Hello,
My first blog post written for my friends at WEARECHAPTERONE is now online. It can be found here http://wearechapterone.com/blog/ Please also have a look at their website which introduces some fantastic other projects.
Best,
Sven
Hello! Thanks for checking this space and sorry that I can’t come up with a proper post this week. The reason for this is that out of the last 14 days I spent 13 in the office and I’m pretty exhausted. And to be honest I don’t really want to bore you with the work I’ve been doing at the office. However, yesterday I finally had a day off and did some tourism. I visited the Baha’i Lotus Temple and randomly walked through Delhi for a while. In the afternoon I went to JN University and played some football. That’s the first time that I had some “proper” exercise since I’ve arrived here and to be honest, I can’t remember if I’ve ever had a break from sports for such a long period. Anyway, playing football gave me a long needed fix and I’m feeling really good today.
I can’t believe that I’ve started my last week now. I don’t quite know how to feel about it. On the one hand I do enjoy the experience of being here and I feel that there is still a lot which I could learn. On the other hand I know that it is time to go back to Lincoln because I desperately need to get on with university work. And I do miss all my friends in Lincoln as well as the (almost) daily exercise I get there and of course a healthier diet. So, on the one hand I’d love to stay here for a little while longer, but on the other hand I’m also very much looking forward to going back to Lincoln. I guess that’s how I’m supposed to feel…
Anyway, here are yet again some tourism pics. There will be a longer and more interesting post soon(ish), but it will probably not appear on this blog. I’ll be writing for an interesting new non-profit organisation called “chapter one”. This is a very recent project started by some of my closest friends and I think it’s a brilliant project that you should definitely check out! Please have a look at www.wearechapterone.org
Well, for now I wish you all the best. I’ll keep this space updated and will also inform you when and where my post for “Chapter One” can be found. But this might take a couple of weeks as I will have quite a lot of work when I get back to the UK. But I’ll post about that work here soon as it’s somewhat linked to the work I’m doing right now.
Take care,
Sven
Lotus Temple
Lotus Temple
Elephants in the street
Health and Safety?? This guy was not secured!!
Hello and apologies that it has taken me so long to update this space. Unfortunately this week has not been all good. I’ve been sick for a couple of days and that’s the reason why I couldn’t post any earlier. As the title of tis post gives away, it’s been a bit of an odd week that has been filled with a bit of everything really. I think that I must have gone through every possible emotional state at some point during it. There’s been a lot of hectic and chaos at the office, I’ve been on an adventure, I’ve witnessed some upsetting stuff on the street and I’ve had some realisations regarding the work I’m doing here for Cintan. I’ve also eaten some amazing Indian food, which I thought would surely make me ill, but which didn’t, and then of course I then had a mediocre Western “can’t-go-wrong” dish that eventually did make me spend a night on the toilet and a day in bed. In this post, I’ll try to talk a bit about my experiences of the past week. But I‘ll have to keep it brief. There’s a lot of work, which needs to be done and I’m starting to run out of time… I’ve only got two weeks left now!!!
Before I start, I however wanted to share a couple of pictures of the area where I live. As I said in one of my first posts, it really is a lovely and vibrant (in it’s own way) place, which particularly lives up at night. So, here you go. The photos are not brilliant, but I think the do express very well what the place is like.
My area at night
My area at night
My area at night
Last week, I can’t remember what day it was, I had a bit of a shocking experience on the street. As I went for lunch with my colleague Seth we saw how one man chucked an old card board box on the street and two 5 year old children, who were dressed in rag and who looked quite dirty, had a fight over. One of them was a little girl, the other one was a boy. The girl just pushed the boy over. He fell and landed with his naked knees on the street. The girl looked up at us and started grinning in a very bizarre way. I cannot find the way to describe it properly. It was as if she was trying to say: “Look at us playing” but in the mean time her expression also said something else – something far more serious. Even though she made it look like play, the reason why she knocked her little companion over was that this box (for a waste item) is of quite a high value. Seth and I found it very hard to comprehend what we’d just witnessed. But it was real and were both very shocked. This time, I was not prepared to see such a powerful scene. It happened all of a sudden and very unexpectedly, literally 100 meters away from the office during the lunch break. I think that’s why it struck me so hard. I had no time to mentally prepare for it and let my mind build a “mental wall” to protect me.
Last Sunday times I had better however. This time my kitchen remained dry and I managed to travel to Agra. Having missed the fast train connection (no, I did not oversleep!! The metro station did not open on time – now how’s that for an excuse?) I took the train from a different station. This was considerably cheaper, but the journey also took an hour longer. This was not a problem though as I got to know a woman from Switzerland with whom I spend the whole day, so I had somebody to talk to. It was nicer than travelling on my own. Unfortunately we were only sold “normal” tickets at the station and told we could upgrade to the AC (air conditioned) class in the train. What a LIE!! The journey to Agra was fine and we travelled “air conditioned” (for the normal price). However, on the way back, I had to stand (for three hours) in a non-ventilated spot. This was quite an experience, as (due to the temperatures) we kept the door open for most of the journey. So at least that made it supportable. However, every so often I had to move and shift someone to approach the door and throw his/her rubbish out of the train.
Agra was nice. Well not the city, which is a shithole (sorry but it’s true!), but the monuments. We visited the Fort and the Taj Mahal (see photographs below). The reason why most guides tell you to spend a whole day in Agra is that you usually have to wait in really, really long lines. Well that is if you’re a man. Women can just jump the male queue and wait in the 10-meter female line. This is why we decided that I was the Swiss lady’s “husband”. I, in this way, I managed to jump the 200 meter queue in which there was NO gap whatsoever. Like this nobody can squeeze in (if you read my post on the metro system you can imagine how often this is being tried).
I walked past the men’s queue, played Mr stupid Westerner… and got away with it! It was not my proudest moment but considering that there were only nationals in the queue and as foreigner you pay a terribly inflated price, I think in some way I received justice. I did not feel too guilty anyway.
Picture taken out of a moving train
Picture taken out of a moving train
Agra Fort
Agra Fort
Taj Mahal
Mosque at Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal
Anyhow, as I mentioned before, on Monday night I got sick and I spend all Tuesday in bed and it really took me until Friday to fully recover. The problem was that at the beginning I did not manage to keep hydrated. I got really weak and I only started improving as I managed to eat again. So it’s probably unsurprising that for the first time since I’d arrived my morale was quite low and at one point I wished I wasn’t here. But now it’s all good again and I’m in high spirits! However I have a lot of work at the office and also need to do uni work. Hence the poor quality of this post, but at least I can share some pictures.
All the best!
Sven
I had arrived at New Delhi Railway station a bit too early and was now waiting for my colleague Brij to arrive and introduce me to Chintan’s “Low Carbon Future” programme. Not really having the time to wander off and to have a stroll around, I decided to just wait outside the metro station from which I had just come. So I began to observe the constant and busy flow of people who were quickly rushing from the metro to the railway station, and of course the other way around.
If you’ve ever been to Delhi then you know that this is a very hectic city. Especially the use of public transport can be very tiresome. As I have already mentioned in a previous post, the metro has made travelling longer distances within the city more convenient and – what is probably most important for the majority of commuters – it makes travelling around the city very cheap. Evidently, when I say that the metro is “convenient”, I only mean that it gets you rather quickly form one part of the city to the other. I don’t want to imply that taking the metro is generally an activity that I look forward to. People in Delhi are in usually very friendly and always willing to help. However, whenever they set foot into one of the metro stations, they mutate into some sort of Darwinian homo metropolaris (sorry!!). It seems that only the strongest travellers can reach their destinations. At least that’s the impression you get whenever someone pushes you with both hands through the opening doors of the metro, not allowing any passengers get out of the cabin.
Another instance when you might be reminded of the “survival of the strongest” shibboleth is when you are just foolish enough not to use the full extent of the earth’s gravitational force whenever you want to sit down. Let me explain: In the highly unlikely event of the person sitting next to where you stand deciding to get up, and as you’re in the process of sitting down onto that person’s now empty seat, it can happen that someone will “steal” the seat from underneath your bottom. As unbelievable as it sounds, some people indeed manage to do this by using the speed acquired from sprinting the three to five meters that they stood away from you and throwing themselves into that gap (by now you’re in a semi-crouched position) between your bum and the (technically still empty) seat. Seat stealing is an art that needs to be learnt, but for which some people have developed a very refined technique.
Whenever the metro is not overcrowded, and like me you’re a relatively tall westerner who hasn’t had a proper hair cut in more than half a year (ok, I must admit that this is my own fault) you’ll get a lot of strange looks and some people will just stare at you for minutes. Strangely enough they do not seem to stop whenever you start staring back. You’ll have to learn just need to live with it.
Anyway, enough of this excursus on the use of the metro in Delhi! I just had another metro journey behind me and I hope you now understand that when I had arrived at the railway station, I did not mind a break. I felt that it was now my turn to do some people watching.
It is bizarre how a city (or at least your experience of it) can change all of a sudden whenever you decide to leave its hectic flow and moving around and become static for some time. Standing there, I realised that amongst the rushing commuters, there was also a slower, more relaxed and tranquil world, which co-exists in the same space. I observed two newspaper vendors who were sitting on the floor amongst the hundreds of the people rushing past every minute. Quite unimpressed by all the frenzy going on around them, they had a chat with one another and a bit later they bribed a station official in order to be allowed to remain seated on the pavement. A couple of yards away was a tobacco vendor standing at a small mobile stand. Many passers-by interrupted their journey here and stopped to chew some tobacco or buy a cigarette. Obviously many of these people were regulars who also wanted to have a chat and a small break before getting on with their busy days.
Finally my colleague Brij arrived and I was taken into the railway station. Brij did however not take me in the “normal” way past the x-ray machines where the police check you for bombs and guns. Instead I was taken to the part of the station where the incoming and outgoing merchandise is handled. If you know where to go, you can just enter this area of the station and nobody will care (so much about the effectiveness of the security controls at the official station entrance). Entering the station area this way actually feels a bit like an adventure. A whole new world opened up to us. Suddenly the smell of urine, that was so predominant outside the station, made way for a mixture of all kind of different scents. There was the smell of fresh fish and spices, but also the industrial stench of engine oil and exhaust fumes. We had to climb over railway tracks, wait for big diesel engines to pass by, and avoid being run over by a cycle-rickshaw, or a push cart with which all sorts of boxes, bags and packs are being shifted from one train to the other.
Welcome to New Delhi Railway Station
Eventually we found the rag pickers who took us back into the passenger area of the station and I was formally introduced to one (an probably the most successful) initiatives of the “low carbon footprint programme”. Chintan has a contract with the New Delhi Railway station and are officially in charge of emptying the trash bins and take all the rubbish of incoming long haul trains. There are more than eighty waste pickers who are currently working at the station. They are required to take ALL the rubbish away, and have the facilities to segregate the waste and sell on all the recyclable goods. This is how they earn their money. Again, this has created a win-win situation. The railway station is kept tidy (and everyone using it has seen vast improvements since the programme began) for almost not costs, and rag pickers have access to a lot of recyclable waste. Furthermore, they are given uniforms and protective equipment. They are thus recognised and recognisable for the service they provide.
Collector wearing Uniform and Protective Equipment
Rag Pickers at Work
Of course not all is running as smoothly as it could. Trains are usually not on time and it often happens that a couple of trains unexpectedly arrive at the station at within a couple of minutes. Work for the rag pickers can then become very stressful and almost impossible to accomplish. Also, it seems to be a frequent occurrence that railway personal appropriate the good quality waste materials before the rag pickers can mount the train. There have even been instances where bribed police or security personal has not let the garbage collectors onto the train until someone else had collected all the good materials. Overall, the system seems to run very well though and the rag pickers have created a method that helps them to acquire as much of the recyclable waste as possible.
And I was show as one train from the south of the country, which had been on its way for almost twenty-four hours, had just reached the station. As soon as all the passengers had disembarked the train two groups of pickers jumped into the train (Brij and me following one picker) and worked their way from each extreme of the train towards the centre coach. First they just rush through and quickly stuff all the good materials (plastic bottles, pieces of cardboard) into their bags. It’s only after that that they go through the train and clean the train from all the other wastes. This gives other people less opportunity to “steal” any of the better quality and hence more expensive materials.
Inside the Train
Train Floor
Being on the train running behind the waste collector was quite an experience. The train was in a right state and the smell of urine was awful. We had to jump over piles of old beddings that were lying on the floor, waiting to be carried out and washed, and the floor was covered in waste and very sticky. All of a sudden we had to stop and wait and I could briefly see how in the cabin in front of us, a covered stretcher got heaved out. Someone must have died during the journey. Then the train suddenly started moving and we were shifted into one of the rail slots that are designated for cleaning the trains. As we arrived there we climbed onto the track (yes literally!) and walked to the area were the rag pickers segregate and store the waste materials, which you can see in the photos below. It was quite a busy area, but clearly well work was well organised and the infrastructure was looked after.
Water leaking
Trains waiting to be Cleaned
Segregating Waste
Rickshaw for Waste Transport
The New Delhi railway station project is another project that works on many levels and benefits so many people. If given a chance, environmentalism from below can really work!
