Experiencing the most

March 4th, 2008 by Bronwen Mander

I have really wanted to experience the most of India, in every way. I have become more daring by eating street food, provided I see it being cooked and I eat it fresh. So far so good. I talk to the teachers at the school about their families and the restrictions placed on them in the Hindu tradition. For instance, these women must live with their parents-in-law after they are married. I also visited an exhibition yesterday of posters from women’s rights campaigns over the last few decades, at the Seaford Gallery in SP Mukherjee Rd, which was extremely beautiful and immensely powerful.

To add to my determination to experience India, today I wore a saree to work. I could not help but feel beautiful in it, because of the flow of the fabric and the colours.

I am really enjoying the school, the kids and the teachers. We spend most of the time in Nursery now, which is the equivalent of Prep, where they start the ‘abc’, ‘123′, learning fruit and vegetables and conversation in English. Moushumi, the teacher, asks me to work on pronunciation with the class. Of course, it only works when she’s in the classroom, because when she leaves, the order falls apart as the kids start yakking, pushing each other around and yelling “Mam, Mam, colouring” as they motion the action. That’s because they know that I always come with a sack-full of drawings and paper activities, to use in the gaps and when I’m asked to take a class.

The stick is wielded quite frequently here, although never hard or furious, but we Westerners are quite incapable of using it. I’ve noticed that swiping kids across the head is quite common in Kolkata too. And of course the kids do it to each other. A lot of whacking, swiping and jabbing goes on in the classroom.

Moushumi asked me to take Nursery for rhymes today, but I told her I didn’t think I could do it. It really would not have worked. They are only good when they are singing songs they already know. So instead she asked me to take the boys out to the balcony to play (groan). I have had the girls before. They are great because they get on so well and I’ve worked out that they can usually invent a game out of a starting point (e.g. fruit and vegetables). Boys, who like to frequently propel themselves into piles of four or five on the dusty concrete floor, are another thing. The major difficulty in taking on these activities is that I can’t communicate with them. I cannot explain to them, for example, how to play Tag.

But I took them with some confidence that I could manage them in play (which I really enjoy), and I am proud to say that, as with the girls, all was fine. I managed to procure a semi-flat (so, it was soft) plastic ball. As expected it generated many ‘piles’ of boys and a few tussles, but everyone enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the ball flew out of the balcony a couple of times and, at the end, a man picked it up and took it into the HIV unit below. We managed to get it back, but it put a dampener on the fun because the teachers didn’t want to lose the ball. It was put away and the kids had to sit on the floor for 5 or 10 minutes until lunch.

Till the next one.