting on it properly and should have placed my weight towards the center. Everybody muffled their laughter because the interview was still going on and there was ample laughter. After that, nobody in the Utthan field team thought twice about speaking with me or joking with me. I might have lost much of my dignity that day, but I definitely gained some new friends. During the closing comments at the October field visit, Jayantibhai the head of that office said that he felt like I had been with Utthan for ten years. All of the field team nodded and gave me high-fives. I think that was the highest compliment and deepest felt praise I have received to date.
Continuing my work with the Peace Program has been wonderful, but extremely difficult too. The issues that come out and the uneasy political climate have made for many sleepless nights. The process of learning has been lonely, but I have learned to fully depend on myself and have gained much internal strength from this.
However, the peace team is what really keeps me motivated. Recently, I helped organize a peace team delegation to the Karachi World Social Forum. The process was difficult and time consuming, but the outcome was way beyond our highest hopes. Seven of us including myself went to Karachi not knowing what to expect and with quite a bit of fear about our reception in Pakistan. Our perceptions were completely changed as we were literally engulfed by the loving warmth of men and women from the community. Everybody from the rickshaw wallah to the restaurant owners to random people on the street kept hailing us as guests. They kept reiterating that there is much love between Pakistanis and Indians and that it is only politics that separate the two communities. With these awesome declarations of love and peace, came offers of everything from free pani puri and oranges to discounted rickshaw rides. Watching the faces of each of the peace team members as they met people working on peace issues in other countries, marched alongside peace groups through the WSF fair ground and danced to music about bringing discrimination to an end I could see their energy rise and their commitment to peace in Gujarat become even stronger
The WSF was inspiring for all of us and our experience will inform our work for a long time to come. At the closing ceremony Jaya Chavda, a member of Utthan's peace team from Bhavnagar, Gujarat, was asked to represent India in a five minute speech. She summed up our experiences beautifully and led the massive crowd in a short song about peace. She was quoted the next day in one of the largest English language newspapers in Pakistan called Dawn in an article titled 'No let-up in global struggle for peace'. That title sums up not only the Karachi, WSF, but also the peace team's own determined resolve to continue work in areas where the effects of violence are ever present in daily life long after the most extreme violence has ended. These events and people will be with me long after my AIF fellowship is over giving me determination to continue working on issues of peace especially concerning women.