Taaza: Pechan Manch

I have been the tattoo lady for the last week. While visiting friends in Jaipur I got Mehendi (or Henna, I was told by my Hindi teacher that Henna is the Urdu word and Mehendi is the Hindi word, who knew?) on both sides of my arms (first picture). Shortly after, when I arrived in Varanasi, the other interns and I (two of them, Michelle and Pyper in the third picture) were taken to a competition hosted by Taaza, a big tea company. NIRMAN was to be one of the expert judges. The point (pechan manch) was to realize your potential. There were tons of women there doing a variety of crafts as well as cooking and mehendi. Things started particularly late, even for Indian standards, because of the rain, so by the time things actually got started we were hungry, tired, had seen everything to see, and had heard the two jingles that they were playing on loop about 100 times each (I still have them memorized..."Taazaa hooonnnee..."). So I went to look at the different people doing Mehendi right in front of us. The girl almost directly in front of our booth was very sweet and very good. I don't remember if we asked or she offered, but eventually all of us were covered. We didn't have to pay, instead we had to come on stage to be judged for the competition. Due to some confusion the three of us in the picture ended up seated in the celebrity box at the very front of the stage with the winner of the Indian equivalent of Top Chef. All of a sudden we were called on stage. The announcer had been running games and raffles from up there, which by now we had all tuned out until she called us up. She asked us some questions about how we liked the event, we answered and then she said we had to sing a song. We were not pleased, but after audience clapping etc, we gave in. But we couldn't think of what to sing. What did we all know? What would we definitely not mess up? That's how I ended up standing on stage right in front of a minor Indian celebrity, my boss and all the other people immediately above me at NIRMAN, and about 300 women in the audience singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". I still get stopped places and asked if I was at Taaza Manch.

Love,

Violet