PICTURES OF WHERE I AM/ HAVE BEEN

Market scene in Pondicheri.

The main after school center in Periathachoor. (4+5 standard)

CALI with one of the girls from the hostel next door.

Me in front of Samsss Where i now live, my room is to the right in the image.

ENTHRALLED WITH IT ALL

I am quite certain I am in the most vividly vibrant and cacophonously insane place i have yet to visit. To talk about intensity would be an understatement. I am coming to know and developing a love for, a place. A place who is as loud as it is bright, as it is chaotic, as it is shocking. It presents complete saturation for every sense. I am consecutively breathing the most awful, followed the most heavenly of smells. The food is as spicy and delicious as the language is foreign and completely incomprehensible to my western ears. The sounds of the bus horns are some of the loudest i have heard. They move, jarring their gargantuan bodies through streets all too small, filled with a people so accustomed they barely acknowledge it’s gait. The cow eating from a mound of garbage, blocking traffic in the middle of the road barley riles a glance from the bus riders. It’s people are poor beyond my comprehension. Yet stirred into it’s blatantly globalized soup, of caste injustices, gender troubles, and political uncertainly, is a radiating beauty that is indescribably growing in with time. I am enveloped in a sea of uncertainty yet simultaneously feeling incredibly alive. On my bus ride home today, I took all of it in. Seated literally right next to the driver, as Tamil pop music blasted out of blown speakers on a rickety bus packed with people I invited these realizations. I am beginning to get to know my new home.

VILLAPURAM + DALIT CHRISTIAN PROTEST

I never thought I would be sitting with Christian protestors. Yet their plight, though initially induced by religion, is largely induced by Caste and economic injustices. The Caste system was set up as part of the Hindu faith. In 1950 a law was passed freeing people from the Caste system (yet after 3,000 years of horrific class discrepancies, it is still very much in place. ) Indians that converted to Christianity or Islam were promised liberation, as the Caste system was a Hindu construct. Black Day is a day for Dalit (untouchable) Christians and Muslims to protest the promise of change never delivered. We sat in solidarity, not for Christianity or any other religious monstrosity, but rather, against a legacy of violence based on constructed poverty. Here is a video of a call and response chant amplified to the government center across the street.

BOOK MAKING/ DRAWING IN BOOKS THEY MADE

THIS is the main after school program. It is in a village called Periathachoor. This is a film from our second visit. We worked with small groups and helped them to make simple 3 bound books. This is a short film of them drawing in the books after they made them. It was candid, i had to sneak the camera out to avoid the theatrics. They enjoyed it and were working diligently!

Tailoring School