9th grade class can't wait to get their hands on the camera. TMS Fellows Danny Thiemann and Vidya Putcha begin their second week at Nalgonda!

What do you want to be when you grow up? Saju looked out our second story window. His eyes widened in proportion to the city limits and accommodated an area he saw himself diminish in.

I asked another student the same question. He said he wants to be a pilot in the airforce like his grandfather who died fighting in World War II. I watched him cross the courtyard toward the mess hall. Reflecting on all the challenges he has before him I am reminded of Wittold Gobrowicz. He once said “the heart of standing is you cannot fly.” I have always felt Gobrowicz meant it takes a lot of heart to stand beneath those impossible things we dream of; especially to do so with a body at that young age which is so short of reaching what it wants to become, and reaches nonetheless. He is a smart boy and has already shown promise in our classes. However, he is also an example of a boy with talent who does not do his homework. I am not very concerned. Discipline is a minor issue, I think, because their commitment is sincere. I enjoy teaching at Nalgonda more than anything here so far and I can’t wait to spend some more time with the students and teachers.

Diwali was last weekend! It was a good break from our regular scheduled programming. Late night during Diwali I walked the streets during that hour when all reserve and a childish wonder are thawed from the city streets. People were still celebrating with fireworks. A man sifted through the crowds for a coin and the moon, in parallel loss, panned through sounds of the city dreaming. Street children can easily be found sleeping or roaming the city at this hour.  A boy caught my eye and then ran off into the alleys. The moon, still in the east, was behind him with the pace of an usher’s flashlight suggesting, yes, he was out of place. The city is brought into sharper relief when I come across these urchins denuded of the crowds that surround them during the day, and maybe he sensed it too.

Monday after Diwali was a good lesson in how TMS teachers must be flexible in adapting to students’ varying levels of being comfortable with expressing themselves. Individual expression is, perhaps, not entirely encouraged in their other classes. Copying work is a big problem. I see there is a need to reinforce the sense that each of their stories has value. We started class by defining different types of story telling. Biography, Autobiography, poetry and general classifications of fiction and non-fiction were discussed. We read excerpts from Jamaica Kincaid’s beautiful introduction to Autobiography of My Mother, an article on Mohammed Yunus, and a poem by Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran. We then moved on to an exercise that expanded on last week’s activities. Our first week in class we brought in comics, whited-out the text, and had the students write text of their own. The students then did exercises in story-telling by drawing three panel cartoons and writing a story on the opposite page. This week we expanded upon this activity by having students first write a story and then storyboard the photos that would best document that story through visual evidence. We plan on having the students then take pictures that visually describe that story. Each picture must first be planned with students writing whether the shot was a close-up or long-distance, high or low positioned and what kind of sounds can be heard when taking the picture.

That night I got home late. It was 10:30 when I finished dinner. Walking home, the city started to quiet down and the pollution finally began bedding itself in the pavement instead of my lungs. Street lights dropped their coins into the eyewells of a man here and there, smoking alone. The long travel home from Nalgonda is a good time for reflection. I thought a lot about how the students have so many aspirations, energy and a sense of individualism in such an overpopulated city. We got home and the fireworks continued to send the birds flying into the sky. As with those birds, the nature that governs some students in their unreliable ascent is too often made most apparent in their fall: Around 20% of girls from government schools do not go to college. The number is higher for our boys.

To all our students who want to become pilots I wish them the best and would like them to read a final quote from Rumi:

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

–Danny Thiemann
2009/2010 Fellow