Off to India: November 2012

As you will have guessed from the title, the last few weeks have been filled with holidays. They were all amazing days and I'm trying to describe the feel and atmosphere of these days here as well as possible.

The first celebration we had was Halloween. Coming from Germany, I didn't care that much for Halloween but for the kids here it's a big deal, they were all so excited the days leading up to it! Some of the grades were allowed to go trick-or-treating in the teacher's quarters but the main event was the Haunted House we volunteers set up for the 12th grade (according to Lizzy, the lower grades would have been way to scared^^). I didn't know who came up with the idea for it, but the final idea was amazing. The Haunted House was set up in the volunteer's quarters. Over the last few weeks, we had some of the students who graduated from Shanti Bhavan in the previous years on campus: they currently have a break from their studies and came back to SB to help out with the teaching and give additional tutoring. On Halloween they agreed to support us in our mission to scare the 12th graders to death. As the 12th grade approached the volunteer's quarters, they would find some of the graduates, apparently dead, on the benches in front of the building. Stepping towards the door, it would open by itself (a simple trick with a rope pulled from the inside). On entering, they had to notice Ally, who was lying at the bottom of the staircase, looking as though she had broken her neck. A sign pointed towards the lounge room were the rest of us volunteers was waiting. We had emptied the room completely, except for the fridge (obviously to heavy), the TV (we put white sheets over it) and a table, also covered in white sheets. Someone had the idea to write the name of a 12th grader (Kavitha) on the wall in creepy letters and with red chalk, including red handprints. Candles were lit everywhere and on the table in the middle of the room, Rebecca was laying in white robes. The idea was to make it look like a sacrifice - Lynn was murmuring something in Latin with a book in her hand, standing next to the table. Sachin was wearing a hoodie covering most of his face and was holding a knive over Rebecca. I was sitting at the other end of the table, also wearing a hoodie, faceless (as it was covered by a black shawl) and having a singing bowl in my hand that produced an eerie noise. Lizzy was sitting on the fridge with a white face, just staring, Bitsy was standing in the corner with lots of makeup, also looking dead. When the 12th graders entered, they were still in good spirits, joking as they picked up the chocolate bars we spread across the room. After a while, as none of us made a move to resolve the situation, they became a bit nervous. Suddenly Lizzy came off the fridge and started to "creep" across the room, blowing out the candles. We all were chanting something in Latin now, growing louder and louder. They tried to leave, but we had Ally lock the door from the outside. In complete darkness, we started following them or grabbing them when they least expected eat. Soon the room was full of terrified screams. We enjoyed that moment for a bit before opening the door to let them out. Mission successful!

The weekend after that, the next, even bigger event followed. On Saturday, the 10th November it was Children's Day at Shanti Bhavan. I think I already wrote about Teacher's Day in my blog in September. The kids had been preparing a day full of performances and skits to thank their teachers. Now it was time for us to reciprocate!
In the weeks leading up to this event, we volunteers started to make the children curious by disappearing to strange "meetings" every day right after dinner. They know something was going on, as we usually meet only on Wednesdays and Fridays. Truth be told, we were practicing our performances for that day in the volunteer's lounge. Event though the curtains were drawn some of the kids couldn't help overhearing the song that was playing there every evening - it didn't take long till the started asking as whether we were, by any chance, going to perform "Gangnam Style". We, of course, denied it emphatically ;)
Another thing that needed to be done was drawing cards for all of the children with some nice words in them as all we got cards on teacher's day, too. The only problem was, that there were only about 15 teachers and volunteers compared to 200 children. The female volunteers proved to be extremely helpful, blessed with an extraordinary artistic talent, Rebecca, Lizzy and Bitsy painted piles of beautiful cards after school and on the weekends. I took the task of making all the cards for my 9th grade - I felt bad leaving all the work to be done by them and it was my class after all. The only problem was my lack of artistic talent and confidence when it came to drawing. With enough other work to do I ended up postponing the time I would complete my pile of cards till two days before children's day. However, pressure of time always proves to be the best motivator and so I stayed up one night, completing my cards. I was pretty surprised about how decent they looked in the end. ;)
On Saturday morning, all the teachers went to the school building to get everything ready and have one last practice. Just the night before we had decided to make up a skit, making fun of the kid's behaviour in class that we needed to go through again. At around eleven, we opened the doors for the kids, handing out sweets and waiting for them to find their places. A graduate and Miss Preemi were the moderators for the day. We started with a singing and dancing performance of the song "Bare necessities" from the movie "The Junglebook". My fellow germans will know it as "Probier's mal mit Gemütlichkeit" aus dem Dschungelbuch :). Lynn came up with a really cute choreography and especially the younger kids were thrilled.
Apart from our performances, the teachers and aunties (who are the ones caring for the little kids and watching over their dorms) had of course prepared several Indian dances. They were really interesting to watch and especially the folk dance by three of the male teachers (including the extremely popular Mr. Ranjan) was hilarious! In between several skits provided lots of laughs, including the one were we volunteers tried to mimic the kids as exact as possible, with a real-life performance by the principal, Miss Beena as a teacher.
When we came to the point where we performed our highly anticipated version of the "Gangnam Style", the kids went crazy! We volunteers had at least as much fun as the kids. After the performances were over, we had lunch and the rest of the day was dedicated to relaxing. An opportunity that I took happily to read and take a nap. In the evening we had "movie night", something that is supposed to take place once a month and was cancelled two times already due to bad grades and bad behavior of the kids. Finally, it took place again, and everybody gathered in the quadrangle to watch the animated movie "Brave". I really enjoyed it, considering that I am not a big fan of animated movies.

Now everybody was looking forward to the week following this weekend. There would only be school on Monday, followed by two free days with Diwali on Tuesday. Diwali is the Indian festival of lights, in its importance it can be compared to Christmas in Germany. The meaning of it differs all around India, in South India many people celebrate the victory of Lord Krishna over a demon. "Festival of lights" is an appropriate name, as small clay oil lamps are arranged in beautiful patterns and fireworks are burned. During the day, there was not much going on - everybody was excited for the evening when we would have a special dinner and fireworks. At around seven, I went to beautifully lit dining hall. We all wished each other a happy Diwali and took some time to admire all the lights. For dinner, we had fried rice - either with chicken or a potato-vegetable ball in a delicious tomato gravy.
After dinner the kids ran to the lawn in front of the dining hall, equipped with crackers, sparklers and flower pots (what we would call volcanoes). The little kids were going bananas, running around with sparklers and immensely enjoying themselves. The older kids took the task of lighting the incredibly loud cracker chains, lighting them preferably next to groups of people. Another thing to look out for were the fire circles, as the kids started dancing around them as soon as they started spinning, occasionally kicking the across the whole floor. I was told that traditionally, Diwali ensured at least three burned sarees at SB. I managed to celebrate without getting any burns but it was a close call. While I was holding a sparkler, Prashant (one of my 4th graders) came to me to light the thing he had in his hand (which I assumed to be another sparkler) on my sparkler. I was happy to help and he excitedly touched my burning sparkler with the tip of his thing, pointing it straight at me. It suddenly erupted in a blast of light which I managed to dodge in the last second. Without giving it a second thought, little Prashant had been pointing a fountain at me! The best thing is that an 8th grader who borrowed my camera managed to capture that moment in two pictures ;). In the first picture, you see me offering my sparkler, in the second I disappear behing an enormous fireball.
After all the crackers were burned and the kids in were in their dorms, some of us volunteers and the graduates had a little dance party in the school building, reenacting our famous Gangnam Style performance. It was just so much fun celebrating with the kids that I already know I will miss them a lot when I'm back in Germany.
Fortunately I still got a good month left at the school! After all these festivals however, a lot of work is coming up in the form of the monthly tests next week, closely followed by the term exams two weeks after. A new volunteer, Rahil has now arrived at Shanti Bhavan (she was already here last year as an OSA) and she will be taking over my lessons for 4th and 5th grade. On the other hand this means, how Lizzy revealed to me on Thursday, that I will instead be teaching the infamous 8th grade in English Literature, Grammer, Creative and Persuasive writing. Why infamous? Well, this grade is known to have one of the school's worst troublemakers in it and the rest of them aren't exactly angels. Surprisingly, my first lesson with them on Friday was quite nice - they were really well behaved. I just hope it stays that way! ;)

Greetings from India,

Peter