May 13 :: Mysore
Shreenevaz
Plans change as they always do in India. We had secured an interpretor to help us make a film with Sunitha, a 15 year old girl that we spend every morning with, but she was a no show.
The boys, on the other hand, were there in full force.
Often they only stop in for a short time and then the gang hits the streets again, but Sunday there was a shipment from a factory in India, peppered with some T’s from the UK full of new clothes for everyone. The boys stuck around to admire their new duds and play tag in the hospital gardens.
Nanjunda’s new shirt… appropriately ‘where ever I lay my mat is my OM’
We decided to go for an adventure with the gang.
the crew
A sturdy little boy secured one of my hands and led the way, sometimes walking, sometimes jogging, always ahead of the pack. He seemed reluctant to share my attention. The smallest of the pack, Manikanta reveled in my attention. Because of his size, he is picked on a lot, and, like the other boys, he is resilient, strong and courageous.
Manikanta
He translated everything we encountered into mime, dramatically hamming the scenarios on the billboards we passed. Every once in a while he would break out into song and dance… two finger pointing up in the air… the universal sign for party.
It felt like we walked out of town… passed the railway station, cricket patches and over bridges. Finally we came to a drain pipe that empties from under the road into a makeshift reservoir, deep enough to stand waist high, before it flows down into a creek-bed.
chasing crabs
Mahadeva
Boys peeled off their shirts. It was an elaborate process for some. Using the strings that seem permanently tied around their waist to keep whatever they are wearing from falling down, some made swimming trunks from their inverted t-shirts… spindly legs poking out of armholes.
Many of the boys had blue black Kunada script tattoos on the inside of their arms. I still do not understand what they say, although one boy expressed that it was his mothers name. I wonder when he saw her last. (Since I wrote this, I found out that the tattoos are names of their friends who have died. Some boys had as many as three tattoos on one arm.)
tattoos
Boys jumped off of everything into the little reservoir, doing flips into waist deep water. Suddenly, they were just kids. Their street savy-ness dissolved in red-brown water. Doing elaborate flips, back flops… each time they broke the water, they checked again to see if we were watching.
A constant din of ‘heeeeyyyyy! heeeeeyyyyyy!’
‘HEEEEYYYYYY!’ Vinketesh on Nanjunda’s shoulders
They have learned the hard way how to land flips into shallow water. Open sores on their bodies betray their accidental run-ins with rocks and each other.
Such kids, such boys. Testosterone flows freely in the wrestle-pit of water.
Surya, Nanjunda and Manikanta
That evening we met three more friends. Dreddie little girls with attitude. The boys obviously respected them deeply and brought them over to introduce the girls properly.
the girls
The young girls body language is bold and confident. They are polite, quick to thank us for the rice plate we got the for dinner and sure to say goodbye at the end of the night. They even fed each other from the same plate, in stark contrast to the boys who struggled to consume as much as possible.
The kids couldn’t figure out my name until I told them it was america without the A-M
‘Ahhh… Errrrrrrreeeeeeekkkaaaaahhhh!!!!’
Yesterday day and night was my favorite so far. I have never been so entertained by a bunch of kids I just got to know.
Mysore street kids rule.
team
So much more to share about these past two days…
Thanks for reading.
Having too much fun in Mysore,
Erica.
www.reelyouth.ca