For the two weeks in between my main projects, I spent time with family, met with some great people, and traveled around in India. So there have been professional, personal, and family/culture experiences all mixed together! I started off in Chennai, staying with my mom’s sister and her family. After a couple days of relaxing, enjoying my aunt’s delicious cooking (though not in the quantities she would have liked), and devouring tropical fruits from morning till night, I gave a presentation to some Friendly Water donors and hopped on an overnight train to Nagpur, in Central/North India.
For those of you familiar with India, you may know that each state has its own culture, language, foods, etc. There are some similarities across the southern states, but traveling from South to North can feel like entirely new country. Even though I’ve traveled to India all my life, I’ve been to North India only once. So when suddenly I had the chance to collaborate with and visit Maharogi Sewa Samiti (MSS), an impressive foundation in Nagpur, I jumped at the chance to go. A few weeks back, their director traveled to the US to receive an award and happened to meet my parents. When he heard about the work I was doing with rural, low-tech water filters, he immediately expressed interest in integrating them into his vision and spreading them across many villages. He encouraged me to come visit and help them get started.
MSS was started in 1949 by Baba Amte, a Gandhian human rights activist who worked to better the lives of marginalized leprosy and otherwise disabled patients. Anandwan is their first and world-renowned village, which works to treat, empower, and build the livelihood of ostracized people. From growing their own agriculture, to manufacturing goods (bicycles, cupboards, towels, bedsheets, etc.) they do everything and function as a self-sustained community. The use parabolic solar mirrors to generate high pressure steam to power their kitchens and heat water. They collect biomass from food and agricultural waste to generate biogas. They have schools, hospitals, and special-care hostels. It took me the good part of a day to just to see it all. Their big project currently is called Smart Village. I appreciated their attention to how infrastructure, economic development, education, healthcare, and technology must all grow together. As an established role-model village, they provide us with a great platform to spread these filters on a large scale. I was thrilled get them on their way to bring BioSand filters into Anandwan’s future. Furthermore, it was great to see the team of young volunteers coming from many backgrounds, working to see this project through. They were fun-loving, taught me about the local culture, and took me into town for an outing on my last night! I am happy to have made new friends and explored such inspiring work.
From Nagpur, I traveled to Bangalore for a few days. My grandparents stay in Bangalore, but they haven’t been in good health. As it turns out, one of my closest friends from Mudd, Kunal, lives just around the corner from our home in Bangalore. Talk about small world. His family graciously offered to have me stay and spend time with them. I got to check in on my grandparents without stressing them out by staying there, and got to spend time with a family whom I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know over the past couple years.
Coincidentally, my first full day in town was also my birthday, but I thought about letting go unnoticed. Celebrations seemed unlikely and out of place without my closest friends and family. Plus, I felt bad about being a guest and then also revealing that it was my birthday, in case it put pressure on them to do anything more than what they already were. But the news slipped out as I received birthday calls from relatives that morning. Needless to say, the whole family went above and beyond. From a traditional lunch with the whole family, to a delicious dinner at a fun restaurant, they treated me to great company and delicious food throughout the day. Even though the whole family has such busy schedules, somehow everyone (including his parents, grandparents, brother, and sister-in-law) was not only in town, but also so loving and engaged. The effort they took to spend such quality time with me throughout the day was remarkable. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the way family (whether related or not) has made me feel so loved at various points over the past few months has opened my eyes to the depths of people’s hearts.
In between spending time with Neetu Aunty and the family, I visited with my grandparents each day. Irrespective of the difficulties my grandparents face, it was a nice feeling to know that I brought some life and laughter in their monotonous routines. And in my honor, they stocked some fruits and ice cream in the house! On their own, they’ve lost the desire to enjoy food, so I was glad to give them a reason to indulge. Seeing my grandparents lonely and depressed makes me reflect on what kinds of choices and mentalities affect how you age. I have so much respect for people who manage to keep some form of happiness, whether through social work, music, or friends, in their lives regardless of other struggles.
At the end of my stay in Bangalore, I went and visited a professor working in the Sustainable Technologies Center out of Indian Institute of Science. It was great to hear him say so many things that resonated so strongly with me and have guided my journey so far. But it was also good to hear about the limitations and struggles he’s faced, especially with regards to funding and large-scale implementations.
For one last hoorah, I joined Neetu Aunty and Rashi in getting mehndi (henna) done! They were doing it for a festival called Karva Chauth, and even though I definitely don’t have a husband to be honoring (that’s the focus of the festival), they let me join in. We cracked jokes and had good fun together, and it was incredible to watch the mehndi artist work his magic. For the rest of the night, we tried our best to not touch things and let the color soak deeply into our palms. The last time I had mehndi done was when I was 10, so I’m enjoying looking down and seeing my hands so decorated.
And now, after weeks of anticipation, the big day has finally arrived. Tomorrow early morning I am leaving for Myanmar to begin a six-month engineering design fellowship with an exciting social-enterprise called Proximity Designs (http://proximitydesigns.org/)! I’m thrilled by the opportunity to learn and work in an environment governed by the design principles that resonate with me so strongly. I’m looking forward to getting be part of a complete design cycle that starts with open-ended problems and user research, goes through phases of prototyping and testing, and ends with a final product. And I’m excited to make new friends and be inspired by so many passionate, driven, young leaders from around the world. I’ll share more about the details of my project once I’m settled in there, so hang tight for that. For now, here’s to a new country, new work, new people, and tons of new adventures!
The top photo and the two rows below are from Anandwan! From parabolic mirrors to handicrafts and hand-woven goods, they have everything.
The bottom photos are from my time in Bangalore!
Top site ,.. amazaing post ! Just keep the work on !