chartandwaters

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.