...and then you

I hope that anyone reading these posts will appreciate the sacrifice that I am making in writing one now--I have been told that tomorrow morning I will have to provide typed accounts of all my activities to date for a review. I am on January 16. I also have to make notes for a report that will compare all of the camps I have attended, and who knows what else. What I really want to do is go back to bed because the crows woke me up at the crack of dawn again. It is at times like those that I share Sean's desire for a beebee gun (how on earth do you spell that??)

ANYWAY, things are progressing at a faster pace now that Dr. Dubey is home. Yesterday I sat in on a meeting about a new hospital with an IAS member (Indian Administrative Services), visited 3 doctors homes/clinics, went to an eye screening in a village, met the the Minister of Health and attended a wedding. At the wedding I tried "Pan masala" for the first time. It is a bunch of spices/sweet things (truthfully I have no idea what it all was) in a betel leaf. You stuff the whole thing in your mouth at once as a breath freshener/digestive. I ate mine in 2 bites and the second was a bit too "leafy" but overall it was a good experience--and a necessary one, given how many times I have read about 'Pan' in books. And apparantly the Pan in Uttar Pradesh is the highest quality in the country, so...

The village screening was not like the others--I got there late because of the 'campaigning' visits beforehand (Dr. Dubey is running for President of the Indian Medical Association, so we are combining my curiousity with his campaign visits). And I didnt look at a single patient. While Gauravbhai was looking at all of them I was surrounded by a large pack of children, who all just wanted to stare. I handed out some candies and talked to a few of them through Dr. Dubey's interpretation. But when I tried to smile at them they would mostly run away. My charm is clearly not in anything that I can do, and certainly not in my verbal skills, which once again just got me laughed at.

When I mentioned all the attention I was getting to the son of the brickmaking factory owner on whose land the camp was held (woo that description was longer than I expected), he said started to give what I think was an explanation for the attention, that I couldn't really understand until he said something to the effect of "well, yes there were these people for a long period of time...your ancestors, they were here until 1947" and I said, hesitantly, "...the British?" and he said "Yes, there were the British...and now there's you". I think that I replied with something culturally sensitive and intelligent like "uhh..." while my eyes bugged out. As I have said to several people since, I am not ready for that Postcolonial baggage, thankyou very much. Bhabi and Gauravbhai thought it was hilarious and of course I could have been mistaken as to what he was saying, but....

The brick factory was not at all industrialized. The bricks were being made by hand by women and children (not many, I think maybe because it was sunday?) and then they get packed into a big trench and fired with coal, and then donkeys transport them from one place to another. I also saw some of their houses which were tiny and dark and very very basic. I was not as shocked at these sights as I feel that I should be, and I had a though last night that it's because the reality that the bricklayers live and work like this has not sunk in. On some level I cannot move past the impression that it is all a sort of "living history museum". I'm not entirely sure what to do with that thought, but there it is.

Anyway, I should go get typing--at 11 I get picked up for a trip to a big private hospital.