Early Morning Sunday Market

Last sunday I found myself walking among a huge crowded informal market ; so full of goods of all kind and so full of people that I was sometimes even more concentrated on putting my feet in an empty zone rather than on the place itself. Luckily I had my numeric third eye with me - aka my photo camera. So I shot the market every 20 seconds to be sure I would not miss anything.
An infinity of little shops blossomed as I walked through the place. Mountains of fabric, piles of books, cutlery, collections of collections, old cameras, gramophones... If the heat was not so unbearable I could have spent the whole day exploring all the stocks. Actually a lot more than a day would be necessary.
Admiring handicraft products, I started to see in them not just cute little wooden boxes or cautious metal work, but the same gestures repeated over and over again by craftsmen for ages. I saw the tremendous traditional knowledge and figured that such a patrimony has been influencing and shaping India way before occidentals put their feet on this land.
As a designer in the making that is something I want to work with, preserving this heritage, adapting the new environment and lifestyles to the past ones, as a tribute to these ancient gestures. Or I would die with them in a museum.

Pottery of Ganesha

We waited the bus to go at Maganahalli .

Ganesha statue's was drying under tarpaulin. The big statue could to weigh up 70kg 

 He made statues of Ganesha.

For the festival of Ganesha they made more two thousands statues. After this statues throw in the water.

If you don't throw the statue, you could poor all long year.

 The others objets, they made it. Two money box.

Other things, for the oil lamp.

 A statue is tranforming in furniture to put down the mobile phone above.

I have not more photos, because the battery of my camera discharged.

Life of women in a pottery village near Bangalore

Here a short video suming up the impressions about the lifestyle of women after our visit to the pottery village in the suburbs of Bangalore.

Hope you enjoy it!

Let's have a look.

Come back 1 week ago. We were in this little village next to Yelahanka where we met some people, we saw some landscapes and of course we discovered how these famous Ganesh statutes are built. 

I am going to talk about people, about how they work, about how they live. It was now, the best moment to take the most beautiful photographs.

Their posture, their look, their smile, their clothes. This is the Indian tradition I like photographing.

I was looking this man mixing the ground to create the little Ganesh, or this man creating something in the metal: handicraft, here we are. 

As Hélène said, this is one of the important points we’d like to discover in India, and this is this point I would like to show you through my photographs.

2 States

My first thought when I started to read Chetan Bhagat´s novel "2 States: The story of my marriage",  was "Oh no, this is going to be a bollywood writen version of an imposible romance story like Romeo and Juliet or Twilight".

But its easy and quick narration made me continue the reading and I understood that under its simple plot there was many information about how that differences between states inside India, and more specifically between north and south, work in the reallity. Going through this book you get to know better the traditions, origins and value systems of two of the different indian communities, Punjabis and Tamilians. It teaches you about their different dressing codes, gastronomies, traditions, weddings, priorities in life... Also it discovers a bit more about how arranged marriage works and the importance for each community to be able to choose the person who with their succesor will get married, basically to make sure the correct heritage of each community´s identity.

Before coming to India I was surprised about how could a country nowadays still keep a system based on such strong differences (casts, tribes, classes, communities, religions...).

But now, after walking in the streets and analyzing the way people act and interact, even if I personally still don´t accept such a discriminatory system, I kind of start understanding why people keeps such a strong pertenance feeling for a specific group. In a city like Bangalore where more than 8 million people cohabit, you have the feeling of being lost in the crowd constantly, of not being important, of being another one more. And that´s the reason why I think that they keep attached to a certain community. The smaller group gives you an identity, a feeling of pertenance, of being part of something, of being known between your own people, of not being lost. And keeping the differences with the other communities only reinforces the inner union  of the group.

The book is also encouraging because even the cast/class system still has a big strenght, it inspires the new generations to think above all these barriers and work towards their freedom of choise for their own future.

About Handicraft in India

As many of my classmates, I have chosen this 2 year transcultural program in India so as to learn as much as possible about handicraft and social design, always keeping in mind environmental issues.

After only one day a the Design Innovation & Craft Ressource Center (DICRC) in Ahmedabad, here are yet a couple of things I want to share with you on those subjects. Hope you will enjoy it.

First of all this great and full of ressources blog, written by Prof. M P Ranjan : http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/

and then this quote, extracted from Crafts Atlas of India, by Jaya Jaitly

"It is almost impossible to encapsulate the entire landscape of craft in India for two reasons : one is the sheer vastness of it, and the second is its fluidity. The essential nature of craft skills lies in its ability to metamorphose, be enlarged, disappear or re-appear, according to changing circumstances and multifarious processes that touch upon this area of human resource."

Handicraft: Finishing Ganesha and fixing Krishna

We took the local bus and landed in a village, where the traditional potter families are these days working on crafting Ganeshas of different sizes for Ganesh Chathurti, the colourful Hindu festival, celebrated on the occasion of  Lord Ganesha's birthday. Ganesha, who is believed to bestow his presence on earth for all his devotees in the duration of this festival is the son of Shiva and his wife Parvati,  It is the day Shiva declared his son Ganesha, the god with the elephant head, as superior to all the gods. Ganesha is widely worshipped as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune and traditionally invoked at the beginning of any new venture or at the start of travel.

Ganesh Chaturthi starts with the installation of these Ganesh statues in colorfully decorated homes and specially erected temporary structures mandapas  in every locality. The pandals are erected by the people or a specific society or locality or group by collecting monetary contributions. The mandapas are decorated with lights, etc. or are theme based decorations, which depict religious themes or current events. After that all figures are dispersed into a water body, accompanied by prayers and singing. Only then, Ganesha will bring luck!

Painting the clay figures is mostly the job of women. The government has set up rules to use specific natural colors to protect the water bodies, but nobody is following these regulations. So the figures once put into the lakes are causing ecological damage.

Marion is sketching the design of the idol.

For about 4 month a year the tradtional pot production stops for the preparation of the Ganesha festival.

The potter and his family are excited and happy to explain their craft to us, the foreigners.

Fixing Krishna

There is another beautiful workshop in the village. The craftsman works traditionally using an alloy of five metals — copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc for the casting of religious idols.

"Metal holds an important position in both religious and everyday life for the Indian people. The Silpastrastras (art text about metal working) goes into great detail about the composition of alloys used to cast both sacred icons and mundane utensils. Panchaloha (an alloy of five metals — copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc) is widely used to cast icons and idols for worship because of its auspicious nature.
Metal working is deeply infused with religion. In fact, before an artisan even begins a project he prays for guidance to Tvastram, the son of Visvakarma, who worked with copper, brass, and other metal alloys. Even in the household, metals have religious significance, from icons in the family temples to cooking utensils. Hindu religion forbids the use of copper for cooking; thus in a Hindu kitchen we could find primarily brass tools, whereas a Muslim kitchen would boast mainly tinned copper." (Quote from the website of the Museum of Anthropology, Missiouri, http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/minigalleries/lostwax/intro.shtml)

In the way back home...

It was 9pm after a long day of 6 hours in the foreign registration office (our famous FRRO) and some desperate furniture searching in Commercial Street to find the basic stuff for our newly acquired appartment. We were in our way back home in an auto full of stuff and it was taking longer than expected since the driver had to stop to fill the tank and not to be smashed by a train. We were slowly advancing in the everyday traffic jam when suddenly all the vehicles stopped. We tried to see what was going on but we couldn´t see much through the cars, but we could listen to some drum music coming from the front. Around 50 metres in front of us the street was closed for the traffic and there was a crowd walking with some kind of big structure decorated with colourful flowers and textiles bove their heads.

Unwittingly a smile came to my face, because, in front of so many people, cheerful music and colours, we obviously were being witnesses of an indian festivity or party. Our auto driver decided to ignore the fact that the street was closed and continued to drive to the crowd and music. We didn´t stop him because our curiosity won our common sense of following the rules, and anyway, any driver in India follows any traffic rules. 

We finally arrived next to the flowered structure. We started seeking for any religious figure inside of it to know what was all this going about when we suddenly realized that that was not a joyfull festivity but a funeral!!

The structure was a very ornamental bed inside which the corpse of a man was lying down. A cloth was covering all his body except his pale face which everyone around him was touching I guess for blessing him. I looked puzzled down to the crowd and noticed the distribution of the crowd of this hindu funeral. Men were walking in the very front while they fired firecrackers and flares. They were followed by a kind of "batucada" that played the lively drum music mentioned before. Just after some men were raising the funeral bed with the deceased man. And last, behind everything, the women.

When we passed the crowd the auto driver accelerated the rikshaw so we couldn´t see much more but the mixed fillings were inside me. I had been smiling expecting a happy festivity because from my "occidental" point of view a funeral has to be a sober, sad and grey happening and not such a pyrotechnic-colourful-musical spectacle. But that only makes me realize how little I still know about the cultural diversity of India and how much I still have to learn to get to forget the stereotypes I brought with me from Europe. And only makes me even more excited about the non-stop learning 2-year period we have in front.

Maddalen Gil

The art of the indian head nod

Yes or No ? That is the question.

I always considered our gesture to say yes and no universal. But in India, beyond the language borders, you can find also the body language borders. Indian people use a special gesture, they nodd their head from side to side giving a funny way to their answer.

Yes, Maybe, of course, I will see tomorow, why not, no problem, probably no? It could be one of these expression or an other.

Firstly, this head movement appears more to an uncontrollable tic than an answer. After a few days, observing their eyes, their mouth, the answer is clearer.

For european people it seems difficult to learn this movement.Between our yes and our no adding a little dance to fluidify your gesture and you should nodd like an indian person in three or four months.

So, it's time to me to practising in front of a mirror in my privacy home the indian head wiggle.