{"id":195,"date":"2010-08-29T06:31:06","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T06:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2010-09-09T16:23:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T16:23:28","slug":"babuan-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Babuan Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It took about an hour to have tea at Ritu’s house.\u00a0 I had brought my karate gi, so I quickly changed, thinking we would go back to the school.\u00a0 But no.\u00a0 There were the family I had to meet.\u00a0 And the awkward periods as everyone around me chatted animatedly and motioned in my direction, and me not knowing what they were saying, but just smiling and looking interested as the center of their attention.\u00a0 Finally,\u00a0we returned to the school.\u00a0 And immediately I knew why the delay.\u00a0 The school teachers had cleared the schoolyard and even added dry dirt where before there was only mud.\u00a0 I now thankfully had a teaching area for the girls’ karate class.<\/p>\n

Usually there are 40 girls here, but the floodwaters prevented about half of them from making it to school.\u00a0 And, in a manner that I am now accustomed to, 17 girls showed up initially; another 6 followed about 30 minutes after class had started.\u00a0 They ranged in age from 10 to 14.\u00a0 Their manner of dress ran the gamut:\u00a0 tunic top and pants; dresses that had been hand-me-downs several times over, the zippers broke and now held together by safety pins; some in their Sunday best dresses that looked like this was the first time they were worn, with lace and ruffles and sequins; and others still in a school uniform of short-sleeved buttondown shirt and skirt.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The girls never cease to amaze me.\u00a0 If this were back in the States, it would not surprise me at all to see these girls\u00a0register\u00a0at the karate school I go to.\u00a0 They have an immense natural talent, a strong competitiveness, and a hunger to not only do, but show what they can do.\u00a0\u00a0 Put them on a team and give them some resources, these girls would be a butt-kicking force to be reckoned with.\u00a0\u00a0As it is, because of their location and\u00a0the inherent\u00a0lack of access to the area, I am the closest they will ever get to doing karate in their lives.\u00a0 It is such a waste and it makes me very sad.<\/p>\n

But yesterday, I did not think about that.\u00a0 In front of an audience that included half of the village,\u00a0\u00a0the girls did calisthenics,\u00a0basic punching, and some blocking.\u00a0 I also had some unexpected help\u00a0from\u00a0the village men who had gathered to watch and offer approving ‘ah-ha’s when a girl would do something right and ‘tsk tsk tsk’s when wrong before shouting out what they should be doing.\u00a0 Two men would even walk right into the class and physically correct a girl who was struggling with something.\u00a0\u00a0I tried my best to shield the girls.\u00a0 Very challenging.\u00a0 There were some girls who were not happy with the extra teachers, and they kept their worried eyes downcast, and did not smile.\u00a0 Other girls, however, were\u00a0natural-born warriors, and they\u00a0knew what they were about and who they are, and did not pay attention to the men.\u00a0 Very interesting experience, because the men were earnestly trying to help the girls.\u00a0 At the same time, I don’t think that they got it that some of their ministrations and directions\u00a0were a bit intimidating and controlling.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that was the morning session.\u00a0 The clouds started to melt away and it was becoming very hot, especially in my karate gi in a lightly shaded schoolyard.\u00a0 With morning class over, we went back to Ritu’s house where her mother, Urksilla, had made a wonderful lunch.\u00a0\u00a0 I ate and drank, my one liter of water that I had bought earlier that day ever dwindling.\u00a0 “That’s okay,” I thought, “We’ll pass by the stall in that village again, and it is only half an hour away.\u00a0 I can make it without more water.”<\/p>\n

Then Dheeraj came up to me, quiet as ever, asking if I would give a private lesson to\u00a0Ritu and three of her six sisters (she also has seven brothers) in self defense.\u00a0 We went to a little, windowless\u00a0room where it was just supposed to be the four sisters, me and Dheeraj, but quickly ended up with the grandparents, uncles, aunts,\u00a0brothers, girls from morning karate class, and other children and adults\u00a0from god-knows-where crowding the doorway and eventually lining the already small room.\u00a0 We went over wrist grabs, neck grabs, hair grabs.\u00a0 What was supposed to only be 20 minutes turned out to be an hour.\u00a0 So goes time keeping in India.<\/p>\n

Finally back to the school for the afternoon session where I focused on self defense, going over several of the moves that I had just taught to Ritu et al.\u00a0 I also got out the big pad on which\u00a0to do forearm strikes.\u00a0 What an experience.\u00a0 I was now getting them to use their voice.\u00a0 Earlier, Dheeraj (who does the Shotokan-Hapkido-Muay Thai mix of martial arts popular in this area) was helpful in getting the girls to kiai on punching.\u00a0 At his suggestion, I did my kiai as an example (and those of you who know me know that I am LOUD), and it really set a great tone.\u00a0 But now with the pad, and the break for lunch, the girls had forgotten how and when\u00a0to use their voice.\u00a0 With a little encouragement and additional demonstration from me, the girls were finding their voices again.\u00a0 Except for\u00a0one young lady.\u00a0\u00a0I could see had an internal block to saying anything.\u00a0 She had been quiet in all the exercises earlier in the day, and was very meek.\u00a0 I took some extra time with her because she absolutely did not want to kiai.\u00a0 But, finally finally finally, a sound escaped her throat.\u00a0 And then another one, this time a little more forceful.\u00a0 And then another, and another.\u00a0 After about the fifth or sixth kiai (still not loud but not a mouse squeak either),\u00a0a\u00a0wave of release from her being accompanied her voice, so strong that\u00a0it was almost palpable to me as I stood on the other side of the pad from her.\u00a0 And it seemed a giant weight had been lifted from her tiny shoulders.\u00a0\u00a0When she walked away, I glimpsed\u00a0a small triumph that she manifested nowhere other than in her eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took about an hour to have tea at Ritu’s house.\u00a0 I had brought my karate gi, so I quickly changed, thinking we would go back to the school.\u00a0 But no.\u00a0 There were the family I had to meet.\u00a0 And the awkward periods as everyone around me chatted animatedly and motioned in my direction, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}