ecological day - a thought

now i'm NOT trying to upset readers from the sub-continent or be culturally insensitive...but here's a thought. if the plastic non-biodregradable rubbish that drifts around India were instead collected and used as a building material the environment could become much more pleasant for all concerned.

just as straw and old rope is traditionally mixed with mud to give strength to adobe housing, so too plastic could be shredded and mixed with mud to give strength to mudbricks.

salvaged plastic waste could also be used to stretch concrete when pouring concrete slabs. admittedly neither of these two solutions is ideal - but images such as that above are common in India. the advent of plastics pushed the traditional recycled paper packaging (that Asia had down to a fine art) aside. the streets of Indian villages and cities abound with scenes such as the one pictured.

and yes, I am aware that Australia doesn't have all the answers either. here at Hope Springs we try to re-use, recycle, re-invent or reclaim as much as possible but there are still too many things that do end up heading for the landfill.

plastic waste is an insidious problem....and apparently at least 3/4 of the worls's crude oil is guzzled by plastic production. i say wrap your goods in folded bags made from old telephone book paper, avoid plastic as much as possible and direct the few oil reserves we have left to transport needs rather than packaging...

a thought

if public transport in India looks like this (much like public transport in St Petersburg, Russia) what do the nuclear reactors look like? and do they really, truly, think they'll plant a flag on the moon (a possibility suggested in the Hindu Times last week). just wondering...

BTW those of you who've signed up as followers...in case you're wondering why I haven't signed in return, well, I don't really need to....I can just click on your icons on the side of my page and make a quick visit, thank you!  (and so can others who visit this page)

scheherezade smiled enigmatically and continued

 

the colour schemes in India are seductive. no prizes for guessing who likes green and shades thereof..

 

one evening we were all invited to partake of nourishment in one of the village houses. and before you all start muttering about the quality of the image...YOU try taking a photograph when there are 31 people milling about in a room about 8 by 10 feet. i don't like having my retinas burned out and assume my fellows prefer to maintain their vision as well; so the flash on my camera is permanently turned off.

but back to the story. we all assembled at the home of one of our hostesses (forgive my lamentable memory, their names have escaped me - this is why all my former students are addressed variously as Blossom, Petal, Beloved and Sweetness) about an hour late for dinner.

we were late because of India time. those of you who have been there will know this means that the transport either didn't arrive at all, was late arriving or arrived early and then hid in a bush until we went searching for it. in our case it was the latter.

after the greeting and handing over of various offerings we were invited to sit. this is fine for those of us who do yoga or ride horses but i swear i heard sotto voce mutterings about the probable need for a crane in order to regain vertical positions later. but i'm not saying who (which would be Blossom, Petal, Beloved or Sweetness anyway so you'd be none the wiser)

our hostesses did the rounds with a jug of water and bowl, followed by a cloth for the ritual washing of hands (a custom it would do no harm to introduce over here!) and then the onslaught of food began. i use the word advisedly.

coconut dosas were served (delicious) accompanied by a hot sweet spiced milk. i skipped the milk, being a farmer means i have too much information about the sorts of diseases local dairy cattle are likely to carry. Listeria and Ovine Brucellosis are only two of the potential suspects.

then came dahl, all manner of vegetables doused in chili and spices, enormous scoops of rice (both plain and spiced), more dosas, pappadums, salads (skipped by old Missus Unadventurous again) and finally an enormous plate of boiled eggs. i was well defeated long before they did the rounds. our hosts didn't eat with us, simply stood and watched us munching their lovely food. 

goodness knows how they rustled up so many plates (suspect the whole street lent theirs for the evening). neighbours and friends kept popping in to inspect the visitors cackhandedly scooping well-sauced rice grains into their mouths. better than television.

eventually we all staggered out to the bus, shaking hands (like the Queen) with a guard of honour along the way. even the village idiot (sounds cruel but is simply the truth) stood by the bus with a benevolent air dispensing farewells.

a night to remember.

i found this denizen of the forest (who too closely resembles a former Australian Prime Minister) in my happysnaps, reminding me of another incident of consumption which happened some nights later. i didn't actually see the event but am assured that a monkey nicked a bottle of coca cola from an outdoor eating area, shimmied up the nearest tree, ripped the top off the bottle and downed the contents before hurling the emptied vessel to the ground. wonder where he learned that behaviour?

why and wherefore

the purpose of the passage to India was to bring a group of women from Australia to work together with a group of women at Vikasana training centre in Mandya village in order to try to establish a range of products that could be hand-crafted there for eventual on-line selling so that the makers could have the chance of earning an income.

the tour was organised by Marion & Jon Gorr (more familiarly addressed respectively as the Bird and the Elephant) of Beautiful Silks, the Melbourne-based company where I purchase silks for my costume work. While most participants paid their own way, the Bird and the Elephant covered travel costs and expenses for Nalda Searles (West Australian textile artist) and your correspondent. Nalda was along to teach string-making and netting techniques; I went along to assess the potential for a plant dye project.

the Hapa-zome technique proved popular.

teaching in a crowd requires inner calm (and very careful stepping)

my usual practice of stacking a dyepot and leaving it to its own devices was sabotaged by eager participants who insisted on jiggling the bundles as if they were teabags...

the Bird and the Elephant organised for bales of "silk waste" to be delivered to Vikasana. Calling the material silk waste was to my mind a complete misnomer. The bales were stuffed full of jewel-bright silk loom ends, weave & dye samples and silk pieces up to 4 metres long.  At Nalda's suggestion, participants began making dolls as well as metres of beautiful silk string and netted billum-like bags. (the doll pictured above was made by me as a souvenir for the Bird...but for some obscure reason somebody later signed their name in ink right across the delicate pink leaf-print on the apron. it's an odd world)

this doll came home with me, bearing a red leaf-print from the teak tree (see earlier post)

and this one was made by the Bird a a souvenir for Nalda (click on the label 'string' below to find a much earlier post mentioning her work)

of red rags and bovines

whilst sojourning briefly near Nagarhole National Park i collected these beautiful and sweetly scented windfall flowers and bundled them for a dye test. that rich golden patch is the result from one flower. locals call it Siuli/Seuli/Shouli/Shephali (depending on who is offering the spelling)....Linnaean convention labels it Nyctanthes arbor-tristis (the sad tree?). 

one woman told me the dye is used to dye sarees for a girls' educational festival...simply by scrunching the flowers in a bucket of cold water... and here's a blog that details a list of healing properties attributed to the plant 

the print above was a complete surprise, from a young leaf of the teak tree, a plant that is rejected as unpalatable by the ravenous roving ruminants with which the Sub-continent abounds.  in fact i think one can safely assume that anything growing by the roadside in a country where stock roams at large (giving a whole new perspective to what we in Terra Australis call "the long paddock") has a self-defence system that involves at least an unpleasant flavour and probably some kind of toxin.

rummaging for information on the Tectona genus (to which Teak belongs) has however enlightened me as to the possible source of the revolting and persistent leprotic rash i developed whilst in Mandya... there's no such thing as a free lunch and those red leaf prints came at a cost too.

it's a fantastic colour (and washfast) but common sense, practical experience and now the wisdom of hindsight dictate that if it gives one a rash and is sufficiently toxic to prevent its devouring by the rib-thin ruminants then it certainly isn't the plant to fuel a cottage dye-industry; especially not in a region where scant attention is paid either to the safe disposal of waste material or to the separation of dyemaking from the cooking of food

reflecting on a passage to India

herewith the first of an abundance of images snapped whilst hurtling through the whirlpool that is southern India. it's a country of strong contrasts; beautiful and terrible at the same time. exquisite flowers with rich perfumes, jewel-coloured houses, clouds of dragonflies and rainbows of sarees struggle for memory space alongside plastic-infested soils, sad-eyed dogs, terrifying traffic and skinny cattle.  somewhere in there is also the hint of the shadow of a passing  leopard. 

the purpose of the excursion (organised and financed by Beautiful Silks) was to assist the people at Vikasana to establish a training program that will eventually allow presently un-waged and homeless women to earn money and build ecologically sustainable housing amid organically managed vegetable gardens. it is a good dream.

my specific role there was to determine the feasibility of developing a natural dye project there. more on that later. it's taking some time for the wee brainchip to process it all...

enfolded magic

yesterday i received the most delightful little parcel, enfolded in calico, stitched around the edges and then (for good measure) adorned with small red dots of sealing wax. it felt rather naughty, cutting my way into it.



inside was a delicious silk shawl, handwoven especially for me by a weaver working with the Avani project (AVANI is a voluntary organization working in the Kumaon region of Uttaranchal, located in the middle ranges of the Central Himalayan region). the 'eri' silk, soft and light as a feather; is gathered from the wild.

why was i so blessed? twas a lovely swap in exchange for a copy of my book, sent to them earlier this year.

i had the good fortune to meet Rashmi Bharti (one of the organisers of the Avani craft project) at the UNESCO Symposium on Natural Dyes in Hyderabad a couple of years ago and we've been corresponding from time to time since then. the craft project helps establish sustainable practices in textile production so that participating villagers can earn an income (and plan for the future) and alongside this they've also been developing simple solar-powered technology to make life a little more comfortable.

it's a long way from anywhere. my little parcel had to be carried for some distance on foot before it was able to join the postal system, thence hitch a ride on a train and eventually wing its way across the ocean.

click here to see more about Avani

the difficulty facing me now is deciding what colours to dye my lovely shawl....