Sari Shopping for Nirmala's Wedding

We feel so lucky to have Nirmala in our lives – she works as our house manager, cook and housekeeper. She has worked for Expat families for over ten years and she speaks English, Tamil, Hindi, and the local dialect called Kannada - and she's a great cook. I have not cooked a meal, done dishes, cleaned or washed clothes for two months! I have been thinking about how much time I spend doing those things back home and wonder how I can possibly do things differently, more efficiently (or get some help) when I return. I am much more productive (and happier) when those chores are off my back. And I enjoy spending time with Nirmala - she teaches our children about local culture and we are getting to know her family and life story.  

Nirmala told me on Monday that she was getting married on Friday, which was Valentines Day. She has lived with her partner Mahesh for seven years and they decided to make it official with a church wedding (they are Catholic). 

Sari shopping

I asked Nirmala if she had a new dress for the wedding and she said “no, but I'm fine. I’ll wear one of my outfits.” I asked her if she would like a new sari and offered to take her shopping. Nirmala was thrilled because she said if I gave her the money for a sari she would spend it on her family, but if we bought her a sari she would wear it. So Claudia and I took her shopping and Nirmala tried on 10 different saris and she looked beautiful in all of them. She wanted Claudia to choose the one she would wear for her wedding – and Claudia was honored.

Before meeting Mahesh, Nirmala was married to an abusive man. They had two sons and when she was pregnant with their third son, he walked out on her. He had abused Nirmala for years and she finally got the courage and the money to get a divorce and change her life. She never wanted to see him again so she moved in with her mother and cut him off. It’s especially difficult in a culture where women without husbands are often treated with disdain. Nirmala said her friends and family were very worried about her and some said it was better to be married – even to an abusive man – than to be a divorced woman in India. But she left – and started over. 

Nirmala and her cousin in her kitchen

Nirmala said her life was very difficult and many times she went hungry – but she did it and she even enrolled her boys in a private Catholic school. She values education more than anything and is very strict with her boys – she doesn’t allow them to leave the house after school – they have to stay in and do their homework – and Nirmala doesn’t want them playing with other kids from the neighborhood – she thinks they are a bad influence.

  Nirmala and Mahesh and two sons...and our family

We met Thomas, Kevin and her younger son at her “anniversary party” which was really her ‘wedding party’ – she called it her 'Thanksgiving party.' We were honored to be invited to her home and we brought a huge cake with two hearts that said Congratulations Nirmala and Mahesh. Her house was in a crowded neighborhood on the second floor – just two rooms – and all three boys sleep in the living room – the eldest and youngest share a twin bed (which serves as the couch and TV lounging area during the day) and Kevin, her middle son, sleeps on the floor. They have one small bedroom for Nirmala and Mahesh and a very small kitchen and bathroom with no shower, just a bucket for washing. There are a few Christian prayer plaques on the wall – they are part of a Baptist evangelistic church, and some family photos. And I saw a few books and games, a very old TV and there is lots of love and laughter. 

The party was wonderful – Nirmala invited her mother and sisters and cousins and some friends and we were the only foreigners – she said we were the guests of honor. There was not enough room for people to eat in her apartment so she sent us downstairs with a few of her friends to eat in her mother’s apartment – which was smaller than Nirmala’s. 

Nirmala and her mother

After dinner Noah and Adam played the guitar and sang and her family and friends loved it. The guests didn’t know the Beatles and Dylan songs, but they clapped along and sang the chorus. It was a wonderful evening. 

It’s hard to imagine how Nirmala and Mahesh will ever climb out of their hand to mouth situation. They both work for ex pat families – he is a full time driver for Goldman Sachs – he probably makes 30,000 rupees a month ($491) and Nirmala makes 22,000 ($271) we pay her double what the average cook is paid because we felt awful paying less to someone who is doing so much work – and she asked for the bigger salary because she is an experienced house manager – not just a cook…still, I give her extra money at the end of the week and buy her things like an oven. Nirmala didn’t have an OVEN. She is a great cook but told me that she onl had a microwave and when she wanted to bake a cake or cookies she would bake it at what she calls,  “my ma’am’s house” and then bring it home on the bus. 

Nirmala's family...

I took Nimala to the store and asked her to pick out an oven and we had our driver take Nirmala and the oven home to her apartment (she usually takes the bus).  We plan to give her son Thomas Noah’s guitar when we leave, and we will give her all of our household supplies and we plan to help with the kids’ school tuition…that is the least that we can do. Nirmala brings joy and laughter, spirituality, calm and great food into our home. We are blessed.

Lighting Up Bangalore's Slums With Solar Powered Lights

All around Bangalore, wedged between gleaming new apartment towers, and hidden in the back of construction sites and highway underpasses, tens of thousands of people live in makeshift tent communities and slums. Breathing in the stench of sewage and garbage, the children who live there play with broken pieces of construction materials and objects they pick out of the trash. 

Children of migrant workers living in tent community. Their families cook, eat and sleep on dirt floors with no access to water, sanitation or electricity. Until recently, their only source of light was a kerosene lamp, which emits toxic fumes that fill the small plastic-covered tents with black smoke, causing respiratory problems, burns and fires.

But a new kind of light is now replacing the dangerous kerosene. An innovative Australian non-profit called Pollinate Energy has developed an inexpensive solar powered light that can also charge mobile phones (many slum dwellers have phones). The business model is simple: train a local sales force called “Pollinators” to sell the lights, and provide them with mentors who teach entrepreneurial skills, enabling the Pollinators to build their own businesses.

Tent slum community next to luxury apartment construction site

Pollinate Energy is a clean energy organization running at full speed fueled by positivity and millennial passion. Its founders, who are in their twenties, call it a social business – a financially stable organization whose mission is to “create sustainable solutions to social problems.” Pollinate began its operations in the slums of Bangalore in 2012 and today it has a staff of three and 20 full-time Pollinators who have sold over 3500 lights. The company was recently awarded a Momentum for Change Award from the United Nations Climate Change secretariat. The award recognizes innovative solutions that address both climate change and wider economic, social and environmental challenges.

The Pollinate model is to create self-sustaining micro-economies. The Pollinators work in slum communities where they live or have cultural connections that help them earn the trust of the residents. Wearing bright yellow shirts, they navigate the alleys of the tent communities selling and installing solar lighting systems. The Pollinators receive a monthly retainer and earn commission on each sale above their monthly targets.

Woman shows the solar panel that sits on top of her tent all day soaking up the sun

At the outset, the Pollinators have to push past generations-old cultural taboos to convince skeptical slum dwellers that a small 15 x 20 centimeter shiny flat panel tied onto the top of their tent will absorb enough energy from the sun to power a bright light AND charge a mobile phone. For many, that first sales pitch seems unthinkable – ‘How can a flat box light up my tent? We have always used kerosene.’ When prospective customers see the demonstration, however, word spreads quickly. The lights cost 1700 rupees (27 US dollars), paid in a five-week installment plan.

Once they pay it off, they are fueled for free by the blazing Bangalore sun. 

Migrant worker invited us into his tent to see his solar light

I recently toured one of the tent communities in North Bangalore with Pollinate’s co-founder Ben Merven. A Pollinator named Rajan translated as we talked to a migrant worker. Holding his baby, the worker told us that, with his new light, his daughter can play at night and his wife can see the food she is preparing. 

The worker proudly invited us inside his tent to see how it works and said he hopes his daughter will learn to read by that light. He also said that his family no longer has stinging eyes and hacking coughs. Studies have shown that lung damage from smoke exposure in non-ventilated tents can cause respiratory illnesses; the second largest cause of premature death in this population of women and young children. 

Merven says, “I enjoy working with a product that can change a family’s life – its such a simple concept and I love problem solving. I especially like working in India, it’s a place where we can stop talking and just do it. I also like the fact that these lights can enhance the safety of women and children in the tent camps at night.” Since 2012, Pollinate has provided 3,500 solar lights in 300 of Bangalore’s estimated 600 slum communities.

The problem of “energy poverty,” according to Merven, is widely prevalent, not just in Bangalore; across India one quarter of the population lives without access to electricity – that’s roughly 390 million people. And 235 million of those households cook over open fires fueled by kerosene and animal dung. To address that problem, Pollinate will soon be selling a new product - efficient, safer, low cost cook stoves. The organization plans to expand this year to Hyderabad and Chennai. Merven estimates that the use of solar lights has already saved 100,000 liters of kerosene and averted the polluting impact of 225,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions.

Daughter of migrant worker

Pollinate’s business is fueled by highly motivated volunteer fellows – recent college graduates and professionals who raise funds to travel from Australia to work in India for a month training the Pollinators and learning the business. The fellows also partner with local Indian volunteers in the Young Indian Professional Programs. Merven says the goal is to “empower local Indian entrepreneurs and help inspire the next generation of social entrepreneurs.” Pollinate Energy hopes one day, to reach every city in India with a population over one million people, bringing light and hope.

Magic and Mayhem

We have been on a non-stop whirlwind adventure since the day we arrived in India. I  now understand why my friend Bethany loves this place so much - she talks about the colors and the energy and I feel it! Every day when I walk outside I am surrounded by stunning faces, vibrant colors, different religious practices, construction and destruction - cars, rickshaws, motorbikes, dogs, cows - and people - all fighting for their own space on a narrow street or a dirt path. There's non-stop music, talking, arguing, honking, the smell of delicious spices, and the stink of cow dung and rotting garbage. It's joy and sorrow - magic and mayhem, all at once. 

Music is playing most of the time and it’s everywhere – from inside local Hindu temples found in almost every neighborhood, to the call to prayer from mosques, to the roaring of radios in cars. Then there is the strange music of horns – incessant honking from cars, motorbikes and rickshaws. The honking is maddening but I’ve been trying a new approach – I try to experience it as a kind of music of street life. If I allow myself to really hear the honking I won’t be able to walk around – it’s horrific – as if the cars and drivers are screaming at each other and no one is listening. Many people honk their horns for no reason. Our driver Prabu does it - sometimes it seems like he is honking just to make noise. He may honk to let people know he is about to pass  – perhaps it's a kind of affirmation, trying to be heard over the loudspeaker of the street, crying out, “I am here. Do you hear me?”  

Street life is a swirl of women from all walks of life dressed in brightly colored saris, scarves and salwar kameez outfits of purple, green, yellow, orange, mauve, red, blue – some with floral prints or elaborate embroidery… weaving in and out of traffic in a secret flowing rhythm. It’s a kind of fatalistic dance, moving just inches away from speeding cars, huge buses and trucks, they slink in an out of the traffic trying to make it to the other side of the road. Horns blaring from three-wheeler rickshaws made for three people – often stuffed with five, six or seven. Purses and bags hanging off the side of the rickshaw, flying down the road.

The most startling sight is the motorcycle or motorbike packed with three, four, sometimes five people – it looks like this; the (mostly) male motorbike driver is usually wearing a mandated helmet (but no one else on the bike wears one). Sometimes there’s a toddler or a baby in front of him on the small seat space between him and the handlebar gears. Directly behind the driver you’ll see one or two children sandwiched between him and a woman at the back of the bike. She sits calmly, her colorful dress or sari waving in the wind, long black braid lying neatly down her back, often with fresh flowers in her hair.

The few sidewalks that exist are literally death traps – with open holes, broken cement, and dangerous metal pieces sticking up from the ground. It’s rare to find a clean, safe sidewalk. You also have to watch out for the dangling electrical wires and tree branches hanging over the so-called sidewalks. Everywhere you walk it’s a dance with danger.

Flying down the road and weaving skillfully, within inches of other vehicles, the motorbikes, too, dance in and out of traffic. Sometimes they go up on the sidewalk or on an adjacent dirt path, other times they move like a snake between the taxis, cars, rickshaws, cows, and other motorbikes.

Really, huge milk cows roam the streets of our neighborhood and most parts of the city (except for the highway) foraging for food, hanging out, often in pairs, in trash piles and around restaurants, homes and stores. If you accidentally hit a cow, or God forbid, kill a cow, there are expensive penalties.

VIDEO OF COW WALKING IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD

In India, cows are sacred. They roam, they eat, and they wander home late in the day so their ‘owners’ can milk them in the morning and set them out for the day to roam again. These sacred cows often wander in the shadow of gleaming corporate headquarters housing Infosys, Google, Accenture and IBM, or in the back alleys behind the Ritz Carlton or the Oberoi Hotel, and around streets surrounding modern shopping malls with stores like Gucci and Nike and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The smell of spices drift out of every small café, street vendor and shop mixed with the smell of garbage and filth. Fresh dosas are cooked in the open air – and then a few seconds later, a whiff of cow dung stings your nose. The smell of urine is the most offensive  – men urinate everywhere – in front of people – they just pull their car or rickshaw over t the side of the road and pee against a tree, a wall, or out in the open – with no shame.

Tent dwellers near construction site where women risk their lives to go to the bathroom

At first it is shocking but soon you become inured to it – a kind of male entitlement that I find offensive as a feminist. Why is that ok? What do women do? There are few public toilets so I’m told that the women who work selling farm products on the streets or on construction sites have to hide behind bushes and in the city, there are not many. A friend who works with an NGO said that many women slum dwellers tell her they have to hold in their urine or feces all day – they try not to drink too much water and they go to the bathroom in the bushes at dawn and in the evening at dusk – in the company of other women for safety. The mayhem and the magic. It’s India.

Entrance to workers' tent community on the edge of construction site