Notes on a Presentation on Rural India by teacher Mrs Deborah Morehead

Bollywood Night, LSUS: Port Belly Project
Originally uploaded by trudeau

Notes on the Presentation on India by teacher Mrs Deborah Morehead

Images were from Mumbai (Bombay) and the small, isolated city of Raipur, as well as from the countryside.

demographics -
India 1.1 billion
China 1.3 b
US 330 m

Severely crowded and largely impoverished nation.

Languages
- English
- Hindi
- numerous additional languages - one for each region, plus dialects

Characteristics of poverty in rural areas -

- water! lack of fresh water
- water carried on head via pot balanced by hidden fabric "crown"
- lack of plumbing in villages - primitive WC's
- lack of refrigeration
- a bed is commonly a wide board
- housing may be primitive - no doors
- livestock may share housing with families
- snakebites common and often deadly
- ponds, streams used for both laundry, bathing and livestock

- bicycles, rickshaws, motorbikes

- caste system - outlawed but remains

- sari - dress made of a single, long rectangle of fabric / pleats folded and tucked to fit each figure.
midriff top
under-skirt
salwar kameez - long tunic atop pants
longhi - man skirt
dupatta - long, multi-purpose scarf
turbans

art -
rice powder designs on ground
decorated houses, shrines

Poverty as described in the Morehead presentation is common across the globe. Whether in Central America (ex, Mexico), South America (ex, Brazil), the continent of Africa (ex, Egypt), or Asia (ex, China), the issues with education, water and health are very similar.

Americans and most Europeans live in what we might call a bubble of wealth and comfort.

Bollywood movies are musicals with a soap opera-type story. The graceful dancing done in traditional dress (such as saris) in these movies is popular globally and referred to as Bollywood dance. .