Saying goodbye

One afternoon during my last week at AWWD, Tabassum came into our office with Sumita (our lovely office assistant). Sumita proceeded to lay out three empty water bottles in front of Tabassum. I looked on in bafflement, slowly turning to understanding, as Tabassum tucked her dupatta closely around her face, closed her eyes and lifted up her hands, murmuring Arabic under her breath. The three bottles of water were placed so she could feel that she was praying in the correct direction, towards Mecca. In spite of the telephones ringing, conversations, and people walking in and out, Tabassum was entirely focused on her prayers. For a couple of minutes a corner of our office was filled with peace and devotion.

It is these moments that I will most miss – the unexpected and unadulterated, if transitory, window through to another’s world and life. AWWD’s community workers have been open and genuine with me, inviting me into their homes and lives, with no expectation of anything in return except friendship. I know that they have given a lot more than I have given back: if ever I am disgruntled or complaining of life back home, I will think back to a beautiful blind woman living in atrocious conditions, unable to see but able to bring joy and a smile to those she meets, who has experienced the darkness of life that I can scarcely imagine, but who is herself a light to those around her.

Although at times I did find Kolkata as a city fairly difficult, frequently needing the (comparitive) peace of my room to recover, there can be no getting away from the fact that I will miss it. Kolkata is a passionate city: with so much humanity squeezed together in such a relatively small area, it vibrates with life. In spite of the huge divide between rich and poor, and the exclusion of many from the riches the city has to offer, it is relatively safe (with the substantial exception of the driving). I could walk through the slums with little fear of robbery. And it is a city with significant religious and ethnic diversity, of which Kolkatans are justly proud. With a 40% Muslim minority, Christians, Jews as well as Hindus, in the last few decades Kolkata has not seen the religious violence that has affected other parts of India. Lakshmi, a Hindu, could lead Tabassum, a Muslim, freely through the streets.

So, I will miss the children from my street running up to shake my hand every time I walk past; driving through the city in a taxi - the varied scents of the city wafting through the open windows: smoke, drains, fried food, flowers, and incense; popping over to my local fruit stall and picking up a few mangoes for 50 Rs…. No, I am not going to look back at my time here through rose-tinted spectacles: the brutal reality of life in Kolkata for many of the disabled women I met effectively prevents me from doing this. And so I will have no easy answer for all those who ask me, on my return ‘how was India?’

Before I left for Kolkata I visited some Christian friends who mentioned the following verse. This has had special meaning for me throughout my time in Kolkata, so it seems appropriate to end this chapter of my life with this verse, but at the same time looking to the future:

‘I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them, and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them’.

Isaiah 42: 16

Advice for the unwary British traveller in India

'When are you planning to leave Kolkata?’ Judith, fellow VSO volunteer, asked me tentatively during my last week at work. My first thought – what did she mean, planning to leave?! I was definitely leaving, flights booked, tickets printed out, parental pick up at Heathrow confirmed, on the 7^th of September. She continued, ‘I’ve just got a nice little message from the American consulate saying there is an India-wide strike starting at 6 am on the 7^th September until 6 am on the 8^th. They are suggesting American citizens don’t travel at all in West Bengal that day. The airport may be closed.’

So, initial decision – whether to laugh or cry. Deciding on laughing (albeit slightly hysterically) my mind wandered over all my travel plans that had gone awry over the previous month. Was I simply unlucky, or was this all part of the Indian experience? Here follows a brief summary of travelling stresses:

1. Floods in Ladakh damaging 80% of the main city’s infrastructure and the runway, two days before we were supposed to fly there.

2. Power cut at 4 pm on Friday afternoon, lasting the whole evening, just as I was trying to book bus tickets and hotel for a hurriedly re-planned holiday on-line (before flying to Delhi early Saturday morning).

3. When we did manage to get bus tickets from Delhi to Dharamsala (in the foothills of the Himalayas) my friend, who I was travelling with, and I were surprised to find that the bus didn’t leave from central New Delhi. This would have been (relatively) easy to find. No. Rather our bus tickets were from, I quote, a 'petrol pump' on a random road the other side of the city. There is no way we could have found it by ourselves, but luckily we had a very nice taxi driver who not only found the correct petrol pump, but also waited around with us during torrential rain, asked around to see whether we were in the correct place, found that we weren’t, and drove us a further 15 minutes up the road to a narrow and bumpy side street, at the bottom of which were a few coaches. He then asked around to find out which was our coach, and so we finally managed to collapse into our seats, fairly sure that we were heading to Dharamsala and not Manali, Simla or any other place in India (nothing would have surprised me by that point).

4. The overnight bus journey to Dharamsala was actually OK and I even slept a bit. This was not the case on the return journey. Unfortunately I pretty quickly started feeling sick due to the steep and winding mountain roads. Then unfortunately, I somehow managed to start hyperventilating (or something) and ended up being completely unable to move my hands or arms, which was really scary. I panicked and demanded that the whole coach stop, it’s funny that when you are feeling so ill you want to die all self-consciousness flies out of the window.

5. So, when we arrived in Delhi the next morning neither my friend nor I were at our best. We had train tickets from New Delhi to Jaipur for that afternoon. However, key lesson I had learned: don’t take anything or granted, and triple check everything. On triple checking the tickets, then, I found that the train didn’t actually leave from New Delhi station, which is what the ticket implied, but actually Old Delhi station, which was a lot further away. I also received a text stating that the time of the train had changed, but not saying to what time. It was then we realised we hadn’t left enough time to get to Old Delhi station given torrential rain, consequent lack of taxis and major traffic jams. So we gave up, and decided to enjoy the delights that Delhi had to offer instead.

6. I managed to fly back from Delhi to Kolkata without any problems.

I realise the above may have given the impression that I didn’t enjoy my holiday, which actually wasn’t the case. When we did manage to get to Dharamsala, it was very beautiful and peaceful (particularly compared to Kolkata).

Unfortunately it was the monsoon season, so it was fairly cloudy and rainy, but we managed to do some cooking lessons, plenty of shopping, and a hike up to 3000m (which, given my complete lack of exercise for the previous six months, I felt was quite impressive). We stayed in McLeod Ganj, which is also known as Upper Dharamsala, and where the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan community live. It was interesting, if shocking, talking to Tibetans and hearing their stories. Many had escaped Tibet over high mountain passes, some suffering from snow blindness or frostbite, and now cut off and unable to return to their families. There were many Buddhist monks, and we visited a few monasteries where monks were busy debating the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy: when they feel they make a sound point they stamp their feet and clap their hands.

McLeod Ganj is very much on the tourist trail, and was a very different experience both to living in Kolkata and to visiting the mountains in Pakistan. It was clearly set up to receive a high number of tourists – there were many coffee shops, and it was even possible to get mozzarella cheese (incredible – it’s almost impossible to get even in the huge metropolis of Kolkata!). The hotels, even the budget ones, were nice, with hot showers and comfortable beds. While I enjoyed the experience, it isn’t one I would really like to repeat. Many tourists like to talk about experiencing the ‘real’ India. While I don’t think this is a tenable concept, given a country of 1.2 billion people and 72 languages, the hotels and restaurants of the tourist centres set up to cater for the needs of rich westerners are about as far away from the experiences of 90% of Indians as is possible to get. It seemed to me many tourists expect western standards of comfort and luxury with a little bit of exotic culture thrown in. I even felt I was treated differently as compared to living in Kolkata: particularly in Delhi whenever I stepped out into the street I felt like I had a big notice pinned to my back: ‘tourist is ‘ere: please scam or rip me off’. There were redeeming features of Delhi though – the Jama Masjid was beautiful, as was the Red Fort.

So, my advice for an unwary British traveller in India: travel with an Indian who knows about the intricacies of the Indian transport system and can deal with scams!

And as for my trip home, well I was able to alter my plane ticket from Kolkata to Delhi to fly out a day early, so I spent a day in Delhi before flying home. While Kolkata was absolutely bought to a standstill by the strike (80 flights out of the airport were cancelled), Delhi was hardly affected. So it ended happily (for me) after all.

Rakhi, Ramazan, and a 'normal' Kolkata day

One of the things I will really miss about Kolkata is the fact that I can get out of bed at 8.30, then leave my house at one minute to ten and still arrive at the office on time. It’s great! Office hours are from 10 until 6 (but actually the day for me doesn’t start properly until after 10.15, when Sumita brings the chai around). I spend most days in the office, and I have been working on three main areas: reporting, information management, and communications, which I will now explain in detail. Those interested can read on, others of you skip to para 4 (smarties may be available for those of you who read on).

For many small NGOs, their project work is their area of expertise, but they have few resources (time or money) to put into aspects of organizational effectiveness – tasks like reporting, documenting their work, or monitoring the impact of their activities. These tasks – particularly reporting for donors - are often viewed as chores rather than an exercise that will benefit the organization. So, my first objective has been to develop a reporting system which will enable the organization to analyse and learn from their work, and also fulfill the requirements for donors. The first stage is the daily reporting for the field workers' project activities. The organization needs to know how many visits they have done, what problems they have come across and their achievements. So I worked with the team developing a format for them to capture this information. Simple, I hear you say. Well, yes. And no. Most of the field workers are disabled women from the slums themselves, which is wonderful and what the organization is all about, but some have not completed primary school, and most did not complete secondary school. Developing a format that they were happy to use and which captured the necessary information, therefore, was actually quite challenging, and involved many discussions. We will see if it will actually be used….

The next level was collating this information on a monthly basis, to assess whether the team has met their targets. This involves collecting both quantitative and qualitative information – for example how many girls are undertaking tailoring training, but also what kind of problems the community workers faced when going to the hospital. And then the information from this can be used in quarterly monitoring – to see whether we are achieving the indicators of success established when the project was designed. It has been quite fun (really!) designing a whole system from scratch - everything was done on a very ad hoc basis before. The reporting has linked closely with my work on information management – it is necessary to be able to store the information systematically so the organization can access and use it!

The other major area I have been working on has been communications: helping the organization publicise their work through developing communications materials and a brand identity. The individual stories of women with disabilities involved with AWWD challenge the endemic stereotypes of WWD, illustrate their capabilities, and the challenges that they face. So I have developed a series of three communications materials based on the stories of individual WWD – a series of posters to grab people’s attention at events, an introductory leaflet explaining about AWWD and the work we do, linking this with brief stories of some of the WWD, and finally a booklet of case studies, based around certain rights (eg the right to livelihood, the right to education) and how WWD have claimed these rights. As you can probably imagine, one of the best parts of my work was visiting some of these women and hearing their inspiring stories.

So, on this ‘normal’ day in the office I spend the morning working on these types of tasks. I have a few options for lunch: often Judith and I go to the local Barista (coffee shop), which is rather expensive, but does have a wide variety of chocolate milkshakes, and is air conditioned. We have to take an auto rickshaw down our crazy road for 3 minutes, careering past lorries and taxis and hanging on for dear life. This deposits us at the crossroads, where we have to somehow navigate across the road without being run down, and then down a footpath dodging past sleeping dogs and motorcyclists who think that driving down the pavement is a good idea. Or Judith and I go to a Chinese restaurant opposite the coffee shop, which does good veg chowmein. Or, sometimes I go with some of the field staff to our local ‘hotel’. This is rather an unusual hotel: it is situated by the side of the road, has wooden benches and plastic sheeting for a roof, and a plate of rice, dal and veg costs 10 Rupees. The food is actually good, if I ignore the ants crawling across the table and don't sit on any rusty nails.

After lunch, on this 'normal' day, all the community workers arrived in the office because it was Rakhi: a festival where sisters celebrate how wonderful their brothers are. Yes, really. Sisters give their brothers pretty bracelets – sometimes bits of string, but sometimes ornately patterned. Now, however, the festival has expanded, and friends give each other bracelets as a sign of affection. Also, one girl told me that it is a good way of warning off guys who are too interested: if a girl gives a guy a bracelet it shows him that she considers him as a brother, and nothing more! I asked whether there is any festival where brothers celebrate how wonderful their sisters are, but apparently not. So, part of this afternoon was spent tying bracelets on each other and eating Bengali sweets that the girls had bought in.

When the day finished at 6 I walked home, past the kids flying kites at the side of the road. When I walked into my place the girls doing a tailoring training course were still there, and were seriously eyeing my bottle of cold water. For it is Ramazan at the moment, and these girls had fasted all day. I also had bought with me some of the sweets we had had in the office, so I sat down with the girls on the cement floor, and they broke their fast with sweets and cold water. They also wanted to see photos of my family and home: they could not believe that my parents house had a separate bathroom, kitchen and dining room. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea showing them.

Evenings chez moi aren’t such fun, and usually consist of reading, writing my blog, collapsed on my bed due to the heat, going stark crazy because the fan is squealing again, or watching one of my 6 DVDs that I had bought with me (again!). But actually, I am usually too tired from working and from the heat to do anything constructive and lying on my bed is the best option. And so ends a normal Kolkatan day.

Floods

Ladakh: the Buddhist part of Indian Kashmir, and apparently one of the only parts of India not affected by the monsoon. According to Lonely Planet, it receives about as much rainfall as the Sahara desert. Imagine our surprise then, when, two days before we were due to go there was torrential rain causing mudslides: 80% of the infrastructure of the city of Leh was damaged or destroyed, and 150 people were killed. So we had to quickly change our holiday plans. More of that in another blog entry. But I can’t talk about floods and strange weather patterns without mentioning Pakistan, although I am almost at a loss to know what to say. This time two years ago I was in Ghizer, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush enjoying the beauty of the blue skies unaffected by monsoon rain. Now I am getting emails from friends in that area saying the roads are destroyed, there is no clean water, little power and little food in the markets. And even friends who are in areas not flooded are struggling with inflation. I have never felt so powerless to be able to help friends in trouble.

The media have been highlighting the slowness of international aid in comparison with the extent of the need – the Secretary General of the UN has said that more people are have been affected than the tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake and the earthquake in Haiti combined. It is thought that international aid has been slow because of concerns about terrorism, and, combined with this, possible misuse of aid (although the UK public have been one of the most generous donors). I have read several good articles arguing that because of the negative image Pakistan has, the crisis has been viewed first through the lens of the threat of terrorism, and then as a humanitarian catastrophe, which has affected the response of the international community and therefore is compounding the suffering of those affected. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8931886.stm
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/19/why_doesnt_the_world_care_about_pakistanis The vast majority of Pakistanis - those who have lost everything in the floods - have not only been victims of terrorism for many years, but now are trying to survive and keep their families alive. The Pakistan that I remember is not constituted solely by corruption, Islamic extremism and terrorism: it was the most beautiful place with the most hospitable people I have ever visited. Not only is the suffering that they are experiencing heartbreaking, but it is even worse that this is compounded by such a negative image. These are some of my memories of Pakistan:

To finish – here are some things my friends have been emailing me from Pakistan: ‘all the bridges are gone, there are many communication problems’, ‘may God help us get through it all’, ‘there is no water, no electricity, no food available in the market and life is miserable. The flood has swept away most of our beautiful lands’, ‘our country is being pushed back to the stone age’.

To donate to support the DEC appeal: http://www.dec.org.uk/.

Monsoon!

There have been several clear signs that it is the monsoon season, in addition to the almost daily bouts of torrential rain and massive thunderstorms. It now takes approximately three days to dry my clothes, several clothes have started sprouting a variety of types of mould, and my walls are now a lovely mottled pink colour - darker where there is damp. I can't really decide which season I have liked least - the intense heat before the rains, when prickly heat was the order of the day, or the humidity of the monsoon - after it has rained going anywhere is like wading through a steam bath. But apart from these few minor inconveniences (as well as the increase in number of rats and cockroaches due to drains being flooded) the monsoon hasn't really affected daily life as much as thought it would. I've only had to wade once - I don't think it has been as heavy here as usual. So life is going on pretty much as normal, I'm still bewailing my significant hair loss due to anti-malarials, drinking frequent chocolate milkshakes, and negotiating the Kolkata traffic with a shudder. The most exciting occurrence of the last week has been the discovery of a street food stall opposite my house where I can get a paratha (fried chappati) and vegetable curry for 8 Rupees. That's about 10 pence. That even puts the chicken chow mein I was getting for 23 Rupees in the shade. So as you can probably conclude, my attempts at Indian cookery have come to an abrupt end!

The last couple of weekends I've been meeting up with other VSO volunteers for mutual emotional support, a little bit of grumbling, and touristy sessions, which has been great. The other saturday we decided to go to Babu Ghat - I had read that it was by the river, so I thought it would be a nice calming place with a little river breeze, perfect for a saturday afternoon stroll. But, actually, it is a gathering place for Hindus, so at the entrance was a seething and jostling mass of Indian men and women, some ambling around, many sitting around ornate statues of Gods and Goddesses decorated with brightly coloured and beautifully scented flowers, the smells mingling with the many incense sticks. We made our way past all these people, hoping not tread anywhere that would cause religious insult, and made our way down to the river. Well, or we tried to, but it was very muddy, so decided instead we would take in the view from the top. Hundreds of men, women and children had come here to bathe in the Hooghly, and were splashing happily across the mud and submerging themselves in the river. Some boys were diving off the rusty hulk of a ship near to the shore. We took in the view for a while, enjoying the people-watching, but then Debs mentioned that it was a bit like staring at people going for a swim in the sea, so decided perhaps our staring should cease.
We thought we would walk up to the flower market, as that is also by river. Unfortunately there was no riverside path, so we had to walk along the main road. And not only is Babu Ghat a special place for Hindus, it is also a main bus station in Kolkata, so the road was fairly busy. There was also a pretty constant succession of porters with huge weights on their heads coming from Howrah station. So all in all walking down the road was quite an intense experience - checking behind to jump out of the way of careering buses and motorcycles, diving out of the way of porters who didn't look like they could change direction even if they wanted, and avoiding open drains and urinals. And all in the glaring sun - it would be an understatement to say after 10 minutes I was a little sweaty, drenched would be the correct term. We walked past an expensive hotel, one that is actually floating on the river, and decided to go and have a look at the menu - less to see that and more to benefit from a couple of minutes of a/c. We walked in and immediately felt out of place given our sweaty-ness, but in the restaurant they invited us to sit down, and gave us free drinks of salt lemon soda - this was the first free thing I had been given in India, and it was perfectly timed! After this rejuvenating drink we felt more energised to walk to the flower market, which is under the Howrah bridge, and is where the Kolkata population buy their flowers for puja, or prayers. By this time it had started to drizzle, so we got onto the bridge and were able to stand in the rain staring down at the craziness below - the packed street lined with stall after stall of bright pink, orange, purple and yellow flowers contrasting oddly with the black and blue plastic sheeting. Men with huge baskets of strings of orange and yellow flowers on their heads jostled their way through the crowds, and every so often a small van barged its way scattering everyone to either side. And walking through the market was an experience for all five senses - the dampness of the drizzle, the pushing and shoving and beeping of horns, wafts from the scents from the different types of flowers - it was great. And I think this is first market I have been to where I didn't buy anything, tempting as it was!

Bits and pieces

I thought that things reached a new low on the rat front the other day: there was a half eaten rat outside my front door. It literally was half eaten, but I won’t go into gruesome details for you. But then yesterday I was talking to Lakshmi and Tabassum and I realized actually I have nothing to complain about. It is monsoon season at the moment – although the rain hasn’t been as torrential as I expected there is still enough of it around. And in the slums this means flooding – Tabassum says it sometimes the water comes up to her waist. And with the flood waters the rats come out. I came across Lakshmi laughing with another girl in Bengali, and I asked what was funny. It was this: Lakshmi lives in a one room house with 7 people and one bed – so she has to sleep on the floor, with rats running around. She can’t sleep, she can’t cook, she can’t keep things dry. All she can do is laugh about it. And for Tabassum - when the shacks flood there is no place to cook so they have to cook on a shelf above their bed. Some people in their slum shelter in a primary school when things get too bad, but there is never space for Tabassum and her family because three of them are disabled. I thought I was beyond crying, I thought I had reached a subconscious level of acceptance of the poverty here, but how can I accept this? What can I do? These are no longer just work colleagues, they are friends, and I am powerless to help them in any substantive way. Kolkata is really challenging some of my most basic beliefs – it is not possible to always be the good Samaritan, the extent and level of suffering means that in many cases I do have to walk on the other side. But then, more positively, it never ceases to amaze me the tenacity of the human spirit, and the way the girls are able to continue living and smiling, even in such awful circumstances.

There have been two telling bits of news in the last week related to India and poverty – the first is that an Oxford research report has concluded that 8 states in India (including West Bengal) have in total more poor people than 26 of the poorest countries in Africa. Unbelievable. And almost on the same day it was reported in the Indian news that DfID may significantly reduce aid to India. They cite the reason as being the India’s substantially growing economy. Why has India’s wealth not trickled down to people living in circumstances that can best be described as inhumane? Why can I sit in a rickshaw next to a girl using an Iphone and drive past a little boy suffering from diarrhea on the street, as he has no other place to go?

I didn’t mean for this to be a really depressing blog, because actually I have been more positive recently. I have less than two months to go, so I am trying to relish every minute (well, as far as that is possible with the heat, humidity and rats) as I know I will miss it when I am back home. And, after 3 months of living here, I am finally becoming more comfortable with Kolkata as a city – I am enjoying wandering around the market after work now instead of getting stressed about being run over etc. And I am going on holiday soon to Ladakh!!

I will finish with some things I have learnt in the last couple of weeks:

- how to slam the door and assertively walk away from a taxi driver who shouts at me insisting I pay triple fare (as well as learning ‘I may be a foreigner but I am not a fool’ in Bengali and Hindi)
- how to hold a conversation in three languages (I speak in English, someone whose mother tongue speaks in Bengali, and someone whose mother tongue is Hindi speaks in Hindi, and we all kind of understand)
- how to work in an organization when at one point only 2 other people spoke English
- where to get good food – there is an expensive restaurant down our road which we went to the other day – we all ended up with swollen and itchy feet due to MSG. From now on I will stick to the outdoor fast food vendor – at least if I get ill I’ll know it is because of good old dirt.
- h ow to deal patiently with bureaucracy (keeping my temper when I have to fill out exactly the same form twice, with exactly the same information that the official already has in triplicate in front of him. Once I had filled it out he ticked my answers, obviously making sure that the colour of my eyes (yes, really) and my father’s name hadn’t changed since last time.

A haven of peace, ponds and palms

It felt very much like a ride at a theme park: an Indian jungle adventure. I was sitting in an auto-rickshaw, tightly squeezed between two Indian ladies, being alternately shaken up and down and lurched from side to side as the auto crashed its way down a mud and brick jungle footpath. Lush green vegetation, palm trees, bamboo, and banana trees encircled our route, and we could almost see the steam rising, so intense was the humidity: it had just stopped raining.

Twenty bone-shattering minutes later and we had arrived at the end of the auto-navigable path. Where there was no brick, the monsoon had created a muddy swamp of a path, so we had to continue on foot. A couple of minutes later, however, and we had reached our destination village. Behind a pond, where women were squatting cleaning their pots and pans, were a cluster of houses, some made out of mud, and some out of a combination of bamboo, plastic sheets and brick. I had to pinch myself to ensure I was really here, it was so like going back in history, or walking into a museum on rural life.

In spite of the beauty of the area, the whole situation spoke of intense poverty. Houses made of mud, women cleaning kitchen implements in a pond, a 45 plus minute walk to a road: life must be hard. And for a woman who was unable to walk for much of her childhood: the challenges must have been almost unimaginable. We were here to meet Moumita, who had suffered from polio as a baby. For many women, such a combination of circumstances would result in absolute dependence on her family and isolation within her house. Not so for Moumita. She was introduced to me as the only woman in her area who had completed higher secondary school, who had graduated, and who now was studying for a Masters in Social Work. Up until the age of 15, her mother had carried her to school – first to her primary school, and then the 45 minute walk to the main road where she caught an auto. But in class 11 she was introduced to AWWD, who were able to provide her with callipers. These enabled her to walk comfortably, thus changing her life: she was able to continue her education.

I had come to AWWD’s rural office to interview girls for some case studies, and Moumita was not the only inspirational lady I met. Deep in another part of rural west Bengal, after a 30 minute walk meandering through lush green fields I met a proud proprietor of a village shop. Niberdita can’t walk at all: she can only get around by crawling. It is difficult to imagine a more challenging set of circumstances - being unable to walk would be unbearably difficult in any situation, but living 30 minutes from a road in a poor rural area - the mind boggles. But Niberdita is living with dignity and determination, and greeted us with a beautiful smile. AWWD had provided her with a loan, which enabled her to expand a shop, so now she is selling all sorts of groceries. She says: 'I meet with many people every day and this is very interesting. I cannot go outside and I cannot stay in the home alone. But now I can meet people who come to my shop'. And Sikha too, can’t walk. She gets around using a hand operated tricycle, which she uses to get to work - an hour journey either way on the awful mud and brick footpaths. And she has not missed an AWWD monthly meeting, even though to attend them involves a 12 kilometre journey in either scorching sun or torrential rain, depending on the season.

It was an immense privilege to meet these women who have faced challenges I can't even imagine, yet are still smiling and have an impressive zest for life.

I stayed for a week in the rural office in a little village called Subhi, which was really wonderful (apart from the toilet, a point to which I will return to later). The office had two bedrooms, so I slept there, as did several of the field staff. Every morning when I stepped outside I could see lush green fields, cows, palm trees and lemon trees. That was wonderful.

However, the whole village could also see me as I made my way blurrily to the bathroom, (which was actually four walls and a roof which contained a few buckets of water), which was less wonderful. And I don’t know whether you have ever had to use an outdoor toilet in a monsoon, situated next to a pond and with no light, but I wouldn’t recommend it. What made the whole situation even worse was that often at night dogs would prowl around, and I had nightmares of being trapped inside the spider-endowed toilet with yapping dogs outside, or venturing out and getting rabies. Neither of those untoward events happened, thank goodness, but it did make life that little bit more interesting.

One wonderful lady cooked for us in the evening. At first I tried to help, but I was obviously superfluous, and often ended up observing and writing notes in my little book instead (don’t expect wonders of Bengali cooking when I return, however, as I tried cooking tonight. The end result was a soggy green mess with bits of charcoaled garlic. Not quite the effect I was intending). All food was bought fresh – there was no fridge. We used to chop up the vegetables on the path outside the kitchen (complete with ants crawling around). But the end result was absolutely delicious: there were invariably three dishes and rice: how Mina managed to do this with only two gas hobs I do not know.

Another noteworthy aspect of life in rural West Bengal was both the variety of the types of transport available, and their capacity to expand to take an ever-increasing number of passengers. At the bottom is the lowly bicycle – you may assume that a bicycle can only take one person, but you would be mistaken. I espied a bicycle carrying four people, although admittedly one of them was child. One person was pedalling, one was sitting on the crossbar, one above the rear wheel, and a child balanced precariously between them. The next step up is a bicycle attached to a wooden platform on wheels. This platform is designed to carry a vast variety of items, from bricks to people. One evening when we were coming back from the field six of us clambered on to one of these wooden carts and one guy cycled us back to the office, which took about 30 minutes. Slowly meandering through the lush green West Bengal countryside was a wonderful experience for me, less wonderful for the cyclist though – beads of sweat were standing on his forehead. He did boast that he could take a max of 8 people on this crate. Below is a picture of one of these bicycle crates just visible below a rather large load of hay:

The next step up is the motorcycle: there were a fair few of these whizzing down the narrow lanes with little regard for pedestrians or animals in the way. And a similar form of wooden crate could be attached to the back of a motorcycle, which seemed to be able to take about 20 people in total. And a level above this contraption is the auto rickshaw. It was not uncommon to squeeze 5 people in the back and 5 in the front, plus a couple hanging on to the back for good measure:

And then there are the vans, which seem to be able to squeeze an ever expanding number of passengers. The picture below is of a van where the field staff wanted me to hang on to get home (it was rush hour and there were few options). As adventurous as I am, I downright refused to do this. Not only would it be difficult to hang on, but the buses come down the narrow roads at tremendous speeds, often passing other vehicles with only inches to spare. Being squished between two vehicles would not be a pleasant way to die.

Anyway, I won’t end on that less than cheerful note – I will say that experiencing this for a week: re-energised and motivated me to better deal with the craziness of Kolkata traffic.

A day out with the girls

Standing outside Linton Street Post Office gave me a good vantage point on which to gently muse on life and the busy-ness of passers-by (except when interrupted, fairly frequently, by young men who delighted in shouting out ‘hello lady’). With that name it sounds a typically British place, but in fact it couldn’t be more Indian. From the family sleeping on the pavement through the mid-day heat, oblivious to the flies swarming around them, to the young man standing idly by his sparkling new motorbike, the street encapsulated much of Kolkata life. For a while I stood by an old man and his wife who were making pakoras – they had got a small-scale production line going, scooping out big clumps of dough and dumping them in a pan full of sizzling and spitting fat. The end result looked quite appetising, but I couldn’t help pondering on the cleanliness of the man’s hand, and decided in the end to desist. Opposite this old man and his wife was a sparkling air-conditioned shop, selling, among other things, Cadbury’s chocolate, pepsi and Colgate toothpaste.

This street is also an entrance to Park Circus slum, and I was waiting for Tabassum and her sister Tarranum. Tabassum is a community worker with the Association for Women with Disabilities, and she had arranged a picnic by the river for some of the disabled girls from her slum. Tabassum is also blind.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a grubby little girl give me a cheeky grin, and then grab the hand of the older boy she was with and pull him authoritatively away. I smiled back. It was a couple of moments later, when the little girl turned round to look at me again, that I realised that it was Tarranum’s daughter. And the boy she was with was Tabassum’s brother. And it was a moment after that that the full realisation hit me: here was a five year old child leading a blind seven year old child alone on a 20 minute walk through a Kolkata slum, to meet a foreigner. And let me tell you that little girl was absolutely fearless. She confidently led both me and her uncle down the streets, guiding him past the motorbikes that came zooming close by us and other hazards endemic to the streets of Kolkata’s slums. When some older boys shouted out to her (I don’t know what they said) she went up and whacked one of them on the arm, albeit with her cheeky grin. And when walking past a cow she gave its rump a big whack as well. I gave the cow a wide berth.

We reached Tabassum’s shack with no other untoward event, and I was welcomed by the big smiles of both sisters decked out in sparkling shalwar kameez. We had arranged to meet at 3 o’clock, and I was spot on. It was not until 4 o’clock that the girls actually turned up, but I didn’t mind; it gave me time to talk to their mother in broken Hindi, and be fed a paratha and burger-y thing.

Once the other disabled girls from the slum arrived we walked together up to the main road, and hailed a taxi. We were a group of 10 people (with two children), so I assumed obviously that we were to be getting two taxis. Not so. Tarannum, I and Tabassum’s younger brother squeezed into the front seat next to the driver, and the other seven somehow managed to fit in the back. Being squeezed between a surly Indian taxi driver and an over-excited young boy, with my right leg twitching every time we drove up too quickly up to traffic lights, did not make for the most relaxing of journeys. However, we got there in one piece and piled out of the taxi, and I was able to breathe in the cooler river air and take in greenery and open spaces. Millennium Park was a welcome break from the craziness of Kolkata’s streets, and we all enjoyed ambling along the footpaths looking at the views across the river. I had been told that this was to be a picnic, so I came prepared with snacks of pasties and cakes. I seemed to be the only one who had brought food however, and meditated on the thought that perhaps Indian picnics don’t include food. The girls seemed happy enough to dig in to what I had brought though.

After having our fill of cakes I expressed a wish to go on the river, and Tarannum said that we could get the commuter boat across to Howrah station and back. This was definitely the best spent 10 Rupees ever. We all clambered on to this rusty hulk that had definitely seen better days, elbowing our way past hundreds of commuting men. The hulk slowly chugged across the river, I could say into the sunset, but unfortunately it wasn’t quite the right direction. We did chug our way past fishermen drawing in their nets, but also past huge rusty wrecks that seemed to be decomposing mid-river. Evidence of the decay of modern industrial ‘progress’ side by side with a still-thriving centuries-old way of life: interesting. At Howrah station the hordes of commuters pushed and jostled their way off the boat, and very few people got back on it for the return journey. We chugged our way back across the river, enjoying the cool breeze and twinkling lights of Kolkata.

Once the trip was over, the fun did not come to an end, however. We made our way to a mini theme park, and as the girls wished to sample the delights of one of the rides I let myself be talked into it. I was pleased to exit with my head still attached to my spine: I can’t imagine what Tabassum must have felt, not being able to see what she was letting herself in for. However, the girls obviously enjoyed it as they wished to go on the big swinging boat: I declined this pleasure and took on the role of official photographer.

After this we made our way to the exit, and before all piling into another taxi we partook of a Kolkata delicacy: pani puri (or something like that). It was very strange, once tried I don’t feel the need of trying it again. It was a fried UFO shaped object, inside which the street hawker puts a dab of something like mashed potato (not able to see clearly due to it being at night) and some bitter liquid. Hmm.

Very rarely are the girls able to get away from their slum, which made this day all the more special, although it was tinged with sadness for me. These girls probably wouldn’t have been able to afford even these simple pleasures had I not been there. One of the girls, who has a curved spine, took me gently by the hand, and then said to me ‘what must these people be thinking about us?’ A revealing comment from someone who has had stigma attached to her for her whole life.

20 million missing women

How do you count 1.2 billion people? The Indian government are working on this precise issue at the moment: 2011 sees the next census, where not only is every single citizen to be counted, but all over the age of 15 are going to be given an ID card. The mind boggles at the extent of the work and challenges involved. Not only are there the challenges of collecting data about all citizens, including migrants, Muslim women in purdah, and those living in huge slum colonies, but there are also perplexing difficulties concerning what questions should be asked. Whether caste should be included has been a hot topic. On the one hand gathering such data would be used to inform government policy for the disadvantaged – the pragmatic viewpoint is that caste is evident in Indian society today and therefore the government needs data so they are as well informed as possible. On the other hand, by including the question the government are perpetuating the issue of caste and caste distinctions, and through this are giving it more credibility when many believe it should be obsolete in a modern India.

Another important question, and more pertinent to my work, is whether there should be questions on disability. In theory, of course the government needs to know the extent of its disabled population. However, in practice the question has not always been included, partly because it is very difficult to frame: how do you define disability? How do you define whether someone is visually impaired – whether they wear glasses? There was no disability question in 1991, but a question was included in 2001. However, the question was inadequately framed – it did not include all forms of disability, and the census enumerators found it difficult to recognise when to define someone as disabled. According to the data generated by the 2001 census, 2.1% of the population are disabled. The UN estimates, on the other hand, are around 6%.

This means that 20 million disabled women were not counted in the last census. This is 20 million women who have been invisible in government policy for the last 10 years, who have not been taken into account in the allocation of resources or budgets.

It is therefore crucial that the government gains a more accurate picture this time round. Not only does this necessitate a more accurate framing of the question, and training of the census enumerators, but it also requires disabled women to stand up and be counted. It is thought that last time round many disabled women were unwilling to be counted due to shame and the stigma associated with disability.

To address these issues AWWD arranged a census seminar with disabled women, people from other NGOs, and government officials. The Census Commissioner for West Bengal and the Disability Commissioner both came and spoke about what their respective departments are doing about the issue, which was very positive. Disability groups have been more involved in the framing of the question this time, and it is likely they will be involved in training census enumerators. Now we need to spread the word among disabled women to stand up and be counted.

Elections!

There can be no doubt that it has been election season in West Bengal, and it is equally clear that Indians have embraced democracy wholeheartedly. In the last couple of weeks Kolkata has become, if possible, even more colourful, noisy and vibrating with activity. I was wrong to assume that the area in which I am living is a Communist Party stronghold though, – the Trinamul Congress (TMC) party have made significant inroads with their own flag providing activities. Now, each shop and building not only has several red and white hammer and sickle flags, but also the green, white and orange flags of the TMC party. It seems I myself have divided loyalties, as both a Communist and a TMC flag appeared overnight outside my house. The TMC has one up on the Communists (CPI (M) as they have a huge flag suspended between two buildings and hanging above the street. But, then, on the other hand there is a hammer and sickle in fairy lights near my office. And it is not only the flag business that has seen such an exponential rise in activity in the last few weeks. The loudspeakers down every street have been in use almost every evening, with men (and a few women) exhorting people to vote for them (well I think this is what they are saying, not too sure on the precise content given they are speaking in Bengali). It is clear though that as the evening wears on the speaker gets more and more frenzied. Loud music is also played, and processions and rallies have been noisily evident as well – drums, cheering, that sort of thing. Thankfully there must be a ban on rallies after 10 o’clock, but even so, four hours of almost continuous Bengali exhortations has been slightly too much of a good thing, particularly as the lack of glass in my windows has meant that I have been unable to significantly reduce the volume of noise.

The actual elections were last Sunday, and I stayed in all day as I wasn’t too sure how tense the situation would be. The headlines in the newspapers the next day said how peaceful it had been – most previous elections had seen ‘bombs and bullets’, but these had thankfully not been evident this time (except for one instance when a policeman had started shooting at someone).
The election results came out on Wednesday, and it was expected to be tenser. Judith and I went out for lunch: the situation didn’t seem very different from normal apart from a number of young men covered in red paint zooming down the streets on motorcycles, and a greater police presence. Other parts of the city saw hundreds of people come out en masse: it was an overwhelming victory for the TMC. My area elected a CPI (M) guy, so apparently it is predominantly Communist. I haven’t been aware of particular tensions when walking down my street, but then I am a foreigner and blissfully unaware of what is happening underneath the surface. Interesting times.

Another visit to the hospital

‘Do you need any help?’ I called out to Tabassum – not an unusual question for me to ask when someone else is preparing a meal. What was unusual about it this time was the fact that I had to crane my head over the edge of a bed to ask Tabassum, who was sitting underneath the bed chopping away at some onions, with a pot of rice boiling away by her side. Under the bed was the only available space in their tiny shack to cook – the whole width of the shack was taken up by their bed, and outside was a narrow alleyway; no space there either.

Such cooking conditions are fairly unusual in themselves. But Tabassum is also blind. She cooks by feeling and hearing. She feels whether the pot is in the correct position above the stove: how she does this without burning her hands is beyond me. She must hear when the water is boiling and it is time to add the rice, and feel how to take the lid off the saucepan. To witness such triumph over adversity; seeing how she continues to live her life even in the most difficult circumstances was emotional enough. But following from the day we had had it was almost too much.

I had met Tarranum, Tabassum’s sister earlier in the morning, and she walked back with me to their home. She introduced me to her five year old daughter, who was a cute little bundle of energy, and who hardly stayed still long enough for me to take a photo.

Tarranum is just nineteen years old. She lives with her husband’s family outside of Kolkata. Each morning at seven o’clock she leaves her house with her daughter and catches a train into the city. She drops off her daughter at nursery, and then makes her way to her family home where she helps Tabassum with household chores; this is necessary as her father and brother are also visually impaired. Her mother is currently visiting another married sister in Jaipur, whose newly born daughter is very ill. At ten o’clock every day Tarranum leads Tabassum out of their home and into the narrow streets, visiting other disabled girls in the area, helping them attend medical appointments and leading self help groups. It must be exhausting work, doing so much walking in the blistering heat, and with frequent power cuts. Work often doesn’t stop until 6 o’clock, when both girls return to their home and continue with household chores. Tarranum and her daughter do not reach their home until 10 o’clock at night.

When I arrived at their place on this particular morning Tabassum was sitting under the bed, eating her breakfast of rice. Breakfast over, our first stop was the home of a seven year old disabled girl. She is unable to sit or to stand, and is deaf and dumb. When we arrived she was lying on a piece of material on a cement floor. Her grandmother sat her up and supported her head, giving her a cuddle. Then she looked at me and said ‘what to do?’ I was utterly powerless to do anything to help or to say anything that would provide any comfort.

Our next stop was even worse. We walked into a tiny room, and at first I saw only two elderly people lying asleep on a bed. But then I noticed a teenager sitting on the floor, staring vacantly out into space, sweat standing out on her forehead, and dribbling. She clearly looked ill, and from what I gathered from the conversation she had been ill for some time. My limited Hindi was really a problem, as I could not understand why she was not in hospital. I think they said that it was expensive and that the government hospital was too far away. At this point the girl stretched out her hand to me, she seemed distantly aware that a stranger was in her home. She then put her head on Tabassum’s lap and started crying, clearly in a lot of distress. I rang up the Director, to see what she advised, and she said that we should go to hospital. Nighat could hardly walk, and in the blistering sun trying to get to a taxi was just awful.

I don’t really want to think about the emergency department at the government hospital, it makes me feel sick. There were crowds of people outside jostling with one another to get a ticket in order to be seen. When we did get a ticket we went into the emergency room where there were three beds. Well, not really beds, they were wooden planks with a rusty gas cylinder at one end. I tried not to look. We then jostled with crowds of other people to talk to a doctor. The doctor gave a cursory glance over the papers we had brought, took a look at Nighat, and said that she could not help. We should have brought her in 15 minutes earlier, as the correct department closed at two o’clock. It wasn't an acute case, so there was nothing I could say that would be any help. We had to bring her back the next day before 2 o’clock. Tarranum said ‘government hospital is a name only, no treatment, no nothing. We always go and are told to come back.’ So all we could do was to struggle with Nighat back out of the hospital; we decided to see if a private doctor could help. He referred us to another doctor, so with a girl who was in a lot of pain, we caught a bicycle rickshaw. This private doctor saw her fairly quickly and prescribed some medicine, but I didn’t really know whether this would help at all since it was clear she should be in hospital. When we came out of the private doctor Nighat could not walk – she had to be carried into the taxi. By this time I was feeling terrible, angry at the hospital for not being able to help, and at the same time feeling so guilty that I had dragged this sick girl out of her home on what turned out to be a wild goose chase. We got Nighat back home, and I just wanted to sit down and cry.

Although it was after 4.30 Tabassum still wanted to cook me lunch, so we made our way back to her home, where she sat under the bed and started chopping away. Although I was really not hungry after the terrible day, it was one of the most delicious meals I have ever had. She cooked rice with lady’s fingers, and a meat curry.

I heard a couple of days later that the family had taken Nighat back to the hospital, and she was going to be seen by a senior surgeon, so hopefully the visit to the hospital wasn’t such a wasted effort after all.

Sad news from Pakistan

Recently I have heard from some friends in Pakistan who all come from Hunza, in the Karakoram mountains in the Northern Areas (now Gilgit - Baltistan). A couple of months ago there was a big landslide which blocked the Hunza river and has formed a huge lake - 11 miles long and more than 100 metres deep in some places. This has destroyed part of the Karakoram Highway which has disrupted trade between China and Pakistan, and from what I understand some of the more northerly villages have been competely cut off. The water level is rising every day and is threatening to submerge the beautiful village of Gulmit, from where many of my friends come from. And if the lake breaches the dam, which is thought to be likely once the seasonal rains begin, 30,000 people downstream could be affected. The army are currently building spillways, so pray that this is successful. Hunza really was the most beautiful place I have ever visited, and the people among the most friendly and welcoming. It has stuck in my mind as a kind of shangri-la, not only because of the beauty of the place, but also because of the commitment of the people to tolerance and serving others. The village has an exceptionally good school and people have a real commitment to education. But in addition to this, many of those who worked in MIED came from this village and were committed to improving the education in other, more disadvantaged parts of Pakistan.

Photos of the area around Gulmit, I think much of this is under water now, and a Gulmiti house which we stayed in:

Link to the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8685515.stm

A round up of the week's news

A cockroach in the kitchen and a rat in the drain are manifestly NOT what a girl needs when she comes home tired late from work. It is a mark of how immune I have got to my living conditions that I just muttered a brief ‘oh dear’ rather than running screaming down the street. Although I might have had the option to move to another place further away, I decided not to: balancing rats and cockroaches against a daily hour commute in Kolkata traffic, I decided to take the rats. Not sure if this was entirely sensible, but so far I haven’t lost my sanity. What has been more annoying recently have been the number of mosquitoes – what with their bites and a nice prickly heat rash it looks like I have a severe case of measles (but apart from these minor inconveniences, Kolkata is a wonderful place to live!)

Last weekend all the volunteers in Kolkata met up at someone’s home, which enabled me to have a snoop around someone else’s living conditions. I think I may have pulled the short straw – although her place was basic, she has tiles in the bathroom, glass in the windows and natural light, all of which I am without. But enough moaning, the volunteer cooked the most amazing dinner, so much so that I am going to describe it in loving detail to you (cooking is not one of my strong points, and at the moment I am surviving off fruit and toasted cheese sandwiches, which is now beginning to pall). So, she had cooked a total of three delicious dishes plus rice: dhal with banana, tomato paneer and chicken rogan josh.
And all this with just two gas rings. I am now slightly ashamed that I haven’t ventured beyond warming up a tin of baked beans….

Kolkata as a city

‘India’s cities house the entire historical compass of human labour, from the crudest stone breaking to the most sophisticated financial transactions. Success and failure, marble and mud, are intimately and abruptly pressed against one another, and this has made the cities vibrate with agitated experience. All the enticements of the modern world are stacked up here, but it is also here that many Indians discover the mirage-like quality of this modern world.’ Sunil Khilnani, in his book ‘The Idea of India’ has beautifully captured the contradictions, the sheer breadth of life, but also the all-pervasiveness of suffering and exclusion at the heart of life in Kolkata. Ambedkar said over 50 years ago: ‘in politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradiction?’ And now, 50 years on, India’s economy is one of the largest growing in the world, yet on my way to work I walk past children who aren’t going to school, men and women washing themselves in a muddy pond, and men straining against carts loaded with bags of cement, pushing it down a busy road.

A hospital is a place where the value a society places on a human life can unconsciously be evident. I had the misfortune to visit a government hospital in Kolkata the other day, as the lovely woman in charge of our office has been admitted. There were rows of people lined outside, some of them lying on sheets and obviously pretty well encamped there. I don’t know whether they were family members visiting or whether they were waiting for admittance. We made our way up to the third floor, and walked down the corridor – remove from your mind visions of white sparkling walls and floors smelling slightly of disinfectant. I saw stray cats wandering around, and the smell in the area around the toilets was foul. In the ward itself there were about 50 beds; the mattress was about 5cm thick on a wooden board and that was it. My friend had seen a doctor, and had been told the next time she would be seen would be in 6 days; in the meantime all she had to do was to lie on this paper thin mattress and struggle with her pain. But on the plus side she did say that the food was good.

Kolkata has several very high quality hospitals, but the elites that are able to afford these hospitals must live in and experience a different city to the vast majority in Kolkata. The air conditioned shopping malls and offices are a world apart from the bustees, and the two worlds are mutually exclusionary; I am sure that many of the elite have no wish to see first hand what life is like in the slums, and the poor are excluded by security guards from the shopping malls and cafes. It is almost as if there is an insurmountable glass barrier between the two worlds. Perhaps I am being too negative – I have met some people from the richer classes who are working in the NGO sector, but they have told me themselves that this sector is not a popular one in which to work; people want jobs in IT, finance or business.

But I am forgetting another part of the city: the old colonial area. I visited this with two other volunteers a couple of weeks ago. It was relatively peaceful with far fewer people around, but at the same time it was slightly strange seeing such physical evidence that the British were actually here. I visited the cemetery for the East India Company: India definitely got its own back on the British, there were so many graves for people who died very young, and many children. It was quintessentially British, but at the same time surrounded by lush tropical forest: very strange. I definitely would not want to visit at dusk…..

AWWD's field workers

AWWD’s field workers are women with disabilities who come from the slums, and who epitomise the challenges that disabled women face in Kolkata. Every time I meet with them my heart aches – they have faced difficulties in their lives that I can barely imagine, yet they are so brave and cheerful.

The other day I was sorting through some papers with a community worker – the papers were profiles of all the disabled girls and women in her slum. With an exclamation of delight she pulled out her profile, which was two years old, and she asked me to read it as it was in English. Two years ago all she wished for was to complete her education and to ‘learn a little stitching’. The idea that, two years ago the only opportunity open to this beautiful and capable individual was to learn a little stitching made me want to cry.

Imagine an alleyway between buildings so narrow that only one person can pass down it at once. Imagine that there are open drains, it is unpaved, and rubbish adorns the sides. Welcome to Park Circus slum, Kolkata, and the home of Tabassum, AWWD’s blind community worker.
Every day Tabassum is led by her sister through the alleyways of her slum to meet with other disabled girls, to take them to medical appointments, to encourage them to join the self help group, to disburse loans, support the women in their businesses and to help them receive mobility aids. I am following Tabassum and her sister through this slum and I find it difficult to negotiate the open drains and unpaved streets, but Tabassum deals with it all with an unwavering serenity and cheerfulness. I ask Tabassum whether she enjoys her job, and she gives me a big grin. I think that’s a yes then. I then ask why, wondering whether she would talk about having gained self confidence, or that she was doing something very worthwhile. No, she is much more practical than that - she frowns and says ‘money is a big problem’. The families in these slums have no security and are living from hand to mouth, literally. Her family make shoes: Park Circus seems to be the shoe making centre of Kolkata, and I walk past piles and piles of shoes at different stages of preparation: young boys were sanding down rubber for the soles, cutting out heels, or sticking on the last sparkly finish to brightly coloured sandals.

Tabassum was not always blind, and is well educated – but in the last years of her schooling her eyesight started to fail, and in the end she was prevented from finishing her education. Her dream of becoming a teacher collapsed. Just two years ago all that she could hope for was to get a lowly paid and menial job as a cleaner, and even then she was harassed by her employer due to her impairment.

But two years on from her job as a cleaner and not only does Tabassum work tirelessly with disabled women in her area, but she has also attended national leadership training, and is a leader within her community for disabled women. She said that: ‘I have now new hope to bring more light not only to my own life but also to others’

The Association of Women with Disabilities

The Association of Women with Disabilities was established in 2002 by its current Director, Kuhu Das, who herself suffered from polio as a child. She founded the organisation by herself in a small village outside Kolkata called Subhi, with no external funding, no electricity, a small hut, no nearby toilet and initially not even a bed (she used the table as her bed). She tells me that she has quite a few stories from this time, which I can well believe. (Some of them include rats and snakes so I won’t cover them at the moment.) The focus of the organisation was on supporting disabled women, particularly helping them to access the services that they needed. This project continued to expand and obtained foreign funding.

Three years ago she moved back to Kolkata to start a project for disabled women in the slums, and a project running national and international leadership training programmes for women with disabilities. Both projects have a rights based approach: as I mentioned in a previous article disabled women are among the most powerless people in India due to the discrimination they face for being female, disabled and poor. They and their families and communities are often completely unaware that they have rights and responsibilities; they are more often considered a drain on resources and incapable of an education, earning money, or being a wife and a mother. Nearly all the girls I have talked to so far on my trips to the slums have said that they suffer from teasing and harassment when they step outside the house. Because poor disabled women suffer from such prejudice and discrimination they have been almost invisible in both the development agenda and to government policy. Until disabled women join together with a unified voice to raise their profile and claim their rights there will be no substantive change. Therefore AWWD works at the local, national and international levels to address these issues and to provide disabled women with a voice.

At the local level AWWD identifies women with disabilities, and helps them understand their rights and fulfil their capabilities. For example AWWD field workers help take disabled women to get a disability card: this enables the women to travel on public transport for reduced cost. AWWD provides loans to enable the women to start up a business: this not only provides them with some extra income, but also builds their self confidence and self esteem. AWWD workers also form self help groups so that women can come together to talk about their problems and to recognise that they are not alone. This is a major step: the vast majority of women said unprompted during a survey that since the intervention of AWWD they feel more confident and happier mixing with new people and going to new places.

And from these women AWWD identifies those with leadership potential, and runs national level leadership training programmes, to enable women to come together to work towards a common cause, to explain their rights and to give them tools to claim their rights. These women then go back to their communities to advocate locally on behalf of disabled women, but also they are part of networks to influence policy on a larger scale. And also AWWD has run regional training programmes for disabled women from countries across South Asia. They have also participated in international conferences (concerning the Conference on the Elimination of Discrimination towards Women, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) to make sure that the needs of women with disabilities in South Asia are heard.

You may well be wondering what my role in AWWD is, as I am ashamed to admit that my job has hitherto not made an appearance on my blog. I am not relaxing and enjoying the general ambience of Kolkata, I am a Knowledge and Information Management Advisor. Yes, it is not the most exciting of job titles, but add the spice of working in India and there is never a dull moment. Take, for example, the relatively simple task of buying some hanging files to go into a filing cabinet. Given the fact that we already had a filing cabinet, I assumed that buying files for it would be a relatively simple task. Hah! After two weeks of searching for them from within the huge western style shopping malls, to the ramshackle old buildings piled high with books, notepaper and ring binders on College Street, to trawling through hundreds of internet sites, I finally admitted defeat. This painful occurrence took place after a couple of hours of wandering from ramshackle old building to ramshackle old building on College Street, hopelessly waving my picture of a file to a vendor surrounded by tottering piles of folders, waiting while he makes frantic phone calls to his stockist and then moving miserably on when he shakes his head. It seems that India has jumped across the stage of using cardboard files right onto plastic. Anyway, I compromised onto the next best thing, and fingers crossed that is currently working OK.

And language is also another, shall we say, entertaining challenge? AWWD routinely works in three (and sometimes four) languages. All written reports for donors are in English. Bengali (or Bangla) is the mother tongue of some of the community workers, and they cannot speak much English. But the mother tongue of the Muslim community workers is Hindi - they often studied in Urdu medium schools, cannot speak much English either, and to complicate matters further some of them seem not to be very confident in Bengali. And, to pile on the confusion, some of the Muslim girls are happiest writing in Urdu and not Hindi (they have different scripts). So before team meetings there have been intense discussions about what language the meeting will be conducted in. It is helpful for me that some of the girls are happiest speaking Hindi because it means I can communicate a little with them and practice my Hindi. But when it comes to talking about information management I am definitely in need of an interpreter. And my very limited language skills have proved problematic at times as the girls speak so fast I can’t understand what they are saying. Last week I was talking to one girl and I think she said that her father had died, but I couldn’t be sure – it was a horrible situation and I didn’t really know what to say (even in English, let alone in Hindi).

As to other news: there was a flying cockroach in my room the other day. I am sure it was a flying cockroach, I will have to google it to check that there are actually such things. Anyway, I sprayed it liberally with poison, which turned out to be a slight mistake, as the poison rendered my room uninhabitable for the next half an hour. And on stepping outside I spied a rat scampering its way down my drain, and at that precise moment the electricity cut out, due to a monumental thunderstorm. Not such a great combination of events really: no light, a rat on the loose, a room full of poison and heavy rain. I therefore shut and bolted my door closest to the rat, and sat on my bed with a torch at the ready, every so often stepping outside to breathe in deep refreshing breaths of fresh air. Thankfully the power cut didn’t last very long. Nerves were in a little bit of a frazzled state after that, and I lay for a while on my bed thinking happy thoughts about beaches and sunshine and flowers.

Kolkata traffic revisited, strikes, and the hammer and sickle

Yesterday I spent FIVE hours stuck in Kolkata traffic. I had thought it would be a good idea to get two things done in one day, and hence travel twice into the city centre, once in the morning and once in the evening. After all – the journey to church on a Sunday morning only takes 20 minutes – how bad could it be? Hmmm. I am now significantly older, wiser and more jaded. I had considerable time to reflect on this mistake yesterday, so here follows my learning that I hope can be of use for any unwary traveler in Kolkata:
a) Don’t travel anywhere in the city on a Monday morning
b) Ditto on the evening before a city wide strike (because you will encounter the rest of the city urgently getting somewhere)
c) If you do find a taxi journey during sunshine hours unavoidable, make sure you have with you:
- A large bottle of cold water (and possibly ORS as well given the amount you will sweat (or glow if you are a lady)
- Calm and soothing music on your MP3 player
- A blindfold (so you can be blithely unaware of the chaos around you)
- Smelling salts (to revive yourself after particularly close ‘close shaves’.

This is how traffic moves in Kolkata during the rush hour – about half a mile before a junction is a jam. The taxi driver drives up as fast as possible, slams on the brakes and beeps the horn (no doubt in the hope that the stationary traffic will magically get out of his way). He then creeps forward into a space that you thought would be impossible (ie on the pavement, between two buses, or in the face of oncoming traffic), stops, and beeps the horn again for good measure, and turns the engine off. The traffic lights, in the far distance, turn green, and there is a sudden cacophony of sound when all the drivers beep their horns and engines are turned back on, revved, and we speed forward all of 5 metres. The traffic lights turn red again. We stop. This continues five or more times until we are at the head of the queue, and can see the problem. Even though there are traffic lights, traffic from all four roads has got entwined together, with each driver trying to creep forward as far as possible and not allowing anyone else through. And it is not only cars. There are hand rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, pedestrians, lorries, trams and men pushing carts loaded with bags of concrete. This chaos gradually sorts itself out, and the lights turn green again, and we speed forward, and I sit back, relax, thinking off we go finally. But no, 5 seconds later the brakes are slammed, and we have reached the tail back before the next set of traffic lights. There are considerable numbers of traffic lights between my house and the city centre. And the closer to the city centre we got the more fractious and irritable got the drivers, so the noise levels significantly increased, as did the number of close shaves.

So, an hour and 15 minutes after stepping into the taxi I step out again at my destination, as limp and as sodden as if I had just run a marathon. I had arrived at the Foreign Registration Office, to pick up my registration documents. My visit actually took all of 5 minutes, as all I had to do was to pick them up. I had a fortifying cold sprite and pasty, thinking I would let the traffic clear a bit, and then fought my way to another taxi. Even at 12 in the afternoon, the traffic had not cleared, and it was over an hour later that I stepped back out at the office again.

Enough for one day, I hear you say. Well, yes. But then Judith and I were meeting the other VSO’s for a meal at a nice restaurant, and I thought that the traffic wouldn’t be too bad in the evening. Yeah, well, it again took one hour and 15minutes to get there – we spent half an hour getting down one side street…

But the restaurant was beautiful – it was on the ninth floor of a hotel in New Market and we sat outside in the cool breeze enjoying the sparkling city lights. Unfortunately not for long. The city lights seemed to be going out in one direction – there was a wave of blackness coming over. A power cut? No, there was a huge gust of wind (and I mean huge – chairs were knocked over) and the air was suddenly full of grit. Everyone staggered inside and stared in amazement at the now bucket loads of rain coming down. Can you believe after a month of being here, with not one drop of rain, the one evening we decide to have a meal in an open air restaurant there is a torrential thunderstorm. But I shouldn’t complain too much, as apparently the temperature dropped by 13 degrees in just one hour. It was cool! A mere 23 degrees at 9 o’clock at night. And just before we left the rain stopped, and we were able to get a taxi without much problem. My optimism that our journey back home, at 10 o’clock at night, couldn’t be too bad, was profoundly misplaced. It took over an hour again of beeping, and inching forward, and we were both profoundly thankful we got home without hitting anyone. There is a city wide strike today, so I guess everyone was trying to get everything done before that – there can be no other conceivable explanation.

Once we reached the street where I live there was another surprise: outside every house and stall there hung a red flag with a hammer and sickle. Apparently I live in the Communist party stronghold of Kolkata. The building opposite Judith’s flat has pictures of Stalin, Lenin and Marx on it! At that time of night, and after such a tiring day I have to admit that I did start freaking out slightly – people were saying that the strike was linked to the Maoists who were demanding the release of two prisoners. But actually that wasn’t the case, and the strike in Kolkata is to do with rising food prices. But it is all very confusing.

So today there is no transport at all – no trains, no taxis, no flights, nothing. But I could still get into work, living as I do within walking distance.

Disabled women and the slums

It takes a certain amount of courage to step out into the streets of Calcutta, when even the simplest actions like crossing a road can be life endangering (I have witnessed three accidents so far). But for a blind woman to step out into the streets takes courage in a completely different league. Yesterday I walked home with Tabassum, a blind community worker with AWWD; she was not born blind but became blind as her family could not afford the necessary $300 for medical treatment. She is not able to see whether there is a bicycle coming up silently behind, whether a motorcycle is driving directly towards her, whether there is a parked car or a dog in her path; I jumped around wincing and squawking, ‘watch out’, ‘take care’ like an overprotective clucking hen. However Tabassum walked with a serenity and complete trust in her (also disabled) friend, Lakshmi, who guided her with confidence around the multiple hazards endemic in Kolkata street life. But the physical hazards are not the only things that Tabassum has to face, stepping out of her house.

India has a disabled population roughly equivalent to the population of Great Britain. To be a disabled woman living in the slums is to push at the boundaries of marginalisation, poverty, and powerlessness. For most Indian women, their role in life is set out to be a wife and a mother, but for many disabled women this is culturally not deemed to be possible. They are therefore dependent on their family, often considered a drain on resources, and stigmatised by society. In a survey undertaken by the Association of Women with Disabilities (the organisation for which I am working), only 3% of disabled women in West Bengal have completed secondary education, and in Jharkhand 70% were illiterate. Disabled women are much more likely to face abuse and domestic violence, and they are often subject to verbal and physical harassment on the streets. So not only do these girls have to face the daily trials of living with their impairment, but they are also stigmatised, teased and subject to deeply entrenched prejudices.

By stepping out onto the streets Tabassum and Lakshmi are challenging these endemic stereotypes and negative images, which takes considerable courage. Through their actions daily they are making a powerful statement: ‘my life is worth as much as yours, I can achieve what you can achieve.’

Saturday morning saw me waiting on the edge of a vegetable market in the blazing sun for Pinky, a friendly community worker. I was to accompany her on her field visits to disabled women. Pinky herself lives in one small room with her parents and two brothers in a slum area, and is orthopaedically impaired. AWWD supports disabled women in the slums through forming self help groups, providing money so girls can continue their education, providing loans so women can start a small business, and teaches them of their rights.

It is difficult to find words to describe the living conditions in these slums – ‘Dickensian’ springs to mind. The narrow streets were packed with bustling activity, not too different to the area where I live only slightly more compact and intense, with an intricate criss-crossing of hundreds of electricity wires above us. Each slum is different and has its own character. In this first slum I visited the streets were lined by two and three-storey houses, complete with colourful saris and shalwar kameez hanging out of the windows (and on the electricity wires), damply fluttering in the breeze. We entered down a narrow alleyway: it was pitch black and smelt of damp: like entering a cave. I felt my way through until I came into a small indoor courtyard, where there was a pump, puddles of water, and chickens clucking around. There seemed to be innumerable small rooms leading off this courtyard, some where whole families were living, and some rooms which were hives of industry. Small boys were making gaudy gold hand bags, and in one room 20 or so young boys looked up at me as I walked past, the room full of colourful bits of material. I wanted to shout out ‘child labour’ in protest, but carried on walking past, my complete inability to do anything to help them starkly apparent. We climbed up some steep, black and narrow stairs, Pinky with some difficulty due to her lame leg. At the top was a narrow corridor, and a seemingly constant succession of people appearing out of the blackness, squeezing past me, and disappearing just as suddenly. Outside each room was a small stove: burning hot coals underneath and boiling dal on top. Three of us squeezed into the nearest room, two of us sat on the bed which took up 90% of the space, to talk to Saira, a disabled girl. Saira’s sister, mother, and various other interested bystanders stood outside, every so often giving the dal that was bubbling away a stir.

It is difficult to imagine how anyone could cope living in these circumstances – in the dark, with six or seven people in a room not much bigger than a small-sized UK bathroom, and with no water or toilet. But as a disabled girl, Saira must face challenges beyond belief, and not only the indescribable difficulties of daily living. She showed me marks on her leg where she had had successive operations. She also said she didn’t like going outside because of being teased and harassed, but with a smile said she has got more confident since she has been involved with AWWD, and likes going places now.

And this was no one-off case. I then met Saeeda, an older lady who had lost her leg in a fire, and who looked at me with dead eyes. Her life was now confined to sitting in the one roomed house, preparing food for the family and comforting innumerable children. We then visited a family where there were three disabled girls. The first sister we spoke to couldn’t walk at all, was obviously in pain even sitting down, but still greeted us with a beautiful smile. She has had the same operation three times by a bogus doctor as the family could not afford to send her to a properly qualified doctor. We spoke to her sister next, who also had a beautiful smile, and was also disabled. She was all of twenty years old, and had been married for three years. She introduced an eleven year old girl as her daughter: I was initially fairly bemused by this, but she then explained that she was her elder sister’s child, but she had adopted her as her sister could not afford to look after her. I don’t know what to write in conclusion. In one way I think I have subconsciously distanced myself from it all, I can’t take in so much suffering all at once. It shouldn’t be like this: so many of the girls are disabled due to poverty – from polio, from accidents, from poor medical treatment, from malnourishment.