Hello, It has been three weeks since my return to France. My bangles acquired on the Delhi streets have fallen and the Henna peacocks on my hands have faded away: it was unfortunate but inevitable. I had enough time to get back into “French mode”, which, for me, includes reverting to slightly different norms of […]

Chitra

I feel very grateful to have met so many kindhearted and inspiring people at Shahi over the summer. One of these individuals was Chitra, the person we had been assigned to work with and who was in charge of supervising us in Bangalore. Not only was she our boss, mentor and to some extend a […]

Indian? … not exactly

One week ago, I took an auto rickshaw on my own. I haled the driver, and doing my best to copy the “Indian” English accent, managed to bargain an acceptable price. While we were driving, I was honored to hear him ask me “ Ma’am, Kannada, Hindi, Telugu…? (But then felt a little embarrassed to […]

Breaking the ice

As I described it in my previous post, empathizing with Shahi workers (especially incoming migrant workers) and establishing proper communication with them is often challenging. When I came into this internship, I had thought that, somehow, the proximity of our ages would strongly play in my favor, that it would enable the girls and me […]

In workers’ shoes

Two weeks ago, Amy, Chan, Kendra, Anant and Chitra (our two bosses) as well as doctor Leena (who looks after various factories in Shahi) flew to Orissa, a lesser-developed rural region North East of India. During our few days there, we visited local villages where migrant workers come from, as well as training centers, where […]

“Ador(n)ed” information

Hello, It’s been almost two weeks since my last post, and I wanted to share a few updates. I am currently working on implementing a “buddy” system: each incoming migrant female worker (aka “fresher”) will be paired up with a more experienced worker living in the same hostel. The “senior buddy” will be in charge […]

Hello! Following up on Amy’s post, I’d like to share updates about our internship at Shahi Exports garment factory. We have now started to think more about our personal research projects. These are not yet finalized but the staff at Shahi has been extremely helpful in helping us narrow down our projects. Chitra especially; she […]

Introduction

Hello! My name is Valentine d’Hauteville. I’m a rising junior in the college majoring in Physics and minoring in Computer science. This summer, I will be interning at Shahi exports and will probably be spending a lot of time conducting ethnographic research at this garment industry. I know… this physics –anthropology combination has surprised quite […]