chartandwaters

This was unfortunately something of a common state for Gandhirajan--working while I played with the kids. Because he spoke the language AND knew how to administer, I was often more free, and, by the end of a workshop, more relaxed. So it was his fault for knowing what was going on. (Yes of course I also administered.) These children were some of our main crew--they participated in both the first workshop and the second.



Mangayai's kolam nears completion.



Next to this fire engine is a very large field that's home to a government-run Industrial Training Institute. There is also an open-air shelter used for various activities such as making nets. The field is used for sports such as cricket during the day and sleeping, for some people, at night. Since the shelters are perhaps 16x12 feet and may fit eight or more family members, some people choose to sleep outside. Many of them are fisherman who, when they lived at their homes, often preferred to sleep on the beach.

I didn't realize people slept here until the last night, when we left especially late. First I detected the forms of goats I needed to step around, and then I made out the people. I was startled and expressed surprise. It wasn't judgment, but Gandhirajan bristled at first, sensitive to any lack of understanding about the way the locals live.

Beyond the field is the main road leading from Nagapattinam to the town of Nagoor and several smaller coastal villages.

All the houses are thatch-roofed and most everyone cooks with an open flame, hence the need for the fire engine.

This was the first time I met Moussina; she was in this little alley leading to the workshop. Her first words to me were: Will you take me to America with you? She, and a few of her friends, have an expressiveness that seemed to me more American than Indian. Americans are often said here not only to more forthright on certain subjects, but to be more expressive in our facial expressions and gestures.

That's Selvam next to her. He has a good relationship with his students and they like to hang out with him. He's helped us with nearly everything, including biking me 3 kilometers home many times at night on the back of his bicycle. He speaks some English, all of it way too fast (because his accent and English are so hard for me), and for some reason doesn't slow down when I ask him to; this can be hard since he's our main contact at the shelter. So Gandhirajan told Selvam I thought he spoke very quickly, but the fact that he spoke fast English made him proud, "Oh, really? She said I speak quickly?"



Here is Moussina in a graceful position and her good friend, Vijy, who teaches at the nearby creche; sorry, the images inside the workshop are all a bit dark as the walls are black.



I took this picture for Arjuna in the center, who lost a great deal in the tsunami. She is a very serious, thoughtful student, and her face has a unique depth and sadness. We were definitely fond of each other, but I sometimes wondered what she thought of my playfulness--sometimes she looked as if she was trying to decipher it, sometimes as if she would have liked to enjoy it if she could, and sometimes I think it was hard for her to know whether she was allowed to feel joy.

Since many of the children had never done art in a formal setting, Gandhirajan suggested we start with something familiar to them and that they might feel confident doing--drawing kolams. Kolams are designs that women make, usually from some kind of flour such as rice flour, at the entry to their home. They usually make the kolams late at night or very early in the morning as a way of greeting the day; the kolams inevitably rub down and away by nightfall.

The kolams are usually made of lines that curve around a grid of evenly spaced dots. There are many standard kolams, but you can also make up your own. I will show you some photos of actual kolams soon.

For some reason primarily Hindu women make kolams, though they do not have religious meaning. Thus the Muslim girls were concerned at first that it was not okay to draw them. Gandhirajan explained that it was okay and they quickly set to the task.

Though we bought books full of different kolams to show the class, most girls and women have many different kinds of Kolams memorized and do not need books to draw them.



This is Mangayai Carasi. That's her whole first name; it means "Queen of Women." She’s friends with the NFE students, many of whom live in the “streets” of the shelter closest to the NFE classroom (the generally Muslim streets), so they hang out in the classroom and we see them a lot.

The first time I met them, I mangled her name terribly and everyone laughed. It became an ongoing joke and a kind of greeting. Each time I saw them, they would say her name and look at me. Or they would point at her and gesture that I should say her name. I would try to say it, falter and make funny faces. We had nearly no shared language but names, so they had massive value.




I don’t know her name; isn’t she a cutie. Girls here wear the most amazing clothing, full of sparkle and shimmer and dazzling colors, of an almost Bollywood wonderfulness. It’s as if instead of reserving some part of the day for make-believe, or letting the child go out in her princess costume only sometimes, they just let them dress up all day. The littlest girls, when they go out, wear confections: calf-length skirts puffed up with tulle, full of ruffles and frills and often complexly patterned, outrageous applique. As they get a little older the dresses may comfortably bear their shoulders, but the skirts are typically full and ankle-length.



Vasanthi on the right: a PCI volunteer, she wasn’t excited about making art but liked being around. Boobathi, on the left, wanted to be an artist and began art school but an arranged marriage took precedent. She’s drawing from memory a very complicated kolam that depicts three symbols, one of Hinduism, one of Islam, and one of Christianity, all being toted on a traditional temple cart (used to tote the image of a god during a ceremony). She has four children who are unusually creative; they dance, draw and write poetry.

I’m not telling individual’s tsunami-related stories just now, but of course all of these people live at the shelter because they have lost their homes. Anyone who has lost loved ones or property or both is what is called "tsunami-affected", though we tended to think of everyone in the village as tsunami-affected.



PCI volunteer Vijayalakshmi drawing kolams.




The lovely and ubiquitous Hussein Beevi, with kolams.

The lighting on these photos is so much better on my camera than on this monitor.

The organization that runs the room we used is "Project Concern International", or PCI. They do a lot of activities in the shelter and have many volunteers who hang out there (some of them live there). Most of the volunteers appear hopeful that their job might advance to employment. The room is primarily reserved for non-formal education (NFE) classes, also called tution, taught by beautiful Kavitha and one helpful Selvam, both of whom stayed on after their classes were over to assist us with the workshop.

We gave two workshops--did I say that?--with one week separating them. The first workshop we gave was just for me to get comfortable with the children and get a sense of what kind of (second) workshop they might benefit from. It was seven days, from 4:30--7:30, and was supposed to be for thirty girls though that number quickly grew. We also set an age limit that expanded for many reasons. Luckily, kids seem to work better together here than a bunch of different-aged kids might at home.

I designed the workshop for girls for a few different reasons, but in the end it probably just made for a more comfortable environment for them. (Some boys would loiter around the entrance, staring persistently in. On the fourth day, when we weren't looking, one of the PCI volunteers gave them supplies and they settled into a corner where they proceeded to work very, very seriously and produce complex, developed paintings. I had thought perhaps they had just felt left out, but no, they wanted to make ART.)

I thought we might do some dance but the dance the young girls wanted to do was--whew!--too racy, and only some of the older girls were permitted to dance.

NFE is for people who have dropped out of regular school; even if you attend NFE, you are called a "drop-out". NFE is for both boys and girls but all the people in the last class of the day--the class before our workshop--were Muslim women. When we asked why, it was explained that at home many of them dropped out because education was considered unnecessary, but now that they were at the shelter and education was convenient, many had started going again. Men were also free to come, but they more frequently had begun some kind of work. In the Hindu community, both young men and young women would be permitted and might be encouraged to work. Some of the young women dropped out before the tsunami; others dropped out after, typically as a result of trauma.



Wacky assignment for early arrivers where we made a collage walkway to the center of the room. The kids cut shapes out of paper I had swashed with water and scattered them in a path mixed with flowers and petals from garlands. (Garlands cheap and sold on streets, popular for hair and ritual.)

The man in the picture is Manihendran, he is 9th standard (grade) and he as our guy Friday for everything.




We also decorated the room with cut-out, fringed newspaper. The kids loved it but some of the volunteers suggested to Gandhi, maybe a little critically, that we buy colored paper next time. Gandhi explained that we were trying to show the value of waste materials, and they liked that idea.

This was at a primary school. We went in and the teachers immediately stopped whatever they had been doing to talk with us about the project. This unnerved me but it was to happen again and again. The kids just went crazy...they seem trained to love and trust foreigners, and cameras are their FAVorite. They all know how to shake hands, which isn't done in Tamil Nadu, and like to show it off. Very satisfying to them when you shake back. For some reason--Bill Clinton's visit?--they also know how to salute but I wasn't as fond of that gesture. It took mere seconds to get them to arrange for a group photo. Later, some of them spontaneously took a yoga pose they may have learned from a local NGO, the Art of Living, that's been giving yoga and meditation classes since the tsunami.

This visit was interesting for me because the kids were being so crazy and excited (oooo, they looove foreigners) I didn't have to do much to keep them interested. I also felt horribly guilty because they kept abandoning the classroom to play and pose for photos. But the teachers seemed touched and one said, "You like kids", which made me realize I was doing something.

In India there often--I don't mean this derogatorily--"extra" people just around, not part of the activities and not separate from them. They don't seem to bother. For instance, the man shooing the kids did not appear to have any official role. He sat next to the entrance, shirtless, in a lunghi, with a sadhu bag though he didn't appear to be practicing. When he wanted to shoo the kids--whether justified or not--he moved at them with a switch. There is a lot of this feigned violence as a form of discipline here. Sometimes it seems completely unjustified.

Several times, when we visited children at a school or shelter, we were far from traffic, so our auto rickshaw driver sat and wait for us to finish. I soon began to enjoy watching the changes in the drivers' faces as they waited. They would pull over and wait, stoic-faced, with nothing to do. We would go in and speak with the teachers. During that time the kids would get crazy and happy and pour outside and whip up a lot of energy with their movement and laughing. By the end the drivers would look relaxed and pleasantly surprised. It was like they had been at a spa.

In each of the schools we visited there were many children who lived in the relief shelter where we later gave workshops. We were interviewing the teachers to find out the effect of the tsunami on the kids, how much art the children had already had, whether the teachers thought the workshop was a good idea and any suggestions they had for how to conduct it (what ages, where, etc.). At all the schools the teachers were extremely accommodating, giving us a lot of their time and respect. They also said they would help us select children who would benefit most from the workshop, and when we went back the next day they had made a careful long handwritten list.

The next photos are in Nagapattinam, where we'd soon set up camp. We spent the day visiting schools to find out their interest, then in the evening visited a friend of Gandhi's, a famous Sufi singer whose name you would probably like me to be able to give. When we came in he was watching TV and he seemed eager for company. He is in his late 70s and still sings; he would have been at a performance but there was something wrong with his throat.

The front room of his house had a raised perimeter about 8 feet wide and an opening in the ceiling over the unraised part--through which the late light was coming in, hence the dramatic lighting. But a lot of homes and businesses use paint in these beautiful seaside blues and greens, all warmed and brightened in the coastal light. I was trying to capture this when I photographed the sewing machine.

He taught me the scale Karnatak (a kind of South Indian) music uses, which is identical to the 8-octave scale in the West though he didn't know it--he was thus impressed when, as he sang up the scale, I predicted the 8th note! He also showed me how counting is done in Karnatak music, in 8; I knew just a bit of this from a friend who studied it in college, so again he was pleased. It made me happy I'd gone to a school that did a lot with non-Western music. Amid all the theory he also managed to explain briefly why Islam is the true religion.

He said Western music doesn't understand improvisation, the way Karnatak music is different every time it's performed, and I tried to explain that jazz did understand but he wasn't very interested. In this way he reminded me of the few other famous performers I'd met, how they'd become used to presenting their stories with the same careful drama they would use on stage, and how they were no longer accustomed, if they had once been, to being contradicted. He was very kind and so eager for conversation.

His animated ways, the way he opened his eyes very wide to talk and lifted his head slightly, reminded me very much of my Grandma Alice. In fact, his face and mannerisms seemed Eastern European (my Grandmother was from Romania), a thought I would have repeatedly in Tamil Nadu.

In Tamil, anyone who is boring you in any way is said to be "sawing your neck." Sometimes it's just called "sawing," or "rumbum". Tonight someone sawed both my and Gandhirajan's necks. It was over dinner.

The man invited me for sawing again (but not Gandhirajan). He asked me to stay a week longer for further sawing.

It made me feel very sawed.

Afterward, Gandhirajan asked me what this man did for a living. I said he traded stocks. Gandhirajan said what. I said he traded stocks. Gandhirajan said oh. I said, do you understand? He said, "unh" which is Tamil for yes, but he said it in a way that I knew meant he didn't know what I'd said. This happens sometimes. I asked him what I'd said. He said, "He trains dogs." This is understandable because the o in "dogs" is pronounced more like the o in cops. And the g has a kind of k sound.

The famous Church of Vailankanni (pronounced Velanganni). This area was hit very very hard by the tsunami and several thousand people were lost. We went here to see if we should do the workshop here, but the school, although agreeable, did not seem enthusiastic. This may be due to the lack of popularity of art as a serious endeavor throughout India, but we were looking for enthusiastic teachers because we wanted them to keep being supportive of the kids' art efforts after we left.

The children at the school looked well-tended to, though we also visited one orphanage that was one of the saddest things to be seen: One longish narrow room, maybe 17x8, for forty underclothed bedraggled kids from preschool up.

Michele, religion guru, can you comment on what I say next? The most powerful aspect of witnessing religion in India, for me, is how everyone's religion is perfectly obvious from their dress and names, and how much cooperation there IS between religions (a concurrent history of oppression and subjugation is of course also there and makes more press). When I asked a Christian monk in Delhi whether his monastery's social work was always well-received by people of other religions, he said, painting a perhaps overly rosy but not impossible picture, of course, India is a pluralist society, people are used to working together. He said his Muslim friends send him gifts for Christmas, etc.

At the same time, nearly every Christian symbol I've seen in India has an emphasis on conversion; there's a lot of use of the word "only" as in Christ is the "only" way, which makes sense if you believe you have an obligation to try to convert. It's in interesting contrast to Hindu iconography, full of sensual pictures of bejewelled gods with gleaming skin and human bodies, and which by its sheer omnipotence seems to assert its authority but *does not permit conversion*. So if you want to join the true religion--sorry too bad. It's not your fault; you were just born into the wrong caste. The dominant political party in India is Hindu and in various ways asserts the authority of Hinduism and thus of caste politics.

If you can convert to Hinduism, the party wants also, naturally, to prevent you from converting FROM it. In 2002 the party succeeded in passing an "anti-conversion" law in Tamil Nadu; the BJP claimed that the law was to discourage "forced or induced" conversions--such as financial incentives to convert--but many people believe it's intended to preserve Hindu ranks, and that it's designed to discourage conversion generally. I don't know what follow-up research has been done on it: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=26392233
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=26191721

Yet there was a long period of a kind of mass conversion. Over centuries Brahmin priests (Brahmins are the highest Hindu caste; their "hegemony" supposedly spawned casteless Buddhism) have gone to various villages persuading them that their local religions were in fact part of Hinduism, their local gods Hindu gods. Many of the priests did this because there was money in establishing a shrine to these deities and promoting them. This is one reason Hinduism has thousands of gods.

Many Hindu people also worship Christian and Muslim gods. A friend tells me that when he was growing up many mothers he knew spent Sundays taking their children from temple to church to mosque to express their complete devotion. Tamil Nadu's ancient religions focus on goddess-, rather than god-, worship, so early Christian missionaries modeled a version of Mary on a popular local goddess and popularized the infant Jesus. Today Mary and the infant Jesus are very popular among Hindu people.

This is a fascinating but unreservedly anti-Hindu article on the role of conversion in helping lower castes escape oppression: http://www.sammaditthi.com/DIALOGUE/dialogue_prempati.asp. He recommends lowest castes convert to Islam as a purely tactical move.

We didn't have time to go inside the church, hence all the signs. Note if you can see it the beauty of the Tamil script.

The Church of Vailankanni....

We took a govt bus to Pondicherry, took a private bus to Kairakal, and in the a.m. took another private bus to Velanganni. In govt buses people are seated (rather, pressed) very close together, and for a dollar more a private bus, with AC and padded cushions, is sometimes less wearying. Unfortunately they frequently come with a booming--I do mean booming, they say Indians love noise--DVD.

In the bus in the picture, we watched a DVD of a popular Tamil movie, in which a woman's neighbor stalks her and repeatedly molests her but she eventually falls for him. I was choking by the end but when I later began to tell the story to Kristin--"This man stalks a woman..."--she laughed and finished for me, "...and then she falls in love with him?" She said, not disparagingly, that she thinks such themes in Tamil movies might be the product of a culture of arranged marriages, in which the lack of experience with alternative scenarios results in some dubious ideas about them.

The rest of the scenes are just me trying to show the diversity of dress and the relationship between traditional attire and a bus.

I'm in Chennai, I came here from Nagapattinam to get a rest after the second workshop; there's a third workshop another NGO proposed to do with us, training preschool teachers on creative teaching methods, but despite the fact that the workshop is next Tuesday they haven't promised us the funding yet. So I'm here preparing a syllabus in case they do.

*Update, it may still come through but workshop has been delayed by a week. So a small reprieve that made me very happy this a.m. *

I'm staying at my friend Kristin's whom I met through our mutual friend and former teacher Annie; Kristin was also her student some 6 years before me. Kristin was a journalist and is now doing her dissertation on Roman Catholicism in Southern India--as part of a doctorate of divinity I think it's called--anyway she is completely great, very very good at making you feel comfortable and welcome, AND she speaks perfect TAMIL, and how many people can you say that about? Tamil is the main language of Tamil Nadu and I will be telling more about it soon.

Kristin's not home for the next week, she's gone south to do some interviews. Meanwhile she's loaning her flat to me and to a woman who's come from Ohio to pick up a young girl she is adopting today! from a local orphanage. Because of a passport snafu that was apparently about turf wars it's been a two year process, so the baby is now two. Laura was just here in August thinking she might be able to get her baby then. She seems wonderfully uncomplaining and calm.

The day I arrived in Chennai Kristin and I went to see the movie the Island with a friend of hers, a stock trader who regrets spending some years studying philosophy because he could have been making money. "And what would you do with the money?" "Spend it!" He thinks he is very old because he is in his early 40s; I think Kristin indicated this was somewhat Indian of him. He took us to the fancy four-star Park Hotel where they show movies on cloth screens in the lobby and there is a leather bar where everything including walls is leather, very modern-young-rebel-anti-hindu :(. I had egg noodles with chicken in red wine sauce and the ingredients were all correct fancy but the cooking was not at all correct fancy. The Island was graphically violent and though it has Ewan McGregor and oh what is her name don't see it.

After I arrived in Chennai I had the best, most unbelievable surprise. Gandhirajan and I were meeting Kristin at a tiny inexpensive Indian restaurant in the upscalish neighborhood of Bessant Nagar and I arrived first, and there in the next table was my friend Bobby, a journalist I'd met in Delhi in May and had many meals and long talks with before promptly losing touch. So after six months and many miles later there he is, and we were both very happy and excited, and amazed because for different reasons we both expect to run into know one we know in this place, and he arranged for me to meet with a nonprofit ASHA he's working with on education issues in case we could "partner" on something, and then I went to ASHA and we went on a tour of a school they had helped develop and the next day we had dinner. He focuses on TB and HIV/AIDS issues working both media and directly as a volunteer to NGOs and he is so unassuming and sweet and friendly, he has none of the cockiness or remove he might have since he's so smart and socially just.

Of the many things he told me--I always want to take notes when I talk to him--one is that government doctors in India (so those serving the poor at lower cost) are also the most popular private doctors (serving people at higher cost), and that they are much more likely to visit their private patients at the hospital than their govt patients. So many govt patients feel pressure to move to private status with these doctors to get the best care etc isnt that wonderful. Of course the govt docs also get the most patients, since so many patients matriculate from govt to private.

There was an article a couple mos back about a well-known practice: How, in a govt hospital, bribes are expected of you before you can get services all along the way. I will save this story for another time.

Today Gandhirajan took me to meet the principal at the Fine Arts College in Chennai where Gandhi used to teach. The Principal wanted to meet me since he is passionate about teaching art to children, particularly in underprivileged rural and tribal areas, which is in large part what my project came to be about. The principal's art was very good and funny, but complicated to explain. Anyway he drew me a picture of the god of time Yama on a bull for me to take home.

The Principal had to go to a gallery opening of an art exhibit by a famous film director who is the principal's friend and took us and a colleague with him. The film director's art, watercolor pen and ink and sculpture, was not good at all and in fact the sculpture, strangely, looked like it had been made of overdry, stressed out clay like the kind as a child I'd find broken in pieces at the bottom of my closet. The media asked the principal to comment on his friend's art, but the principal refused as he never mixes personal with public. There were just about 30 people in attendance but there were many media cameras and they seemed always to be shining their huge flashes at me; they seemed to be passing time taking pictures of me because I was foreign. Once Gandhi observed it too it made me very self-conscious and I hid. In the car I said the art seemed amateur and the principal said carefully, "That wasn't amateur, that was a loose movement," then turned to Gandhi to see if he had gotten the English right.

The principal spoke about the importance of artists trying not to imitate other artists which is a trend here. The other artists they imitate are typically Western, considered the gold standard. Art that's not "traditional", depicting gods and ancient stories in classical forms, apparently didn't occur in India--as a public phenomenon--until the 1900s, so when people here refer to Modern Art they are referring to art that both corresponds to the Modern period, and to any art that isn't traditional. As we rode home the professor spoke on his views about many artists; for example, he thinks Dali was painting mental images that came to him perhaps because of an upset stomach but that he did it with remarkable skill, and that his skill gained him unreasonable praise. The principal also wanted to ask why Freud was considered so important when for thousands of years people have been figuring out how to understand the psyche. The principal was highly opinionated and very likable.

Our accents were hard for each other to understand, so Gandhirajan did much translation; the principal would speak a thought vigorously, patiently wait for Gandhi's translation, my reply, and then Gandhi's translation of my reply--and then begin his next thought with precisely the same vigor. I was grateful for how passionately he wanted to communicate his ideas to me.

He is one of the many who are examing what it means for artists here to use Western art as the gold standard, when Western art is rooted in a completely different history and culture.

The principal and Gandhi asked me to give a lecture--two lectures--on creativity and art in the west. They want me to talk about artists' experiences in the west and the role of imitation. (It's startling how exact the imitation of an artist's style is in some instances here.) I keep having these peculiar opportunities to do something I'm not qualified to do because I'm available and maybe presentable, so I agreed. I would think it's irresponsible of me except that I think if they could find someone better they would....no????

At night we went back to Gandhi's friend's place where I am being allowed to work on his many Macintoshes. The friend, Baskar, is a skilled Macamatician (as well as a graphic designer, copy editor, etc.) and said he didn't need my brother's services, but thank you. He says there are lots of Macs here but mostly in the graphic design field, just as Macs are popular among graphic designers at home.

My dad may be pleased to know that Baskar has XM so he can wirelessly play his ITunes on speakers 8 feet away.

Baskar rents a lovely house with a petite, stylish upstairs design studio--the studio has a kitchen and opens onto a large patio with tall, picket fence walls. So a sense of privacy. The patio's surrounded by palms and the eaves of large deciduous trees burst through and over the pickets. Many people come to Baskar's to hang out while he works. They also seem to take all meals here, and several, such as Gandhi, sometimes grab a pillow and stay overnight sleeping on the cement floor. Yesterday Baskar's housekeeper brought three bottles of Absolut (raspberry, lemon and plain), and the "boys" also went out for rum and beer. Meanwhile I met Baskar's wife and two children; his wife, I learned, teaches middle school and she was able to help me brainstorm many problems I'm having developing the syllabus for next week. Also she fed me. I like her very much: very opinionated but warm, very honest and, while she's being honest, often taking it as an opportunity to assert the importance of being honest. She said she loves working with kids because they are so innocent and fresh and pure; if she could she would avoid all the adults at her school altogether. When she offered me "a bit" of their leftover dinner and I said, "Are you sure?" she said, "That's why I said 'a bit'....It's best to be honest."

While bopping between computers and taking swigs of beer and such, Baskar also makes time for quick conversation scattered with wonderfully large statements; when I saw he had many books by Kafka and said he must be a "kafka fanatic"; he said no no no he has no fanaticism of any kind, you can't read Kafka and be a fanatic. And when I asked whether he wanted to buy a home, he said no he didn't believe in owning property of any kind (Macs and Xm notwiths---but anyway he shares).

Later Baskar put on Karnatak music by a man named Tanjore Viswanathan and after a half hour of it he mentioned that the musician taught at Wesleyan. As if I might of heard of Wesleyan by chance, but of course it's where I went to college. Then he dropped a few names of students, one of whom I'd known at Wesleyan. I knew Wesleyan had a strong ethnomusicology is that a word department with emphasis on Indian music; Baskar's friend said because of that department South India "has strong ties to Wesleyan."

In the midst of their drinkup I worked on my syllabus. Later someone rushed me home on a scooter on the empty streets, in luxurious antithesis to the crazy daytime traffic.

The reason I haven't been able to rotate photos is that blogger does not seem to allow it. However, I can rotate in Mac's Iphoto so for the moment there may be hope. I know many people across the world have successfully posted photos on the web without difficulty and that I am unusual. Now that I have a break I will try flickr again, on which so far I know how to post 6 photos.

...a parade of large Ganeshas on carts surrounded by entourages of hooting young men. When the parade passed we turned to this nice statue of Gandhi on the coast; it's providing good shade for some children.

Pondicherry is a beautiful and interesting town. As a French colony it is full of Frenchies in Western dress and Indians who seem to have resisted the urge to cross-pollinate, at least dress-wise: The natives seem all to be in their traditional dhotis and saris. The signs are in French, English, and Hindi. I visited once more between workshops, and on that trip I got to eat a baguette.

The thrower's excellent "follow-through"; one of the larger Ganeshas making its way down the street. I wanted to see it thrown into the ocean but they were taking it too far away. Neighborhoods typically have larger Ganeshas on each block, some 8 feet high, and then one VERY large Ganesha, I believe 16 or more feet high. The neighborhoods have contests to see who can make the most interesting Ganesha. For example, you might make one all out of coconuts.

I had stopped in Pondicherry for a few hours on my way from Chennai to Velanganni. I was accompanied by Gandhirajan, a Chennai-based artist who had contacted CAFI back in March because he was interested in the Healing Arts Project. He had already given two art workshops to tsunami survivors, one self-funded and one through another NGO; he hoped to collaborate with CAFI for more. Gandhiraj would turn out to accompany me for the rest of the project as an excellent project coordinator, art teacher and translator. In Pondicherry we met a theater artist, Gobi, who would be joining us for one of our workshops.

Velanganni, which I used to spell correctly but now spell as it sounds, is a tsunami-struck town in the district of Nagapattinam. It's known for its famous Roman Catholic church and community. Chennai (formerly Madras) and all the towns I've been in since are in the coastal state of Tamil Nadu, which I'll rave about separately.

In Pondicherry I asked a local, a fairly spiritual Hindu, what he thought of Ganesha. "He's good fun," he said, and hastened to add, "I don't think he's a GOD". The latter is not a popular sentiment.

Apologies if I butchered the spelling of this very popular 2 or 3 day (depending on who you ask) festival starting on Ganesh's birthday, September 7. His name is pronounced "Ganesha" here so I'm not sure why the dropped a in most spellings. Everyone loves the mighty Ganesha, who represents wisdom and wealth and is sometimes depicted as an older elephant, and sometimes as a baby elephant with candy in his hand. Celebrators buy a little Ganesh--the most common ones are brightly painted plaster--and set up a puja offering to him (that first image is Venkatesh's puja offering), do puja (prayer) in the a.m., cook special delicious "festival food" all day and receive guests....then in the evening have a second puja and take the Ganesh to a water tank or water body to throw him in. This symbolizes, as someone put it to me, making a "new" god--giving rebirth to him--and at the same time creating for one's self a new self. (This has caused some environmental damage because the materials used to paint most Ganeshas are chemical.) Some people pay others to throw in their Ganesh.

Several days later, in the French province of Pondicherry, we watched a group of boys who had collected Ganeshas from houses cart them to the ocean for throwing. Figure 2. In Figure 3, you see them throwing the Ganeshas enthusiastically in.

People who have lost a family member that year celebrate no festivals for the whole year.