Saturday, October 31
Halloween girls
I'd already taken off a lot of my pholkumari costume, but here's the afterparty shot.
Wednesday, October 21
For more Bridge Year fun:
My photo album - http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shai03/India#
The Bridge Year Website (with monthly updates from the field) - byp.princeton.edu
My photo album - http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shai03/India#
The Bridge Year Website (with monthly updates from the field) - byp.princeton.edu
Looking Up
Cows are sacred and beautiful animals, but there’s no denying the insane amount of foul-smelling brown mush they excrete. There’s so much, all over the cobblestone alleyways, that I spend the majority of my time carefully watching the path in front of me, protecting my faithful flip flops from a messy, squishy fate.
Luckily, at present, I have yet to have stepped in said unpleasantness. Andrew, on the other hand… Let’s just say that when I hear him curse loudly under his breath, I’m fairly certain of what he’s just encountered.
“Watch the road!” I tell him. “I can’t believe you didn’t see that. It was right there in front of you!”
“I know, I know,” he says. “Trust me. I know.”
Tonight, I was walking home from Hindi class, back to the program house. For some reason, I looked up. Maybe I thought I heard a motorcycle coming, maybe I heard a child’s yell – I can’t be sure. But for some reason, I looked up. I noticed, above the door of the house next to our program house, a beautiful design. It was a flower, outlined in red, artfully decorating the otherwise plain white building.
“Has that always been there?” I asked Chhaya.
“Yeah, haven’t you seen it before?”
No, I hadn’t seen it before. I’d been watching my feet. I hadn’t realized it before, and was a little embarrassed to admit it when I did – I just haven’t really been looking up. I’ve travelled just about as far from the familiar as I possibly could, and I’ve been so worried about keeping my feet clean that I’ve missed the details that, albeit small, make a different place what it is.
Andrew has been looking up. Without thinking twice, he takes advantage of opportunities that normal people wouldn’t even consider. A shave in a small barbershop in a remote Indian mountain village? He’s there. A stop in a traditional Indian wrestlers’ gym during a walking tour? He and Joe didn’t even wait a day before waking up hours earlier than usual to join the wrestlers in their akara. Granted, sometimes he gets a little dirty. The barber tries to overcharge him. The wrestlers in the akara are pretty rough. And sometimes, he steps in an unfortunately located cow patty. But when I think of all the things he’s gained from his experiences, those small daily risks that have made his time here outstanding, I guess it’s worth it.
I’m learning from everything around me these days – including my fellow students. I think I’ll try to be a little more Lotus-like for these next few months. I’ll just carry around a handkerchief to clean my shoes off along the way.
Luckily, at present, I have yet to have stepped in said unpleasantness. Andrew, on the other hand… Let’s just say that when I hear him curse loudly under his breath, I’m fairly certain of what he’s just encountered.
“Watch the road!” I tell him. “I can’t believe you didn’t see that. It was right there in front of you!”
“I know, I know,” he says. “Trust me. I know.”
Tonight, I was walking home from Hindi class, back to the program house. For some reason, I looked up. Maybe I thought I heard a motorcycle coming, maybe I heard a child’s yell – I can’t be sure. But for some reason, I looked up. I noticed, above the door of the house next to our program house, a beautiful design. It was a flower, outlined in red, artfully decorating the otherwise plain white building.
“Has that always been there?” I asked Chhaya.
“Yeah, haven’t you seen it before?”
No, I hadn’t seen it before. I’d been watching my feet. I hadn’t realized it before, and was a little embarrassed to admit it when I did – I just haven’t really been looking up. I’ve travelled just about as far from the familiar as I possibly could, and I’ve been so worried about keeping my feet clean that I’ve missed the details that, albeit small, make a different place what it is.
Andrew has been looking up. Without thinking twice, he takes advantage of opportunities that normal people wouldn’t even consider. A shave in a small barbershop in a remote Indian mountain village? He’s there. A stop in a traditional Indian wrestlers’ gym during a walking tour? He and Joe didn’t even wait a day before waking up hours earlier than usual to join the wrestlers in their akara. Granted, sometimes he gets a little dirty. The barber tries to overcharge him. The wrestlers in the akara are pretty rough. And sometimes, he steps in an unfortunately located cow patty. But when I think of all the things he’s gained from his experiences, those small daily risks that have made his time here outstanding, I guess it’s worth it.
I’m learning from everything around me these days – including my fellow students. I think I’ll try to be a little more Lotus-like for these next few months. I’ll just carry around a handkerchief to clean my shoes off along the way.
Seva
One of the wisest men we’ve met thus far in India is named Krishna. He is a musician with a PhD in physics, a mystical man with a story for every lesson. Last week, he came to speak to us about seva, or service with spiritual intention.
He shared with us the Eastern philosophy about service. Krishna, I assure you, said this all 100 times better than I’ll be able to, but here to the best of my ability is one of his points.
When you are sleeping, he explained, you dream up a whole world. You can find rushing rivers, towering buildings, and burning fires - all in your head. When you wake up, you think you are in the real world, but according to the mystics of the East, that too is a sort of dream world.
When the Buddha achieved enlightenment, and people asked him what he did, he would reply, “I am awake.” He had become in tune with the oneness of the universe, reaching complete tranquility by transcending the pseudo reality of the world we live in.
Because of this connection of all things, we are each other. I, for example, am the rickshaw driver, the beggar outside the temple, the dog dashing between motorcyclists down a narrow cobblestone alleyway. It is simply the illusion of the physical world that makes us feel separate.
Think for a moment, as Krishna asked us to, about an arm. Pointing to his arm, a man might say, “this is my arm.” No one would point to his elbow and exclaim, “this is me!”
But hit that same man on the arm, and he will indignantly ask, “Why did you hit me?”
Through this lens, we view the other – be it the leper living in the box by the Assi Ghat steps or the sabjii walla on the corner – as separate from ourselves. No one would look at another person and say, “That is me.” But when there is suffering inflicted on one part of the universe, the entire entity takes offense.
Western social biologists spend so much time trying to discern what it is that makes humans want to help others. Is it that someday, we hope others will help us? Do we expect a parade in our honor, and a shiny medal of honor?
We serve because when we see a child physically and mentally scarred by her surroundings, we too feel that pain. Because when a country’s low literacy rate holds back its intellectual advancement, no country can move forward. We serve because when a boy who cannot walk is shunned by society as being useless, it is as if we are all ostracized for differences we cannot control.
I looked around the circle as Krishna spoke, thinking about the various seva that each of us would soon be embarking on. I had in my mind the image of an arm being a part of a whole, and each of us having an arm that had been affected by the service sites we’d visited. Be it the orphaned children Andrew works with at the Bal Ashram, Chhaya’s students at the Southpoint School and Joe’s at World Literacy of Canada, the differently-abled youths of Lizzie’s Kiran Center, or the children of women in prostitution who I care for with the Guria team; each person with whom we connect personally affects our motivation to help.
It is as if we are one of the multi-appendaged Hindu Gods, our five arms reaching out to redress the problems of the world. Documented somewhere, I’m sure, is the little-known tale of the Bridge Year Devi. Beginning with the nine months she spent living in Varanasi, India, her story ends with her riding off on her tiger in the service of her nation – and the service of all nations.
He shared with us the Eastern philosophy about service. Krishna, I assure you, said this all 100 times better than I’ll be able to, but here to the best of my ability is one of his points.
When you are sleeping, he explained, you dream up a whole world. You can find rushing rivers, towering buildings, and burning fires - all in your head. When you wake up, you think you are in the real world, but according to the mystics of the East, that too is a sort of dream world.
When the Buddha achieved enlightenment, and people asked him what he did, he would reply, “I am awake.” He had become in tune with the oneness of the universe, reaching complete tranquility by transcending the pseudo reality of the world we live in.
Because of this connection of all things, we are each other. I, for example, am the rickshaw driver, the beggar outside the temple, the dog dashing between motorcyclists down a narrow cobblestone alleyway. It is simply the illusion of the physical world that makes us feel separate.
Think for a moment, as Krishna asked us to, about an arm. Pointing to his arm, a man might say, “this is my arm.” No one would point to his elbow and exclaim, “this is me!”
But hit that same man on the arm, and he will indignantly ask, “Why did you hit me?”
Through this lens, we view the other – be it the leper living in the box by the Assi Ghat steps or the sabjii walla on the corner – as separate from ourselves. No one would look at another person and say, “That is me.” But when there is suffering inflicted on one part of the universe, the entire entity takes offense.
Western social biologists spend so much time trying to discern what it is that makes humans want to help others. Is it that someday, we hope others will help us? Do we expect a parade in our honor, and a shiny medal of honor?
We serve because when we see a child physically and mentally scarred by her surroundings, we too feel that pain. Because when a country’s low literacy rate holds back its intellectual advancement, no country can move forward. We serve because when a boy who cannot walk is shunned by society as being useless, it is as if we are all ostracized for differences we cannot control.
I looked around the circle as Krishna spoke, thinking about the various seva that each of us would soon be embarking on. I had in my mind the image of an arm being a part of a whole, and each of us having an arm that had been affected by the service sites we’d visited. Be it the orphaned children Andrew works with at the Bal Ashram, Chhaya’s students at the Southpoint School and Joe’s at World Literacy of Canada, the differently-abled youths of Lizzie’s Kiran Center, or the children of women in prostitution who I care for with the Guria team; each person with whom we connect personally affects our motivation to help.
It is as if we are one of the multi-appendaged Hindu Gods, our five arms reaching out to redress the problems of the world. Documented somewhere, I’m sure, is the little-known tale of the Bridge Year Devi. Beginning with the nine months she spent living in Varanasi, India, her story ends with her riding off on her tiger in the service of her nation – and the service of all nations.
Miracles
There’s an age, somewhere between one’s third birthday and the first day of fourth grade, during which a child believes in magic. Everything and anything is possible. When I was very young, little houses built in the backyard out of twigs, with moss for carpeting and bits of bark for furniture, housed real fairies, who came every night to eat the Rice Krispies I’d left for them in acorn shell bowls. My father’s glance into my closet was enough to kill any monsters living within. I had no doubt that magic was happening all around me.
So when my mother taught me the concept of Direction of Energy when I was four, I readily accepted it as the best sort of medicine there was. Direction of Energy involved feeling the energy field around someone’s body, and then pulling negative energy out of them, while guiding in positive energy. If someone told me about Direction of Energy now, I would smile and think how crazy they sounded. But since I was so young, it seemed perfectly normal. Sure¸ it was a little fantastical, but so were my fairy friends. Once mastering the art of Direction of Energy, I used it when my friends scraped their knees on the preschool playground.
“This will help you, don’t worry.”
They believed me, and usually it did help, if only because their minds told them it would.
Sitting in the Ramakrishna Mission House, I stared down at what Bushra had become. Once a joyous, beautiful five-year-old girl, she was now a writhing mess of pain. Her stained, ripped shirt hung raggedly from one shoulder. She maintained no feeling in any part of her body, and thrashed about so violently I was afraid she’d pull out the IV that had been crudely taped to her hand. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and her eyeballs themselves had rolled back in her head. Worst of all was her long, high pitched wail, coming and going from a too-widely opened mouth, signaling her immense physical suffering.
Manju ji, one of the heads of Guria, spoke quietly in the corner to Bushra’s distressed mother. She was so afraid to lose her youngest child, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to afford the treatment that possibly wouldn’t even be enough to save her life. Many doctors had seen Bushra and offered no help, saying that the girl was too far gone. Many hospitals wouldn’t take her in. At last, the Ramakrishna Mission House did, and yesterday afternoon, Bushra had gone into a coma. “With this kind of brain fever, she has a ten percent chance of survival,” the doctor told her mother.
Everyone had been thinking of Bushra. At the Guria center, we’d had two minutes of silence – punctuated by Bushra’s sister’s sobs – to pray for Bushra’s life, each child praying to God to bring their friend home safely. The prayers worked, Manju ji told Bushra’s mother. No one had really expected Bushra to come out of the coma.
“Chalo, Shaina,” said Manju ji. She came back and looked down sadly at the Bushra, who had at last worn herself out and had mercifully been able to fall asleep. “Let’s go. The doctor is too busy right now… I wanted to stay and speak with him, but we’ve been here too long.” She turned, and pressed a 1,000 rupee note into Bushra’s mother’s hand.
Too busy? I thought. God, somebody help this girl. I wish there were something I could do.
Suddenly, I realized there was something. “Manju ji, can we stay for a few more minutes?” I quickly tried to explain Direction of Energy to her. I’m not sure if it made the translation from English to Hindi in her mind, but she agreed to let me try.
I sat down on a wooden stool at the head of Bushra’s short, hard bed, placing my hands a few inches from the sides of the sleeping girl’s head. I closed my eyes and began to feel a familiar tingling of energy, the hot energy of her inflamed brain tissue growing stronger and stronger. It felt prickly and angry, and just when it was about to really hurt my hands, I began to work. I visualized a blue, cooling light emanating from my palms, massaging its way through Bushra’s burning head. It soothed us both, and a minute later, I felt calm. I opened my eyes, feeling the stares of all the women around me – Bushra’s mother, her grandmother, her nurse, Manju ji, even the other women sitting with their sick children in beds around us. But I kept a soft gaze on Bushra as I drew my hands slowly away from her head. In the same moment, Bushra opened her eyes. She yawned, and attempted to sit up. She was quiet, and her nurse helped her up. Her eyes no longer rolled, and she looked alert. I couldn’t believe it. Could I have helped, even a little bit?
Stunned, Manju ji touched my shoulder. “What – what was it that you did?” I explained again, and this time it seemed as though she understood. She said something in Hindi to the other women. The grandmother, old and toothless, began wiping tears from her eyes with the end of her sari, looking deep into me and bobbing her head side to side and up and down.
Soon the doctor walked in, and looked over Bushra, who began to quietly cry.
“She is still in very bad condition, but she is much better than she was yesterday,” he said.
Manju ji and I left the room silently.
Genevieve had told us that things were different here in Varanasi, that anything can happen in this holy city. But I haven’t really believed in miracles since childhood. Walking out of that hospital, I realized, India has made me believe in magic again.
So when my mother taught me the concept of Direction of Energy when I was four, I readily accepted it as the best sort of medicine there was. Direction of Energy involved feeling the energy field around someone’s body, and then pulling negative energy out of them, while guiding in positive energy. If someone told me about Direction of Energy now, I would smile and think how crazy they sounded. But since I was so young, it seemed perfectly normal. Sure¸ it was a little fantastical, but so were my fairy friends. Once mastering the art of Direction of Energy, I used it when my friends scraped their knees on the preschool playground.
“This will help you, don’t worry.”
They believed me, and usually it did help, if only because their minds told them it would.
Sitting in the Ramakrishna Mission House, I stared down at what Bushra had become. Once a joyous, beautiful five-year-old girl, she was now a writhing mess of pain. Her stained, ripped shirt hung raggedly from one shoulder. She maintained no feeling in any part of her body, and thrashed about so violently I was afraid she’d pull out the IV that had been crudely taped to her hand. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and her eyeballs themselves had rolled back in her head. Worst of all was her long, high pitched wail, coming and going from a too-widely opened mouth, signaling her immense physical suffering.
Manju ji, one of the heads of Guria, spoke quietly in the corner to Bushra’s distressed mother. She was so afraid to lose her youngest child, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to afford the treatment that possibly wouldn’t even be enough to save her life. Many doctors had seen Bushra and offered no help, saying that the girl was too far gone. Many hospitals wouldn’t take her in. At last, the Ramakrishna Mission House did, and yesterday afternoon, Bushra had gone into a coma. “With this kind of brain fever, she has a ten percent chance of survival,” the doctor told her mother.
Everyone had been thinking of Bushra. At the Guria center, we’d had two minutes of silence – punctuated by Bushra’s sister’s sobs – to pray for Bushra’s life, each child praying to God to bring their friend home safely. The prayers worked, Manju ji told Bushra’s mother. No one had really expected Bushra to come out of the coma.
“Chalo, Shaina,” said Manju ji. She came back and looked down sadly at the Bushra, who had at last worn herself out and had mercifully been able to fall asleep. “Let’s go. The doctor is too busy right now… I wanted to stay and speak with him, but we’ve been here too long.” She turned, and pressed a 1,000 rupee note into Bushra’s mother’s hand.
Too busy? I thought. God, somebody help this girl. I wish there were something I could do.
Suddenly, I realized there was something. “Manju ji, can we stay for a few more minutes?” I quickly tried to explain Direction of Energy to her. I’m not sure if it made the translation from English to Hindi in her mind, but she agreed to let me try.
I sat down on a wooden stool at the head of Bushra’s short, hard bed, placing my hands a few inches from the sides of the sleeping girl’s head. I closed my eyes and began to feel a familiar tingling of energy, the hot energy of her inflamed brain tissue growing stronger and stronger. It felt prickly and angry, and just when it was about to really hurt my hands, I began to work. I visualized a blue, cooling light emanating from my palms, massaging its way through Bushra’s burning head. It soothed us both, and a minute later, I felt calm. I opened my eyes, feeling the stares of all the women around me – Bushra’s mother, her grandmother, her nurse, Manju ji, even the other women sitting with their sick children in beds around us. But I kept a soft gaze on Bushra as I drew my hands slowly away from her head. In the same moment, Bushra opened her eyes. She yawned, and attempted to sit up. She was quiet, and her nurse helped her up. Her eyes no longer rolled, and she looked alert. I couldn’t believe it. Could I have helped, even a little bit?
Stunned, Manju ji touched my shoulder. “What – what was it that you did?” I explained again, and this time it seemed as though she understood. She said something in Hindi to the other women. The grandmother, old and toothless, began wiping tears from her eyes with the end of her sari, looking deep into me and bobbing her head side to side and up and down.
Soon the doctor walked in, and looked over Bushra, who began to quietly cry.
“She is still in very bad condition, but she is much better than she was yesterday,” he said.
Manju ji and I left the room silently.
Genevieve had told us that things were different here in Varanasi, that anything can happen in this holy city. But I haven’t really believed in miracles since childhood. Walking out of that hospital, I realized, India has made me believe in magic again.
A Bridge Year Blessing
Sometimes, when lying on the roof, staring up at the vast night sky, I turn my attention down to the activity of the valley. All over the horizontal rows of earth are little splotches of light. I try to imagine the specific source of each, and its purpose. One tiny house’s fire cooks the night’s spiced potatoes and chapati. Another illuminates a small room, while in a house down at the bottom of the valley, a little boy curls up by his fire to study his English textbook.
Four nights ago, if anyone across the valley were to be sitting, looking up at the stars, and happened to notice the far glow on Mr. Verma-ji’s roof, he would most certainly have been looking at my friends and me, our headlamps alight as we readied ourselves for our mini Rosh Hashanah celebration. For Joe, that meant reading as much as he could of Harry Potter (and the prisoner of Azkaban) before Andrew finished cutting open his sticks of honey. I’d already poured a small portion of maple syrup into a small metal bowl, and fresh Indian bananas (the best you’ve ever tasted) waited, soft and sweet, beside the bowl. Genevieve, Christina, Binit-ji, and Lizzie sat in the circle with us, quietly and patiently waiting while I explored my pocket prayer book.
I didn’t know what prayers were to be said for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. My book knew what to do on normal days, on Shabbat, on Hannukah, even what to say on Purim. It had served me well in Kausani: on Saturday morning, after I’d finished a super-abridged Shabbat service, and I noticed the Himalayas had come out, the book provided me with the blessing for “seeing the majesty of the heavens, high mountains, or other glorious phenomena of nature”.
I searched and searched, and could come up with nothing for Rosh Hashanah. My companions were understanding and flexible though, and in the end we decided to say the shehechianu. “Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech haolam,” I began, and Joe and Andrew joined in. “Shehechianu vikiyamanu vihigianu lazman hazeh.”
The prayer thanked God for “giving us life and sustenance, and bringing us to this happy season.” For me, the blessing was perfect.
In its short and succinct Hebrew way, its words encompassed all that I wanted to say and more. Thank you, God, for making sure that admissions officer had been in a good mood that day. Thank you, the prayer said, for catching our eyes on the short blurb about Princeton’s pilot Bridge Year program, and thank you for instilling in us the courage to explore beyond our country’s familiar borders. Thank you for giving us the strength to write yet more essays about why us. Thank you for keeping Skype functioning long enough to be asked what we would do with no toilet paper for a year. Thank you for getting us past surprisingly intrusive swine flu checkpoints in the airports. Thank you for holding our wheels to the ground as we flew through the crowded, noisy streets of Delhi, and down the impossibly bendy one-way roads of the mountains. Thank you for keeping intestinal craziness, while clearly inevitable, to a minimum. Thank you for ensuring that our instructors were more knowledgeable and experienced than we ever could have hoped for. Thank you for inspiring us each morning with lush green hills, unearthly flowing wisps of clouds, and high, piercing Himalayan peaks. Thank you for allowing us to see our potential to improve lives, even in the small way that we had, helping to reconstruct Sadu’s small house. Thank you for giving us life, sustenance, and bringing us to this happy season.
And thank you, in advance, for everything to come.
Four nights ago, if anyone across the valley were to be sitting, looking up at the stars, and happened to notice the far glow on Mr. Verma-ji’s roof, he would most certainly have been looking at my friends and me, our headlamps alight as we readied ourselves for our mini Rosh Hashanah celebration. For Joe, that meant reading as much as he could of Harry Potter (and the prisoner of Azkaban) before Andrew finished cutting open his sticks of honey. I’d already poured a small portion of maple syrup into a small metal bowl, and fresh Indian bananas (the best you’ve ever tasted) waited, soft and sweet, beside the bowl. Genevieve, Christina, Binit-ji, and Lizzie sat in the circle with us, quietly and patiently waiting while I explored my pocket prayer book.
I didn’t know what prayers were to be said for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. My book knew what to do on normal days, on Shabbat, on Hannukah, even what to say on Purim. It had served me well in Kausani: on Saturday morning, after I’d finished a super-abridged Shabbat service, and I noticed the Himalayas had come out, the book provided me with the blessing for “seeing the majesty of the heavens, high mountains, or other glorious phenomena of nature”.
I searched and searched, and could come up with nothing for Rosh Hashanah. My companions were understanding and flexible though, and in the end we decided to say the shehechianu. “Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech haolam,” I began, and Joe and Andrew joined in. “Shehechianu vikiyamanu vihigianu lazman hazeh.”
The prayer thanked God for “giving us life and sustenance, and bringing us to this happy season.” For me, the blessing was perfect.
In its short and succinct Hebrew way, its words encompassed all that I wanted to say and more. Thank you, God, for making sure that admissions officer had been in a good mood that day. Thank you, the prayer said, for catching our eyes on the short blurb about Princeton’s pilot Bridge Year program, and thank you for instilling in us the courage to explore beyond our country’s familiar borders. Thank you for giving us the strength to write yet more essays about why us. Thank you for keeping Skype functioning long enough to be asked what we would do with no toilet paper for a year. Thank you for getting us past surprisingly intrusive swine flu checkpoints in the airports. Thank you for holding our wheels to the ground as we flew through the crowded, noisy streets of Delhi, and down the impossibly bendy one-way roads of the mountains. Thank you for keeping intestinal craziness, while clearly inevitable, to a minimum. Thank you for ensuring that our instructors were more knowledgeable and experienced than we ever could have hoped for. Thank you for inspiring us each morning with lush green hills, unearthly flowing wisps of clouds, and high, piercing Himalayan peaks. Thank you for allowing us to see our potential to improve lives, even in the small way that we had, helping to reconstruct Sadu’s small house. Thank you for giving us life, sustenance, and bringing us to this happy season.
And thank you, in advance, for everything to come.
The Machine
In seventh grade Performing Arts class, Mr. Agalias asked for a volunteer.
“Someone go to the center of the circle, and start doing something. Anything. Move your arm up and down. Turn your head left to right. Make a noise that corresponds with your action. ‘Swoosh swoosh,’ maybe, or ‘boing boing’. Just do something repetitive.”
Dan, one of our braver classmates, went up first. He turned his knee out, then back in again, saying, “Whee! Whee!” He continued the pattern until Mr. Agalias tapped my head and told me to find an action and noise that fit in with Dan’s. I bent down, and put my arm in the empty space his knee would create, pulling it out every time his knees came back to center. “Boom. Boom.”
We were the machine. One by one, Mr. Agalias would tap us on the head, and each of us would become a working gear of the contraption. Before long, we’d become a bouncing, buzzing, busy cacophony of middle school actors.
Today I find myself part of a very different machine, several thousand miles away from that small theater in Grover Middle School. The machinery of our efforts is much the same as it was those years ago, though our purpose is decidedly more useful. I am in the small tropical paradise of Kanda Valley, working to put the roof on a high new house.
It all begins with the young man on the ground, wearing a shirt reading, “URBAN CHAOS!” He is stamping dirt and rocks and cement together, while a man close by shovels it into metal pans. These pans are picked up and passed, man to man to man to man, up an efficient design of makeshift stairs and scaffolding. Their rhythm is continuous, the pattern accented by grunts and laughs and Kumaoni calls. Cement dumped out on the roof, the trays are passed down to me. I make eye contact with the man below me, and he raises his eyebrows, wordlessly signaling that it’s safe to slide the trays down to him via fraying plastic slide. Whoosh. He runs the trays to the shoveler. And the cycle begins again.
One of the volunteers above me wipes the sweat from the back of his neck, saying, “Man, wouldn’t this be easier if they just had a machine to haul all that cement up here?”
I watch the activity all around me, and shake my head. Look at us. We are the machine.
“Someone go to the center of the circle, and start doing something. Anything. Move your arm up and down. Turn your head left to right. Make a noise that corresponds with your action. ‘Swoosh swoosh,’ maybe, or ‘boing boing’. Just do something repetitive.”
Dan, one of our braver classmates, went up first. He turned his knee out, then back in again, saying, “Whee! Whee!” He continued the pattern until Mr. Agalias tapped my head and told me to find an action and noise that fit in with Dan’s. I bent down, and put my arm in the empty space his knee would create, pulling it out every time his knees came back to center. “Boom. Boom.”
We were the machine. One by one, Mr. Agalias would tap us on the head, and each of us would become a working gear of the contraption. Before long, we’d become a bouncing, buzzing, busy cacophony of middle school actors.
Today I find myself part of a very different machine, several thousand miles away from that small theater in Grover Middle School. The machinery of our efforts is much the same as it was those years ago, though our purpose is decidedly more useful. I am in the small tropical paradise of Kanda Valley, working to put the roof on a high new house.
It all begins with the young man on the ground, wearing a shirt reading, “URBAN CHAOS!” He is stamping dirt and rocks and cement together, while a man close by shovels it into metal pans. These pans are picked up and passed, man to man to man to man, up an efficient design of makeshift stairs and scaffolding. Their rhythm is continuous, the pattern accented by grunts and laughs and Kumaoni calls. Cement dumped out on the roof, the trays are passed down to me. I make eye contact with the man below me, and he raises his eyebrows, wordlessly signaling that it’s safe to slide the trays down to him via fraying plastic slide. Whoosh. He runs the trays to the shoveler. And the cycle begins again.
One of the volunteers above me wipes the sweat from the back of his neck, saying, “Man, wouldn’t this be easier if they just had a machine to haul all that cement up here?”
I watch the activity all around me, and shake my head. Look at us. We are the machine.
Hamara Dost
Today, as we were walking home from the village, we passed Gautham, a little boy in our homestay family. He was walking home from school with his friends, who were all dressed exactly the same way, looking like a little herd of Gauthams in their identical light blue uniforms and crooked dark blue ties.
“Gautham!” we shouted. “Gautham! Our friend! Mayra dost!”
All grammar out the window. Too excited.
I don’t really know what we expected. Did we think he’d run, arms outstretched, to embrace us? Lick our faces like a puppy? Happily introduce us to his little buddies, proudly telling everyone that these Americans lived with him?
Whatever we were expecting, we didn’t get it. He pushed one of his friends in front of him, and continued to walk, keeping his head down.
“Oh my God,” said Joe. “Did we just embarrass Gautham?”
Luckily Gautham got over his embarrassment pretty quickly – only after he coerced Joe into a game of pretty intense game of hide and seek when we got home.
“Count to ONE HUNDRED!”
“Oh no! I only know up to ten! Ek, do, tin, char, panch, che, sat, ot, nau, dos….. 18! 52! 65! Here I come!”
A good game of hide and seek fixes everything.
“Gautham!” we shouted. “Gautham! Our friend! Mayra dost!”
All grammar out the window. Too excited.
I don’t really know what we expected. Did we think he’d run, arms outstretched, to embrace us? Lick our faces like a puppy? Happily introduce us to his little buddies, proudly telling everyone that these Americans lived with him?
Whatever we were expecting, we didn’t get it. He pushed one of his friends in front of him, and continued to walk, keeping his head down.
“Oh my God,” said Joe. “Did we just embarrass Gautham?”
Luckily Gautham got over his embarrassment pretty quickly – only after he coerced Joe into a game of pretty intense game of hide and seek when we got home.
“Count to ONE HUNDRED!”
“Oh no! I only know up to ten! Ek, do, tin, char, panch, che, sat, ot, nau, dos….. 18! 52! 65! Here I come!”
A good game of hide and seek fixes everything.
Scooby Doo* and the Mystery of the Anasakti Ashram
Scooby Doo wasn't actually with us on the trip, and I can't confidently say that he would have been much of a help. While he's led his posse of eager cartoon characters through dark forests and past evil creatures of the night, our mission was fairly high on the impossible-o-meter.
Christina had handed us a sheet of paper, a long checklist of everything she hoped Andrew, Lizzie and I would find in the village of Kausani.
"Are we really supposed to find all these things?"
She looked at me, her lips curling up at the edges, the way she does when she's amused. She likes it when we figure things out ourselves. Experiential learning. Get used to it.
Here's something you should know about Kausani: they're not used to tourists here. You can "Namaste" all you want, wear your traditional Indian suits, modestly look away from males, and pretend not to watch, enthralled, as an elderly man guides his cow along the road, but your blonde hair still screams, "I'm so completely different from you!"
As we made the several-kilometer trek down to the village, we tried to decide what we'd get first. Tea lamps? An Indian Flag sticker? Three handprints from the local children? When all you can confidently say in Hindi is "I am not married," the possibility of communicating your need for an Indian tongue cleaner is severely limited. We decided to start with "A pamphlet from the Anasakti Ashram."
When we came to a fork in the road, we went to the right, heading uphill on a winding path to the Ashram. Finally, we found a plain white stone building, several stories high. A sign on the front told us we were very welcome to the Anasakti Ashram, and we began the ascent up several flights of stairs.
Each stair, carved into the stone, was short. Not one was parallel to the ground, and as we climbed higher and higher, trying to keep our balance on the steps, we felt more and more like visitors to some strange location Dr. Seuss might have written about. I half expected to find the Onceler from The Lorax waiting for us at the top. When we did reach the summit of our treacherous climb, we found, not the Onceler, but a middle-aged man doing some kind of squatting meditation, looking out over the mountains. We had stumbled up onto the landing rather loudly and ungracefully, and I felt painfully out of place as his head turned slowly to face us. Behind him, a group of men were engaged in some sort of worship inside a room. A sign above the door said that everyone was required to be "present at prayer."
"We should... um... pamphlets?" I whispered, and turned to see that my companions really didn't know how to handle the situation either.
I looked back at the man, his eyes round as he watched us. I looked down at Christina's sheet. "Talk to people: make some friends!" the instructions reminded me. I looked back at the man. Back at the sheet. The man. His eyes seemed to be burning into me, branding a big "O" for "outsider" on my forehead.
"Let's go upstairs," I said.
Again, we climbed. Finally we came out onto some sort of balcony. There was a high podium covered in Hindi writing, and in the corner, a group of men in simple brown robes. They noticed our arrival, then turned back to their conversation, keeping one eye on our movements.
There are some places in the world that want people to come visit, places that encourage travelers to peak their heads in and poke around for a bit. Those are the kinds of places that take the time to write up pamphlets. But after experiencing the energy of our surroundings, we were very sure that the Anasakti Ashram was not one of those places.
In the end, we decided to take a picture of a posting of the Ashram's rules. We kept the camera low, expecting some holy man to see us with our camera and kick us out. Then we kicked ourselves out, hurrying back down the steps (as safely as possible) and back toward the village.
By then, any chance we might have thought we had of finding everything on the list was pretty much shot. “Neem” for example, does not grow in Kausani, and it was therefore useless to ask for. Nobody had any Coriander seeds, and after a few awkward attempts, Andrew stopped pursuing the Indian tongue cleaner.
In high school, I was so used to getting an assignment, and completing the task. Everything was doable. But Kausani was totally new to me. Some things were available. Some were not. Later, Genevieve would tell me that this was India. If I expected to be able to do everything completely, all the time, I’d go crazy.
We bought some vitamin C from the pharmacy, a package of bindis, a bottle of apricot oil, some postcards of the Himalaya Mountains, and a prickly green vegetable we didn’t recognize. We asked a friendly shopkeeper to tell us about Ravi Shankar, the Rig Veda, and the Prime Minister of India. We even found some things that weren’t on the list. Andrew and I bought matching hats (we’re basically bhaaii-bahan, after all), and I got a beautiful notebook painted with powdered rice made by women artists from Kumaon.
So what if the Anasakti Ashram didn't have pamphlets? By the time we made it back to the Chevron Ecolodge, our legs were tired, and our bag was full enough. Experiential learning. We're still getting used to it.
*By "Scooby Doo," I of course mean "the adventurous and open-minded BYPies, specifically Shaina, Lizzie, and Andrew because Joe was sick, and Chhaya's still recovering from surgery." But unless you're Sufjan Stevens, some things are too long to turn into a title.
Christina had handed us a sheet of paper, a long checklist of everything she hoped Andrew, Lizzie and I would find in the village of Kausani.
"Are we really supposed to find all these things?"
She looked at me, her lips curling up at the edges, the way she does when she's amused. She likes it when we figure things out ourselves. Experiential learning. Get used to it.
Here's something you should know about Kausani: they're not used to tourists here. You can "Namaste" all you want, wear your traditional Indian suits, modestly look away from males, and pretend not to watch, enthralled, as an elderly man guides his cow along the road, but your blonde hair still screams, "I'm so completely different from you!"
As we made the several-kilometer trek down to the village, we tried to decide what we'd get first. Tea lamps? An Indian Flag sticker? Three handprints from the local children? When all you can confidently say in Hindi is "I am not married," the possibility of communicating your need for an Indian tongue cleaner is severely limited. We decided to start with "A pamphlet from the Anasakti Ashram."
When we came to a fork in the road, we went to the right, heading uphill on a winding path to the Ashram. Finally, we found a plain white stone building, several stories high. A sign on the front told us we were very welcome to the Anasakti Ashram, and we began the ascent up several flights of stairs.
Each stair, carved into the stone, was short. Not one was parallel to the ground, and as we climbed higher and higher, trying to keep our balance on the steps, we felt more and more like visitors to some strange location Dr. Seuss might have written about. I half expected to find the Onceler from The Lorax waiting for us at the top. When we did reach the summit of our treacherous climb, we found, not the Onceler, but a middle-aged man doing some kind of squatting meditation, looking out over the mountains. We had stumbled up onto the landing rather loudly and ungracefully, and I felt painfully out of place as his head turned slowly to face us. Behind him, a group of men were engaged in some sort of worship inside a room. A sign above the door said that everyone was required to be "present at prayer."
"We should... um... pamphlets?" I whispered, and turned to see that my companions really didn't know how to handle the situation either.
I looked back at the man, his eyes round as he watched us. I looked down at Christina's sheet. "Talk to people: make some friends!" the instructions reminded me. I looked back at the man. Back at the sheet. The man. His eyes seemed to be burning into me, branding a big "O" for "outsider" on my forehead.
"Let's go upstairs," I said.
Again, we climbed. Finally we came out onto some sort of balcony. There was a high podium covered in Hindi writing, and in the corner, a group of men in simple brown robes. They noticed our arrival, then turned back to their conversation, keeping one eye on our movements.
There are some places in the world that want people to come visit, places that encourage travelers to peak their heads in and poke around for a bit. Those are the kinds of places that take the time to write up pamphlets. But after experiencing the energy of our surroundings, we were very sure that the Anasakti Ashram was not one of those places.
In the end, we decided to take a picture of a posting of the Ashram's rules. We kept the camera low, expecting some holy man to see us with our camera and kick us out. Then we kicked ourselves out, hurrying back down the steps (as safely as possible) and back toward the village.
By then, any chance we might have thought we had of finding everything on the list was pretty much shot. “Neem” for example, does not grow in Kausani, and it was therefore useless to ask for. Nobody had any Coriander seeds, and after a few awkward attempts, Andrew stopped pursuing the Indian tongue cleaner.
In high school, I was so used to getting an assignment, and completing the task. Everything was doable. But Kausani was totally new to me. Some things were available. Some were not. Later, Genevieve would tell me that this was India. If I expected to be able to do everything completely, all the time, I’d go crazy.
We bought some vitamin C from the pharmacy, a package of bindis, a bottle of apricot oil, some postcards of the Himalaya Mountains, and a prickly green vegetable we didn’t recognize. We asked a friendly shopkeeper to tell us about Ravi Shankar, the Rig Veda, and the Prime Minister of India. We even found some things that weren’t on the list. Andrew and I bought matching hats (we’re basically bhaaii-bahan, after all), and I got a beautiful notebook painted with powdered rice made by women artists from Kumaon.
So what if the Anasakti Ashram didn't have pamphlets? By the time we made it back to the Chevron Ecolodge, our legs were tired, and our bag was full enough. Experiential learning. We're still getting used to it.
*By "Scooby Doo," I of course mean "the adventurous and open-minded BYPies, specifically Shaina, Lizzie, and Andrew because Joe was sick, and Chhaya's still recovering from surgery." But unless you're Sufjan Stevens, some things are too long to turn into a title.
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