Month: May 2008
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Keep it Clean, Keep it Green
Indian public intellectual, Vandana Shiva, argues that large corporate farming practices ultimately do violence to farmers and the land. It is implied that we should model our agri-culture upon the small organic agrarian village, for these communities have lived sustainably for centuries. Having read such things, I was naively led to believe that India is…
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Old Delhi
Hank Kreuzman organized an afternoon trip by several of us to Old Delhi. We first toured the Red Fort (see above), which was the primary palace of the Mughal emperors until 1857 and a British and Indian administrative center since. It is a fascinating place, especially considering its long and complex history. The capitol city…
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Wastewater management in Wooster Nagar
It is not the most exciting topic, but one close to the lives of rural Indians. The new town of Wooster Nagar had the rare opportunity to devise a water management plan from scratch as they built the infrastructure of their village. Finding and managing fresh water for drinking, cooking and other household uses is…
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Welcome to Wooster Nagar
When we visited Wooster Nagar, a village built with major support from the people of Wooster, the villagers welcomed us with music, drawings on the pavement, and great warmth. They were grateful, they said, for Wooster’s help in making new homes for them after the tsunami wiped out their old ones. The clip below shows…
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Kalakshetra Dance Demonstration
Kalakshetra is a school of fine arts (and part of a larger foundation of the same name) in Chennai. It reminded me very much of Shantiniketan, the school founded by Rabindranath Tagore, with its beautiful trees and serene setting. Leela Samson, the director of Kalakshetra and an accomplished Bharata Natyam dancer, started our session in…
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Wooster Town
Porselvi, Anitha, Elizabeth In Wooster Nagar (Wooster Town), the villagers (26 families) showed us their new homes built along Noble Street, with major funding from the people of Wooster. During our visit, Elizabeth Schiltz got the names of Porselvi and Anitha while we were on the roof of the National City Bank Community Center (which…
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More Photos
We just got back from a very moving visit to Wooster Nagar (lit. Wooster Town), a village destroyed by the 2004 tsunami and rebuilt with the support of the Wooster community. I’m sure someone will be blogging on this soon. Before we leave Chennai (we fly this afternoon back to Delhi), I just wanted to…
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Caste Violence
May 25, 2008 37 Killed in Caste Riots in India By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 3:14 a.m. ET JAIPUR, India (AP) — Authorities invited leaders of one of India’s lowest castes for talks as the death toll rose to 37 Sunday from three days of bloody demonstrations over caste classification. Police repeatedly opened fire…
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Education in India
One of the central themes of Nussbaum’s book is the failure of state education in India. She takes it to task for rote learning and a total absence of critical thinking. What is interesting is that private education in India is booming. In fact, it’s a thriving industry. The signs are everywhere. On the streets,…
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Arts in Chennai, Part II
On the outskirts of Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu we met up with Sashi Ananth, a local architect with a degree from Madras University, who treated us to a day of touring ancient architecture, beginning in Mahabalipuram. Our lesson began with a description of the ways in which temples originated as a representation…
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Animals: Real and Cake
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Arts in Chennai
After a brief flight, we arrived in Chennai and noticed a marked difference in landscape and an increase in the heat! As we disembarked from the bus we were greeted with shell necklaces and lime water to wash away the stress of the day. After depositing our luggage, we were quickly swept away to Dakshina…