fly like paper, get high like planes

(..watched Slumdog the other night and Nirupa just got the soundtrack, so we're going through a big MIA phase)

It's been brought to my attention that I've been slackin on the blog, so let me see if I can bring this up to speed..
Workdays around the clinic have been relatively routine, I'm still trying to do yoga in the morning, working on cutting the giloe vines (finally got em all off the fence but now still have to chop into little pieces), scanning/classifying old articles for the library. It just keeps getting hotter and hotter, consistently in the 90s during the day now so I'm trying to stay in the shade and near fans until 5 pm or so and appreciating that I don't have to work out in the sun in the garden. In the afternoons/evenings we sometimes go to the markets, Chowk (in the old city near a mosque) or New Market, where all the upper-class people hang out; I'm much worse about resisting the temptations of ice cream this time around. I've helped out in the kitchen a few nights, cutting vegetables, trying to learn what the woman who makes dinner is doing, and playing with her adorable kids. Sometimes we watch movies on Dash's laptop, and while it's a little weird being "home" for a couple hours and then coming out into the Bhopal night, it's nice to be able to relax. Occasional visits with the neighborhood kids/families; every time I walk by the tailor's the people who live next door invite me in for tea and I get to hold their cute cat and slightly intimidating parrot. Oh I went back to Ratna the gardener's hosue the other night to celebrate her daughter Puja's 14th birthday! All the kids blew up balloons and hung them around the room, I got to help make dinner (mashing potatoes with my hands while squatting on the floor 3 feet away from the family cow), they sang a slightly twisted version of 'Happy Birthday' and cut the cake (but no candles), a few presents, and then delicious dinner. Puja is an awesome girl-really smart and friendly (with good English); she showed me her school notebooks and told me about how she wants to be a scientist.

On Sunday Dash, Frank, Mary and I went via private car (with a friend and her brother) to Sanchi, a Buddhist site about an hour outside of Bhopal. It was late afternoon when we got there, so the light was beautiful and we spent a couple hours wandering around looking at the stupas (stone mounds that have relics/tombs inside) and beautifully carved gates, and ruins of some other temples and two monasteries. Back in Bhopal we stopped for tea and made a bit of a scene coming in to sit at a very male-dominated sidewalk cafe place, where the owner showed us a framed news story about how his tea shop got really hoppin after midnight.. then we went to dinner at a restaurant in the fancier part of 'New Bhopal' and got to see how the other half lives.

Monday afternoon, we (all of the volunteers) walked over to the Union Carbide plant about 10 minutes away from the clinic to see what we could see.. first encountered a wall painted with lots of anti-Dow slogans in Hindi and English; walking along it discovered a big hole that people were using to get in and out, namely a bunch of kids who were playing cricket in a field just inside. But we were a little wary of going in without a permit, so we went back the other way past the huts where people live right up against the wall and some sketchy pools of water that a little kid seemed to be drinking out of. Wal;ked around to the "front" (off the main street) where we could get closer to some abandoned-looking buildings, but weren't sure exactly what we were looking at besides more kids playing in old radio towers so headed back. But THEN yesterday a French journalist showed up who had a permit to visit the site, so we went with her and got to walk around inside and actually see some things up close. I guess I didn't really know what I expected to see at the abandoned site of a gas leak that happened 25 years ago, but what was there was definitely bizarre. Kind of hard to describe, I'll try and put pictures up soon, but basically the tanks and pipes and things were just sitting out in the open all rusted over (whatever walls had been there were scavenged, I guess) and our "guides" (police?) kept pointing out places where there was still toxic waste sitting around (there definitely is still some somewhere in there, "cleanup efforts" have been basically non-existent). But since we couldn't see any bubbling green pools of sludge and there were all these trees and grass grown up around, it sort of looked.. not very sinister. We did go to the old control room, which was really trippy: still signs there with emergency warning messages and a plaque that said "SAFETY is everybody's business", labels for where pressure gauges to the tanks were, and random papers covering the floor. It seems like whoever wants to pretty much can go in there and take what they want; animals are living all over the place and the people who live nearby don't really seem to realize that the site is still contaminated. Lots more to say in that regard but better leave it til later..

I've bought my train ticket to leave on Sunday, when I'll have been here for 3 weeks and in India for almost a month! And definitely will try to have some pictures up before then. Love to all (and if you're reading this, leave a comment so I know I'm not just writing to no one!) xoxo