Sao Joao's Feast

Last Friday, the 24th of June, was the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Goodness knows how it is celebrated anywhere else in the world, but in our little world in Goa, people jump into wells and sing love songs!

Yes, floats and mini-parades are part of the package in some villages in North Goa but are all carried out on Chapora river on brightly painted boats. This is all part of a 100-year old tradition that until recently was dying out. Now a few villages are trying to revive the tradition and this year some resorts have even organised dinner soirees, well-jumping included, to woo the spirit of St. John the Baptist which lives in us all!

I won’t torture you any longer with: Why well-jumping? Simple answer, because the feast falls during the monsoon, and the well waters rise high enough to jump into them safely, provided you can swim. People also jump into rivers, lakes, swimming pools and whatever other water bodies they can find.

The feast is also called the brother-in-laws feast as the in-laws of newly married brides are invited to the brides’ house to celebrate the festival. This is done so as to introduce the son-in-law to the village. The newly wed son-in-law then wears a head crown of fruits or leaves and jumps into the well. The brides’ parents have to offer the couple an assortment of fruits and vegetables that are available during this season.

Even though St. John’s feast is a religious occasion, it gels well with the agricultural calendar and the monsoon. Nature and religion is combined to form a festival of fun for everyone.

And before you ask, no, I didn’t jump into any wells!

Here comes the rain, again!

Somebody please remind me what I was thinking of when I decided to pack my bags, leave England and go to Goa for four months DURING monsoon season?!

The rains have arrived. Sheets and sheets pelting down. Rivulets of red mud (the red soil characterises the Goan landscape) streaming down the streets all with one aim in mind, to reach the nearest level storm drain. We live halfway down a hill. As if getting out the house (more like wading out of the house) wasn’t hard enough, the cars coming down the hill kept splashing me from head to foot with muddy red water.

At least the farmers will be ecstatic! They began planting their rice seedlings last week and prayed for waterlogged soil immediately after. Goans start twitching nervously if the rains haven’t arrived by the feast day of St. Anthony, 13th June. The monsoons were 4 days late this year!

Devdasis in Goa

I recently spoke to the Director of an NGO based in the red light district in Baina beach, one of the beaches in North Goa. Baina is particularly known for prostitutes from among the migrant labour community but the issue of particular interest to me was about prostitutes who are born of the Devdasi system.

As I found out, the Devdasi system is the tradition of ‘divine prostitution’ under which girls are offered as dedications to temples to appease the deity Ellamma. The dedication ceremonies used to occur in the main Hindu temples, after which the girls were basically at the beck and call of the Hindu Brahmins (priests). Today, although the dedication practice is outlawed, it has moved to the smaller temples or to the houses of the temple priests without the pomp and show of the past. In some cases, Devdasis are pushed into brothels. The system is more commercialised today with many Devdasis turning to prostitution in the face of poverty.

The Devdasi system was first made punishable under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Act, 1927 of Mysore, a princely state then. This was followed by a blanket ban on the system by the British Raj in the 1930s. But, the system is still very much prevalent in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and the northeast of India despite the respective governments undertaking rehabilitation programmes for those who want to liberate themselves from the system.

The issue of Devdasis at Baina stems from the fact that migrants from places like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra who come to Goa in search of better opportunities working on construction projects for example, continue to practice the Devdasi system among their communities out of habit and to justify initiating their children into prostitution. This is a growing problem that certain NGOs try to counter through be-friending the Devdasis and creating awareness within their communities. But without adequate help from the government, or access to the neighbouring governments’ rehabilitation programmes, the problem seems to be escalating in Goa.

Volunteering at Jan Ugahi

I have begun work with Jan Ugahi, which is Hindi for “People’s Awareness.” This NGO deals with womens and children’s rights in Goa. They run a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence, provide care, support, legal aid and counselling to abandoned women and children, and have a literacy programme for street children.

Everyday at 11am, someone takes a jeep out to one of the slum areas and collects streetchildren to bring them to Jan Ugahi. As you enter the office, which is a three bedroom flat in an apartment building that they now own, there is nothing but a huge floor-area where the children all sit down and are given notebooks or small blackboards where they can draw or write. There are two teachers, who years ago, were abandoned children that learned to read and write from the same programme. They now teach others and are awaiting results from the school board of education on their 10th grade open school exam.

The last time I was there about 19 children, mostly between the ages of 7 and 13, were being taught how to make paper bags out of old newspaper. They are paid a rupee per bag and are taught a new skill but also the value of it at the same time. Shops and stalls use these bags, as plastic bags are not sold in Goa anymore.

The aim of this programme is to take children off the street where they are vulnerable and expose them to the idea of playtime and study. They normally have two working parents who are out the whole day either looking for work or working on contruction sites etc. as cheap labour. The children are left to run wild and often become delinquents and vandals as they grow up. Jan Ugahi is trying to counter this by exposing them to some form of structure. They are also given clothes if they need it and medical help if necessary as they don’t have access to doctors or proper medical care if they cut themsleves or break a limb. A lunch is provided too!

I’ve agreed to help with a number of projects and will tell you about them as they develop. At the moment, Jan Ugahi doesn’t have a website, so I’m helping the director develop some web content and a format for their website.

Geeta's story

I’ve been talking to various organisations in search of work on women’s and/or children’s issues. I’m helping one group carry out a survey next month on the working conditions of migrants who work as domestic daily help for Goan families. The plan is to be trained in the issues facing these workers, who live in local slums, and tease out issues of human trafficking for prostitution as well. It’s a challenge!

I’ve found another organisation that provides direct action and support to indidual women and children who are in distress due to AIDs, trafficking, domestic violence or abandonment. Talking with the director, I was extremely impressed with the level of care and involvement that the organisation engage in and how they manage their resources considering their vast workload. I will know in a few weeks whether they will be able to take me on.

To give you an idea of the types of issues these kinds of organisations are dealing with here is an example:

Last month, a 9-year old girl (named Geeta) was admitted into hospital with 94% burns on her body and she died soon after she told the doctor that a man had grabbed from behind, poured kerosene on her and set her alight. She was found by her employers curled up in their garden sink where the culprit had dragged the girl and turned the tap on her so that her burnt skin would fall off. The initial police investigation claimed it was a suicide case. After they amended the report to read that it was a murder case, NGOs that were monitoring the police investigation claimed that the scene of the crime had been cleared before the murder investigation had been completed. The murder had taken place under the roof of the girl’s employers and the employer was released on bail 24 hours after being thrown in prison.

Further digging revealed that the girl had complained to her mother, who lived in a nearby slum, that she was being abused by her employers. Her mother sent her back to the house anyway as the girl’s employer was not only paying for the mother to have a roof over her head, but also for her mobile phone! The case continues behind the scenes but it is the NGOs that have to pressurise the police to do a good job and who have to call press conferences in order to garner public pressure of any sort. The apathy of society, the cynicism of the press and the corruptibility of the police are all complicit in making such cases the norm that exists behind the scenes of everyday life here in India.

Here comes the rain!

About three hours ago, it went very, very dark outside; the sky filled with black rain clouds and the pre-monsoon rains began. There was the most unbearable humidity just before as the air saturated itself with moisture, then the heavens opened up and the saints began a game of billiards (which is a way of saying there was thunder and lightning)! We had two hours straight of lightning bolts shooting to the ground, everything trembled with every thunderclap! My mother said tomorrow morning’s newspapers would be full of reports of the areas that had been hit and there were sure to be some deaths by electrocution. Everyone has to take cover during these rains. Its like this for two weeks or so until the “real” rains arrive. This is just the intro!

Everyone has been waiting for a cool night, finally a respite from the heat. And tomorrow, I’ll have to go shopping for rubber rain shoes before they’re all sold out!!

Mango Season in Goa.

It is incredibly hot and humid here. And we’re drowning in mangoes! Its mango season and not only does Goa grow 125 different varieties of mango, I’ve probably eaten them all! The house is full of the scent of mangoes. There’s mango curry, mango pickle, mango jam, mango juice just to name a few preparations. There’s mango-stuff in bottles that no one has a name for, it was just “done” for ages. I can’t walk into the kitchen without tripping over a mango that’s rolled out of its comfy, straw nest where it was put to ripen!

And how I have missed it all.

I love the way we divide the seasons by fruit over here. I arrived just at the end of jackfruit and water melon season but just in time for mangoes. We could do the same for vegetables or fish, but I’m not as much of an expert. It’s the colours and taste of fruit; so rich and deep, that excite my senses and remind me of how much I’ve been missing! Imagine all the heat of a scorching, blazing, merciless sun captured in the rich yellow of one mango! The deep orange of a beach sunset captured in the flesh of another mango variety.

Every family has a mango tree in their backyard. So every week, one or the other of my aunts drops by with a sack of at least 30 mangoes in tow, freshly picked from their mango tree. Every household in the family gets a sack. And then, its our turn. One tree can produce a 1000 mangoes in one season, and our endless supply during this season is mostly for free!

Even TESCO can’t beat these prices!