Planning, lunch out and a trip to the police station.

A lovely comment about Pachaikili centre, found by Pam in the visitors' book.

 

January 7^th

This morning we had a meeting scheduled with Sekar and other RUHSA officers, to plan a timetable for visiting projects funded by Friends of Vellore, the organisation under whose umbrella we in the Bishopston Kuppam Link are now placed. In the absence of Dr Rita we met in her room, with Dr Bishwari who stands in for her in her absence, Sekar, currently coordinator of B Sc Medical Sociology courses, Matthew, Training coordinator and until recently coordinator for the Elderly projects, Surendar, a social worker who works with the Youth clubs, and Jeffers, a training officer who runs the stall-fed goats project and the Farmers’ clubs. 

We began with introductions and with some recapping of the work that e.g Matthew and Sekar have done over the years in RUHSA. I had met Dr Bishwara last year and we had exchanged horror stories about kidney stones (though his beat mine since he was afflicted with traumatic pain during a 24 hr train journey!) We talked about the work which Sekar did for many years, setting up a huge number of self-help groups (SHGs) in the KVKuppam block. This was a project fraught with potential problems, but which has proved extremely successful and continues to this day. Through it large numbers of women were empowered to make small changes for themselves and their families, by saving money through the groups and then obtaining small loans, for specific projects. Over the years the groups have gone from strength to strength and RUHSA has been able to use well-established groups to help it set up its own projects. So for example our Pachaikili centre was set up with two SHG groups initially, one taking responsibility for the children and one the elderly. Nowadays one SHG runs the centre as a whole. 

After a very interesting conversation about a range of issues, to do with health education and social projects, Dr Bishwari had to leave, but not before he had listened to my idea about the need to provide counselling for adolescents (and I had explained about the awful numbers of suicides we had known of amongst our friends locally) He told us that the suicide rate in India is roughly twice that in the world generally and I find this very easy to believe. (Actually later that day Pam and Brian bumped into a couple at the hospital outpatients, from a family they met and befriended years ago and learned when Pam  enquired about the man’s brother that he had taken his own life three years ago.) Dr Bishwari told us that they do offer HIV counselling and Surendar has been involved with this. I asked if RUHSA would be able to provide trained counsellors if we did try to get this project going and he said that this would not be a problem. It is not unusual for people to present at the RUHSA hospital after trying to poison themselves and they are counselled by the doctors/ nurses who treat them. There is no specific counsellor role in the hospital, but Dr Bishwari said that it will make a huge difference if such patients are able to speak in confidence about their problems at this time of crisis. He is very sympathetic to the ideas we have been developing about perhaps using the Pachaikili centre for some regular counselling/ advice for youth and I am looking forward to discussing this with Dr Rita on her return.

After Dr Bishwari left us we got down to the business of arranging a timetable of visits, beginning tomorrow with the stall-fed goats on the RUHSA campus, then two centres for Elderly people in Kavanur and Kavasampet. We can cycle to both centres (if the saddle-sore bums allow!) Then in the evening we will go to Nagel to see a Youth club and a Farmers’ club. Next week the current coordinator for Elderly centres, Rakesh, will be back and we will plan to visit the three remaining ones. It seems that at Panamandengi the Elderly centre funded by FOV Sweden has a very lively care-taker, Lalita, who is doing all sorts of interesting activities with the twenty elders who attend there. There is also a government-run balwadi (pre-school) next door to this centre, so there could be potential for getting the young and old together there, as they are at Pachaikili.

Surendar told us that there is a project funded through FOV with young men from his Youth clubs. Eight men were identified who were unemployed and who had dropped out of education before completing secondary schooling (around Standard 9). They were given the opportunity to attend a four-wheeler motor mechanic course at the community college on the RUHSA campus for six months, followed by a six months placement with Mahindra or with Ganesh (Suzuki) motors. That first group have just completed their year and will be offered employment by their placements, if they have worked well. Surendar will arrange for us to speak to some of this group. 

A lovely feast and Santa and Pria who had doubtless been cooking it since the crack of dawn...

All in all it had been a very interesting and useful meeting, and we felt we had made a very good start on our planning. We had then to cycle off (sun overhead, as always) for lunch at Balaji’s house. Here the fatted calf (or carrot/ potato/ green beans) had been prepared by Balaji’s lovely mum Santa and his wife, Pria. This family make us so very welcome and always push the boat out (to use another metaphor!) and though there is no way to prevent this, we do always worry because they really are on a low income and our arrival must mean a real stretch for them. Balaji himself has some work, but not regularly, in plumbing and electrics, his older brother who used to work for BTC does now have a regular office job, but their father is now seriously disabled, does not have the use of his legs and certainly cannot work (he was a skilled weaver) Santa is such a beautiful woman but does look as if she bears the troubles of the family on her shoulders. Although there should be an old age pension and/or a disability pension for the father, we heard last year that he did not get one and we have heard in other contexts that a back-hander may have to be paid before a pension can be received. Life in a country with no welfare state is fraught with dangers, as I have often written before. Balaji for example was working in Chennai during the recent floods and was trapped in the upper stories of a tall building, where helicopters had to drop snacks and a few basics to keep people going. As he said himself ‘India is not safe country; we face many dangers’ 

After a super lunch we had to leave to pop in on Sarida, our former ayah, whom we learned yesterday had recently lost her older daughter Prianka, after she took her own life. Once again we could only provide a shoulder for Sarida to cry on and we regretted very much not having the language to be able to understand what she was saying, nor to be able to express our condolences. However, in such a situation, there is never anything that can be said to take away the pain, and just to hold her and cry with her was at least something we could do.

We left Seetaramanpet then, with promises to return to take coffee with Sarida (in this culture it is always just wrong not to give some token of hospitality to a visitor, and this worried Sarida even in her dire situation.) We then had to dice with death on the main road through KVKuppam, to get to the police station to register ourselves as always, as aliens. En route several over-loaded open lorries tried to make a lorry sandwich of us as they passed in opposite directions. This is no joke nowadays as we have aged and some of us wobble a bit on bikes; so prayers to any kind of deity, with or without an elephant head, have to be offered earnestly. The deed was done remarkably quickly and pleasantly - much easier than this process used to be. I took a photo or two of the stacks of dusty foolscap ledgers and a pile of riot shields, which gave a bit of a flavour of this police station. 

A handy supply of riot shields tucked away in the corner.