Re-Conceptualizing

Panch is currently undergoing heavy reconceptualization. Our team has gone back to the drawing board after our 6 month experience trying to find answers to a question: How can low-income communities take ownership in the design and fabrication of their own solutions to their challenges? Findings were mixed, as we learned much more about the reality of urban low-income technologies in India, but found that the current reality lacked platforms both appropriate and willing for such a philosophy to be built upon. We decided to ask Question B: What if we made our own platform?

This picture taken of Aditya during a team discussion in Delhi captures our current stage: reconceptualizing comfortably. But painfully aware that we are disconnected from the low-income communities we are talking about. In this picture, I think we were talking about theoretical histories of power.

Now I have to leave India since my visa has run out. The future of panch and what form it will take is yet to be seen. But my ticket is roundtrip.

Brainstorming Brunch

After meeting up with Aruna and Aditya and conceptuatlizing toghet in Bombay and Agra, we went to Delhi with the mission of throwing our ideas at a broader audience to see what they thought. The basic idea was we were thinking of setting up an organization to facilitate low-income urban communities to aspire and create their own responses to the challenges they face.

How do you engage other people in brainstorming and critiquing a set of ideas that are really in the very prime stages of conceptualization? Since we couldn't compare it to any experiences we had had personally, we approached it as a learning adventure.

We started off by putting our discussions on paper, individually and collectively. Using 3A (instead of 3M) sticky notes and newspaper (Aruna's idea) we tried to arrange concepts and more concrete ideas together, categorized into idea spaces that when looked at in series displayed a process of what the organization would do rather than an end result or output.

Our work faced real-life, and mixedly-welcomed distractions. Specifically the World Cup of Cricket was in its semi-final and final match, with India ultimately winning it all. As well as Aditya and Aruna's niece, Janeli.

Slowly we arrived at some consensus for a framework to display this process and got to work making around 10 poster papers filled halfway with sticky notes.

The empty halves of the posters were reserved for participants in our upcoming Brainstorming Brunch to fill in as they saw fit. The Brainstorming Brunch was an event we invited people we knew personally who were more friends than acquaintances. Tiffany, Luan, Agnes, Dhananjay, and Sumitra ended up attending.

As we had anticipated soliciting brainstorming and critique on the conceptual process of an organization/project from a diverse set of backgrounds is hard to do in a way that the participants are clear on what is going on and the outcome is useful for the facilitators. Reflecting we realized that we were trying to communicate conceptually when we should have focused on communicating concepts in a more concrete way, with clear outcomes of the Brainstorming Brunch. The people who came were great and we were lucky to have access to a free space to work in. And in the end it forced us to struggle with communicating together to other people, even if it was difficult, to begin to move beyond internal conversations into creating external discussions.

Riverfarming snakumbers

The Yamuna river is incredibly polluted. Delhi dumps its industrial wastes into the river and other settlements along the Yamuna have developed industrial activities that do the same. Agra is no different, except that it happens to be downstream of many of these, leading to it being ranked 20th in most polluted Indian cities. Since it is dry season, the river is really low and forms stagnant pools at various parts. The beach along the river is home to common open defecation and...yadiyadiya we could go on about how bad it is and how the Agra planning policies forbid access to the riverscape which has limited its development...

but one of the most interesting things is the annual cultivation of watermelon, squash and cucumbers on the fertile sands. I only got a glimpse at it but this is what I saw:

In India there are two types of cucumbers. This is one variety. In the hazy background you can see the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan, a famous ruler of India and the financer of the Taj Mahal, died. It is 6am.

I helped them harvest some of the snake-like cucumbers (snakumbers). Vishnu, on the left, sleeps on the same floor I do. The sand is actually furrowed and covered with straw which is meant to keep the moisture in I was told. The seeds are planted in the middle and then they grow out like vines around the furrows. Very leafy plants only are planted as other crops lose a lot to the birds and dogs that roam.

The boy on the left is part of the extended family I am staying with. Along with his dad, he sleeps in the straw shelter you see in the back. I asked him if he was off to school after this and he laughed. 'No, I have to take care of the farm' he said matter-of-factly. They are tying up the cucumbers in the wicker baskets to carry them into town where other family members are selling them on carts.

The rate for a small farm is 700 Rs or ~$15. They weren't sure if it was a government program or not. The snakumbers taste just like cucumbers.

Sapna and Prem

Seen as an educated newcomer, Sapna organizes a family tutoring session every other week in her kitchen. Pictured below in the orange, she lays out a mat and has the kids do their homework while she gives them help on drawing, english, math, hindi, and civics.

Through the door behind Sapna is where she lives and sleeps with her husband Prem. Prem means Love and Sapna means Dream. That is Prem's motorcycle in the kitchen on the right side.

Prem works as a delivery boy at a blood-testing lab. He is 21 but since he has a stable job and is the oldest male he has the responsibility of providing for his family, including his mother and 3 younger siblings. He makes 3000 Rs a month which is $800 per year.

Sapna and Prem are having their first child this June. Prem and I became good friends, and he is likely the most genuinely generous person I feel I met during my time there. Spending time with him and Sapna gave me interesting personal experience of the way young couples relate in their culture.

Puri Lens

It is no easy task to comprehend a 'community gathering' in Naya Vadi in the Yamuna Par (which translates to 'on the yamuna') in Agra. Community gathering is not accurate as this was a family gathering in a community. But as I found, community outside of family is a bit of a foreign concept in this peri-urban space. Even if you are there it is hard to do more than just take bits in much less process it. Language likely to blame, but regardless it has prompted me to share my experince at Rakesh's anniversary party through the lens of the puri. Puri refers to a small deep-fried chapati, which is just flour and water and salt. It seems to be the festival starch for weddings as well not because it is preferred to the chapati, which is grilled. or the paratha, which is infused with oil then grilled, but because it cooks quicker and therefore can be served hot on demand. That may explain the fastfood=deepfry relationship we find in the west as well.

So this is the story of Rakesh's anniversary told by following the puri around. Rakesh asked to borrow my camera to capture the event. Its a good thing too because I was feeling too sick from all the oil to do anything.

Puri starts as a mass of wheat flour and water and salt if they want. All the younger women at the event gathered around the puri's. The older women tended to go inside. The ones actually making the puris were the teenagers. Usually people just prepare the food on the floor in the house but in this case the number of preparers caused them to move to the space in front of the house. Rakesh comes from a relatively well-off family it seems as his house is nicer than most of the others.

After the dough is mixed and rolled out by the women, a relative, Om Prakash, (in this case) was tasked with the sabji (vegetables) and the puri cooking. He puts them in lots of oil on a wood and buffalo dung fire or a propane flame.

The men, upon arrival, take their seats on the floor in front of leaf placemats or in this case styrofoam platters. Piping hot puris are served on a wicker basket to them - as much as they want, when they call for it. Other young male relatives are tasked with water, vegetables, and sweets.

This is how we ate. Notice the women in the back making the dough for filling our plates.

If you come late, they'll find space for you. No matter what age you are. As long as you are male. And you'll get puri.

After the men have eaten and moved out to be hang outside around the music, the women move in to eat their puris. At other weddings I have seen women eat with men before, its just not customary. In this case, the women were served by girls rather than boys. Staring directly at the camera on the right is Lakshmi who is pretty cool. She taught me how to make any dish taste the same by dousing it in oil and garam masala.

After the eating is done, the women clean up the puri mess, and meanwhile there is a presentation of flowers from the sister-in-law (there is no brother-in-law) to the husband. Then there is a series of serious pictures in formal garb. Unfortunately by this time someone had set the 'shaky hand' setting on the camera and all the pictures came out blurry.

Everything formal taken care of, midnight, loud music, and electricity still provided, there is only one thing to do in such a social gathering...

Dance! (Only the males got to dance this time.) In other cases the women get to dance somewhere else, but certainly never together. The one doing the t-rex michael jackson walk in the middle is named Santosh - which means Content. Content from all the puris.