crows, Eh-spray paynt caines and gulab jamun....

Wooooow (as our friend Dr J would say)! Its been so long since we have blogged! Even this catch up, in which I will try and undoubtedly fail to sum up the last 2 weeks, must be brief cause its almost 11 pm, my laptop battery is at 32 percent and its cold out here on the stone ground outside of my machhar net and cozy sleeping bag that makes me look like a content glow worm.

Since Rachna, the coordinator of the ICJB (bhopal.net) and Sathyu's wife and essentially the strongest woman of my life (besides you, mom), got back from the Bhopal bus tour in Europe things have been crazy here. Every day Rachna gives like 10 interviews with local, national and international reporters (look out for Sambhavna on BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera, AP, etc.) while getting tons of work done and giving us tons of work to do. Alizarin has been slaving away on Photoshop making placards, I have been scanning and typing documents, we have been sketching and painting and printing and building and reading/writing about the disaster (for a slideshow we are preparing chronicling the lead up, disaster and aftermath) and so much more. Its been insane. Luckily, this place embodies that balance between serious commitment to one's work to improve the world and the pure hilarity that keeps your mind and body alive and happy! We work work work then laugh with kids, zip around with 3 of us on a motorcycle in the clear fall sunlight and learn grotesque hindi dancemoves from videos of hritik rochan and do yoga and cook spicy dinners (dal, chapati, chaval, curry aloo and fresh GUAVA was our last brilliant creation) and keep smiling all the while. then we go home or back to our computers or projects and get back to work. Its great. 

Another important thing in our recent lives is that we have had the privelege to work as apprentices of sort of an amazing professional muralist, Janet Braun-Reinitz. Janet is a riot at 71 years and 5 feet she is constantly seeing the beauty in lines and colors and spouting stories  rich in detail and walking about in red platform heals over little white socks leading up to paint-splattered overalls and puffing out her new york accent while chain smoking pall mall reds. in short, she's brilliant. most of her murals are in NYC (she lives in Bedstuy, Brooklyn) but she has them all over the world from Nicaragua to Rome to Pensicola. we've been helping her sketch out and paint a beautiful bright mural about the disaster and the corporate crimes of UCC and Dow and the survivors struggle for justice on a wall across from the abandoned UCC factory. we've now been featured in the Bhopali newspaper for this (me and alizarin both concentrating on painting within the lines) and have been recognized aournd the neighborhood a few times as those artists from the paper!

I have to go as I'm running on reserve battery but today was great! finished a secret building project, got about 1/2 way done with a hip-high crow sculpture (to be explained soon), ung out with ICJB right hand man Vikas and learned about Hindi and village life an then topped off the night with ridiculous bollywood esque dancing and lots of sweets (GULAB JAMUN seconds yum!) at a wedding of SAmbhavna's accountant. I love this community and feel so (i hate to say it cause its so damn corny but here goes) blessed to be apart of it! Bhopal zinda bad!