almost done….
So, i’ve gotten really behind on this, but things have gotten really busy. Before art classes started, we had a few days off which were nice. I got a lot of work done. Then art classes started. We leave campus at 9am, and don’t leave the factory until about 5pm. I’m in a handmade paper class. The first day started out alright. We got there and had a tour of the factory in Auroville where we were going to be and looked through some books to get project ideas. Then we got put to work. Literally. Herve (he’s french and his name gets pronounced as anything between air-vay and ell-way with all the accents) distributed the 5 of us around the factory doing different jobs. Lindsay and I worked on folders. We had little pieces of paper that had to be fan folded 4 times so that the edges lined up exactly. Half a mm off, and it wasn’t good enough. After doing an hour or two of the folding, we got to glue some together. The gluing was not any better. Everything had to be exactly lined up and glued in the right direction with no paste coming out on the edges but with every edge glued securely down. In the afternoon, we folded and glued envelopes together. All the stuff was for export to different places in Europe.
The second day, he must have decided that we weren’t good enough to be factory workers, or picked up on the fact that working wasn’t really what we wanted to do, and we got to start our own projects. We made banana paper. We started with boiled banana stalk fibers and pounded them on a rock with a wooden hammer until they were a pulpy texture. We only did that for a little while. Then we put the rest in a machine (that’s normally used for rice grinding - common here, not so much at home) and let it do the rest of the work. Then we mixed the pulp with water and dipped screens in it to make sheets of paper. After dipping the screen, you flip the paper over onto a cloth, and stack all the sheets on top of each other, with cloths between. Then it gets pressed and peeled off the cloth, and put between pieces of big thick paper to dry for a few days. We got through about 125 sheets.
The next 2 days, we did the same thing, but starting with ready make pulp mostly made out of ground up cotton scraps from the t-shirt factory. We got through about 250 sheets a day.
When the cotton paper was done, we got to make notebooks out of it. We sewed the binding and glued them together and made nice covers. They came out really well. We each got to make 2.
Since then, we have been working on independent projects. Brad is making a model boat that is taking all the time. The rest of us are just making a bunch of little projects. It is surprisingly difficult to come up with paper projects that take more than half a day to do. So far I have made a mask, 5 pairs of earrings, a woven basket out of strips of paper, some other woven things, a lantern, a smaller notebook, a set of cards, and 4 folding paper stars. I am running out of ideas, but we still have 3 more days - 20 or so hours of work time.
Days are long there, but there are some nice people. Herve is a little bit intimidating, but kind of funny. There are some European ladies who work there who are always very nice to us. There is one American guy, Joshua, who also works there. He is very nice. I think he is the only American outside our group that we have met. Most of the people who work there are Indian. Most of them don’t speak much English, but they are nice to us. We a comically bad at some of the things they have tried to teach us. Generally, I think most people have no idea what we are doing there and we are kind of in their way though.
The factory is actually a pretty nice place. While the work seems very dull and repetitive, everyone seems happy. There is a lunch break and tea time twice a day. Inside the factory is not air conditioned, but there are lots of fans that keep it tolerably cool (and keep blowing my papers around). Men work making the paper pulp and the paper and running the press. Women work in the other half of the factory making finished products out of the paper.
We have been eating lunch at a place next door to the factory. It has been interesting to see the population of Auroville. It is mostly European hippies that live there. We see all sorts of interesting hair styles and outfits, and even more interesting hair styles and outfits that they put on their little kids. It is quite a place. The food at the restaurant is not spectacular, but it is good enough.
Along with all the paper work, I’ve been working on my research project, trying to come up with a Princeton quality junior research paper with out a Princeton adviser or Princeton resources. It’s taking a while, but I’m finally starting to feel like I’m getting somewhere. It is no fun to come back and work after 8 hours of paper though.
This week, we have 2 days off, which is nice. Today was election day and tomorrow is Tamil new years. It is nice to have a chance to catch up on sleep and work because with class on Saturdays, we have very little time to do anything.
It is good to have time off, but it is also really boring. There is not much to do here. I am very ready to come home next week. Good food, soft bed, other people who speak English, fast internet, and lots of other things to look forward to. I leave Thursday night from here, and get back Friday evening at home - just in time for Easter!
