Old Lucknow

Another incredible day, starting with a meeting with a PhD student in Psychology who is working on her dissertation concerning  the use of a drawing task as a diagnostic tool for children, hoping to discriminate between 5 major psychiatric disorders by reviewing formal aspects of their artwork. One of my colleagues at Children’s put us in touch, coincidentally just a few weeks before my trip. It was exciting to make a connection with an individual halfway around the world, regarding our professional focus. We both hope it will lead to future collaboration or an exchange program to help introduce the field of art therapy formally in India, where as of now it does not exist as a distinct clinical specialty.

Then, at noon, off to Lucknow via a short flight, to accompany my friend’s husband to an agricultural conference in the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most politically influential state. As the Director General of the staple food crop research program that has been Bob’s focus for the last many many years, we were greeted as dignitaries, offered lovely bouquets of gladiolus blooms and roses,  whisked through a crowd of others awaiting passengers from the terminal, into a white Ambassador car with curtains on the side windows, plush patterned upholstery and a red light and “dignitary” flag on the hood, and driven to the guest house where we are being housed for this night of the conference.

Our classy ride!

Once reunited with our luggage and established in our guest rooms, we were provided with a tour guide, a young woman who also happens to be a social scientist, a “gender specialist” whose life work over the past nearly 20 years has been to interview and study the lives of women who are rice farmers or whose families farm rice.  She seemed not to mind being cast in the role of “entertainer of spouse and friend of dignitary” and told us a little about her work, which has truly covered uncharted ground in opening a relationship with women who actually do much of the farming but have generally been illiterate and have not availed themselves of some of the advances in knowledge about farming. Due to the relationships that this young woman has worked to establish and maintain over many years, many of these women are now coming to gain access to the fruits of recent research and outreach efforts to increase the yield of their crops.

Abha, our generous and enthusiastic guide

Aside from that we did a little shopping! Lucknow is known for a particular style of fabric work using a very soft muslin fabric and hand embroidery, called "chickan" work, a cottage industry performed by women to supplement their family income. The embroidery is very fine, though no longer so extremely fine and elaborate as the 40-year old samples the purveyor showed us from his grandfather’s time, work so finely done that you can barely see the threads used to create flowery patterns and open work made by pulling apart the weave without breaking through either warp or weft of the weave, very very delicate work, beautiful to behold. And of course we found it our civic duty to purchase some of these fine garments, at a minimal discount from the asking price despite the best efforts of our host-guide to negotiate a lower price. Fair is fair, after all, and these workers are not well-paid to begin with so we could not object and were pleased with our choices.

One of the women who embroider this beautiful fabric

Looking over the handwork with our guide and translator