FEBRUARY 10, SATURDAY

FILMING VIRAMPUR AND THE ASHRAM

I had breakfast at 9:30, toast and cheese and a banana and green tea to calm my stomach, then went to the Virampur main road market with , my guide, where I took some videos of the market but without the crowds that I imagined. Virampur is a large village and the market center for tribal people for miles around. They come to the market on jeep transport, often jammed so full that people are hangin out the side or off the back. The tribal people of Gujarat are the people who were here before the Aryans arrived with their form of Hinduism thousands of years ago. As in the United States tne native Indians who had their own animistic religion were pushed off the good land into the desert or mountains and were marginalized.

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Today they are still marginalized and disadvantaged. A number of Gandhian institutions like Hasmukh’s Ashram where I am staying, have been set up to provide boarding school education for these tribal people. Tribal people are easy to recognize because of their distinctive clothing. One of the things they shop for in a market town like Virampur is their type of clothing. There are a great number of tailor shops in the market with sewing machines at the front of each shop and clothes hanging up for sale. Most clothing worn in the tribal is made right here in a local market town.

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I walked around the market part of town taking spatial videos which I was able to keep fairly level. But there weren‘t as many people out as I had imagined there would be.

And then we were off to a Shiva temple outside of town, not the one that I photographed years ago and I made a book of. I got a number of photographs while my guide did puja, worshipped, at the main shrine with it‘s enormous Shiva Lingam, which a white bearded pujari in orange was decorating with yellow paint. Facing the Shiva Lingam (stylized phallus) was the animal on which Shiva rides, Nandi the bull.

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And then when we got back to the Ashram there were visitors to the ashram for which the children in their red and black uniforms were putting on a show of song and dance. It was a great chance to get a good spatial video but I didn‘t click on the spatial icon and instead got a good regular video in which I walked right in among the children.

After that there was a speech to the children about whom I was and why I was there in either tribal or Gujarati, I don‘t know which. I gave a little speech saying I was pleased with how happy they were. During the speeches I took a lot of photographs of the children.

And then I was taken to the new science building where the visitors from the Sarabai Foundation in Ahmedabad were setting up science models in a room in the new building. This is the 25th of 100 they are setting up for disadvantaged children in tribal areas. There are 150 lessons in math and 150 lessons in science with practical displays for each lesson which someone here will teach but with workshops several times a year to help develop what is being done.