So much for the temperate monsoon season. Okay, it's only 100, but it was pretty painful to be outside in today and yesterday. It's amazing what a difference poofy Indian pants made today vs. the heavy cotton western pants I wore yesterday.
I wore said heavy cotton western pants all throughout a very long, hot day in fact. I think I mentioned the successful judgment the organization had where the woman who gave birth under a tree was awarded compensation by the government because the public hospital so badly neglected her. So yesterday, an Indian intern (Nihal) and I were supposed to go find her in the park where she lives and take her to the bank to see if the money had been deposited. I noted to my boss that I wouldn't be that helpful in this expedition, but she thought it was important that I see how the woman lived.
The first park we went into by accident was actually pretty nice. At least, there was grass. When Nihal asked the scattered homeless people if Miriam was there, they said, no, but we need help too. It is a bit disheartening to feel like Lawyers to the Rescue, yet going to fish out one woman in the midst of a horde of suffering.
It turned out that it's not really accurate to call the place where Miriam lives a "park." It's more like a vacant dirt lot with garbage all over. A lot of the people under the tree in the middle seemed happy in the time while we were there, especially those playing with the many babies that were around, whose bellies were all really swollen. It seemed less happy when Miriam's mom, who told us that Miriam was on the way, explained how rats would steal all of her possessions if she left them on the ground.
Finally, Miriam came back, after more and more people clustered to stare at Nihal and me and as my western pants became more and more uncomfortable to be in. Nihal, Miriam, Miriam's baby and I all then climbed into a 2-person rickshaw to go to the bank. At the bank, as I stood next to Nihal while she tried to get things done, the tellers kept trying to address me, and Nihal, who is only 22 but is some kind of journalist, would say, "She's with me!" Everyone was very reluctant to help get the account confirmed for the homeless woman with no address and no birthday and darker skin, so it was taking a really long time. Finally, because of a misunderstanding where one guy thought that I was Miriam, everything got done in about two minutes. I told Nihal I thought this was because of racism. She said that it was more that they don't trust poor people, and that that is ironic because of all the people who might orchestrate some kind of bank fraud, Miriam would probably be the last.
We got back to the office after much more sweating. The weekly whole-company meeting then started promptly, and we learned all about a very impressive youth-run organization that lobbies for things that affect young people, such as the fact that 7 states in India have banned sex education.
I went out to dinner a bit later with a few of the other interns. One cool thing about the other interns is that they're not all American, which makes things more interesting. So I was out with one American, a Canadian, and her Scottish boyfriend. There was also a guy from Singapore who just left.
The restaurant was amazing. It was the best food I've had in India so far. I don't understand how it can be so famous, because it was very hard to find, and involved a lot of wandering alone down dark alleyways. But the alleyway hanger-outers seemed pretty used to directing wannabe hip westerners to their hidden establishment. It looked out over a lake and I realized that I haven't seen a body of water in almost a month. I ordered pandhi curry, which involved kurgi (?) style pork, kind of like really good southern barbecue. The other thing that was amazing was somebody's pumpkin curry. The bread we got was exACTly like one Moroccan type of bread called msemmen.
One of my fellow diners brought me a "pollution mask" to use when in the auto rickshaws because I find it hard to breathe in them when they're in areas with a lot of traffic. It says, I think, "SARS patient meets Hannibal Lecter." I'm hoping to start a trend.
Oh, right, and I refunded my ticket to go to Ledakh because my supervisor said she would highly recommend that I stick around to go hear this abortion case in the Supreme Court, even though we don't know when it is. Oh well. But she recommended that I take such a trip at the end of my internship, so that is food for thought. I'm thinking, ashram.
If anyone has any artistic ideas for a documentary on maternal mortality, let me know!
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