As I was driving through Delhi last spring, I spotted a rare sight: A woman in a bright white tailored suit driving an auto rickshaw, one of Delhi’s ubiquitous three-wheeler vehicles. I immediately jumped out of my car, ran over to her, and got her phone number. Just a few days later, I spent the day filming Sunita Chaudhary, one of the city’s only female auto rickshaw drivers.

Delhi rickshaw driver Sunita Chaudhary. (Photo: Sonia Narang)

“I’ve never cared about what society thinks,” she said. “You can’t feed yourself if you follow society.”

Chaudhary’s conservative family didn’t approve of women working outside the home. So, she left her hometown more than a decade ago, and came to Delhi.

“I did not have money or the education to support myself,” she said. “All I had was the strength and determination to do something in life.”

After working odd jobs, she struggled for three years to get an auto rickshaw license, due to the difficult nature of getting a commercial vehicle license.

For years, Chaudhary rented an auto rickshaw for $8 a day, leaving little money leftover for daily spending. “I would sleep in the auto, and get ready and change clothes at the public toilets at the railway station,” she said.

Eventually, she received a government loan to buy her own auto rickshaw, and she paid it back overtime. Several years later, she still hasn’t told her family about her job.

“I eat well, and I can pay off my rent with the money that I earn. I make ends meet,” she said.

Her daily earnings: $10 on average.

Chaudhary says it’s a risky job and she’s also been harassed by the police. But, she’s determined to keep driving. She avoids belligerent passengers and if someone threatens her, she says she acts tough and rude.

“Work is work, and if something bad has to happen, it can happen if you’re sitting at home,” she said.

Over the years, she’s gained supporters and friends in high places, including attorneys who helped her get a license and secure a loan for her auto rickshaw.

Chaudhary also talks openly about her political aspirations. In fact, as I filmed her driving past the Indian Cultural Center in Delhi, a male employee came out of the building to meet us. When Chaudhary started discussing plans to run for office, he said those positions weren’t meant for auto drivers like her, and she should just stay in her place.

She paid no heed to naysayers, and just a few months later, rode up on a horse while wielding a sword to file her nomination papers for India’s vice presidential post. She didn’t win, but she’s not the type to give up.

In her new book, “To The People Food Is Heaven: Stories of Food and Life in a Changing China,” Ang describes meals she ate with monks, activists, and village residents, and how she came to understand the people and soul of a country through its food.

She talks to Lisa Mullins about her book, her love of jasmine tea, and her fondness for comfort foods, especially after covering particularly tense stories.

In 2002, an early summer monsoon brought heavy rains to Hunan province. Rivers overflowed and flooded the countryside destroying crops, homes and lives.

One of Ang’s first assignments was to cover the floods.

It was during this catastrophe she experienced her most memorable meal during her time in China. A farmer who lost a year worth of crops served Ang a large meal of Chinese delicacies, including his last chicken.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: One of the first assignments that journalist Audra Ang received when she started to work at Associated Press Beijing Bureau was to cover a flood in China. That was in 2002. An early summer monsoon had brought heavy rain to Hunan Province. Flooding in the countryside had destroyed crops, homes, and lives. Audra Ang writes about her experiences in her new book. It’s called “To The People Food Is Heaven: Stories of Food and Life in a Changing China”. She recalls walking through one area with a photographer, Greg Baker. They came up to some houses right by a river.

Audra Ang: I thought that was what we would think as lakefront property. I thought it looked quite peaceful and a group of people kind of approached us. And I say hi and I asked them, “How have the floods affected you?” One of the men in the group answered me, and later on I found out his name was farmer Tu , and he said that his crops for the year had been enveloped by water. I was like, “Crops? Where are the crops? I don’t see anything,” because we were all looking out to all this water in front of his house, and he was like, “Right there. That’s where the crops were.” And that’s when I realized the very quiet devastation of what had happened to him. He took us on a boat ride. He had this long stick and he kind of paddled us around the area and he told us this story about how his village had fought for days to try and prevent the water from overrunning their little dike around the area and so people were stacking sacks of rice on these dams, but nothing really had worked and eventually all they could do was helplessly watch as the waters ran over these dikes.

Mullins: There is a point where he did something, he calls out to his wife. I guess maybe he knew you were hungry or maybe he was so grateful for the fact that you and your photographer were listening that he wanted to offer you a meal.

Ang: This is a very Chinese thing. It’s very polite. It’s a gesture of hospitality. People always offer you something to eat or drink, and being greedy and interested in food and I wanted to talk more to him and his family, I accepted.

Mullins: You must have been amazed though that this man who had just survived a flood was offering you a meal?

Ang: I actually wasn’t because, again, like I said, it’s kind of a gesture that you see all the time, but I was very grateful, I was just like, “That’s a really nice thing for him to do,” and I just kind of jumped at it without thinking and he called out to his wife through the window and said, “Hey, prepare a meal.” And I could hear the oil sputtering and things being fried and the clang of the wok and the spatula she was using. And I remember walking into the kitchen, I don’t remember much about the house or the surroundings, but I remember the table that was just piled on with food, and at that time I didn’t realize people don’t eat like this every day, especially farmers who lost everything. They had chicken and they had braised pork and they had eggs and fish and vegetables all laid out with bowls of rice for us. It wasn’t just farmer Tu and his wife, but some villagers, they were all just crowded around this table and they’re looking at Greg and I kind of expectantly.

Mullins: What did they expect?

Ang: They just wanted us to sit down and eat. And I looked at it and I was like, “Well, there are however many of you and there are just two of us. Surely you’re going to join us?” And they were like, “No, no, this is for you.” And, again, it’s all very polite, it’s all very Chinese to be like, “No, you first,” “No, you first.” And so I kind of in my clumsy Western way kind of put my foot down and I’m like, “I’m not going to eat anything unless you join us. This is really too embarrassing if we just eat all this food,” and so, of course, farmer Tu and his wife then sit down and then we start the meal. And I don’t remember at what point, but at some point I realized that he had slaughtered his last chicken for us.

Mullins: How did you figure that out? And why would he do that? He had kids to feed too.

Ang: It’s just a gesture of Chinese hospitality and I saw that so many times during my reporting experiences outside of cities, that people in the countryside especially would give as much as they could even though they didn’t have very much, and that’s why these experiences really stay close to my heart.

Mullins: You were born in Singapore. You are of Chinese descent. You go to the country as a journalist to cover the people and the events that are going on there and also to try and kind of, as you say, understand your place in the chaos of China. How did food help you do that?

Ang: Even when I left, I realized I still didn’t understand my place in the chaos. I’m trying to think if food just interacted with my seven years there in so many ways. Some of it was finding points of comfort in the strangest places, like when I was covering something sensitive, to go in southern China, that’s where my ancestors are from. And one day I’m [??] covering some riots and one morning I woke up and I was just dreading going back to that tense situation, police everywhere and villagers were upset, and so I just found this hole in the wall and I discovered that they sell these like fish dumplings which I never thought I would find outside Singapore. It’s something I ate as a child, something I really enjoyed, and I just had this bowl of fish dumplings and fish balls before going to this tense work situation and, again, it provided me some comfort and it tied me in with the local culture. Those kind of things brought me closer to my Chinese roots.

Mullins: Audra Ang. Her book is called “To The People Food Is Heaven: Stories of Food and Life in a Changing China”. Nice to have you on the program.

Ang: Thank you very much for having me, Lisa.

Copyright ©2012 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Throngs of visitors and pilgrims gather for prayers in the marble courtyard of the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin, a Sufi saint. But few realize an extended family of musicians called the Nizami Bandhu, live right inside the grounds of the 700-year-old sacred shrine.

Chand Nizami is 48-years-old and the leader of the group. His family are Qawwali musicians. The word Qawwali comes from the Arabic word Qual, meaning “poems that are full of praises to God.” Nizami said tears often come to his eyes as he sings.

“We get a strong feeling in our heart and soul. We sing the name of God and Sufi saints, and by singing their name we feel at peace,” he said.

Every week, on Thursday evenings, the Nizamuddin shrine is packed with people of all religions. They sit cross-legged on the floor, knee-to-knee, and listen to Qawwali music for hours into the night.

The 12 members of the Nizami Bandhu are all men. They sit in two rows facing the tomb of the saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin.

The lead singers play the harmonium, a hand-pumped keyboard. The others clap their hands or beat traditional drums.

“There’s a big difference between performing on the stage and performing inside a sacred shrine,” Nizami said. “When your guru or saint is in front of you, and you’re singing face-to-face with God, it’s an entirely different atmosphere.”

Nizami’s nephew, 28-year-old Sohrab Nizami, grew up in the midst of this spiritual shrine listening to the music.

“Our uncle, father, and grandfather used to take us to see these Qawwali music programs,” the nephew said. “When they would rehearse, we would also sit with them. We enjoy following in their footsteps and learning from them.”

Now, his brother Shadab brings his 5-year-old son to rehearsals.

“This Qawwali music is a family legacy that’s within our blood. We’d like to carry forward and continue this tradition of Qawwali for many generations by teaching our children,” he said.

In the busy Muslim neighborhood around the shrine, passersby can often hear the group’s CDs playing in street stalls. But, it was the family’s cameo appearance in the recent Bollywood film “Rockstar,” filmed at the Nizamuddin shrine, that’s bringing them greater fame in Delhi.

As the Nizami Bandhu performed inside a school auditorium in Delhi, 11th grader A. Shreya Sharma said the Qawwali music speaks directly to her.

“What makes it special is the way it appeals to the masses, the way it is energizing, and the way it is compelling. It’s like an escalator to heaven,” Sharma said.

The music appeals to people from different traditions, including Muslims and Hindus. Sohrab Nizami said the family also wants to continue reaching out to audiences of all ages.

“This is a gift from God, so that’s why we want to continue this,” he said. “We don’t want to lose this treasure.”

The family is bringing the music to Western audiences. They are performing at the India Community Center in Northern California this September.

Subscribe and follow The World’s Global Hit

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Follow @marcowerman
  

Silkworm farmer H. B. Manjunath talks with a solar technician about the solar panel installed on his rooftop. (Photo: Sonia Narang)

Sonia Narang reports from southern India on the growth of solar power in rural parts of the country. Small loans have made solar panels available to homes and businesses that otherwise suffer from India’s severe electricity shortage.

In Chemangala village in southern India, silk farmer H.B. Manjunath walks into a back room of a dark thatched roof cabin, flips on a light switch and watches as the cool light from the lamp illuminates hundreds of milky white silkworms crawling in a wooden box full of mulberry leaves. The worms need the crispy leaves to survive and spin their silk cocoons, but they’ll only do it when there’s continuous light. And Manjunath says that used to be very hard to come by.

“We had four or five hours of unscheduled power cuts everyday,” Manjunath says. “Sometimes, we would not have it at all.”

But that changed when Manjunath took out a small loan from his local bank to pay for a single solar panel and batteries to store the electricity. The 120 watt system generates enough power to illuminate the silkworms for three hours a day.

Now, Manjunath says, he’s not worried even if he doesn’t have grid power for 24 hours. “The solar works for us,” he says.

Manjunath’s bank loan was part of an effort in the southern state of Karnataka to promote affordable solar lighting in rural areas, an effort that’s in turn part of a national trend. India’s central government hopes to boost renewable sources of energy and install 20,000 megawatts of solar generating capacity over the next decade, to help fill a huge power gap in the country.

Five hundred million people today do not have electricity in the country. That’s nearly half the population. And even places that are hooked up to the grid can face daily blackouts.

Dr. Harish Hande, founder of the Bangalore-based solar company SELCO, says the need for energy is urgent, and not just so people can run their businesses or light their homes.

“It’s very important from a governance point of view, India’s social stability point of view, that we need to provide basic needs,” Hande says.

India’s economy is booming, but conventional sources of electricity just haven’t been able to keep up with the growth in demand in India. That’s one reason Hande spent years trying to convince local banks in Karnataka to offer small loans to rural families for renewable energy systems. In recognition of his efforts, Hande recently was awarded the prestigious Magsaysay Award, sometimes called the Asian Nobel prize.

Hande says solar lighting can have a profound emotional impact on the poor.

“A day laborer once told me that you would not understand what it actually means after a hard day’s work coming back to a house which is dimly lit,” Hande says. “The mood which is already down goes down deeper. Once you see bright light, it’s a different feeling. It’s a different way of life where you look forward to tomorrow. He says ‘I’m willing to pay for that.’”

Hande says many rural Indians are willing and able to pay for solar and other renewable sources of energy, if the cost can be spread out over time. That’s where the bank loans come in. Silk farmer Manjunath’s solar system cost $400 to install. That’s more than he would have been able to afford at once, but with the loan, he pays less than $7 a month.

Dr. Ashok Gadgil, an Indian physicist who’s now director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California, says India’s critical shortage of conventional electricity has created a big niche for solar power.

“Acute electricity shortage means blackouts, and blackouts mean lost income and lost business,” Gadgil says. “So there are many, many opportunities where photovoltaic electricity for economically productive uses is viable in India even at the current prices.”

And the technology is starting to catch on in Karnataka. Silk farmer Manjunath says he was one of the first in his neighborhood to install the panels, but that word travels fast here, and more than 100 households have followed suit.

And the electricity isn’t just benefiting local businesses.

On a recent afternoon a group of energetic teenage boys gathered around the solar panel on Manjunath’s roof after school. The boys say they stick around Manjunath’s house during the evening hours to finish up their homework under the lamps.

“With solar power,” says one of the boys, “I can study continuously without stopping. And it doesn’t matter if there’s a power cut at night.”

The Yokome brothers come from a family of musicians. Their father, who taught them to play sanshin, runs a sanshin school on Ishigaki island. Their grandmother was once a well-known singer on the island.

“I’ve been listening to sanshin since I was in my mother’s body,” said Hiroya Yokome, who is 26 years old, “so the rhythm and music was instilled in me from the start.”

His brother, Hiromichi, 28, said he started playing sanshin when he was 10. But he didn’t really love the family tradition until later on.

“At first, I thought this music was just for old people,” Hiromichi said. “I used to have the idea that sanshin must be played in a traditional way, but then I realized it could be played in many ways.”

The brothers live on Okinawa’s main island, but they sing melodies in the old language from their native home, Ishigaki. The language used to be spoken on the Okinawa islands. But it was banned in schools after Japan annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom in the late 1800s. The language has mostly disappeared, but it remains alive in the music.

“There are things that can only be expressed in the Yaeyama language,” Hiromichi said. “If the language dies, then I think Yaeyama native music would die too.”

Yokome Brothers practicing at home: Hiroya Yokome (left) and Hiromichi Yokome, (right) play a few songs while seated on the tatami floor of their apartment. (Photo: Sonia Narang)

“My father introduced me to rock,” Hiromichi said. “Then I started to listen to other kinds of music, like jazz. Thanks to him my music style is mixture of many different elements.”

The brothers have started to make a name for them in Okinawa’s capital, Naha. They perform concerts there several times a week.

Keisuke Chinen, the manager of one local venue, said the brothers evoke feelings of Okinawa’s island culture.

“Because they’re brothers, their harmony is wonderful,” Chinen said. “Through their music, listeners can also see and feel Okinawa’s four seasons, scenery, and culture.”

It’s his responsibility to keep things running smoothly for the 40 people who live on his floor.

At a daily meeting with other shelter leaders, Sase receives a stack of new hand towels to distribute to the evacuees. Most of the evacuees are elderly, and they suffer from a variety of ailments, including high blood pressure and pneumonia.
A leader from another floor suggests a Karaoke night for the evacuation center, and Sase is all for it. For a minute, the leaders forget their circumstances and laugh as they plan the entertainment.

“There are 40 people living here with different ideas and opinions about things, but they are all in the same situation. I make decisions based on what’s right for the group and they understand my decisions,” said the 61-year-old Sase, a soft-spoken man who used to work for a construction company.

On the second floor, evacuees sleep side-by-side in cramped conditions. Cardboard boxes and rows of blankets delineate one family’s living space from another. Sase and his wife occupy a small tatami mat near the stage of the community center. In their living space, shoes and work boots are neatly organized in front of small boxes containing the only belongings they could salvage.

“After the tsunami, few personal items were left, but my family is all right so I don’t have a sense of loss,” Sase said. “Now we’re trying to rebuild, so we don’t feel hopeless.”

Sase sorts through papers on his floor mat, now his workspace. He has to keep a regular count of who is still living at the shelter, since evacuees have started moving into temporary housing units.

Three months after the tsunami, evacuees in the community center face new problems. There’s the heat and mosquitoes, and people are exhausted. Sase tries to make things as normal as possible for them.

He recently organized a group trip to a nearby hot spring. The second floor evacuees enjoyed a traditional Japanese bath for the first time in months.

Fumiko Hatayama and her husband live on a tatami mat adjacent to Sase and his wife. Hatayama said she didn’t know Sase before the disaster, but now they’ve become friends, exchanging gifts and sharing items.

“He’s a serious, sincere, industrious person,” Hatayama said. “He takes initiative to clean up and handle things.
Inside the center, people read the newspaper, watch television, and knit. Sase distributes the towels he has just received from city staff. In addition to his duties at the center, Sase spends several hours a day clearing up mud and debris in and around his tsunami-damaged house. Through it all, he remains calm.

“I don’t feel so much stress because I try not to pressure myself too much. If I push myself too hard, I will have a breakdown,” he said.

Tomorrow, he will continue his routine of cleaning and making sure the second floor residents have everything they need.

Osaka, a bustling western Japanese city known for its bright lights and lively entertainment districts, has turned off some of its most famous light displays to exhibit self-restraint in a time of national grieving.

In Osaka’s Dotonbori area, office workers, young people and tourists gather on the famed Ebisu Bridge every night. Massive neon displays usually light up the night in this part of town, which is thought to have inspired scenes from the movie Blade Runner.

These days, however, the atmosphere here is a lot more subdued. Osaka didn’t face power outages like other parts of Japan, but the bright lights are off.

Even Osaka’s giant Glico Man billboard, a Japanese company’s advertisement which shows a man running on a track, has gone dark. It’s Osaka’s equivalent of a flag being lowered to half-mast.

Osaka resident Kotaro Kobayashi, who works for a local TV news station, said people in Osaka are trying to restrain themselves ever since the earthquake hit the eastern part of the country. “In the current climate, being loud and flashy is not appropriate,” he said.

The practice of self-restraint is known as “jishuku” in Japanese. It has become commonplace here in recent days. Many have expressed a desire to cut back consumption when so many of their countrymen in the tsunami-ravaged northeast are suffering.

On a recent evening, Osaka’s Ebisu bridge is packed with a group of volunteers collecting written messages of support for survivors.

One of the volunteers, Takako Kamada, said this is a time of sadness for the entire country.

“If there’s something terribly wrong in our country, we want to show our grief, so we do things like cut down electricity to express our feelings of pain,” she said. “If there are people who are sad in Japan, we want to have the same feelings that they are having.”

After the earthquake and tsunami, people in Osaka began reducing their power use, thinking they could send electricity to those facing shortages. Since the country’s electric grid is split, the local electric company announced it could not send extra electricity to affected areas. But, many have continued to conserve.

Hiro Atarashi organized the messages of support on Ebisu bridge. “Even though our lives are unaffected by the disaster, we also try to restrain our lifestyles,” he said. “We try to think as much as possible what can we do for the people in the northeast.”

That urge to sacrifice is part of Japanese culture, said Kensuke Suzuki, an associate professor of sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University near Osaka. Suzuki said people who could not help tsunami victims reduced their own consumption as a way to cope with their frustration.

He also described the Japanese concept of “gaman,” which means to tolerate a painful situation. “The rationale for cutting back on electricity is connected to the Japanese idea of gaman,” he said. “Japanese people willingly put themselves through hardships, because they believe if they tough it out now, things will get better for them in the future.”

Even Osaka’s 24/7 convenience stores, known for their high-wattage neon signs have shut off exterior lights.
Minoru Inayama, the owner of a Daily Yamazaki store in Osaka, said the company’s headquarters told the individual stores to conserve electricity.

“We can’t just think we don’t have to worry about what’s happening elsewhere in Japan,” he said. “I think we should help with whatever we can, even if it’s a little bit.”

And no one wants to be criticized for acting like it’s business as usual.

Still, some say Osaka shouldn’t come to a standstill. As college student Aya Yamada and her friend buy crepes from a kiosk near Dotonbori, she said she’d like to help in whatever way she can. But she thinks people here should carry on with their lives.

“If we continue with our daily activities, it will encourage people in the affected areas to become more positive and show them that everything is going to be okay,” she said.

Kotaro Kobayashi said there may be a downside to all this restraint.
“I understand the current mood, but if we don’t resume normal activities, the economy could suffer,” he said.

Hono-o Daiko are (left to right) Akemi Jige, trainee Yuuna Higashikawa, Chieko Kinoshita, and Mizue Yamada. (Photo by Sonia Narang)

In the days before Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, an all-women’s drumming group named Hono-o-Daiko was preparing to travel by bus to a concert in Fukushima, about 300 miles from home in western Japan.

Hono-o-Daiko, which means “blazing drum,” was scheduled to perform the weekend after the earthquake struck.

The concert was canceled, and the drummers stayed in Hakusan City and watched non-stop coverage on television of the earthquake and tsunami disaster, including footage of the explosions at nuclear reactors in Fukushima.

Chieko Kinoshita, who joined the group eight years ago, said she is still in shock. “It’s very hard to watch what’s happening,” Kinoshita said. “It hurts my heart to see it.”

If the group had departed a day earlier, they would have been in the earthquake zone, but they have mixed feelings about escaping the tragedy.

“It’s complicated,” Kinosita said. “If we had been there, we would have been stuck in harm’s way. But even though we were safe, we kept wondering what we could do to help.”

Akemi Jige is the group's founder (Photo: Sonia Narang)

Hono-o Daiko formed about 25 years ago when female taiko drummers were a rarity. Akemi Jige, the group’s founder, is 58. She said she’s never seen such a disaster in her country.

“I feel helpless,” Jige said. “I want to do something, but I can’t. I want to give them power.” The youngest member of the group, Mizue Yamada, is 25. She had many friends in the affected area in northern Japan. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “I want everyone to regain their spirits soon.”

Memories of Kobe

The women teach students of all ages. One of them, Naoko Okada, 23, is from Kobe. She remembers when the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit her hometown in 1995, crippling the city and killing more than 5,000 people. She was in first grade at the time. “I know what it feels like and I understand what people are going through now,” Okada said.

The drummers hope they can bring taiko to Fukushima when the area recovers. They want to perform a memorial concert for the earthquake and tsunami victims when people are ready.

“Right now, things are very hard for the people in Fukushima,” said Jige. “If we could play the taiko for them with feeling, even for just a short time, we could give them a little bit of courage and energy. I would be very happy if I could help them.”

The Japanese have a word, “ganbaru,” which means to “fight on,” or persevere. It will take a lot of perseverance, the drummers say, to band together to help their country get through this tragedy.

Japanese tweets translated into English

Read more tweets about the crisis in Japan