Settling Down

I am starting to wonder if I need the assistance of motion to keep my eyes open and mind clear. In traveling across the country, I came to realize that there are many questions that one can ask and answer rhetorically on one’s own. Then, the very simple act of moving your belongings into a drawer and onto shelves, getting up in the morning and going to work, the mind begins to accept the passing of faces and disturbing images as quickly as a two-stroke engine autorickshaw will take you. Until you are snapped out of the equivalent of a nine-to-five mental shroud and brought mistakenly back to reality.

A few days ago a kind, youngish Muslim auto-driver took a wrong turn. Wrong only because it was unintended. We snaked through a few side streets of one of Ahmedabad’s many slums. Tucked behind and between larger apartment complexes, storefronts and houses, the slums don’t spread outward as they do on the edges of Chennai, rather they sit bundled and apparently illegal, between yet another Tata-owned complex and that Chitra advertising billboard. These slums receive electricity through jumper wires that draw power from nearby circuit boxes. The water from a few taps here and there. These are the neighborhoods of NGO’s, like the one I work with, a physical representation of why we do the work, and why young corporate types here in the city think we have over-inflated senses of purpose. They feel we think too highly of the work we do, while their daily engineering of software is better for society. I have yet to see more than one computer in a slum in India. And that machine was put in place by an NGO a year or so ago- they held a few training classes, but then abandoned the project when their international donors pulled the funding.

It is the same as I found in the United States. Foundation meets NGO. NGO woos foundation, foundation falls in love with an idea, idea becomes reality. Foundation afraid of commitment, runs to the Swiss Alps, and changes wardrobe a few times. NGO left alone and confused in Ahmedabad’s streets. Foundation sends Dear John letter. Foundation takes credit for the idea and pulls the plug on funding. NGO- feeling used finds rebound love with a new suitor while the computer sits idle, but connected to the internet.

So my driver began to apologize. Over and over again as he sped up and nearly clocked a wayward cow. As we sat there for nearly an entire second waiting for the animal to move its tail end, I quickly put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘slow, aste’ He spun his head around. The first word he understood perfectly well. The second he just didn’t expect out of my mouth. The third word, not spoken by me, but by him was, “why?” ‘Safe only,” I replied. With that he drove through the remaining two blocks at a normal auto-driver’s pace. (Which many will realize is still rather swervy, jerky and nauseating enough.)

As we pulled back to a main road- name unknown because Ahmedabad’s city planners don’t believe in placing a sign with the name of a street where it is visible if at all anywhere - a group of young children smiled and waved. “Hello” said one of them. I waved back, smiling. These kids didn’t have the sun-bleached hair of others living in slums in other parts of the city or in makeshift encampments leading up to Shivranjini Crossroad. In fact, they appeared comparatively quite well fed. Their skin was less tanned, not dusty from car exhaust and sand. They wore shoes- mostly.

As we turned onto the main road I spun my head around toward the kids and something amazing caught my eye. I immediately asked the driver to stop, ‘ek minute’ I told him, got out of the auto and stared at the seven foot papier mache standing Ganapati. Next to him was a seated Ganapati, who, if he stood would equal the height of his neighbor. All around the ground were smaller versions the God, seated, standing, laying down, one reading a book.

I watched as a dozen or so men and boys dipped what appeared to be some sort of woven paper, much like canvas, into vats of white sludge and applied in steady, rhythmic motions to various statues taking shape. The only sound I heard was the honking of horns. These sculptors appeared oblivious to the noise, which by my standards was overbearing. They were focused, not even looking at in my direction as I stood there gawking at them.

The auto driver got out of the car and stood next to me. In broken English he said that this was the only place that people throughout the city came to purchase statues for Ganapati Puja and other festivals. Some he said, pointing to more statues sitting inside the hut that had been constructed out of corrugated metal, blue plastic tarps and a mile of rope, were painted in the most garish, outlandish colors of red, orange and green.

This slum apparently makes the majority of its money off of this trade. They have secured a place in the workings of city holidays, religion and commerce. And for that, the siphoned-electricity and ‘illegal’ water connections are ignored by officials.