Underneath the skin

TBY launch in Jaipur. Pic courtesy John Dean
We have been interacting with an American Travel operator to explore the option of working with The Blue Yonder in Rajasthan. On a visit to see our work with the communities in Jaipur, they were keen on knowing how much money was going to the communities, to the local organisations we work with, to The Blue Yonder and how we maintain the transparency in financial dealings etc. Positioning their company as a Responsible Travel company means that they were also accountable for the 'claims' of potential partners like us. Their clients will be keen on knowing how their contribution would make a difference.

Providing dignity is key while working with communities. Pic courtesey John Dean
Since most of our destination management experiences came from what we learnt from River Nila in Kerala, we take our activity partners in other destinations to understand where we come from. It's amazing to see how people from different culture ( within India) look at these initiatives in different way. Local dynamics are so different with the communities we work with in different parts of India. In some places, people continue to work with art and crafts, because they have the passion and drive to do it, but in some other places, they do it because that's all they know as a livelihood and without art they are in utter poverty.

In our journey through Rajasthan, this was something that stood up most of the time. Any tourist hotel in Rajasthan would have an evening performance. There will be artists dancing and singing and there will be tourists sitting and sipping their beers without knowing anything about the background of the artists or why they are there! For most international tourists, this is in any case something quite exotic.

Most of these artists are hired by contractors who 'outsource' them to different hotels in the cities and are paid pittance once in a month. There is absolutely no element of dignity in their work and they perform for the sake of bread-winning. They mostly just dance around, sans any energy, any passion and I don't think any one can blame them if you don't even see a sincere smile on their face. How do you smile when you are not happy? When your constant worry is about next days meal, where will that genuine smile come from?

One of our artist friend from Rajasthan after his tour of Kerala mentioned the other day, "You guys can talk about reviving art forms and tradition. That's nice. But many of the guys you work with in Kerala are grounded properly and have their livelihood. They have a basic comfort zone to explore further. In our case, we are struggling to earn our living and still want to pursue our traditional arts. We wonder how we can strike a balance between these two worlds".

Pic courtesey John Dean
When I shared our Rajasthani friends observation on Kerala artists being well off to one of our artists in Kerala, he said, "Yeah, we are good in faking. Good that our friend didnt see what is really happening behind the fancy clothes we wear and the decent looking houses we have"! There is not single day that I go to bed wondering how we will get through this month with mounting expenses in my day to day life!"
Bangalore © GP 2008

David Stott in a vending machine!

Being the .com I am, I was running to Gate 25 to catch my flight to Bangalore from LHR yesterday afternoon. Even in that rush, I noticed a beautiful photograph in a book vending machine and thought, "That's something like a David Stott photograph". I went back and it read: "Footprint Rajasthan - David Stott".

Wow! Thats a great way to see your fellow traveller and friend some 7000 miles away from home and that too in a book vending machine in London! Though I was the last person to breeze through the gate, I couldn't resist to take out the camera and capture this special moment.

Bangalore © GP 2008

Extremes

There were two stark things that struck my mind during the last four days in Rajasthan. The dispassionate artists who were performing in front of ‘rich tourists’ and the passionate artists who were talking non-stop about how far they would go to protect their art forms and traditions.
In the first part of my travel here, I was invited to visit an imposing structure standing in the middle of an impoverished village that was visible even from a distance. Literally a fortress, there were many people hanging around in side the fort as if they were waiting to take orders. Another stark contrast were the vehicles outside the fort and those vehicles parked stylishly inside the fort. Flashy Ford Endeavours to Mitsubishi Pajeros to Toyotas were all inside and rustic but efficient bullock carts used by the villages outside.

The central courtyard was all decked up with colours and there was a beautiful, large fountain in the middle. If I had just woken up in that place not knowing where I was, the place would have occurred to me as some Mediterranean Bungalows that’s normally show cased in most Hollywood Mafia movies.

A group of eight performers had already gathered on the terrace. They sang, they danced, they performed Kalbeliya, and showed many tricks that needs years of practise. They stood on top of three glass tumblers carrying 6 litres of water in it and danced without spilling a drop out of it. Rolled out currency notes were thrust into their pockets, into their arms. They gave out such artificial smiles and bent their back even more to the front, now making sure that they made eye contacts to the beer sipping tourists. With the rhythm and tempo increasing, currency value went on from a mere hundred to finally a crisp note of thousand! The girls invited the tourist to dance with them, which some hesitatingly and some readily accepted. In an hour or so, the ‘performances’ were over and we were guided into our waiting vehicles.

I didn't know who these performers were. I didnt interact with them, they were showcased infront of us. It started there, it ended there!

Power went off many times during the performance but they were equipped with alternative spot lights probably sourced from an alternative generator. While stepping down from the terrace, I had a look at the beautiful horizon. The nearby village looked sleepy, calm and quiet. I couldn’t help notice that out of all those forty-fifty houses that were surrounding the fort , there were just couple of houses that had electricity.

One of the friends of the family, who bought the Kila, mentioned that they intend to make this fort into a luxury boutique hotel which will also be used by the owner as his home away home for vacations. The master bed room ( there were ten large beautifully done bed rooms), had bathtubs and running taps. That’s not unusual in a luxury fort, but when you look at the villagers walking many kilometres to get few pots of water for their survival, it hurts to be there.
Even for the few hours you spent there.

During the next days I stayed in Makrana with friends, I saw how they were living with their limited resources. Managing their limited resources and maintaining a life style that doesn’t damage their environment and ensuring that their life style was sustainable for the generations to come. Though I normally use very little water for my daily use compared to many people I know (I was born and brought in a region that was always green and never knew what water scarcity was), I realised that where I live in Bangalore, my individual consumption of water in a week was probably more than what a family of five might be using in the desert area in two weeks!
Jaipur GP © 2008

Freezing in Makrana

Dayalji kept on piling one blanket after the other on me. 4,5,6 and then I was getting worried if his family had enough for them. 'You have no idea how cold it could get here these days". Even the walls were giving away cold and I could hear hissing sound of the wind from the desert slipping through the small holes in the windows. If not for seeing Dayalji worshipping next to the Aluminium trunk I was sleeping on, I would have just slept until noon. It was so difficult to wake up in the morning!

It’s been two days in Makrana (famous for its Marble that were used to build most of Taj Mahal) and once again I have been humbled to see the resilience of people living in remote parts of India. Winter here is so cold that it comes closer to one or two degree Celsius. Heating is not affordable for many and unheard of. All they have are some blankets. Most of them looked older than they really are. As for summer temperature, when I asked what could be the maximum temperature one villager smiled and responded. "There is nothing like minimum or maximum temperature for us during summer. Its just "full temperature' :) Irrespective of the harsh climate and the environment they live in, I couldn't escape observing that almost all of them were genuinely happy.

I came to this part of Rajasthan couple of days back to meet our activity partners, spend some time with them, understand their background and explore the synergy that our work could bring in. I was so tired by the time I reached Makrana as I had been standing for 3 hours in the train from Jaipur. Straight away I was taken to one of our partner’s network office and met a bunch of locals who were curious to figure out what I was doing there. It was amazing to see they could connect to the dying rivers of Kerala and its impacts on lifestyles, especially the culture and heritage that the river influenced for eons. Even my halting Hindi was of no barrier to them as they went on to narrate their stories on how artisans were finding it difficult to make a living out of what they knew.

We arrived at Dayalji's house (after a mini tour of the streets sipping "sugary dooth" ) and checking out local eateries that served mouth watering dishes. I was a bit scared to see the way Ghee was used in every meal we had. People over here literally are drowned in ghee. Whoever said that consumption of Ghee has something to do with obesity; they should come and see thin /lanky figures of Rajasthan. By the time we arrived at Dayalji's house, all I wanted was to crash in ASAP. But Dayalji went on with his stories and entertained me with local legends and folklores. Amongst them was a story of a fight between Amar Singh Rathore from the present Nagore district and a local Badshah. It seems the Badshah made a rule that any girl who marries a local should sleep with him first! On resisting this, Amar Singh was killed in a fight with the Badhsah. These stories until recently used to be part of the oral traditions of the folk musicians. Apparently there is hardly anyone who makes a living out of similar tradition in this region.

That makes sense to the understanding of the people over here when I showed them presentations on the dying river valley culture that we are dying to preserve. Language isn’t a barrier, culture isn't a barrier and it’s the same story all over the world. While Dayalji was passionately narrating the stories of Amar Singh, I was thinking about similar stories I had heard from Scottish friends, where the English brought in a rule in medieval time that any local girl who gets married should first sleep with the English magistrate! Wasn't that also a story sequence in the movie Brave Heart?
Makrana GP © 2008