We firstly wanted to start this post by explaining that none of us know how to write in words the feelings that we all discovered today, but we can try...
Is it hard to imagine a life of absolute fullness and happiness?
As people who are accustomed to the western comforts of our so called developed lives, the answer to this question is yes. After all, a life with continual needs, when we stop and question ourselves, is often actually a life of continual wants. Most of us could probably say we are never satisfied or that our hunger for these wants is never full, yet we consider ourselves to have so much and be so lucky.
Today, for perhaps the first time in some of our lives, we mutually experienced the meaning of true joyfulness and a total disregard for the word need. Instead, what we saw was people making real moves not just to better their future, but to simply make themselves happy.
It turns out, after decades of people searching for true contentedness, that all it takes is an hour long car journey into the desert out of Bikaner, to a village called Lukhransar.
The school here was set up by Rangsutra on 5th of August, 8 months ago and has since taken on around 20 women, who now can read and write the English alphabet, colours, days of the week, and basic phrases which they used to interact with us. But it is much more than that; it has collaboratively pulled together a collection of inconspicuously intelligent women who have shown us the true meaning of potential.
The women here have bright, sparkling eyes that glint either with sunshine or elation, we’re not sure which. Some are very young and some slightly older but all with the wisdom, spirit and enthusiasm of someone who has lived beyond their years.
We set out this morning with a loose brief of sharing knowledge of our home lifestyles to these women, instead it is almost too hard to recall all of the wonderful things we did today, things that taught us more than we could ever impart. Since we are also struggling to edit down our selection of photographs let alone descriptively document how we feel about our day, we decided to let the pictures do the talking...
Interacting with the sudents of the school- asking them questions about what they're learning and sharing information about our school lives, marriage traditions and moving away from home.
Christina brought an Austrian Lifestyle magazine which aided us in explaining to the women about different kinds of European foods and therefore the different crops and cooking methods. It also depicted Austrian architecture and technology.
They sang a traditional village song for us that explained how we all are the future generation of India and that we should watch each step we take. In return we sang Scottish songs such as Aud Lang Syne and songs for a rewwarding harvest. We also sang a few Indian chart songs such as Kolaveri and Chammak Challo.
We discovered that not only are the girls learning embroidery but that they had some English reading and writing skills, for which they had project books. Their work was perfect and showed real pride.
The motifs which they have been practising obviously have a real poignancy with them as they began to draw them on our hands and arms. They also wanted to write ' my name is...' in perfect english on a sheet for us.
We shared out some packets of bindis with them which we all signed with our names. This aided them to understand the english spellings of our names and created a lovely interaction of bindi sticking.
Here are a few images of us with the all the pupils and with the teacher of the school. Thereafter a beautiful, green eyed and wonderfully intelligent woman invited us back to her home for chai where we met the whole family including livestock.
It seemed hugely important to these women for us to meet the older generation of their families, suggesting that they had utmost respect for the people who may have taught them the roots of their craft and their way of life.
One of the young girls impressed us with he clarity of her English, her new found photography skills and her obvious desire to learn as much as possible.
The chai we were given was presented to us in shallow bowls and we were also given buttermilk which was welcome on such a hot, dry day. But what struck us most was the vivid colours of the houses, textiles and characters amongst the earthly tones of the desert sand.
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