In terms of volunteers - I have over 30 right now (not including Corporate Social Responsibility groups who come in for day events only). Most of the volunteers are doing really cool things - from Korean culture workshops using chopstick games to English teaching, from multi-media courses to breakdancing, from medical checkups to drawing and art classes - they chose projects from the project list I have developed and I also have a resource of specific activities as well. To support volunteers also, apart from a weekly meeting, I have created, catalogued, and systemized (with the help of a volunteer :) ) an extensive library from which they can borrow books to help in their placement and in their general area of study. What happened:
I was at work, like any normal Saturday. Francesco was at home preparing for his trip to London. At 12:00 someone rang our bell and to inform that he was sent by the landlord to check the water tanks on the roof – the boy could have been any delivery walla, so Francesco directed him to the roof. Francesco left the house at 2:00 to run some errands, got a frantic call from a friend around 3:30 saying that our front door was broken, returned to the house at 4:00 and found both of the locks on the front door intact but the door itself ripped apart, our house gutted of all technology, cupboards emptied out onto the ground, completely ransacked. We lost Francesco’s computer, both our external hard drives (meaning EVERYTHING we have saved and backed up including all of Francesco’s masters work and PhD work, all my photographs from travelling the past 4 years, everything), both our digital cameras, every memory card for the cameras, both my IPODs, and our speakers.
What happened AFTER what happened:
Is even harder to handle. We called the police. The police came. Sir Sub-Inspector Vijay Kumar walked into the place as if he owned it himself, as if he was the most important man in the world. And our landlord was sitting by, waiting to see what responsibility he HAD to claim and what he could possibly get away with.
First, the questions – it happens when meeting ANY Indian and serves as a way for them to place you somewhere in the hierarchy that they automatically place everyone. Maybe it’s a throwback to the caste system, but everyone has people above and people below, and at introduction every Indian will determine where you are in regards to themselves. Being white puts us high in the scheme of things, since white people are naturally rich and educated (they know nothing about Southern United States). Even beyond being simply white, there are questions that people ask to place you within the “white hierarchy”. Where are you from? If you say Japan or US it means you spend a lot of money. If you say Switzerland there is definite respect because for whatever reason (probably Bollywood) Indians see Switzerland as heaven on earth. If you say Italy it means nothing past half of Sonia Gandhi (so no recognition of the Pope, as we tried with SI Vijay Kumar, and he could only relate to pizza and pasta – very educated police force). Then: Where did you study? The best answer to this question is London – it doesn’t matter the school and it doesn’t matter the subject – if you studied in London, its prestigious. And finally: What do you do here and how much do you make? We both answered NGO work – which usually gets respect because it involves “helping the people”. But then salary; it’s something I will never get used to, discussing money so openly with strangers (although its not really open since I’m convinced everyone lies). I told SI Vijay Kumar honestly that I am making an Indian salary and that we are living off that (we neglected to mention Francesco’s), and he was both shocked and concerned. We threw his expat vision for a loop – and to top it off we told him we had no maid or cook for the flat, so no chance of them stealing, and he didn’t know what to think.
After the questions are asked and answered, the power hierarchy is relatively established. There are a few distinct displays of power that I’ve noticed (in this scenario and others I’ve experienced here):
1. -having access to information and deciding to withhold it from everyone else (I could elaborate for days on this).
2. -having the ability to do as little work as possible, because we can get everyone else to do it for you, or just decide not to do anything anyways.
3. -having the privilege to FART in front of everyone.
The last one might seem a little ridiculous, but it happens in India. SI Vijay Kumar kept letting them rip (full-on leg-lifting) while in our house surveying the scene and asking his questions. But AS SOON AS he went back to the police station with Francesco to file the report (a fight in and of itself), the farting ceased. Francesco saw that he was nobody there, so far down the chain of command that he no longer had the position to be disgusting.
And then the attempt to insert logical thinking, a foreign concept in India:
SI Vijay Kumar ordered fingerprints to be taken, photographs were captured of our room and the mess that was left behind. He spent some time lecturing us for agreeing to live in a place with fibreglass on the door and lecturing the landlord for renting a place that was unsafe. Ultimately somehow he demanded the landlord compensate us for our losses (which will never happen) and give us more security (which is the next big fight in the chronicle). I suggested logical solutions to our awful situation:
1. -We could visit the neighbours and ask them if they knew anything. If the delivery boy was the one who stole everything (and used visiting with Francesco here as an opportunity to check things out, and then waited until he left to do the dirty work) then perhaps he was waiting outside during the day and someone saw. If it were someone from the neighbourhood itself, perhaps a concerned person would raise alarm. The police shot down this idea in order to not draw any more attention to ourselves (while the crime team was in the background nodding in amazement like it was an idea they had never considered!)
2. -We asked where the thief could possibly be reselling the technology so that we could go and see if we could find our things. We accepted that we would probably get none of the information and only the hard equipment, but at least we could be doing SOMETHING. It was only after mentioning Nehru Place, a market infamous for second-hand electronics, that the policeman batted an eye and agreed. How is it that we suggested the answer to our own question?
3. -And finally, if the police were so diligent to take fingerprints of the potential suspect right away at the scene of the crime, why did it take 3 weeks for them to return to take Francesco’s and I’s fingerprints to have something to compare the others to? What if we had moved (as planned) in that time? (By the way, for anyone who finds yourself in this unfortunately situation, expect to spend at least 3 hours getting your fingerprints taken – complete with an over-powerful policeman manually rolling ink onto a board, dipping each finger 4 times on each hand, and then your whole hand 4 times, and then your whole thumbs 4 times, and then getting the right hand and left hand confused, and doing some fancy folding tricks on a piece of plan computer paper. Its normal. )
The first suggestion brings into light the apathy I find among general Indians. I haven’t figured out a formula for when, where and how, but for whatever reason, when I’m most in trouble, and there are Indians in a position to help, they chose not to get involved. When I was on the bus and my mobile was pick-pocketed, I called the stolen number from my other number. The thief (stupidly) answered the phone and was talking in Hindi, saying things I assumed were important to understand. I kindly (and somewhat frantically) asked the man next to me, who I knew spoke both English and Hindi, to help me translate and speak to the thief; he refused as did the rest of the people standing around me on the bus. The policeman was displaying the same apathy – he assumed from the beginning there was nothing to be done and that past filing a report that will get buried in piles of paperwork, we could never expect to get anything returned to us in any form. He also assumed (probably correctly) that asking neighbours wouldn’t amount to anything because they wouldn’t want to be involved in someone else’s problems. BUT when a car accident occurs on the street, the whole road will stop and get out and beat the person who caused it. When there is a fight on the street, everyone who is around will join in. When you are “in” you are really in. When we told a few of our Indian friends and families what happened, they have vowed to get retribution and taken strong steps to help us solve our situation, sometimes by giving us a place to stay for a night, or a nice meal, or in bigger ways by pulling strings to find a new place to stay. This isn’t apathy at all but rather the opposite – and in a circumstance even further removed from the immediate situation itself, where they have even less chance to make a difference.
In the meantime, any donation of music, movies, etc are appreciated :)
