InterPlay in the Slums

Many of you have been asking what exactly InterPlay is.  Well...maybe I'll just describe what I've been doing, and then YOU can define it yourself.

 

This afternoon my friend Prashant the Priest took us in a car to one of the Bombay slums.  The slums are the poorest sections of the cities, where people create homes out of any building materials they can find.  In India, they are also the lowest class people.  The slums have lots of curvy alleys, and are very crowded--about 50% of Bombay's population lives in the slums, I've heard (but I haven't verified that statistic).

 

We went accompanied by people from a nonprofit agency who work to empower the women of the slums to find jobs for themselves, so they don't have to resort to work like prostitution.  We met in a room with about 20 of these women who live in the slums.  Their faces were bright, their clothes colorful, and I kept on thinking, "These women do not look like my stereotype of a poor person."  After some introductions, Cynthia (my friend and cofounder of InterPlay) stood up and asked all the women to copy her movements.  For the next ten minutes, we did the silliest things together--shaking out our legs, arms, and voices; making wild gestures with our arms and funny sounds with our voices.  The women, dressed in their colorful saris and long scarves and dresses, copied us, and we were all laughing and giggling.  Then, we got into partners and did the Mirror exercise, where one person leads some gestures and the other person follows.  It's pretty cool to stand opposite a woman who speaks a different language from me, and has a very different life, and be the best of friends for 2 minutes while we lead and follow each other's gestures.  I took a picture which I hope to post within the next few days.  It turns out this woman is almost exactly my age (and Mme. Amy's age), since she is born in 1973. 

 

When we were done being silly, dancing and improvising together, we asked the women how they felt.  Prashant translated the Marathi.  "Fresh," one woman said.  "I forgot my worries for a short time," another added.  "My shoulder pain went away," said a third.

 

At the very end, we did an improvised blessing for them, throwing kisses and whooshing sounds over them with our outstretched arms.  Spontaneously, they blessed us back, standing and "whooshing" their arms over us.  It is amazing how connected you can feel to people just by dancing and being silly.

 

Based on this description, how would you define what InterPlay is?