stories from
Fulzar
a documentation of the experiences from Fulzar village visited as a part of the module ‘Learning from the field’.
Shoghi Bagul Graphic Design M.Des 2017
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Chapter 1
Thoughts before the trip This chapter talks about the thoughts about how the trip would be, the expectations and pre conceived notions about the village which each of us had before we went there.
Page Photo2credits: Rahul Gajjar
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Chapter 1
Thoughts before the trip As a part of the module “Learning from the field”, the M.Des students of Graphic Design 2017 batch had visited the village ‘Fulzar’ located in Jasdan taluka of Rajkot district in the state of Gujarat from 24th to 30th September 2018. The objective of the trip was to educate our students about the Myths and realities of an Indian village, culture and Environment in depth, to learn, to understand and to study the social, cultural and physical environment.
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We were accompanied by faculty members Ms. Sarika Samdani, Mr. Jagadish Kumar V. and Mr. Subir Dey along with Mr. Mansuk Patel from the administration. Before leaving for the visit the basic understanding which I had about the trip was to visit the village, look up for possible design interventions and come up with solutions which shall be surrounded around graphic design. Also, for many of the students it was for the first time that they were visiting a village and the general perception about how a typical village would be was majorly based on what was portrayed in news and films since childhood. For me, I could relate a village to the one that I belong to. I could easily relate to Dang district anytime a discussion about village was being made.
A village in the Dang district of Gujarat state. Photo credits: Jordan R Katz
My perception about a village was comprising of houses made with walls of bamboo and cow dung, floors with cow dung, a house with cattle and courtyard; the people of the village majorly doing farming for their living; the village having primary schooling and aanganwadi centres for education and healthcare facilities from the government; influences from the urban areas in terms of new houses made with multi storeyed concrete and bricks; a mix of both old conventional thinking people and the newer generation who accepted change and tried to get it into the village from the urban areas.
As a group we thought and a general perception about how a village would be was considered to be • less developed compared to urban areas less amount of proper infrastructure facilities, the standard of living would be low, their perceptions and understanding would be limited to their village areas and not much beyond to what is happening in the world. • self-sufficient the people in the village wouldn’t be majorly dependant on resources from the urban areas for living, they can easily manage their food and water resources by doing farming and sell them for monetary income. • rigid - slow to accept change the people of the village wouldn’t be open to new ideas and thoughts from the urban areas and take long time to accept any change from the outside world.
• typical characteristics of a sarpanch based on what we had seen in films and media a typical image of a sarpanch was a old man with a turban on his head having a big moustache.
• dirtier because of having cattle a lot of cow dung and lack of proper toilet and sewage facilities led to a perception of dirty roads and a stinking village.
• open houses without high walls everyone expected houses to not have high walls and instead be more open with a small fence made of tree leaves and branches
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Chapter 2
Exploring Fulzar We explored the entire village in multiple teams and tried studying one particular area in depthabout the people, their living - helping us gain insights about the village.
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Chapter 2
Exploring Fulzar We explored the village on our own on thr first day without any brief to know the geography, the kind of people living in, different kind of businesses run by them, places for social interaction, the farms, and so on. Having a basic knowledge about the village we all sat together to exchange what we witnessed and came up with questions about our perception we had before visiting the village and how it was different for most of us. We divided ourselves in three teams of five and tried to map down the village as much as we could according to detail. One could easily witness that what the village seemed to look whem visited the first day and when trying to capture whatever we could while mapping
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down was a completely different experience. We could see that the village had different kind of houses in different areas, people with smaller communities were living in different areas and had different ways for living. The Kumbhars had their own area, bharwads stayed on the other side, while the butchers stayed on the outskirts of the village. Very depply rooted perceptions about castism was prevalent in the people’s behaviour but when it came to greet with us from the outside everyone tried to be as grateful as they could and welcome us with chai and food to have as for many of them it was something which they rarely could witness and was a thing of honour for them to welcome us in their houses and talk with us.
We prepared a consolidated map for each team and then tried to come with a map for the entire village with exact number of houses, the type of people, their business, public spaces, water bodies with respective color codings.
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Chapter 3
Education in fulzar
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Chapter 3
Education in fulzar While mapping down the village I happened to visit the Aanganwadi centre next to the primary school building. The Aanganwadi centre 42 in fulzar village was run by two women - Geetaben (the senior in charge of the centre) and one maid to help her carry out the chores in the centre. Geetaben introduced us to the functioning of the Aanganwadi centre adn it left us into thoughts that how the Indian government has tried and has also been able to reach out even to the remotest of the villages in the country. How an Aanganwadi centre in a village has not just been a centre for playgroup and nursery but has evolved to be centre for primary health checkups, polio and other vaccination distribution centre. For the people of the village this aanaganwadi centre also was a medium for having the infants being taken care of when the parents are working in the farms. As the centre provided free meals for the children the people also took it as an opportunity and utilize it.The aanganwadi had 25 - 30 regular children from age group 3 to 5 years coming everyday. For other children below the age 3, Aanganwadi didn’t count them in formal records but would provide them basic meals to have and also let them be in the class with other children. As it is mandatory to have woman from the same village running the aanganwadi centre, Geetaben let us know that she had been handling this particular centre from last 30 years and once being posted there is no transfer unless the woman gets retired and is replaced by other woman from the same village. Having a woman from same vikllage lets people of the village have trust in her and also when something neeeds to be introduced or conveyed, being a known person from the village helps.
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When interacted with students in the primary school, it was disappointing to know that the girls weren’t emcpuraged much to study further even when they wished to study further whereas on the other side the boys were allowed to study but most of them didn’t take it seriously and value about the education as for many of them it was prevelant that the boys would be an important part of the family in the future while the girls would get married and go. The primary school had classes till 7th, and for secondary and higher secondary as well as for college studies the children were asked to go to Jasdan and other nearby cities like Rajkot.
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Chapter 4
The business of Diamond polishing Fulzar had many families working in the field of diamond polishing business run from their homes which was one of the major source of income in the village. Page 14
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Chapter 4
The business of Diamond polishing Many families in the village were having these circular machines with rotating sides and a set of holders which looked like bullets to polish diamonds right in their houses. At first when came to know that the family earns money by polishing diamonds everyone was eager to know how and what actually do the people do this. The people from Kumbhar community were the ones who mainly dealt in the business of diamond polishing. It was very common to see that it was not just the man in the family who would be doing diamond polishing but even the women of the house would help in it and bring good money.
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Its usually the man from the house has worked at a diamond polishing factory in the main hub of diamonds in Surat then move back to the village and get a polishing machine to work from their houses. Stones are being put into the holders and then polished against the rotating disc in the centre. They sell these polished diamonds to merchants in Jasdan who give them 2-3 rupee per diamond, who further sells it to the vendor for 10-15 rupees. In a day on average a family polishes around 100-150 diamonds making around 300-450 rupee income per day.
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Chapter 5
Fulzar’s acess to sweets Fulzar had an interesting family who was mainly into making sweets for the village and apart from also had their hobbies as side business for an extra income for the family.
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Chapter 5
Fulzar’s access to sweets While mapping different areas in the village I was approached by this young boy named Haresh who is known as Bhola in the village. He got me to his house and described about their experiences with the students from the previous visit. This family runs a farsaan and mithai (namkeen-snacks and sweets) business from their house in the village. They are the pioneers in this business, originally from Kalasar a village nearby their family shifted here to get good business. They are specialized in making sweets and namkeen majorly from Besan such as Fafda, Gathiya, Sev, Ladoo, Barfi, Jalebi which are usually stocked for a day or two as per the sales in the village. They make other sweets and namkeen based on requests and orders from within or outside which they export to Jasdan.
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The family’s main pillars Bhupatbhai and his wife usually spend their day in the vaadi(farms) supervising the labours for farming, while the children Pushpa, Dimple, Lata, Haresh and Ramji make the sweets and farsaan and take care of the household work. All the five children are grossed into the process of preparing materials and making sweets and farsaan thorughout the day along with houshold chores. The parents completely trust them and have left the responsibility for preparing, making and selling the sweets on the children. The three sisters when having spent an entire day with them gave a glimpse of their perception about the village the outside world, their dreams and aspiration along with what all kind of things they can do apart from just doing the household chores. The eldest of the all Pushpa who got married during her childhood had really strong views on marriage and had ran away from her in laws back to her parents. Being at home she took up the responsibilities of the family to support her parents and also look after the younger siblings. She is into knitting, makes house decor things, bags and at the same time she is preparing for her exam to get a job for lady constable. She along with her sisters during the afternoon when done with making sweets and farsaan do tailoring stuff to explore their creativity and experiment new designs which they either watch on the television or from people they come across in Jasdan whenever they visit. This also helps them get sewing and tailoring orders from the women in the village giving them extra income. Also they run a small beauty parlour in their house and take orders whenever there is a special occasion in the village or a festival to dress up for. This helps their family get extra income along with the farsaan and sweets business, which eventually also helps their parents let their children be responsible and indepenedant at the same time.
Samples of knitting work, mehendi designs, showing how do they do make up for other women in the village.
We closely observed them when the family was making sweets and farsaan and also tried making some laddoos with them. What come out as a learning for from all the observations was the dedication they had and the sense of responsibility it brought to them as a part of making the sweets. These sweets were for the customers and anything wrong from their side would lead to something which their family would then have to face it and eventually lead to loss in the business.
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Food prepared with the willingness to bring smiles on the person’s face who is about to have it shall always taste the best -Anonymous
Acknowledgement • Graphic Design 2017 batch • Ms. Sarika Samdani, • Mr. Jagadish Kumar V. • Mr. Subir Dey • Mr. Mansukh Patel • Dr. Tridha Gajjar • Ms. Nidhi Desai
Special thanks to Meghna Menon, Neerosha Singh, Rahul Gajjar for their photographs.