Aditya and Aruna go to Agra

Aditya Pant and Arundati Muralidharan, who have been involved with Panch ever since its conception, returned to India in January after Aditya had completed his Masters in City Planning from MIT. Arundati (Aruna for short) is doing a PhD at Boston University. They are in the midst of discovering what to do next and agreed to come to Agra to discuss how we could imagine setting up a workshop space in the community I was at. We met a local organization, got caught up on each other's lives, and spoke with community members.

Here we are discussing outside the local tea stall. (Photo Credit: Aditya)

They speak flawless Hindi, so they were able to learn some new things about my community right away. For instance, they found out that my 'Bhabi' (or brother's sister of the family I have been adopted into) did not know that she had twins until she had them via C-section. In her drowsy state she heard the doctors discussing if they could just sell one of the babies since they were both boys and thus valuable - the mother would never know. She motioned 'no'. But her sterile relative later offered her a sum for one of them. She declined. Prompted by Arundati's skills for talking health, she explained that her boys were malnourished and have costed a total of 2 lakhs Rupees (~$4000 US) in health bills so far including the birth complications which accounted for about 40% of that. Aruna suggested she feed them dal (beans) every day, but she said, 'yeah, that's what doc said, but they just like chips and biscuits.'

Clothes are just a hindrance. Bhabi's twins at play. (photo credit: Arundati)

Of course, leave it to the nationals who have been to the Taj before to play tourists.

Aditya found a ladder climbing the truss of the old rail bridge crossing the Yamuna. He decided to climb up and admire the view, much to the chagrin of Aruna who stayed on the footpath citing balance complications. The sunsetting was nice, but all around us was a river polluted with faeces and trash of all kinds, much of it from Delhi I hear since the river connects the two cities.