Painting the Future-My Dream India

Sunday Cindy and I went to an event sponsored by Sukrupa. Sukrupa is an organization whose mission is to help underprivileged children escape a background of poverty, slum life, illiteracy and ignorance.
Cindy came to know of the organization through the OWC. It is one of the charities she works with on their charity committee.

The event was an artistic competition between children. I couldn't tell exactly what the age range was, but I know there were kids in 8th and 9th standard at the higher end. Some were probably down to about ten or eleven years old at the lower end.

Basically the children( all 137 of them) were given watercolor paints, brushes, and paper. They were asked to paint on the theme of "My Dream India". These children competing were from both the Sukrupa school, as well as local schools in the area. You can tell by the many school uniforms present.

The children were given roughly 1.5 hours to paint on the theme, and then all of the paintings were collected and hung inside. I was amazed at the creativity present here. Some were very detailed and drew with rulers and pencils before painting, others just started in. Many were very beautiful, and all were inspiring.
Once the paintings were hung up inside, the judges (Cindy was one), were asked to go in and pick the winners. During this time the children were fed Samosas and a sweet. Some of the children from Sukrupa school helped out with the distribution, as did others who were children of other sponsors or judges. The judging panel was comprised of artists, and local business people.

I was amazed at how quiet and well behaved the children were both during the painting, meal and waiting afterward. There was about 20 minutes once the food was done when the judges were making their decisions. I'm glad I didn't have to choose as it would have been very difficult. Anyways the children were sitting quietly, sometimes talking, but not rudely or loudly. Then there was some dancing and singing by some of the children.

In the end prizes were handed out and the event ended. I must say I was very impressed by what the children did, as well as the organization of the event, and how much was done with so little. Hats off to Sukrupa!!
More photos on Flickr.

Squeaky Green

As friends and relatives will likely know, I like to do a bit of gardening. Unfortunately I don't get much time (nor have much space) to do that here in Bangalore. But... About a year ago, we went to a gardening center to pick out some potted plants and other things to spruce up the house. I found a number of plants I liked and we took them home, or had them delivered. I also found a variety of seeds.

So what does this all have to do with squeaking, well not long ago, I heard squeaking one night outside our bedroom window. At first I thought it might be animals. After all we do leave the garbage out there sometimes for collection. I did some looking around and never found anything. Then I heard it again, and yet again, especially on stormy evenings. So I started to get suspicious. We have a couple of plants out there-- actually dwarf papaya trees.

See I had gotten the seeds when we were shopping last year. I had planted 2 in a very large pot, thinking we would have some small (4-6 foot) papaya trees in the pot. Well, they outgrew the pot, and the gardener (who is now gone by the way--he just took off one day and never came back) moved them from the pot on the roof to by the side and front of the house.

I thought I might get one or two papayas from the trees when they started to flower, but holy cow, never this. And guess what, they squeak when the wind blows the trees around. So that is why I hear squeaking outside the window at night. Strangely enough only one of the three plants is very fruitful, the second has a few fruit, and the third has none, though it is around the corner from the other two.

Short stop in Shenzhen

I had to go to Shenzhen for work for a couple of days. Left Sunday night (2:20 am) and arrived in Hong Kong at 10:30 Morning. Made it to the office by about 12:30, and fortunately they had a nice box lunch waiting for me. I was pretty tired by the end of the afternoon as the night had been very short (the flight is about 6 hours and I didn't get to sleep the whole time).
That evening I went to the hotel, and conked out pretty early. Second day was pretty full at the office, and I was hosted to dinner by the local team I was visiting. They decided that I needed to be toasted by each one individually with some "white wine". I think it was a rice wine which is very strong. Anyways, I was lucky to manage to walk home that evening. Next day more work, and another dinner. Last day I got to drive around town for a little over an hour to see some of the sights of Shenzhen. I got to see:
the Eiffel Tower--no not the real one, they have miniature copies of the wonders of the world there, and the Eiffel tower is visible as you drive by.

Some interesting Architecture. There were a lot of skyscrapers, and even more tall buildings, both residential and commercial. This city was formed about 30 years ago, and now has 14 Million people, that is 500000 new every year. But the nice part was the wide open streets.

Another surprise, or at least an indication that I wasn't in India is visible in this picture. Can you guess. Yes, the bare legs are on the ladies, not on the men. In south India, you can often see men in their Lungi, with their nobby knees sticking out if it is hot and they have hoisted them up to get some air--but women, almost never do you see bare legs. Also many of the women were carrying umbrellas. Now it did rain a little tiny bit, and it was very humid the whole time I was there, but the umbrellas were for shade.

And here is a set of signs for all Bangaloreans to be jealous of Imagine being able to go 50kph in the city center, imagine that honking was forbidden--and people followed the rules, and imagine there were places for people to walk and ride bikes away from the traffic--heaven I guess. Also they use overpasses for the pedestrian traffic on large roads.

I got a few more pictures which are not great--all taken through the taxi windows, but they do give a bit of Shenzhen flavor. They are on my flickr.

After the tour, we drove back to HK airport, with a minor 30 minute delay at customs due to high traffic, and I came home on Thursday.

Coastin in Cochin

Well, it's been over a month since I've posted anything. I guess that's because Cindy was doing all of the traveling in Europe and I was at home, working, keeping the household going. I had help from the girls who did pitch in a fair amount. After Cindy got back from her trip, she wasn't too keen on traveling soon again, but I convinced her we should go away. I had picked out a couple of locations, but they were not viable. She managed to find a nice spot in Cochin (also known as Kochi on the coast of Kerala), one of the biggest ports in India.

Cochin has a fairly old history. There are accounts of very early contact with the Chinese, from whom they learned to use these Chinese fishing nets which line the coast of Fort Cochin. There are also accounts of Arabic contact and early Muslim visitors to the port city. At that time the port wasn't so big. It was really created by a huge flood, and then later in the 1900s a british man organized the dredging of the port and creation of another island. That led to it becoming a large seaport.

During the expansion of the European empires, the Dutch, the Portugese, and the English all conquered the area. As expected there are vestiges of all three cultures left behind in Cochin.

We lodged at the Malabar House. When we arrived, we discovered they had upgraded us to suite and decorated the bed for our anniversary. It's a bit pricey, but I do recommend it for anyone willing to spend the money.

We stayed in the old Fort town section. It is where the Chinese fishing nets are, it is also where Vasco de Gama is said to have to come to live after his explorations. There are some beautiful "Rain Trees" which are all over the area, they seem like they would be native to India, but they were brought from Brazil along with several other trees and plants by Vasco de Gama. The first day, after arriving in the late afternoon, we walked out to the Chinese fishing nets and it was starting to get dark, but there was a cool sunset, and they were still catching fish at one of the nets. It was really busy with locals out for a stroll on Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning we went for a walking tour around the area. We started out by the fishing nets, and progressed up to several local monuments from the European empires. We saw the Vasco de Gama house. We also walked by the Dutch Cemetery, the Bishop's house, and several other establishments, including the Santa Cruz Cathedral. There are a number of churches, mostly catholic, but not all. There are Roman and Syrian Catholic churches, as well as some protestant. There is also a Jewish section of town (which we missed actually) as there was an old Jewish settlement there.

In the evening we went and saw a Kathakali dance performance. We arrived at 5pm, and had reserved seats in the front row. This wasn't really hard as there were only about a dozen of us for the performance. It's low season in Kerala now. The theater could seat at least 100. The actual dancing didn't start till 6ish, but we got to watch them put on the makeup, which they did sittting on stage. The makeup is all 'natural' ingredients-- either ground stone or local plants, with the exception of blue which is indigo. I'm not sure indigo is local to Kerala. All these were mixed with Coconut oil for application. Then the extra things, like the nose on Shiva (in his disguise), or the white additions to the face on the side (looks sort of like gills) which is paper cut to fit on the spot, and applied with Rice Paste.

There is no speech in the performance other than the singer who tells the story in the background. The dancers tell the story with hand movements (some of which we had demonstrated to us beforehand) and with eye movements and facial expressions. The makeup really accentuates the facial expressions. The eye movements are really fast sometimes too. Because of the small audience it felt like we were getting a personal presentation. We were allowed to take photos as long as a flash wasn't used. Of course this was not a whole story presented. When actually danced for real, the Dance Stories (Kathakali) can go on for 8 hours or more.

The next day we went for a 'tour' with Selim, a rickshaw driver who hangs out in front of the Malabar Hotel. He met us the first day and tried to get us to take a tour with him. We were only interested in walking that day, so we put him off, but I can highly recommend him. He really knows a lot about Cochin and will take you to interesting places. He took us to a spice market. He is a neighbor of the owner, so he is allowed to take tourists inside to the various store and processing rooms. The market has been there for hundreds of years, and is located in at specific location as it is on the port.











Here he Selim stirring lime they use to coat the ginger which they dry for Ayurvedic uses here.

They had all kinds of spices here: Cinnamon, Pepper, Star Anise, "Long pepper", Red Sandalwood, Ginger, Nutmeg, you name it I think they had it.

He took us to a museum in the Dutch Palace which is being renovated. Part of the un-renovated section has these beautiful murals, which are deteriorating. No pictures allowed, I sure hope they get them preserved soon. We also stopped in the local laundry, The irons they used must have weighed at least 20 pounds. They were very heavy to lift up, some were electric, and some were still Coal heated.

We also stopped by a small 'factory' where they make papad--a fried bread, you can buy stacks of the dried dough in the store. Here she is making the dough into little rounds, which can be dried in the sun--no sun this day though.

Next day we went home as it really started to rain.