Day 1

11.45am
Mr Victor Nath met me at the airport and his driver drove us out to the Village, which took 40 minutes or so. This is not a large city by Indian standards, about 30k across Victor told me, but it has a population of more than 5m people. I am still in a state of some culture shock in relation to traffic rules. I try not to look forwards as the driver weaves in and out of the traffic, which is not just a traffic of cars but also includes auto rickshaws, cyclists, pedestrians, heavy lorries and cattle. The only traffic rule I can decipher is that where in Europe we have lines on the road, here drivers use their horns instead, and everyone looks to drive down the middle of the road.

We pass a large new building, which is the HSBC call centre, where workers answer calls from Japan, Europe and North America, working shifts adjusted to local time in each country. I am told that UK workers have to watch tapes of Coronation Street, check the daily weather and the football scores at the start of each shift but I don’t know if this true. Victor tells me that the work appeals to young, well-qualified people because they can earn around $200 a month – more than they would earn as a college teacher, but he worries that there is no career progression and that the global economy may well move the jobs somewhere else just as fast as they came here.

We talk about the project and I mention that there is some feeling in Europe that the idea of the Village is criticised by some, who see adoption as a better solution. Victor tells me a little of the backgrounds of the children and of local circumstances and culture. Most people who want to adopt, want to adopt young, male babies and on the whole are reluctant to adopt children from poor backgrounds. Victor explains that in part this is because in the majority Hindu culture, when fathers die, their last rites have to be carried out by a son. Hence, 70% of the children in the villages in India are girls.

Children come to the village because the police find them abandoned as babies or, more often, because their family has broken down, either because their father has died, or simply abandoned the family. Some come from families where there has been abuse.

Victor tells me that he has arranged for one of his staff to work with me as an interpreter. Her name is Shobha and he tells me that she is young and he thinks that she will relate well to the children. He explains too that she has only recently been working in the office, compiling a database of donors, and so she will be seen as someone who can be objective and not too closely tied to the village.

When we arrive at the village I am greeted by two young children and given flowers and then taken to meet Mr Ramesh, the Village Director. I am to stay in the Community House, which involves walking through the village along a stone path. On each side are the houses (sixteen in all), in each of which live a housemother and ten children. There is also a three-room kindergarten (which takes in both village children and children from the surrounding community) and an Activity Room (where children get special lessons in classical dance and music and where there are some computers, including two special computers for young children, donated by IBM).

Over lunch in the Community House we talk more about the project, including how to select children to participate and outlining a timetable and trying to foreshadow possible problems. The children are at school all day and return to the village about 4.30. At 5.30pm there is a short assembly and they need to return to their houses before 7.30. Realistically, we think from 6pm until 7pm, or just after is the best time to meet. In addition, the children are free on Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, and next Wednesday, the day before I leave is a holiday as it is Ramazan.

We talked further about taking the children out of the village and I was told that the Village bus could be made available for trips and picnics and that we might visit a large park in the city, a playpark for children, a small local zoo, or perhaps a street where they might go with the mothers shopping. I repeated my concern about being responsible for the children but they told me not to worry, that at least one other adult would come too, that the children were responsible and would not wander off, and that anyway they were capable of finding their own way back to the village by bus if the had to. I wasn’t entirely reassured by this but it is striking how different the attitude would be in Europe.

Most of the children, I am told, will speak and understand at least some English. There is no serious security problem in the village, there are no gates and only a low chain link fence surrounding the property, but to be safe I should lock the equipment in my room when I am not there. The children, I am told, may be a bit nervous about using the cameras as they will not have used one before and they may be a bit shy about participating in the project.

Mr Ramesh tells me that I can have access to the records that the village keeps on the children and suggests that each day we consider two cases and he will discuss them with me. He explains that the mothers’ do not normally see the records because, as he put it, they want the mothers to respond to the children as they are, just as they would in an ordinary family. The aim seems an admirable one – to give the children a new start and to orient them to the present and the future, not to the past, but it leaves the question as to whether or not it is best for the children to repress the traumas that many of them have experienced.

4pm
The Mothers were called to meet me at the Community House. Thirteen (of sixteen) mothers came, the others were out shopping when the message went round. The Director and the Village Educator were also present at the meeting and the Director translated for me. I explained the project, saying that the idea was to give people outside the village a better idea of the lives of the children, of how they saw their lives, the things that made them happy as well as other aspects of their lives. I explained that I was only coming to one village (Victor had told me that there are more than thirty villages in India) and that my two colleagues were visiting villages in Thailand, in Colombia and Nicaragua.

I told the mothers that I would be giving the children cameras to photograph aspects of their lives and so they should not be concerned if they saw the children with cameras. I said they might want to photograph their rooms or other parts of their house and the mothers could ask them not to photograph rooms that were untidy, or to come back later if they wanted to. I also said I didn’t want to cause any embarrassment and that I would not take away any photographs that people did not want me to take. I said too that I would leave copies of the pictures in the village when I left and that these would remain with the Village to use as they wanted to.

I was asked where the idea of the project came from and I said that it was SOS who first had the idea and that it was a response to the UN’s program Violence Against Children. I said that the final outcome would be a book that SOS would produce, using material from the four countries.

They asked me what were my connections with SOS and asked if I was I a member of the SOS staff. I explained that I wasn’t and that the reason SOS had asked three outside people to do the project was to assure people about the objectivity and independence of the project.

I said a little about myself, about my work in the university and about my family. The mothers then introduced themselves. Some spoke in English but most in Kannada, the local language. They have all been here thirteen years, since the village opened, and have fourteen to sixteen children. They talk of the children as part of their family (just as I did in describing mine), including those who have left for college or university or those who at work or living in hostels. One of the mothers has a Moslem family but she admitted that they were not fasting this year (Ramazan is next week), another is Catholic, but the rest are Hindu.

The Director thanked me and said he hoped the project would be a success and said that he felt blessed that the Village had been chosen to participate in the project. I said I hoped that the children would enjoy it and learn from the experience and that it would not be too disruptive for the mothers. I told them they should tell someone to tell me if it was. I told them that they would see me around the village for the next week and that tomorrow I would be in kindergarten and that at some stage I would hope to meet them individually.

6pm
The first meeting with the children. We had decided to restrict the numbers to twelve but there were others waiting outside hoping they might be included. We decided we should start with the twelve but keep an open mind about adding others later if there was an opportunity to do so.

I explained the project to children and Shobha translated for me. Most of the children understood my English, or at least some of it but Shobha was able to make my explanation more colloquial. Later I asked her how much she was adding and she said that when I spoke one sentence she made it into four (but she laughed when she said it!). I said that is the problem with being a professor and she said, that is the difference between a professor and being a teacher! I noticed that when I spoke some children smiled enthusiastically but others looked serious and perhaps puzzled, but when Shobha interpreted they all smiled!

Once they understood what we were asking we put the children into three groups and asked them to discuss the kinds of things they wanted to photograph. Several of them wanted to photograph their mothers, but interestingly, talked not so much in terms of capturing a likeness but in terms of things that the mothers did. In the kitchen cooking was one suggestion, showing how they played with and looked after the young children was another. These seemed to me sophisticated ideas.

They also wanted to visit the local temple and photograph the god (perhaps an even more sophisticated idea!), and show the mother in the Moslem house preparing the food for Ramazan. Two of the children wanted to photograph something in their house which they said gave off a blue glow. I am not sure what this is or whether the camera will register such an image, but perhaps we shall see.

I told them that tomorrow I would show then how the cameras worked and we would get them to photograph each other. Some of the other things they want to photograph need to be shot in daylight conditions, and as it is dark by six, this might need some organising.

After the meeting with the children Mr Ramesh came in and asked how it had gone.

The children respond very well to Shobha, and she to them and I think I have to trust her to interpret the intent of the project rather than literally what I say. She told me after the meeting that she had taken a job in the office that was really below her capabilities and qualifications because she loved the village and the way they cared for the children. The project gives her direct contact with the children, which she loves, and the chance to be part of a project, which is something she has always dreamed of doing. I am very encouraged by her enthusiasm and understanding and I think I need to treat her as a collaborator and co-researcher. I think Victor has made an excellent choice in asking her to take this role and I suspect many people in his position would have chosen someone who was ‘safer’ and would keep the project in control.

About 7.30 I went back to the Community House where Rosi had cooked me dinner. Victor had told her not to use much spice but I think I should tell to use just a bit more!

Comments

[barbara and michael]

Rob, I would have loved to join you - just back from my own trip to India I even feel more "on site" than ever - and I can not wait to read the other days - Michael is sitting next to me and is getting even more courious....

[Mary Lou Holly]

What an incredible project! I read with curiosity and delight, and felt quite priviledged to be along for the journey. I cast people in the pictures with roles though a few were named and I could be certain. The illustrated journal takes the reader there. I found myself with many questions and ideas burbling as I read- about methodology, about the system of families and the contrast at the park of the other kind of families and the beauty caught in the consciouness of the researcher's eye at the kindness of the child to the younger child - many of the miracles of social interaction of the kind and curious type are cpatured in this journal. I want to read more! To learn more about this project and the other places. . . and children. . . and to atretch and borrow the methodology. What are your thoughts now about the children and the dual purpose you mention in the first day or two about their role?

[Rob Walker]

Mary Lou asks what are my feelings about the children now?
Mixed! In one sense this exercise freezes moments that would have disappeared in the flow of life and it is curious how this research process keeps them alive. Yet at the same time of course events have carried everyone off to other places so there is a tension between what is (in the text) and what is (in life). Part of the paradox of using what has been called the 'anthropological present tense'!
There is also, on my part, a residual guilt that I havent kept in contact as much as I had hoped.

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