Wait, what? Have you heard of putting a knife under your child’s pillow to ward off the evil eye? Because that’s what this commercial just showed.
This giant lizard opened the Velcro window netting while I was away this weekend and my room is a beetle, ant, moth, gnat and mosquito colloquium. Colloquium? Where’d that come from.. I sealed the netting but the lizard/s keep coming back. 3rd time I’ve flung it/them off the sill.
Thrilling. I know.
I believe we have a flat. I’ll say it with confidence when I have the key. We tried to get a 3 bedroom, but it just wasn’t meant to be. This flat (I haven’t seen it yet) is a 2 bedroom with apparently outstanding 80s flare, and practically free (thanks to Jess’s connect). It’s in Ballygong and across the street from a Haldiram’s! Which I thought was a grocery store, but it’s a restaurant? Either way, rejoice.
Anyhow, let me take you on a journey through the wondrous world of SRI fieldwork.
This is called rice. You eat this. It is very common to the region and peoples since ancient times.
SRI is heavy on field work. The photo is of Susmita-di, Chobi-di in red and Arti-di in blue, all SRI team members. We were doing the rounds visiting SRI farmers to record and follow-up on the growth of the panicles. It’s about half a month until the harvest is due so we have a lot of work ahead. So far 27 small farmers are participating and we need to execute our outreach campaign before the November planting season begins.
Here’s the thing with field work. It is strenuous and time consuming, but we have a pretty great relationship with the community. Kalpona’s daughter gets sick, the staff go visit. Some of the SRI staff were once farmers themselves and in general our field staff is of the community and come from the self-help-groups. You get the picture. In other words, field work also means we get to chill with folks and enjoy the occasional tea, moori, fresh cucumber and veggies folks offer. Yeah, it’s awesome. So Susmita-di and Proticando-da (white shirt mustachio) were really into taking a lunch break and hanging out with a lady farmer who was keen on showing us how fresh moori is made. It’s sort of like popcorn-rice.
Moori is sort of the poor-mans stomach filler and the rich man’s diet food. You don’t use oil because it is made on top of this charcoal-like sand. Moori makin’ is all about multi-tasking and skill so you should all recognize.
Selling moori in bulk is one of a dozen side-hustles everyone does in the village.
The lady who lives here also has a wild parrot that asks guests if they want chai.
This is the ruins of the British watch tower I mentioned earlier. Twisted Secret Garden moment.
West Bengal is nuts. Beautiful.
Just some trails on our way to the plots. Can you believe what I am doing this year? Folks can certainly work on projects like SRI, but who the hell in my position can work on SRI at this level? I have access to the community and I feel like I’ve been indigenized into the NGO pretty well. It still blows my mind.
I’m really not about the photographing of little brown children for display, but this is Malu. Malu is a little porkpie and the neighbors were talking about how he is constantly eating veggies. So I said, oh that’s good, he likes veggies! and they’re like no, he eats the crop we sell. Oh.
We visited one family that shames the swiss family robinson. They have their hand in 12 simultaneous small industries. First they have a really good year round vegetable rotation, they also produce and sell surjomuki oil, their SRI rice was also one of the highest yielding, as you see in the photo various lentils are also harvested, they have a pond so they own a small fishery where they even breed shrimp, and look! The reason their chicken coop, which is also an excellent source of income, is above the water because the natural cooling system the pond provides keeps the chickens healthier, while the chicken poop and extra feed that falls through the bottom become fish feed. Talk about sustainable. Who needs Swedish Development institutes investing in model villages that introduce totally out of wack (but cool, very cool) environmental technology when sustainable practices like this are done. Don’t answer that.
This is called a rice field. It often happens that rice is grown in this fields. So instead of speaking English with an English-Medium accent (British-Indian) which was the plan, my regular English has completely degenerated. If this field were divided into quadrants, the SRI plot is on the north east side (short stock).
Another way to generate income in the village is through chikan and embroidery. A second cousin of mine does this for Aarong in Bangladesh and the saris are sold 15x higher than the cost of labor. Listen, before I end on a bad note. I have been getting angry passively listening to this same narrative about the lazy, stupid native. Did I say native? I meant woman. We’ve all written long essays on exactly what we think about neoliberal agendas, and I just wrote another one in the context of all these NGOs, lecturers and Specialists I’ve been meeting who love speaking for women workers. My head would get cut off if I just publish it as a blog instead of a clean, edited essay. Anyway. The point is, comments by giant funding agency representatives and board members who say things like “These women, they just don’t know how to think.” almost recycle Moynihan-esque rhetoric. If the basic assumptions about poverty is that the Indian woman’s inability to think independently, their attachment to cultural values and traditions (I just threw up in my mouth for a second, hold on), that they’re just lazy and would rather depend on the NGO for employment (what and drive Cadillac rickshaws?) then just think of the poverty-alleviation models that are created based on these ideas!!!!! Some of these programmes feel like they run with total disregard to anything that the community is saying or identifying as a limitation. A basic issue that women say over and over again is mobility. Mobility breaks into different categories from restrictive families to the simple fact that the service industry in any modern city is concentrated where the capital (cash money) is. Ain’t no working class neighborhoods around the Guchhi store. Even if you spell out things like, 1- the ridiculous distance it takes to commute to these jobs 2- the expense it takes to travel these distances 3- the unsafe environments women are put in 4- the simple fact that after a 14 hour shift the girl ends up going home at midnight ect ect….. why, as a specialist, would you go out of your way to recommend women to suck it up and fight their family and patriarchy and blah blah bloody blah in order to keep your awesome exploitative job? The gall to call women who have real problems lazy or stupid or lacking ambition and initiative.
Seriously.
Instead of creating projects that cater to the specific circumstances of communities, some of these entrepreneurial interest groups - specialists - lecturers create models that are essentially twisted profit-based business plans carrying the same business values, but are beaten into wearing a nonprofit face.
I’m speaking in huge generalisations. I’m not talking about my NGO or anything associated with AIF. I’ve been going to these strange lectures and kitty-tea parties and country clubs and having lunch and chai with all kinds of professionals in the sector. Most of them are AWESOME, some of them …inspire me to write that last litany.
3 weeks ago
Nafisa grew up in Queens NY, got some sort of degree in Ethnic Studies and Political Economy, worked in youth organizing/nonprofit, then moved to Kolkata as an 
