Seva Cafe, Don, other stuff in A’bad
I’m getting back in the swing of things in Ahmedabad. I recently started using a bicycle to get everywhere and I absolutely love it & the freedom it brings… I have a bike with a basket on the front - pretty sure it’s a girls bike, but I don’t care, it’s awesome (and it isn’t very unusual for guys to ride ladies bikes here - you see it all the time). Almost everywhere I’ve been to in the past week has been accessible via bike - I’ve only taken a rickshaw once.
Last week I spent some time volunteering at Seva Cafe… Seva Cafe is a restaurant on a terrace on one of the main shopping districts in Ahmedabad - CG road. They have a fixed menu of options that rotates every day, with a mix of foreign and Indian dishes every day. They serve only 50 people, and are only open for dinner. The catch is that at the end of your meal you are brought a bill and an envelope. The “bill” has a list of what you ordered, there are no prices. You are free to put whatever you want in the envelope. Noone will say anything if you don’t put anything in it. They serve 50 people per day, and only collect on average 2000-2500 rupees per day (about $50)… They have a small staff of paid people, which is made up of kids who grew up being helped my Manav Sadhna. Manav Sadhna is an NGO that runs Seva Cafe… it does a lot of great work with a slum in Ahmedabad that I mentioned early on in this blog, as well as other projects around the country. Manav Sadhna is fortunate in that they are based inside of the Gandhi Ashram, and they get a ton of international volunteers. Seva Cafe has been operating in the red since they started (everything is transparent)… but Jayesh Bhai says that “In the worst case, we have fed people with our hearts”
It was a lot of fun to work there… When I was working there, the menu had a mix of mexican and indian food that was fun to serve (and yummy to eat!)… It’s great to see these kids who are so dedicated to the cause. I think they learn a lot from the experience, and the thought is that if if even one person who visits the cafe gets really moved to carry that forward into the world the cafe is a success… If you want to read more positive stuff about the place, check out Nipun’s blog at http://nipun.charityfocus.org/blog/ar/pilgrimpost/000944.html
A few pictures:
sign explaining seva cafe
Chopping:
Exterior portion of Seva Cafe:
As I mentioned in the last post, I also got to see the movie DON. I don’t think it’s a huge success of a film… a lot of people I talked to didn’t like the movie (its a remake of an old film, and a lot of people loved the old one and don’t like the remake)… I really liked it though - I thought the songs were re-shot tastefully, and with a mix of old and new sounds, and that overall the movie was shot extremely well. Manasee and I had gotten to “Fun Republic” early, and went to the “Special store for NRI’s.” Needless to say it was absolutely hilarious, and there was nothing in there that any NRI (Non-Resident Indian - they love the acronyms here) would be caught dead wearing on a regular basis. There were, however, several items that an NRI like myself would love to wear for hilarities sake… Shirts that have crazy slogans too wild for this blog are all the rage, as are faked US company shirts, some of which may have logos from more than one company (like my brothers belt that is both Calvin Klein and Gucci at the same time - just spin the belt over!)…
Anyway, so as we were trying to decide which “NRI” shirt to buy before heading to see the movie Don, Manasee spotted a shirt with DON embroidered on the front and back. Naturally we couldn’t pass up this opportunity, and so it was that I wore a Don shirt (150 rs - $3.30) to the Don movie. It was pretty hilarious because people would look at me and point, thinking I didn’t notice…
Here’s a picture - it doesn’t quite do the situation justice because from the picture it looks like I just put a Don sticker on - anyway it was a lot of fun, though I sort of got a little self-concious with it towards the end, kind of like when I had the moustache last month.
A few days back, it was one of our friends (Archana’s) birthday, and there was a huge party at the place where she’s staying. There was a LOT of leftover food, so she brought it to the office the next day and we had it for lunch. There was still quite a bit leftover after lunch, so we thought we’d go out and give it to some homeless people on the street. Cutting the long story short, the kids were happy to get the food, but they had no plates or bowls to eat on… so they would go around through the trash and find a dirty newspaper or sign or bag and tell us to put the food on it… and their hands were pretty gross too, but there was nothing we could really do about it due to a time-crunch. This is how a lot of disease is spread in the country… a little gross, but they probably also take a dump outside and use their hands to wash-up, and probably never use soap at all. Sanitation is one of the biggest problems facing India’s poor - here’s an article on toilets from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/10toilet.html?_r=2&ref=health&oref=slogin&oref=slogin It’s very true… I often see people drinking water from the same streams that they or other people shit in, it’s pretty damn gross! Even animals by nature won’t shit in areas that they drink from, they know that it’ll get them sick… drinking your own pee is totally OK (in terms of your stomache, psychologically probably have some problems), eating your own shit causes major problems.
Lakshmi giving the kids food:
Immediately after I took this picture, I regretted it a bit, because all of the kids got up to look at my camera and then insisted that I take a lot of pictures of them individually… I knew it would happen - I’m not sure it’s a bad thing though, showing the kids a camera & taking their picture… It makes them feel important, like someone is spending the time & effort to take my picture! I just felt bad because they all got up and left their food for a couple of minutes, and plus I had to go to dinner with my college buddy…
My college suitemate Kunal was in town to open up a new nursery school… he now runs schools across the country and has gone through a pretty big round of financing and is now opening them up at a fast clip. The school is called Children’s Nook, in Ahmedabad… It is inside of an old mansion… the school is really amazing by Indian standards, fully air conditioned, full of color, and well designed. Fees are 8-10,000rs ($200) per 3 months, which is a TON of money for nursery school in India. Tina Ambani, an old movie star and current wife of one of the Indian bigshots Anil Ambani flew in for the opening. It was funny to see all of the reporters flock to her and ask her questions because she had a lot less to do with the opening than did my buddy Kunal or his mom Pinky. It was really cool to see my buddy run a press conference with 20 reporters though… there were TV stations & newspapers covering the event.
So - star power is huge in India (& everywhere)… I’m sure that a ton of people only came to the opening to see Tina Ambani. The newspapers all were interviewing her rather than Kunal and his mom, the people that actually opened the school…
The day before, some of us from Indicorps had gone back to our orientation space in Sughad Village, where the rotary club was hosting an event for some 75 Future Leaders of India… They wanted to get an NRI’s perspective on leadership & India. It was nice to see kids who want to get invoved and help India move forward, but I didn’t see the drive in them to make it happen… There was some famous Indian cricket player also there giving some absolutely horrible motivational speech (I came from nowhere and became a famous cricketer because I am awesome!), and it seemed like people gravitated towards him more… one of the girls said something like, “This guy has inspired me so much that I just want to be with him always…”
VOT?
(that’s how some people ’round here say what, and it’s hilarious to me - you have to imagine the thick Indian accent)
