The Wandering Two: Another Week in Pune

This past week has been a busy one back in Pune. One of the new volunteers, Becky, from the UK, has agreed to be co-coordinator of Wake Up Pune with me. This is a huge weight off my shoulders, especially with World AIDS Day in December to prepare for and our upcoming Condom Cricket tournament next month, there is lots to do and it’s always good to have someone to consult and work together with. Naveed and I have been conducting English classes for the DISHA ladies. DISHA is Deep Griha’s Integrated Services for HIV/AIDS. While Wake Up Pune (WUP) is mainly run by volunteers and targets the English-speaking population of Pune to spread HIV awareness, DISHA targets the Marathi and Hindi-speaking populations and conducts awareness activities in the slum areas as well as working on treatment, care and support for people living with HIV. They run a nutrition program and drop-in centre, an income-generation project and also provide counseling and home-based care and support for people living with HIV. The DISHA ladies all wear red saris and work together in the communities and are a wonderful bunch. It is a pleasure to spend an hour each afternoon working with them on their reading, writing and speaking and we often laugh a lot at the confusion that arises on their part and ours! I also spent an afternoon helping out at the centre in the Ramtekedai slum area, visiting some of the crèches (day-care centres) and playing with the kids.

On Saturday we participated in an awareness rally organized by a student organization AIESEC in Pune. We marched through the streets holding posters and banners and shouting things in Marathi that we assume were aimed to educate people about HIV etc though we have no idea what we were (trying to) say. It was a lot of fun though.

On Sunday our friend Anurag invited us to visit the Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum which contains the personal collection Dr. Kelkar, including sculptures, textiles, weapons, musical instruments and many other ornaments from across India. There were a lot of really cool artifacts in the museum including a suit of armor made of crocodile skin! After our trip to the museum, and a brief stop for ice cream, we went to Shaniwar Wada, a palace fort that was the seat of the rulers of the Maratha Empire until 1818 when it was surrendered to the British and later largely destroyed by a fire and then visited a Ganesh temple made entirely of ivory and gold! It was very beautiful. It’s nice being shown around the city by people from here!

One day after work all of us girls living at the cultural centre went sari shopping. We sat on the floor on cushions while the men working there opened bolt after bolt of beautiful fabric and laid it over us to examine. In the end I resisted buying a fourth sari and had to live vicariously through Sholeh, Jemma and Heather who each bought one. We also made a trip to Phoenix Market City, a fancy mall here in Pune and Naveed happily emerged with a bag of goodies from the Lacoste store.

That’s all for now,

Love,

The Wandering Three