Department-centric SIP Report – 2021-2022

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Ankita Gujar (Faculty-in-charge)

   This academic year, the department-centric activity for Social Outreach, connected to inclusive story-telling and ethnographic practice, was conducted through the months of October, November, and December 2021. Due to the nature of the activity, it was conducted only by fully vaccinated students above the age of 18 years and with full informed consent from them to seek stories from people in their locality. Their mandate was to create an Ethnographic resource pool – through visual media (photography exhibition) – available to all, presented in an inclusive format – through captions and audio descriptions and short stories narrated on the side. Each group worked in teams of 5-6 persons and selected a theme for their miniature-visual ethnography, tasked with capturing the world around them changing due to the pandemic. This was compiled later into a micro-ethnographic booklet published on the Blog for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology as a resource for new students to be sensitized to the outreach capacities of the discipline.

   A total of 29 students completed the activity. The general take-away that students had from the activity was that they learnt complex narratives and layers to stories otherwise not visible in mainstream media, noting the stakeholders in community building and growth, engaging with governmental and local business structures that sustain community life, and being able to document this without biases, or by tempering subjectivity through ethnographic reflexivity and inclusion. They also learnt how to create content that reaches persons beyond able-bodied individuals. All of this particularly connected them to some of the units of courses we teach at the department – like ethnographic ethics, local governance, and politics of the body.

   Some of these stories are presented below. We hope they make an enjoyable and engaging reading for you.

Looking at Shopkeepers during the Pandemic:

   Exploring the several aspects of humans and discussing solutions for problems within human society has been at the core of fields like Anthropology, Economics, Sociology and psychology. With this project today, the students aimed to demonstrate an anthology of stories- directly from the source. Our group of students of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, reached out to one of the marginal sectors that were influenced largely by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The said sector being the hearty community of shopkeepers. From different backgrounds, and different forms of retail, we bring six inclusive, inspiring and informative stories via the visual medium of photographs. These warm toned photographs accompanied with the stories we poised, tell a great deal about the economic, emotional and psychosocial changes that these shopkeepers went through because of the pandemic.

Storyteller: Zulfiker Attari

Ethnographer: Trisha Shah

 Picture by Trisha Shah, 6th november 2021

 

Image description: Full of warm tones, this is a picture of a bag shop with the owner (in a purple shirt) and a child who works with him (in a red t-shirt and a cap) in the frame. Cloth and jute bags of bright colors are kept on a glass display at the bottom of the picture and hung around the shop for customers to see. There are shelves filled with plastic boxes behind the counter. On the left, there is a small section decorated with jhumkas (earrings) for sale and above that is a hanger full of masks. There are handmaid diaries on the glass counter.

 Story:

   On the fork of one of the bustling streets of Hathi Pol, a famous tourist/local market in Udaipur lays the dimly lit and yet colourful shop that goes by the name of Haidery Bags Corner. The owner, an old kind man named Zulfiker Attari, or Kaka as I called him, had some colors of his own to share. We got talking as my brother and I were looking at some handmade diaries and bags, the conversation growing warmer as we started talking in our shared tongue.

   Zuflikar Kaka told me how until 6 years ago, he lived away from his family pursuing his dream of becoming a photographer all the way in Kuwait. Living there was lonely but he wanted his family to live in the Bohri community he grew up in rather than alone in Kuwait. When his kids needed him, he came back to Udaipur and started this shop where he sold goods made by hand by the artisans of nearby villages. The retail market was good in such a famous area but the pandemic hit them hard. His son went to Kuwait to work with his in-laws and couldn’t return home to his new bride. Money was tight but they got by with the income of his kin. Though the government’s definition of ‘essential’ kept changing, his remained constant- read namaz five times a day, provide enough that there is food on the table, and pray for good health. Kaka is very jolly to be working in his shop and seeing the hustle of the festive season again.

   With him in the frame is Deepak, the child of an alcoholic who used to lurk around the junction of Hathi Pol. After his father passed away, Kaka took him under his wing and provided for the boy. Though the shop did not have an ancestral history, Kaka did honest business and lit the small colourful shop with his kindness. With the clink of glasses full of chai that Kaka ordered for us, my Diwali was a little bit brighter seeing the hope of new beginnings Kaka and young Deepak always carry with them. 

Animals and us in a lockdown:

Storyteller: Amita Shah

Ethnographer: Ronit Shah 

 

 Image description: The image is taken at night time. The subject is a young cat. The cat is orange in colour, and has green eyes. The cat is sitting on the pavement, against the right leg of the feeder, looking up to the feeder. There is a newspaper on the ground in the bottom, towards the middle of the picture. Yellow street lights illuminate the pavement.

Story:

   Amita Shah was never an animal lover. Not like she hated animals, but it was always a situation of mutual fear between the animal and her. Most of all, she was afraid of cats. This fear was unchanged for nearly 46 years of her life, until the lockdown. The Covid-19 pandemic changed something for her, and it was in a way that Amita never imagined.

   In September 2020, a stray cat wandered into her building and Amita could not stay further away. Her son, however, could not stop trying to get her involved. Little by little, he brought the pregnant mama cat closer to their home, and Amita reprimanded him, warning him to not get attached. One thing was clear, adoption was not an option. On her son’s insistence, she started feeding the cats.

   Slowly, the fearful Amita got attached to the cat and her little kittens. Over the course of one year, her attachment grew into love. She had to lose one of the three kittens to an accident, so she showered her love on the remaining cats in her building.

   This act of kindness was not without its opposition. Residents of her society conspire to get rid of the cats, and have used all forms of illegal ways to do that. To keep the cats safe, she keeps the cats at home for as long as she can. In the face of blunt opposition, Amita has not backed down. She continues to challenge the cruel demands of the residents. Amita’s resilience has earned her the respect of other animal lovers in the community.

Public Service Workers:

Storytellers: ASI Praveen Jadhav and ASI Dadarao Shinde 

Ethnographer: Lovina Newton

Image description: Two traffic police ASI’s on duty, in their white and khaki uniforms, in a traffic stand on the road. A walkie-talkie is visible in one ASI’s pocket. A road busy with vehicles makes the  background.

Story:

   Thane traffic police is a force to be reckoned with... At least the number of people who are directed, managed and sometimes penalised by them would agree. Their core duties, like controlling speeding vehicles in sun, smog and noise created by the vehicles, generally last 8-10 hrs/day. But sometimes during ‘bandobast’ this time frame is stretched from a couple more hours to days altogether. The work is known to be extreme along with numerous occupational hazards. And the lockdown mandated empty streets asked for more from them. Imposition of strict laws locking people indoors translated into 24/7 monitoring of roads, which extended their working hours. They also became providers when distress calls came, providing cooked food to delivering groceries, to fetching patients to and from hospitals as also taking the dead to crematorium. Being the only ambulatory body in the city, they became travel advisors and travel managers for the migrating labourers. Counting the efforts and anecdotes, ASI Praveen Jadhav and ASI Dadarao Shinde expressed their sense of duty to the people, even while not in uniform. They noticed a reduction in air and noise pollution on the roads with the thinning of vehicular traffic. They pointed out, as it became clearer in the lockdown, that source of pollution lies in the ill maintained vehicles.

   And a major chunk of such vehicles are owned by the government. PUC, fines and a sense of personal ownership pushes the public to maintain their vehicles, which creates less pollution. The government vehicles however, manage to escape some of these bounds and as a result become a major source of the pollution that we see, and hear, on roads. The traffic police battle this pollution and the people behind it every day. And they hope, with new insights and sources being identified, that some of their strain could be alleviated.

Artists, media, and keeping society entertained:

Storyteller: Joy Fernandes

Ethnographer: Priya Noronha

Image description: Joy Fernandes is walking in an office. His hair is tied back and he is wearing a blue checkered shirt over a black vest, blue jeans, and brown shoes. He is holding a mobile phone to his ear, and his other hand is in his shirt pocket. He is in the centre of the room. There are chairs and a desk to the left side, and chairs lined up on the right. Behind him to the right is a glass door to another room. Behind him to the left are three cameras on tripods. At the bottom of the image, there is a darkened bar, on the left of which there is a ‘volume’ icon, and the word ‘LIVE.’

Story:

   Joy Fernandes is a well-established person in the theatre scene. An actor, writer, director, and teacher, he talks about how the pandemic has irrevocably changed the industry which will remain a hybrid of streaming and live performance. He mentions how the small screens have saved actors in many ways. OTT platforms flourished during the pandemic, with a large quantity of content created. Now, however, he believes that it’s time to focus on how to get quality back.

   He, fortunately, was still able to film plays during the pandemic, which were then streamed to a ticketed audience as a theatre event. But he mourns the loss of theatre’s biggest pull: live interaction. Theatre, which in India has never paid well, is further strained by the mandated limited occupancy of auditoriums. 

   He notes how actors are the most vulnerable while filming: directors, cinematographers, etc. can wear masks, but “you can’t wear a mask and act”. He and some co-actors contracted covid-19 while filming. And, while he wasn’t in a precarious position financially, other actors he knows from Marathi and Bengali theatre had to turn to selling vegetables, and fish. Many of those from other states left Mumbai. He also was able to conduct online training, which, although he found relatively unsatisfactory, was rewarding in terms of its greater reach. As he said, “options are there; it’s not all bleak.”