Indian Wedding

View of the stage

Francis is someone who I have not mentioned yet, I believe. He works for us here at the office, running errands and doing odd jobs that come up. He has delivered my laundry, fixed the bicycles (brakes, bells, etc.), and mailed letters. Francis clean the office each morning, helps water the plants, and gets teased about how he should get married soon. His work here at PlanetRead helps keep the building together and its employees working uninterrupted from their work, making him an important part of our team. He doesn't speak much English but always smiles and says, "Hi, Kah-Tee!" twice each day: in the morning when I arrive and he's finishing sweeping the courtyard and in the evening when I leave and he's playing cricket with friends on the road outside the office.

Yesterday, his sister got married, and everyone in the office was invited to celebrate! Ananya, Parthibhan, and I got dressed up in traditional Indian dress. (We looked great!) Others (namely some of the men present) went in T-shirts or more casual clothing. All the same, the guests were in good moods, and the celebration was very colorful. All the women had jasmine in their hair, which perfumed the air marvelously, and wore saris with lots of gold jewelry and glitter.

Scott agreed to take photos with my camera, while members of the office (including myself) posed with the newly married couple. After presenting them with our gift (table set), we rushed downstairs to eat. The food at Indian weddings, as I am told, is always very good, very greasy, and very spicy. (I had to run out and buy bottled water for Scott and myself to help everything go down soundly.) It was delicious! After eating, we exited quickly, collecting our party favors (coconuts) and grabbing some sugar to sweeten our mouths.

Our meal, served on a banana leaf

Some of Francis's friends lit fire crackers in the road to halt traffic and announce to everyone passing by that there was a wedding celebration inside the building before we left. They made very loud cracking noises and blew sparks everywhere, causing rickshahs, motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians... everyone pause to watch the display.

I ended the night by attending an impromptu get-together organized by my good friend, Jagu. A small party of people traveled to go get ice cream and cold water at a local hotel/restaurant called the Promenade (one of the few places in Pondy that is open past 10pm). Nikhil was kind enough to drive me home since it was late and it's nearly impossible to cycle in my sari.

Fire crackers on the street

On Holiday

I just got back from a company retreat with the PlanetRead and BookBox teams. Almost all of us from the Pondy office piled into a white van and drove 14/15 hours towards the west. The men onboard the Pondy-to-Munnar leg of the journey ate lots of spicy Indian chips and munchies, watched "Ice Age 2," and smoked cigarettes along the way. The van traveled through the night and into the early morning. The road was very bumpy, so none of us got much sleep. We reached our destination, Munnar, after climbing steep green hills and kicking up lots of brilliant reddish/pink dust while stopping along the way to snap some photos.

The altitude in this area of Kerala was a welcome change. Munnar was much colder than Pondy (Scott bought a lined jacket), which was surprising to some of us who didn't get the "bring your sweaters" memo.

View while climbing one side of the hill. Notice the signature red dust!

Munnar is famous for its tea plantations, which make the lush green hillsides look like something out of a Tim Burton movie, and well-known to locals for its spice market. I think everyone on the trip bought some tea. There were also many products made from wood for sale in the shops and along the side of the road.

Tea growing on the hillsides

Hotel

We spent the first day shopping for gifts, exploring our hotel, checking out a local waterfall and chatting. I discovered my favorite breakfast treat here in India: round pieces of lightly fried sweet bread (resembling a tortilla) called paratha.

The next day, we went boating on the water near a dam. Pappu filmed interviews among members of the team as we joked and talked about PlanetRead and BookBox. He intends to share the video with our President, Brij. The small but frequent rains thwarted our plans for a bonfire both nights of our stay; nonetheless, it was very fun to spend a weekend outside Pondy and with some office mates.

My trip home included a brilliant fill moon, fried rabbit, "ConAir," "Thambi," and close to four hours of Friends episodes back to back.

Team photo

When we got back, Scott and I limped sleepy-eyed towards the flat. The streets of Pondy were warm and completely still, except forthe dogs who occasionally reminded us of their presence with barks.

PlanetRead Makes Headlines!

Gauri, our guide, translator, and resident professional journalist (as well as my roommate) for our journey to Maharashtra, ended up writing about her experience with us for The Maharashtra Herald. The paper even published 2 of my photos with the article. I believe that the third one is Nikhil's or Pappu's.

Field Trip: Karnataka and Maharashtra

Scott, Pappu, Nikhil, and I just got back from doing field research in two states here in South India: Karnataka and Maharashtra. (see red line on the map). The trip totaled 10 days, and was a great learning experience for all of us. Scott and Nikhil got some great information and we all enjoyed the sight-seeing we were allowed to do on the side: onions, cows, sugar cane, and mud! We were totally dirty by the end of it!

On our trip, we visited several villages within these two states and enjoyed lots of tea that was forced upon us by our very hospitable guests. (The tea here is amazing!) The villages were developing, breaking any stereotypes we might have had about how a village is just like another. NOT TRUE!

We also visited a couple schools to show students SLS and get reactions from them, teachers, administrators, and others. The students loved our BookBox stories and crowded around quickly to view them on our laptop. I managed to get some great shots of them. We found overwhelming support for our work in these schools. The results from elders from the villages were more mixed.

I took over 1,000 photos total (a new record). Below are some of my favorites, which you might spy on our PlanetRead blog or website in the near future! I definitly fell in love with that hillside in Maharashtra.

Unloading the equipment from the back of our van

"Boyz" sandals on Nikhil's feet

Little girl off to school with Rai

Examining

Girls and school sharing a joke

SLS viewing

Wet feet

Heavy weather for the documentary team

In the sugar cane

Yummy tomato plants

Interviewing a woman in Maharashtra

"So what do you think of SLS?"

View from a hill in Maharashtra

Pappu

Sheep on the hillside, framed by wires

The shepard

The second shepard, Vikki

SLS for the Hearing Impaired: PlanetRead's New Project

I have been assigned the task of heading a research effort designed to assess the potential usefulness of SLS for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired here in India. I'm very excited about it and have already done some research in the field and on the web. Our focus will be what can be done in India now for the deaf with SLS, but I'll be examining other types of technological aids and legal policies for the deaf abroad. Another team member, Mark, who is based in Israel, is also helping me and has been an amazing resource for information and tips. His sister is deaf, and he is very excited about the potential of SLS as well.

The Big Question
We are still unsure of how exactly SLS could best be used/tailored to fit the needs of the deaf community here in India. My job will be to go talk with professionals who work with the deaf as well as students, teachers, administrators to ask them what they think of SLS and what can be done to improve it. I'll show them what we do (BookBox and SLS on TV), get feedback, and report back to our design team to help them build a beta version of SLS for the Deaf. By the end, we want to have an option for the hearing handicapped on all of our products.

The Preparation
I've been preparing myself for this by reading up on the Deaf in India and what already exists for them in terms of technological support. Subtitles/Closed captioning already exists in many countries, including India; but I consistently find that there is room for improvement. The UK is an excellent example of a country that has recently made real gains in making public spaces accessible for the Deaf.

The Goal
It is my hope to have a brief about SLS for the Deaf 80% done by the time I leave in early August. It will include all my research as well as some This leaves approx. 4 weeks left.

The Potential
I'll be working with the Marketing Director for PlanetRead, Vikram, who is stationed with our PlandRead team in Mumbai. Together, we will work with a National Institute for the Deaf in Mumbai to see if SLS could be incorporated into a nation-wide policy, mandating SLS's use on all channels in India for this purpose of making entertainment and information more accessible for this community. (YAY!) Talk about pressure to get the job done. This institute's director has already pledged to support our research and give us help. So things are moving along well.

Here are some photos from my recent visit to a school for the Deaf here in Pondy. The school housed 1st to 9th standard. Visiting these students was once of the best experiences I've had in India so far, and I learned a lot. The school administrators allowed me to visit classrooms on my own. So, I spent time hanging out with the students, telling them where I was from, asking them to show me how to write in Tamil... It was great. Scott and Nikhil came with me on this trip to interview students, teachers, and administrators about working with the students and what could make their job easier. They were very enthusiastic about SLS.

Wrapped Up

Yesterday, my friend Mitel showed me how to wear a sari (also spelled saree). I thought it would be a complete disaster, but I was successfully wrapped up in a bubble gum pick cloth by the end of it; in the process, my mistakes managed to make her laugh out loud a few times. I felt like a little girl learning how to put on her clothes all over again! SEE IMAGE FOR ACCURATE RECONSTRUCTION OF EVENT:

Saris are in fact three pieces of clothing:

1. The sari itself (the shawl-like part)
2. The blouse (tailored to fit perfectly)
   
3. The petticoat (matches the sari)
   

I have wanted very much to learn how to wear a sari! I felt I had achieved a new level of being Indianized once I had learned. I now have a new appreciation of the lifestyle of the women here who meet the challenges associated with the folding, pinning, measuring etc every day. A clear majority of them here in Pondicherry (and I am told in South India) wear saris. An added bonus is that, according to my female Indian friends, saris are difficult to wear and therefore, being able to wear one can be considered a rite of passage. Both Mitel and Ananya (another PlanetRead employee) learned how to wear a sari from their mothers once they were young adults; Ananya only learned after her marriage. Both complain about how difficult it is, which Ananya's husband finds amusing; according to him, 50 years back there was nothing else a woman could wear!

Fortunately, Mitel was very patient with me and helped me out the first two times. The difficulty in wearing a sari lies in the folding of the pleats, which must be completed carefully. Each pleat should be the same size in width and (roughly) length. I was lucky to have such a great teacher who encouraged me to repeat the process again and again; she loaned me the practice sari to take back to the flat to continue my education. My conclusion at the end of the lesson: saris cannot double as bedsheets (hypothesis disproven), wear like fruit colored togas, and breath easily in this tropical heat. Good-bye pants!

The politics of sari shopping was my final challenge. Mitel and I braved the shopping district here in Pondicherry, following my lesson. On the heels of other women (many of them mothers with their daughters or sisters) we entered shops, were presented with lots of choices by salesmen who did not speak much english, bargained prices, and then gave up and moved onto the next shop. It was exhausting! Mitel explained that since I am a foreigner, it's harder for me to bargain a reasonable price for saris; I notice that this is a trend with almost all of my economic transactions here in India. It's something to get used to. But, again- thank goodness for Mitel or Nikhil or whomever I am with who doesn't look as foreign as I do, because s/he always takes over and saves the day! But I am extra proud of myself because I went back to the shops the next day (on my own) and eventually found a beautiful tiger orange one with gold borders; it's blouse will be ready at the tailor's tomorrow.

The First Village Trip: Tamil Nadu

The kids enjoying the flash of 15 seconds of fame at the local school near the Tamil Nadu village

Today was a very exciting day: my first trip out to a village to research SLS in the field! Scott, Nikhil, and I (plus some extra batteries for our equipment) piled into an old white Ambassador and jostled our way through the suburbs and towards the outskirts of Pondicherry. We arrived, after about 40 minutes, at a small village where some members of the lowest caste here in India, the Dalitas, reside. As we rolled along slowly, searching for a place to park, people stared into the car. We got out of the car; The women laughed quietly at my punjabe and all the villagers stared wide-eyed at our equipment and our white skin (Scott and I). It was a very powerful first meeting for all of us (villagers and visitors alike). Soon, we were venturing off the road and in between the small huts netted out of palm frans to find the sairpanch, the head of the village.

Once we had greeted him, thanked him many times, and explained what we had come to do, a television set and a long black cable to run across the sand were brought on scene quickly. Then we learned that here in the morning, the electricity is cut, making watching the live broadcast of filmsongs with SLS on Doordarshan (a local channel) impossible. Fortunately, we had brought the laptop and were able to show a few filmsongs in Tamil, the language spoken in this state in India, to the assembled group.

After snapping some photos of this scene, I ventured off on my own away from Scott and Nikhil and the television and towards the street. I explored the main road we had driven on a little more, examining the houses and the large telephone pole along the white concrete. I spyed a satellite dish attached to one house as well. Some of the kids followed me, speaking to me in broken Tamil. I couldn't understand them at all, but found them to be extremely friendly though demanding about me taking pictures of them. As I walked around, the women and men in the village brought me their infants to photograph, insisting on a "still." After I while, I had to venture back to get our translator, Sebastian, to both begin my photo essay work and to escape these proud parents! But my tour continued even as I headed back; the children got bolder and began to tug at my skirts and show me inside the homes. One young boy brought me a flower.

View of the main road with a satellite dish hiding in the palm trees

Later, with Sebastian's help, I managed to select the first subject for my first photo essay for PlanetRead: Hari. He was shy, but a good reader and very willing to take me all around the village with his friends. These kids had so much energy and enthusiasm about being my tour guides! They walked very quickly and choose excellent destinations. We saw the fields where the men worked, the outskirts of the village, a couple homes, and the beach. With their help, I got some great shots as well as some important insight into what their daily lives are like. Below are some of my favorite photos:

Hari reading as a friend looks on.

The cricket field where Hari and his friends play.

Boys climbing a tree near the beach.

The pond adjacent to Hari's father's farm land. He fishes her while his father works.

Running towards the sea, Hari turns to make sure I'm keeping up.

Later on, Scott, Nikhil, and I visited a school where children from the neighboring villages attend. The teachers, usually women, teach in Tamil and the students use books in English; the system is designed this way in order to teach students how to translate from English to Tamil. I was surprised to notice that I would often enter classrooms to find no teacher and no lesson going on; Mitel tells me that this is not abnormal, that education is lacking in the richer and poorer areas of the country. The students at this school would be sitting idly until they noticed me in the doorway and would shout: "HIIII!!!" their eyes wide with anticipation once they spyed my large camera hanging around my neck. What enthusiasm as a group, but how shy they were one on one. I tried my best to communicate to them and ask questions. I enjoyed exploring these classes without a translator or authority figure from the school; only with this method could I more easily approach the students in a less overwhelming and more natural as possible way. I found that the best way to communicate who I was when I entered each classroom was to first say "hello" and ask how they were. After straining their ears, usually one would catch onto my American accent and be able to decipher what I was saying. Then, I would draw a map of the world and point to India and to them. Then, I would point to the USA and to myself. Then they would all scream loudly, "AMERICA?!" "Yup, America," I would say.

Children at the school holding up a book written in English

Puru to the Rescue!

In this first trip to India, I've learned a great deal. But, if I've learned two things about business here they are:

1. "Things happen at their own pace" -Nikhil
2. Connections, connections, connections (see below example)

Brij's brother, Puru, came in today and helped Scott, Nikhil, and I sort out our upcoming visits to the villages. We are conducting a more indepth study of SLS in the rural parts of this country and documenting our findings through film and photography.

Things looked bleak when our guide, Sebastian, called us to announce that he was going to be unavailable the morning we had planned our inaugural visit. Clouds rolled into Pondicherry in a very dramatic parallelism as the three of us scrambled to contact others who might serve as our liasions/translators. Then: Mr. Puru with his small blue phone entered the scene, made a couple quick calls, and suddenly, we were back on track and zipping our way out of Pondicherry towards our destination. Sebastian was with us and everything was great!

SEE PHOTO FOR VISUAL REPRESENTATION

Thank you, Puru and nice tan!