LSS is incredible. I can't believe I'll have to leave.

I don't even know where to start. I guess maybe since my last post, or something. That might be logical.

So we hopped the bus to Delhi with a bitter old fatso called Gordonji and a farmer from a nearby village called Shulanji. Karun told me all of his stories of times when he's beaten people up defending women's honor, and showed me how to break thumbs, cut off circulation, how to hit someone in the neck so their windpipe closes up. I have no idea whether or not to take him seriously.

We arrived in Delhi in the wee hours of the morning. I flew into Delhi a few months ago, and I guess at the time I was kind of shut off from what was happening around me, or maybe just taken aback by how different everything was. This time, I can see how much the poverty there sucks. There is nothing romantic about it. Waking up in the morning and taking a bath in the sewer is no picnic for anyone and neither is watching white tourists ride by in rickshaws with Marie biscuits in their mouths. We'd heard that "accomodations had been arranged for us," and we eventually found them in the middle of an enormous dusty feild with three tents that were about an acre in area. There were thousands of activists from all over India staying on the ground there with noooo bathroom! It doesn't sound awful, but it sure smells awful.

The actual social forum was similarly dusty, with thousands of representatives of different NGOs all competing for eachother's attention. Groups of villagers performed their respective traditional dances in random places; a union of hundreds of bicycle rickshaw drivers circled the grounds; and swarms of protesting crowds all crunched through two non-functioning metal detectors. A really great band called Log Dixshit (haw haw) performed with a group of Nigerians who had come, and when I went up to the dusty front pit to dance with everyone else I was again subject to the same video camera attention I'd been avoiding in my little village.

We were lucky enough to find Chayya from the office in the crowd, so I ended up in her hotel room that night instead of the circus tent. A couple of the heads of one of the central offices invited us to dinner. One of the older, more respected heads got a little tipsy (off of two beers), was loud and inappropriate, fell into the depressed drunk "I want to die" talk, and then vomited all over himself in the restaurant. What is seen as a regrettable but understandable mistake for US college students is seen as a truly shameful offense for upper-caste Indians like him. I felt terrible for him.

The next day Karun got a call from LSS, saying that almost the entirety of our staff had been attacked and three of them were in the hospital. What had happened had to do with the land dispute we'd been working on in Bheeladi. The upper caste of hte village had called a comunity meeting to settle the dispute once and for all. The LSS staff went and demonstrated that the local government did not have the right to bulldoze Bheel land on four or five legal counts. Within the space of ten minutes, a few dozen women showed up on a tractor weilding sickles from the North, and then about a hundred men with sticks surrounded them from the other direction. They were all fortunate to get out alive witht he help of a few policemen. Everyone was bruised and battered but no one was seriously injured. The upper castes destroyed almost all of the Bheels' crops for the year.

Everyone recounts the details of that day as though it were an action film or a slapstick comedy. RamJahn was chased through a cornfield by a man on a motorcycle. He'd been sick with chickenhunia, so after a few minutes of running he started vomiting and had to give up--but he adds pulsing music and vivid vomiting noises to the tale. Narunia didn't run, she went into the nearest Bheel house, changed into Bheel clothes, and stood outside pretending she had nothing to do with LSS. A crowd of men picked up our frail little Khemraj high above their heads and slammed him on the ground. Ramrai, the guy who's leg I'd been trying to fix for awhile, couldn't run--so he stopped, surrendered, put his head on the ground adn told them that he had a broken leg. They asked where it was broken, he showed them, and they hit the spot with their clubs. I guess it all sounds pretty gruesome when I write it down, but every time we talk about it we all laugh until we cry.

Sooo Madhu, Karun, and I all stayed up all night at the main office in town writing a summary of what had happened as well as a petition to be passed around. The next day we had called a dharna in front of the Collector's office, so we had everyone from the village and the organization sitting under a canopy, blocking the front gate of the governor's office all day long. Prasand Ajit and Palkah were there...everyone's old friends showed up to show their support so the whole thing felt a little bit like a picnic to me. Eventually we made our way intothe inner courtyard of the government office. All of the women walked behind everyon eelse witht heir heads covered. There was a family of stray puppies living under one of the pillars. We waited for about an hour for the collector to pay attention to us. When he finally did, he gave us about two minutes of his time and then brushed us off claiming that it was the duty of the police to take care of the dispute. This government system is so frustrating...the media and the police and the government area lal dominated by the same upper astes who don't care about the same people.

The dispute still isn't resolved. We've been scrambling to find legal reasinging to back up our position, but it's getting harder and harder by the minute. I'm really amazed by the Bheels--at first they hesistated becasue they were so afrid for their safety, but now they're ploughing ahead with the legal battle even though they live in constatn fear of sticks. The summary that we wrote appeared in "The Hindu"--the most liberal of the three major newspapers in India. But even that doesn't seem to be enough.

Yesterday I went with all of them to the police station to file their complaints of what had happened for hte second time. They are all so cheerful, everything is a joke, even for the old farmer men who are trying to defend their land. There is one man who was beat up so badly that he was bleeding badly from two or three places on his head. He didn't have any other clothes, so he wore his blood-stained shirt for more than a week afterwards.

Phew...what else...

Since I've learned more of my broken Hindi my so-called "social life" in Amarpura has picked up considerably. Every morning when I go running a bunch of the kids come to do stretches and calisthenics with me. Manoch also goes running early every morning, but when I join him he goes ten times faster than is necessary. My adopted dog usually comes with us, and one time he tripped me so I had a few small abrasions on my hands and elbows. Within an hour or two all of Amarpura knew about my "accident" and was giggling and asking me about it for the next week. Every time I visit a house, I end up singing one of the old folk songs I know, and they try to teach me a Hindi song and laugh at my accent. The awkward routine has become so normal for me that I almost enjoy it.

I finally went to Manoch's house to drink tea with his family. They're wonderful, his brothers are really charming, and Ashish the photographer is always greeting me with some roasted peanuts and a flower and some of his prints. Manoch is sweet, but everyone in the village has been following our interactions very closely and whenever I flake out on showing up at his house he gets really flustered because everyone thinks I'm refusing a marriage proposal.

Speaking of marriage: I'm thinking maybe I won't.

Yesterday after an awkwardly scrunched car ride, Kapil and I played hid and seek in a guava orchard. The other night we had flower wine and chicken at Prakash's house with Gita. I really love this place.