Last Entry - Tears and Laughter and Joy

So much behind a simple door

My blog hasn't quite caught up with fast old me. Already having left India, I write this on my porch looking at my garden and the slowly descending Arizonan sun. I have already been gone from India for almost two weeks, yet it feels like just yesterday that I spent my days in yoga, teaching and exploration. Now, a new kind of exploration is set to take place and, indeed, new adventures await. As they always always do. However, before starting any new adventure, it is always best to reflect on what encompassed the past adventure. Fears, happiness, people, places, language, sights, smells - so much initially to absorb and now to reflect on.

It would be impossible to describe all that has happened to me since my last blog posting, describing the thrilling act of playing Holi. We celebrated Easter together and I lead 72 children in their very first Easter egg hunt over palace gardens. We reviewed our lessons and danced in traditional Rajasthani dress. I traveled back to Delhi and to Mumbai and than to London and than to Washington DC before finally reaching home.

My last breakfast, brought to me by faithful BimSingh

I am reminded of my last morning spent in Jaipur before taking the train to Delhi. I woke early and dressed quickly, than walked out along the main road in the hazy dawn sun. I passed the shrine to Lord Hanuman (the monkey god) on my left and watched school girls with braided hair touch the floor in honor of him as as holy man threw a bucket of water over the steps to clean them. I bought flowers as a gift for my supervisor at a local shop,where the owner gave me a single red rose as a gift and told me he loved America. Carrying the heavily wrapped bouquet with me down Civil Lines, women sweeping the ever present dust from their doorways smiled at me behind their brightly colored dupattas. I hurried to my last yoga class with my teacher, Manisha, and we completed our last poses together with smiles and cheer. Geeti and I shared one last breakfast together (complete with our imported French jam) and sipped our sweet coffee in the sun.

I spent my last day at the Foundation surrounded by so many children, I could barely breathe. They all wanted to touch me, hug me, kiss me and place yet more bangles on my already jewelry laden arms. I kissed cheeks, wiped tears and held the little hands of arms attached to bodies attached to faces attached to personalities I have come to know slowly and over time. Afreen's sensitivity. Vedpul's natural intellect. Avash's confidence. Shifa's artistic ability. Kiran's determination to excel. Tanya's beauty. Kashih's desire to be loved.

Little Women

With my little ones - my Sunflower class - I will miss their chipper voices calling out to me, "You looking good today, mam'am!" Their desire to be as close to me as physically possible when I sat on the floor with them. Our handgame called January, February that we play in a circle and which I always allow myself to lose. With the older classes, I will miss their curious questions and inquisitive natures. Their unquenchable thirst to learn new things Of these children, I became close with too many of them to begin to list them by name here. Little Mehak, with her spectacles - tears in her eyes as I told her to read the newspaper and never stop studying. Tall and quiet Govind, giving me one last story to read on the plane. Mehzabi who always gave me the biggest and most generous hugs.

And the teachers? The beautiful, shining, proud, curious, determined women who laughed and cried and danced with me throughout my months there? There are not words enough, in English or Hindi, to describe the bond of friendship we will forever share together. Ruksar, Priyanka, Geeta, Ruchi, Payal, and Soonam. As dear to me as sisters and so painful to say goodbye. We kissed and hugged each other and my last image is of them waving farewell to me on the Tushita steps as we drove away into the night.

Dancing together one last time

And Geeti? My teaching partner, fellow explorer and closest friend in India? I could not have asked for a better person to share my time with. A friend I sincerely hope I will have for years to come.

I will end this final entry with not my own words, but rather the words of shy and creative Govind. Who brought me his stories to read and correct every week, who blushed when he talked to me and who reminded me of myself at his age. Eager for my budding talent to be vindicated. To have someone assure me of the worth in writing. To feel special. I hope I did for him what so many teachers did for me.

Laughing with my Indian family

Story: A Girl

Once there was a city. There lived a girl. Her name was Amy. She went to like so many places and studied there's language and saw there people's life. She had so many powers .She went to here used her powers and change into the beautiful place. She live on the tree of mango because she like mango. She live a happy life.

Thank you India. For showing me more love than I ever could have imagined. For teaching me patience and how to find God in the act of simply breathing.  For showing me how inextricably beauty and suffering are joined. For making me laugh at a wide range of public spelling and grammatical mistakes (Best Hair Saloon, Big Cock Fireworks) and breaking my heart with your scenes of despair and the rawness of poverty. For the rooftop terrace at the Foundation and the many evenings I spent there watching the sun set over the surrounding mountains. The last brightness of the day shining between the ramparts of the Rajput wall dipping over the hills and the village spread out before me. For giving me scenes of sari-clad women sweeping the side of freeways and men bent over old Singer sewing machines in a row, mending clothes day after day. For the sweet taste of gulab jamun and halva and the spiciness of green chilies and the gentle warmth of fresh chipatti on my tongue.

Govind concluded my story with "she live a happy life." What lies before me is something only God can know. But I pray I will lead a happy life. Even more,I pray that conclusion for all the lives of all the children and the people I encountered during my four months in the "disorganized caprice" that is India - that they live a happy life. And that we meet again.

They woke with me at 4:30am to see me off the train. And waved until it finally departed.  

I will leave you, dear readers, with this final piece of advice - always travel. Travel within your heart and your mind and with your body. Go beyond what you think you can do and test the deep waters of your fear. It will always be worth it. Dive in.

Namaskar.

Holi-Day

HOLI.

Otherwise known as the Festival of Colors, this holiday signifies the beginning of the spring season and leaving Winter behind. It also celebrates the characters of an ancient Hindu story that revolves around themes like sacrifice and love and faith.

An explosion of color and noise and laughter. I couldn't have asked for a better place to celebrate this holiday for the first time, or for better company. As the pictures attest, I didn't stand a chance. My kids ambushed me almost immediately. I just had enough time to register that the colors had been put on the table before color was all I could see. And taste. And smell.

I smeared bright color on many a cheek (gently) while the owners of said cheeks took more pleasure in smooshing color all over my face and hair a tad more violently. I think my short height was a key factor leading to my utter surrender. The kids just didn't have to reach very high to get to my face, as they did with some of the others.

To the right - Jitender and Avash fresh from their attack

After the colors ran out, we turned on music and danced traditional Rajasthani songs together in the sun, covered in color and dust and happiness. How wonderful it was to celebrate Holi in the newly-acquired garden area. This large space served as a public toilet and dump for the past 25 years and sits directly across from the Foundation. After much deliberation and conflict between the owner, the Foundation was (finally) able to purchase the space last month. Now, the children and the surrounding community will have a space for events (such as this), but also a garden where the children can grow flowers and vegetables and learn about the joy of Earth. Somewhere safe and clean and theirs. I wish I could be here to see it finished, but it is just another reason why I will have to return soon.

As cliched as it sounds, the day I spent celebrating Holi with the children and with new friends will be a day I will always remember. I chose to forget how much toxic chalk I inhaled. My skin is also tinted a nice shade of pink.Its been six days since Holi. Should I be worried?

Madness

Payal all Pink

Sweet little Arshi getting painted

Troublemakers :)

Post-war snack

Final Weeks and a Trip

You can't see, but I was making faces at two children on a neighboring rooftop

The past month has been extremely hectic and fast and beautiful in its entirety. I have come to know and love Jaipur. I now know MOST of the names of the children at the Foundation. It really isn't my fault that we keep getting new children with increasingly complicated names, I think. I find my body actually responding automatically to the postures my yoga teachers tells me in Sanskrit to do every morning, and, lo and behold, I can actually do the majority of them without pain. I wonder if LA Fitness will send me a personal yoga teacher at my home when I return?

Ah, my return. Something I both dread and anticipate. I shouldn't say dread. But...a part of me doesn't want to go back. It has been hard here. Challenging in so many ways. In some ways that have nothing to do with India. That is just life. But, I'm away from it all. I work nine hour days, but I design my projects and evaluate myself. I enjoy my solitude in the evenings. I don't have to worry about driving my car or paying bills (ugh) or any of it. 

But enough of that. For now. I will write my weepy, reflective email before I leave. In just over two weeks time. 

Returned from a lovely Udaipur weekend trip with Geeti. "Enjoyed" a seven hour train ride on the magical India railway, than meandered around a city often termed the "Venice of India." Drank beer and watched the sunset over a lake. Got caught in an unexpected rainstorm and huddled under a stone gazebo in the city palace, since linen pants and rain don't go well together. Played cards over awful lager with a couple of Australians we met in an organic diner, getting steadily drunker as we discussed Malcom Gladwell and how crazy India is. Fell asleep on my window seat in my haveli hotel to the PAT PAT PAT of women washing clothes in the water underneath me. 

Oh, and I bought a camera. Pictures. Galore. 

Sunset

My view. City Palace and the lake. 

A washing

Geeti, watching the clouds roll in over the water

Rupee Baby

An infant girl was left in a plastic bag in the town temple this week. Such a thing is hardly anything new or specific onto India and is, perhaps, not even a tragic event onto itself (assuming the child is found safely).

The difference in India, of course, is the gender of the infant that is often left.

India, with one of the worst sex ratios in the world - only 914 females to every 1,000 males. An appalling statistic. In that it shows just how many females are missing.

I asked the teachers why they thought that girls were more often left than boys. Priyanka responded in her soft, yet articulate way that when a family has a girl they only see her as a cost. They must pay to raise her, to educate her and, finally, they must provide her a dowry before she is married. And than she leaves the family. She doesn't care for them in their old age, like sons will. Therefore, she is thought of as only an expense.

A fixed rupee sign placed on the face of a girl. The value of a person determined solely on the basis of a gender.

When I asked Priyanka if she thought the gender imbalance would change if dowry's were abolished, she whispered softly "it would lessen."

Driving home from work that day, I was reminded of an opinion piece I wrote my local newspaper when I was 14 years old. After it was published,  my father proudly framed it and the gradually yellowing clipping continues to be displayed on top of the living room piano to this day. In it, I responded to an article written concerning the trial of a girl my age who had left her newborn baby in a dumpster and the child had not survived. She was being tried as a juvenile and facing numerous charges. I don't know what happened to that trial. Likely caught up in my own blossoming teenage life, I never kept track of the story.

For that girl, the issue was not that she had given birth to a girl. It was that she had simply given birth. Here, half a world away in a suburb of one of the largest cities in a "modern" India, daughters are abandoned not because they born. But because of what they are. Not male. But female. And, therefore, valued less.

# INDIA

The most telling photo ever taken.

Dreary Delhi Day

Delhi. Old and New. To the dismay of my friends from Mumbai, I enjoyed Delhi better. The green spaces, the flowers and the wide boulevards appealed to my senses in a way that the madness of Mumbai did not. Although, Delhi has its own madness. Never so obvious as in Old Delhi, which stands as a testament to the timelessness of India. Where else can you be in the middle of a capital city and pass by a sleeping cow? I also had the negative/positive experience of experiencing the city in the rain. The Target loafers I brought with me may never be the same.

Bit gloomy

Unfortunately, as the (few) faithful readers I have may remember, I will have to resort to Pictures with Imagination again. My camera has finally decided it would like to die in India. Perhaps I should give it a proper funeral ceremony in the Ganga when I travel to Benaras. In any case, I was only able to capture a few in Delhi. There is a certain freedom in not clicking photos during a trip - in just experiencing and fully seeing the world unfold. Or so I tell myself as I take mental photos and convince myself that its just as good.

Here we go.

Qtab Minor. Ruins from the 12th century. Eating parathas alone on a bench, trying not to make eye contact with a group of men my age watching me gleefully from their perch atop a window ledge of a standing wall of the old mosque. Finally resigning myself to my fate and taking four photos with each of them. Am graciously thanked. Peering down an old well to find (no surprise) a three-foot pile of  plastic water bottles. Intricate stone carvings of demons and Gods, their faces long since scratched off. A mystery to me.

Me, freezing as stated

Humayans Tomb in the rain. A Moghul tomb standing in the center of Delhi. The marble floors slick under my feet from the rain. Look to the right for a picture of me freezing.

Old Delhi. As seen from a hastily hailed rickshaw conducted by a skinny man with calves of steel. I suspect. I didn't physically check. A dog sleeping in a bright bed from sari scrappings. Electric wires a teeming mass above the streets making wooden telephone poles literally buckle under their weight. Shops selling everything from wedding invitations to fireworks. Me, your freezing and pretending not to be protagonist, sitting in my first legitimate rickshaw and dreaming of soup. And, turning a corner from one narrow street to the next, the dome of a mosque rising above the madness like a sanctuary.

The Mosque. Jaame Masjid. Quickly discovering that the only thing worse than wet, wool socks is taking off wet, wool socks to place my barefeet on sodden sandstone and marble floors, slick with the recent rain and other things I prefer not to think about. Splashing with Geeti and my faithful Delhi friend, Deeraj, as we marvel at the gradual color change of our toes from pink to white to blue. Climbing an increasingly narrow staircase to the top of one of two minarets and pressing our faces to the metal window grill, the only thing separating us from the chaotic world below.

The world below. Chaos. More roofs than can be counted. Streets teeming with people and cars and animals and rickshaws. The red fort in the distance. Palm trees and shopping malls and shacks.

Devouring warm gulab jamun standing up shoulder to shoulder with strangers in a crowded cafe. Syrup dribbling down my chin as I eat with questionably clean fingers.

Shopping in New Delhi

Overpriced tea at the Imperial Hotel, sitting in the same dining room where Gandhiji and Nehru once planned the future of India. Feeling terribly under-dressed.

Eating bagels at midnight in a cafe in the posh, Greenwich-like neighborhood of Hauz Klaus. Recently pushed out of an antique store where I considered buying an elephant saddle. Settled for postcards from 1956 instead.

Push to Pushkar

Descending into the city of Pushkar from Ajmer felt just like driving to Fossil Creek from Campe Verde. With a few notable exceptions. The ecology was the same - cacti and the Indian version of palo verde trees hugged the winding road through mountains that bore the same shapes those in Southern Arizona do. The sky was the same piercing blue as is found in the Southwest. The similarities ended there. Chipped, white steps led to a temple at the summit of the mountain and members from a minority sect were slowly making their steady way to her entrance in worship. Providing a sharp contrast from this quiet, religious practice came in the form of a speaker set atop a pick-up truck, blasting remixed Hindi tracks with startling intensity. Men in turbans and dressed in white danced with sticks on one side of the highway and more trucks passed as we crested over the top, on their way to join the party. Or protest. I was never sure. In India, I have become used to accepting that I will never know even a sliver of truth of a story.

We made our way into Puskar - a famous Hindu pilgrimage site made so due to its holy lake, which is believed to be created by the juice of a lotus flower wielded by Lord Brahma. Descending down the ghat to the water below, I paid 200 rupees to be blessed by a holy man and have my hands dipped in the sacred water of the lake as a puja for my family (and future husband, apparently). And ended up leaving with a bag of blessed sugar and bristled annoyance at being informed that I would be cursed by Brahma for not "donating" enough money. I didn't quite understand what the sugar was for.

The town also features one of the only temples devoted to Brahama.. As I climbed its steep white steps with bare feet (my shoes having been left in Box #14 below), I was greeted with a bright, metallic blue shrine and the piercing eyes of the idol of Brahma. Father's lifted their children so they could ring the brass bell upon entering. I gazed briefly at the colorful temple, more moved by the fact that it looked remarkably good for having been built in the 14th century than by Brahma himself. His figure was draped in marigold garlands and beautiful cloth and the smell of incense mixed freely with the more pungent odor carried by the number of people visiting him that day. I maneuvered my way around the mass of German tourists that sheltered together looking lost in the entryway and tiptoed back down to the bustling street.

A short cut was voted as the fastest way to tea, but ended up taking my companions and I away from the main road and through the housing district of Pushkar's permanent  residents. I caught a cricket ball that had skipped away from a group of boys and was rewarded with a grateful "thank you, auntie." Women scrubbed pots and worked Singer sewing machines in the fading sun. At one store, men gathered black coal in their bare hands and shoved it under an open stove, the fire being kept alive by the use of metal house fans. A fitting image to the phrase "fanning the flames," if you ask me.

Tea was taken at the southern-most ghat leading to the lake and I watched the sunset over the rim of my hot, but faintly murky glass. Tourists accepted marigolds by holy men of questionable authenticity (who took pictures with them for a nominal fee) and a little girl sang a traditional Rajasthani song with two other men, accepting my 100 rupee note with hardly a smile. Tourists took videos of the singers and they demanded payment in indignant voices. At the far end of the lake, away from the tourists, I could just make out a group of men dipping themselves in the water and cupping it over their faces, an ancient ritual in a city that has changed so much and so little.

Discerning between the fake and the authentic here can be difficult. The monetary and the spiritual. I wonder what Puskhar looked like before it became a tourist haven. Surely, there wouldn't be a Pink Floyd Cafe. Does that detract from a true Indian experience? Not sure. What makes something true? Indian? Real? Ah, the pondering of the traveler. I'll leave those questions to more seasoned voyagers than myself to answer.

The moon lit our misguided detour back to the Jaipur highway, which inadvertently lead us through village after village and forced us to inquire for a way back home at two tea shops on the way. Always get a second opinion here. And if leads you in another direction, get a third.