Rain & Cricket

It’s RAINING!! Finally!!

For the first time in two weeks, the rain is coming down. Last night, at around 10:30, when all the interns were just sitting around in their pajamas, we heard the pitter patter on the roof. We ran outside to celebrate!

It was so freeing to be out in the rain, to just feel it on my face. It rarely rains like this in the city, with the rain just pouring down for more than a few hours. My favorite kind of rain is the summer rain. We were all a bit stir crazy from being inside all day, and working on curriculum. I think all the other interns felt the same. We had a little dance party outside, to let off some steam. It’s been crazy hot here, and pretty dusty. Now that the rain has come, things can cool off, and the air can be clearer.

We also played our first cricket game! Shuklaji, the security guard at Anand Niketan Bodakdev, taught us to play! There is a pretty big language barrier between Shuklaji and us. He speaks very little English, and we speak barely any Hindi. But with the help of Apurva, we were able to learn! Highlights of the game include three 6 hits in a row, and Shuklaji hitting the ball all the way over the school building. We were all laughing at Shukalji’s antics on how we were doing in the game.

“Good six!”, he would yell when one of us hit the ball out of the boundary line. (For those of you that may not be familiar with cricket, when the hitter hits the ball out of the boundary line without it touching the ground within the boundary, it is worth 6 points). He would dive to catch the ball, and try to teach us the correct batting stance. We all appreciate that he is trying to connect with us on a real level, and not just be the anonymous security guard.

The workshop leaders are still preparing for the opening ceremony on tomorrow. We still can't believe that they are starting tomorrow!

The Monsoons - Emma

Hey all. I’m going to wax briefly poetic in this entry and I beg forgiveness in advance.

The monsoons started a few days ago, and I don’t have any relevant pictures.  None of the ones I took were good enough.  The rains had been teetering on the edge of release for my entire stay in Ahmedabad thus far, but hadn’t come.  The odd dryness lent, I realize in retrospect, an aura of anxiety and tightened lips to the entire city.  Without the rains, the year cannot progress.  Without the rains, the city could not move forward. It is thus with excitement and joy that they were met when they finally began. 

The rain wasn’t the torrential buckets of water I was told to expect but it flooded the streets in minutes anyway, forcing walkers to wade through impromptu lakes and turning cars into ad hoc boats.  The clouds rolled overhead in great cataracts of grey.  It was awesome in the biblical sense. 

this is the best picture I got.  It is still inadequate

       The thing, however, that had the greatest impact on me was the juxtaposition of the water against the the city.  Ahmedabad has sprung into a truly urban environment only in the past thirty years or so.  A city of advertisements, concrete, and cars, it is modern and intensely so - even if it appears to Western eyes to be a bit delayed in that modernity. Seeing the rain (this primeval torrent of water, this persistent pattern which provided the constrictions by which India, both modern and ancient, was formed) stream into the city was a sort of stark reminder that even in the midst of the 21st century, the rains are the rains are the rains are the rains (as Gertrude Stein might posit).  The rains are the past and the present and the gateway to the future.

In the meantime, however, they are the harbinger of bugs.