Talking About My Trip To India, At The Mansion

Giving a talk about my trip at the Mansion

Generally, I’m not comfortable talking in front of large groups of people.  I have a hard time with so many people looking at me.

And I wasn’t so sure of myself when I sat down in the activities room at the Mansion (an assisted living facility in town) this afternoon to show the residents there some pictures and talk about my trip to India.

But I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with many of the people who live at the Mansion, so it was more like talking to a group of friends than anything.

I spent the morning selecting photos from my trip and putting them on an album in my computer.  (this actually took me three hours, not because I have so many photos, but because I’m not technically savvy and had to figure out the best way to display the photos).   I didn’t realize there’d be so many people coming to the talk, so once I got there, I decided the best way to show the pictures was to walk around with my computer.

Maybe not the most efficient way of displaying photos, but it worked.

I gave a chronological account of my trip, talking about the different foundations we visited and the work I did with girls and women with the tote bags and potholders.

I talked about the animals in India and got lots of questions about them and many other things.

Peggy wanted to know about the food.   Barb had a comment or two about some of the good-looking men in my photos.

I told them how we picked up the baby goats roaming around the village of  Bolpur.  Since they had a visit from Treasure and her baby goats just last week, I knew it was something we could share.

I ended the talk by showing them a photo of me in my sari and explaining how they’re worn.  (I wish I had thought to bring my sari.  I could have done a demonstration).

Red was there, of course.  He went from person to person giving and receiving love.   And Jon was there too, being generally supportive and taking pictures (of course).

It turned out to be a lot of fun.  I think most of the people there enjoyed it and I know I did too.

That’s Hannah, Me and Kiera in our Sari’s. And that’s the owner of the hotel where we stayed,  behind us. His mother taught us how to wear the saris.

 

 

 

 

Kolkata Diary. Three Days In Bolpur

 

Most of the  brick and mud houses, called Matir Bari  (soil house) in Bolpur  have traditional scenes and/or decorative patterns carved and painted on the house.  Manure dries in a circle under the clothes line to be used for fuel.

We piled into the bus with our overnight bags.   We’d be spending three days and two nights in Bolpur.   While waiting for Nadine to join us,  Dahn mentioned that we wouldn’t have any internet or phone service where we were going.

I got out of the bus and dialed Jon’s number.  We’ve been calling each other every morning and evening.  If I  suddenly stopped getting in touch with him, he’d worry about me.

And I wanted to say goodbye, we’d be out of touch for three days.

“Mon Cher,” Jon quoted  Piorot, “Mon’Amie”. (we’ve been watching the Agatha Christie series on Netflix every night before I left for India)   I love you I said to him, as Nadine walked by pulling her suitcase.

In the city every green thing, every tree and plant is brown with dirt.  As the people, buildings, vehicles, garbage, and noise thinned out, the vegetation started to turn green.  Cows and goats grazed in big fields of dying grass.  We passed small thatched roof villages and four-story cement hotels.  We passed farms surrounded by tall brick and mud walls.

It was mostly big trucks and buses on the road with us now.  And some motor bikes often carrying three men, or a couple, the woman sitting side-saddle in her sari.

During the four-hour drive and I slipped into my silent mode.  Going within myself, making it harder and harder to join in the conversations going on around me.  By this time I was certain that I had nothing of interest to contribute.  But I was more than  content  to look out the window.  Watching India pass by me.  Seeing everything for the first time.

A couple of hours into the trip, we stopped at what looked like a new, freshly painted  gas station.  They served coffee and had clean bathrooms with western toilet bowls.  Somehow the conversation turned to my potholders.

Kelly explained that they didn’t have a market for potholders in India.    But if I could teach the women of  a village we’d be visiting in a couple of days to make potholders from sari scraps and provide a market for them, that could work.  Immediately  Dahn offered to put out the money to buy the potholders from the women so I could sell bring them home and sell them on my website.

My discouragement and disappointment from the day before lifted.  My plans of helping the girls, would not be in helping victims of sex trafficking, but in helping to  prevent the trafficking from ever happening.

A few hours later we turned onto a one lane dirt road.  Kelly pointed out where the Fair Trade Market would be tomorrow.    A field of dry, orange, hard packed earth.    We’d be able to walk to it in the morning.

The driver slowed down as we passed the brick and mud cottages and then stopped in front of a new two-story,   building with a large gate leading to the courtyard.

We were greeted with drumming.   I bowed my body to the small woman who daubed a bindi on me and put flowers behind me ears.

A row of four women danced for us and a few of us joined them.  A simple step that I got all wrong but I didn’t care, I was dancing and it felt good.

We were handed coconuts with a hole carved into them and a straw sticking out.  Always thirsty, I sucked down the fresh coconut milk,  which tasted so much better than the stuff you get in a can.

Kelly, Nadine and I would share one of the three rooms. Nadine hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of days.  She  and Giselle from Puresa Humanitarian  had been visiting the families of girls in danger of being trafficked the week before we all arrived. She said she probably picked up something in one of the villages.

There were three cot sized beds in each of the three rooms of the hotel.  Each room had it’s own bathroom with western toilet,  a sink and shower with hot water on demand.   Fans cooled the room  and the doors and   window were shuttered at dusk to keep the mosquitos out.

The Women’s Interlink Foundation is doing preventive work in the village.  Because of it’s proximity to Kolkata Bolpur is the kind of village that girls could be easily trafficked from.

Girls are often sent into cities with the promise of a job and wind up being sold into slavery.  Just as often they  are knowingly sold into slavery  by their parents, who need the money and don’t value the lives of their daughters in the same way they do their sons.

Because of it’s location and the fact that the  village has a rich tradition of artisans, The Women’s Interlink Foundation was able to get a grant from  Canadian Tourism to help make the village a tourist destination.

They taught the people of the village how to repair their homes, and built on the skills they already had to make their art marketable.  Girls take classes in jewelry making.  Men make hand carved furniture.  Other people in the village have been taught to cook for the guests at the hotel.  The hotel also employs local people.

The crafts are sold in the village, the nearby market and markets around the country.  Recently a television show was filmed in the village.  Now tour groups come from all over India to see the setting of that TV show.

The village in Bolpur is a success story.  Because it’s prospering, and the girls have a way of earning money, they are of more value at home than being sent away to work or sold.

The girls in Bolpur won’t  need anyone to rescue them.

The hotel in Bolpur.  That’s Hannah, Mitali, from the  Women’s Interlink Foundation, Kiera, and Kelly from The Village Experience.

 

 

 

 

 

Kolkata Diary. Back From Bolpur And On-Line Again

The courtyard of one of the homes in Bolpur

I just got back to Kolata and the internet.

I didn’t find out till we were on the bus to Bolpur that we wouldn’t have internet or phone there.  I was able to call Jon and let him know just  before we left.

And just as he wrote on his blog, when I couldn’t talk to him because of the time change (I don’t want to wake him up) I went to his blog, which is the closest I could get to him.

And there he was, reciting a love poem to me.

I cried and touched my cheek and lifted my hand to my lips, and kissed him back.

I wrote a little while I was in Bolpur. I couldn’t access my blog, so I wrote on my word program.   I’m going to try to copy it onto my blog.  But I won’t I have time to write about the whole experience today.

In an  hour, we’re taking a drive through the Red Light District.  I imagine that will take up a lot of space in my heart and head and will want to write about that and whatever happens in the coming days.

But I will get back to writing about Bolpur eventually.  It’s a wonderful success story of bringing a village back to life which will help ensure that the girls who live there will  not become targets for the sex trade. It’s a preventative program, one of many that The Women’s Interlink Foundation has created.

I want to thanks for all your encouraging words about my last post.  It turns out, India style, that there may be hope yet.

Tomorrow we’ll visit Sunlapp. The women there have six sewing machines and it looks as though they’re going to be ready to sew, with me teaching them to make potholder,  using scraps from sari’s, when I get there.

I’m not making any promises, but I’m crossing my fingers.

I did have some insights as to what actually happened, the confusion about me teaching and the  potholders.  I’ll write about that at another time too.

I’m going to try and post my writing from Bolpur now and put up some pictures.

 

 

Getting My Head Ready For New Mexico

House in Bolpur India

I felt it yesterday after my Bellydancing class.  It was the feeling of having accomplished what I needed to before leaving for New Mexico on Sunday, even if it wasn’t all actually done.   It was a shift inside me.  Bellydancing was the threshold that brought me from one reality to the next.

Tomorrow I’ll work on getting my studio back in order, go to the post office one last time and begin to relax. To get my head and body prepared for our trip.

I lived in Taos for six months about 15 years ago.  I traveled all over the state and surrounding area at that time.   I was very drawn to the landscape, to the natural feeling and look of the architecture.  Earth houses they called them in India, they seem to grow from the ground. Just like adobe in New Mexico, made from the earth.

I’ve always thought of the desert as a place to go to find myself.  The earth seems to be baring it’s soul, inviting me to do the same. I want to break my everyday habits of living while there.  Embrace a different sensibility.  As Nicolas Malebranche said, I want to “deceive my imagination to awaken my spirit”.

Maybe that’s too much to ask of a single place during a ten-day vacation.  But it’s what I’m thinking, what I desire.

I bought two new sketch pads for the trip.  I’m taking my computer, but don’ t plan on looking at my email every day.  Maybe once or twice during the trip.  I’ll only post on my blog and facebook when I am drawn to.  I don’t have an idea of how often that will be.  I won’t know until I experience it.

Oh, and I also plan on having a lot of fun.  Me and Jon on vacation together for ten whole days.  The longest vacation we’ve ever taken.  Doing what we want when we want.  Not so much different from our life together on the farm, and very different at the same time.

What Are You Wondering? Sold

What Are You Wondering?  is Sold $175 + $10 shipping.  You can click here  to buy it in my Etsy Shop.

Dahn, one of the women that I traveled to India with a couple of years ago, told me I had a childlike sense of wonder.

I remember when she said it.

We were in Bolpur   and I was looking at a huge hand woven covered basket used to store grain.  I had never seen anything like it and I wanted to know more.  How it was made,  how long had the people in this village been creating and using such containers.

But my interest wasn’t only intellectual. When I looked at the giant covered basket, I felt a sense of awe yet it was also somehow familiar.  A wave of nostalgia hit me,  like it was something I had once known.

At another point in my life I would have taken Dahn’s words as an insult.

Growing up I was taught that  “curiosity killed the cat.”    For some reason to be curious or questioning was seen as a feminine attribute, which was inherently inferior and weak minded.

So I learned to suppress my sense of wonder.

But suppressing my curious mind and heart  created a longing in me that was unfulfillable.  Not being able to express all that I witnessed dulled my eyes, so I forgot how to see.

I had some friends along the way who understood and appreciated my wonder.   Some moments of stepping though the doorway into who I really was and being able to transform my experience of the  wonders I encountered, into something tangible that was satisfying to me.

But mostly, I was quiet.

That changed when I met Jon and witnessed his curiosity. I had finally met someone who wasn’t afraid to admit  he didn’t know something.  Someone who believed that smart, creative and interesting people were naturally curious.

Jon not only accepted, but delighted  in my sense of wonder about the world around me.

Now I live in that space on the other side of the doorway.  I not only allow, but depend on my curiosity  to keep me wondering, to keep my eyes wide open to see what’s in front of them.  Now, through my art and my blog,  I have a way of expressing what I see and feel and of being fulfilled by it.

My new fabric painting “What Do You Wonder” is about  embracing, honoring and acting on our sense of wonder.

It’s a reminder to see and be curious about the tiniest, most insignificant  seeming thing that’s right in front of us.  As Socrates (the philosopher not the snail) said, “Wisdom beings in Wonder.

What Are You Wondering?” is 19 1/2x 20 1/2″ and is Sold.  $175 + $10 shipping.  It’s for sale in my Etsy Shop,  or you can email me at [email protected].  

Full Moon Fiber Art Etsy Store

You can read more about my process making “What Are You Wondering”  here.

Detail of What Are You Wondering?

Leaf Plates and Pooper Scoopers

A  close up of a Leaf Plate made by the man in Bolpur, India

Some of the comments on facebook  about using a leaf as Gus’ Pooper Scooper reminded me of the leaf plates we ate off of in Bolpur, India.

A man in the village purchased a machine that creates, disposal plates out of leaves.  He started out small but now has a business where he employs other people in the village to make the Leaf Plates.

They’re completely biodegradable, work really well even with all those delicious Indian sauces, and are beautiful too.   He makes them for people to use at big events like wedding and parties.

Of course eating off a plate is very different from using it to clean up puppy poop, but it’s the same idea.  And who knows maybe it inspired me.

Stacks of Leaf Plates in the Bulpor.

 

 

Vishnu and Lakshmi Dancing Potholers, Sold Out

Lakshmi and Vishnu Dancing Potholder

When I was in India, we went to a Fair Trade outdoor market in the Village of Bolpur.  The hard packed earth was covered with blankets and so many different things for sale.  I was mostly interested in the fabric, which there was a lot of.

Folded into neat squares covering large areas of ground were hundreds of different kinds of Sari fabric.

Needless to say, it was hard to choose which ones to buy.  But I had help.  Barnali, one of the women who works at the Women’s Interlink Foundation walked around with me and dickered with the sellers.  She told me when I was being charged too much and always got a lower price than they first asked for.

A piece of Sari fabric laid out in my studio.

Sari fabric is long.  I haven’t actually measured it, but you get about 8 yards and the pieces I got were around $10-$15.  Some of the fancier fabrics are more expensive, but I was looking for cotton with unique prints and bright colors.

When making a Sari from the fabric, the piece of fabric on the end of the material, the one without the fringe, is cut off and made into a small shirt.  The rest of the fabric stays whole and  is tucked and draped the woman wearing it.  One safety-pin is sometimes used to pin the Sari on the shoulder.

I was told that it was Vishnu and Lakshmi, the Hindu God and Goddess,  dancing in the print.    I often saw many images of Vishnu and Lakshmi in fabric and paintings and statues on the trip and each time I did, I thought of Jon and me.

Over the past couple of weeks, I made some potholders using the fabric.  In the potholders I also used some of the other material I got on my trip.  The bright orange with the stick drawings on it and the sold orange with the blue strip in it.  The rest of the fabric, some of it also from India even though I didn’t bring it back,  came from my stash.

Vishnu and Lakshmi Dancing Potholders

These are the 10 Vishnu and Lakshmi Dancing Potholders I have for sale.   Are Sold Out.  They’re $15 each + $5 shipping for 1-2 and $7 shipping for 3 or more. Shipping is more outside the US.

If you’d like one, you can email me here at [email protected]

Just let me know if you’d like to send a check or I can email you a paypal invoice. 

 

The Everyday Ritual of “This is Me”

 

I didn’t get a good photo of the trees or walls  with the manure hand prints on them. But they looked just like my snow hand prints on this tree, only in varying shade of brown.

I picked up a handful of snow and pressed it to the tree.  Then another and another.  It felt satisfying to do.

This is what the people in the village of Bolpur in India did with cow manure.

The pressed handfuls onto the trees and on the low walls surrounding their houses.  So when you walked around the village you saw people’s hand prints  in drying manure.

Once it’s completely dry, the manure is used for fuel.

When I first saw the hand prints  I thought they were some kind of art.  Many of the people in Bolpur are artisans.  They sell their crafts in markets throughout India.

But even when I found out their purpose, I still couldn’t help seeing the beauty in this everyday ritual.

To me the hand prints were like the signatures of the people who lived there.  Like graffiti saying “This is me” again and again.

There seemed something so primal about the act.  So close to the earth.  So sustainable.  So natural.

So natural, that I wanted to try it.

I noticed the large pile of  manure when we were taking a walk around the village.  It was right in front of  a four-foot wall almost covered with round drying hand prints of manure.

I knew it was unusual  and it wasn’t something most people would want to try .  And I did wonder if  the other women I was with would think me strange, but I couldn’t help myself.

I think part of it is the sculptor in me.  I wanted to know what the manure felt like in my hand as I pressed it to the wall.  I had a sense it would somehow connect me to all the  people, over the ages, who had done the same.

And I wanted to see my hand print on the wall.

As we walked past the wall, on the way back to the hotel, I reached down and scooped up a handful of cow manure.  When I first pressed it to the wall it started to peel away, so I pressed harder and held it for a few seconds till it stayed.

I stepped back and looked at it.  Mine was the hand print of an amateur.   Without confidence or experience.  And it wouldn’t last long, by the next day it would fall off the wall.

But none of that mattered.

That I had such a strong urge to try it and I acted on that urge, was a part of it for me.  In a way, adding my hand print to the wall with the others, was like looking in the mirror and at the same time, announcing to the world,  This is Me.

The architecture in Bulpor is very organic.  It’s as if the houses  are growing out of the ground.  You can see some of the round dried “hand prints” of manure on the ground under the clothes line.

 

 

 

 

 

Kolkata Diary. A Different Way of Living With Animals

It looked like the back end of a rat.  The biggest rat I’ve ever seen.  It was on the balcony outside my hotel room in Udiapur, one morning.  I thought of Minnie and Flo and the pieces of mice, moles and bunnies they leave on the back porch.  This rat looked almost as big a Flo.

I wondered what left it there and thought of the eagle I saw perched on a flag pole outside the roof top restaurant yesterday.  I wondered if the monkeys that I saw the day before ate meat.

When I told the owner of the hotel about it, he joked and asked if I was feeding the rat.  Then he said, “Welcome to India.”

From what I witnessed, there’s a different relationship between animals and people in India than in America.

Their lives are more integrated, more organic.

I didn’t see a lot of cats, but the ones I saw were the kind I wouldn’t want to cuddle with.  They were dirty and beat up looking.  Wild things, sauntering around like tigers on the prowl.

Dogs were everywhere I went.

Not pets.  I only saw one pet dog.  A beagle who lived at the Jaiwana Hotel.

Dogs live among the people.  They have their own lives, go where they want when they want.  They have their territories.  I saw the same dogs every day in the village of Bolpur and in Udiapur.

Dogs roam the streets.  They sleep on the side of the road, scavenge the piles of garbage and run in packs.  Sometimes people throw them scraps to eat.  In the early morning you hear them fighting.

Some were so skinny their bones were showing, others had open sores on their bodies.  But most of the dogs I saw seemed healthy and content.   Roaming the streets, living side by side with people, avoiding cars and motorcycles.  Once I saw a man throw a stick at some dogs hanging around a hotel, to chase them away.  But mostly people seem to ignore them.  Or maybe it’s that they accept them.

The dogs in India have found a way to live with the people there.

And maybe it’s because of the cows.  Because the relationship between dogs and people looks much like the relationship between cows and people.

Although the cows seem even more easy going and relaxed than the dogs.  Nothing seems to rattle them. Certainly not people.  But they also stay calm and go about their business with cars and motorcycles whizzing by them.  They’ll stand confidently in the middle of a busy highway while trucks move around them.

And the grassy medians off the highways, that we mow and maintain in America, are grazed by cows in India.  Because they are seen as sacred, they’re not afraid, they know they’re not in any kind of danger.  So they live harmoniously with people in rural villages and in busy cities.

It’s an amazing thing to witness and be a part of.  Because you can’t help but be a part of it when you’re there.

I know it helped me keep in touch with the natural world, having the dogs and cows walking next to me down the streets in Kolkata.  As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It wasn’t about petting them, or feeding them, or trying to rescue them.   They didn’t need rescuing.   It was about living along side of them.   And respecting them and their lives for what they are.

When the monkeys ran across the balcony of my hotel one afternoon, the babies hanging off their mothers chests, I was enthralled. Someone had hung the ropes they used to climb to the roof tops.  Their presence wasn’t discouraged, but encouraged.  They had as much a right to be there as I did.

As I left Udiapur for  the airport early Saturday morning, it was still dark.  I saw the cows sleeping together in small herds on the sidewalks.  Dogs found beds in the tuk-tuks ( golf cart like taxis) parked on the side of the road.

I thought of fleas and feces and disease and wondered why I didn’t see more of each.  I imagine if I lived in the slums instead of staying at a nice hotel my experience might be different.  But no one seemed to begrudge the animals their presence.  They are just a natural part of life.

I know seeing them everywhere, walking among them, helped ground me, as nature always does.

Dogs in Udiapur
Monkey on my balcony

 

 

A man with a pig and cow in Bolpur
Woman with donkeys on the side of the highway in Udiapur.  These were the only donkeys I saw.  As often happens with donkeys, they seemed to carry a heavier burden than some of the animals I saw.

Kolkata Diary. Arriving In Udiapur

Two planes and seven hours later, we arrived in Udiapur.  This is where I’ll spend the rest of my trip.

It was and still is an adjustment being here.  It’s a beautiful city surrounded by lakes and one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.

Driving through the narrow market streets and arriving at our hotel,  was like being transported to another world.  It’s not just the clean air, green vegetation, warm breezes, natural and man-made beauty.   It’s the other end of what we were doing in Kolkata.

I left my room and headed towards the familiar voices.  Nadine, Kelly and Kiera were sitting on one of the many landings of the hotel which overlook the lake and mountains.   The hotel is  a labyrinth of stairs and doorways, hallways and balconies and rooftops.

I started to cry before I even got to them.  In the past I would have hidden in my room and cried alone.  But one of the important things I’ve learned on this trip is to really be myself.  Even when I’m feeling like I don’t belong, instead of withdrawing I speak my truth, no matter how mundane it may seem to me or  how vulnerable it makes me feel.

I need your help I said to them.  This is all so beautiful, even decadent, I said I need you to help me understand why we’re here.

Our days in Kolkata were so filled they gave little time for me to  absorb all that I was seeing and experiencing and feeling.  Even though I wrote about it everyday, which helped me be thoughtful and understand my feelings, I was still living in a haze of busyness.

And now it was over.  We weren’t going back to Kolkata, we weren’t visiting anymore organizations.  The itinerary in Udiapur is for us to do what we want, to rest and journal and enjoy ourselves.

How do I go from the intensity and emotion, the purpose and meaning, to this kind of luxury.

Nadine took  my hand.  This place isn’t  that nice she joked,  you should see some of the really expensive  hotels around here.

Then she and Kelly went on to explain the importance of this transition time.

Helping others is not about making ourselves suffer.  If all we did was go to Kolkata and not see the other parts of India, the beautiful and hopeful parts, most of us wouldn’t want to come back.

And just seeing the horrors of a country is not an accurate picture.  It would be like just going to the South Bronx and thinking that is what all of America is like, Nadine said.

I don’t want to be going back to the Untied States and believing Kolkata is India, not just a part of it.

They convinced me that this is an important time to embody all that I had experienced.  To try and make sense of it and incorporate it into my life.  It’s been a week of new intense and emotional experiences  and that needs to be balanced.

This all made sense to me.  And a part of me knew it was what they would say.  It’s why I went to them.

And I can see it’s true.  Since I got here I find myself crying for seemingly no reason. I know it’s cleansing, it’s my body,  my mind and heart processing the past week.

And I can see that what I need to do now is allow myself to relax.  To enjoy this other part of India and take care of myself. I want to come out of this experience enriched and whole, not broken.

Because I do know that I can’t help anyone,  if I can’t help myself.

Last night, Dahn, Hannah, Kiera and I went to a Taylor to have sari’s made. (It costs $23 to have a shirt and skirt made.  I got the fabric in the fair trade market in Bolpur for half that).    It’s a tradition of the group to spend the last night having a sari party.

The sun is just just coming up here and I’m not sure what I’ll do today yet.

Writing this has already helped me understand and feel better. I’m going to try to take this day as it comes.  To do what I feel like when I feel like.

I’ll be sure to take some pictures and  let you know what happens.

( After being shown to our rooms, I tried to get back to the front desk to get the wifi password and I got lost.   So I wandered around the maze of stairs and hallways and rooftops till I found my way.  The video ends abruptly because Jon called me just as I got to my door and the video shut off.  But I think it gives an idea of the wonder of the place.)

 

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