I don't really have much to say when I am not on the project. My days in Bolpur are mostly boring. The only bright spot is The English Adda, which happens every evening. Arindam, Kunal and Sunipa come around 4:30 and stay on till sometimes 7:00 and sometimes even 8:00. They seem to enjoy being here and I enjoy having them around. Young people are so full of energy and enthusiasm that I feel quite good just being around them.
I haven't gone to the project as I had planned to because when I arrived in Bolpur, the young people mentioned above were very anxious to continue with the spoken English sessions. All of them are going to be busy from mid December till mid January and were anxious to practise their English before that. I agreed. Especially as they seemed very keen and I noticed that they were making good progress.
The intial hesitation is gone. They now speak unhesitantly and can express themselves quite well. Now I need to work on their sense of tense and also pronounciation. A typical session consists of a bit of reading, learning the meaning of difficult words and pronunciation. This is followed by an "adda" when they all talk about what they had done the previous day -- thus learning how to express themselves. It's working very well.
I was hoping to start proper English sessions from January. But I have received news that I may have to attend a few trainning programmes in UP from mid December till mid January. So I'm afraid I will not be able to start anything new till that is over. Perhaps the beginning of February will be a good time?
As for the project, according to Renee, it is running by itself. Bhola has hardly been around for the past two weeks because his "taxi" has been hired for Panchayat Elections due to take place on the 13th of this month. Radha has been absent for a while and Raiman has been sick. Both are now back to teaching. But it seems that even though there were no teachers, the children behaved themselves and attended school regularly. It seems some of the teachers need more discipline than the students as they apparently spend more time on the cell phone and less time in class!
There's only Renee and Shanku on the project. Raiman spends the night on the project. Kartik is too busy with farm work after school. There's no question of asking Radha to stay over at night. But Renee says that she's quite comfortable and has no issues about her stay there. In any case, she's due to leave the project in a few days for a month long break. Hopefully some of the issues will be sorted out by the time she comes back in January.
It's wet and cold in Bolpur these days. The days have been grey for the past few days and last night it rained as if it was monsoon. Any plans I had made in my mind to make a quick dash to the project were scuttled. I don't even feel like going out to buy vegetables! It's not the cold that's bothering me. It's the grey weather and the threat of rain any moment. Last thing I want to do is get wet and fall ill during this season.
Well, that's all for the moment.
