true life planet

A special project on my day off leads me through winding alleys to find clay, then to Daya Dan to spend the afternoon witha very unusual and smart young boy, and finally, a long chat with the head Sister at Daya Dan over cups of hot chai and Christmas cards leads to a small victory….

This last week I had the wonderful opportunity to work with a very special child at Daya Dan, named Mongol.

Mongol is 15 years old, a very small boy with tiny limbs and gnarled hands who is in a wheelchair.

He has a wasting illness.

He has lived with the Sisters since he was 3 years old, along with his sister Meghan, who also has the same wasting away illness.

Mongol and Meghan were found by Mother Theresa’s tomb after a Christmas celebration. Although the room is quite small, it becomes very crowded for the Christmas celebration and the two children were not discovered until after everyone had left.

They were left in small basket.

The Sisters took them in and they lived at the orphanage for small children, Shisu Bhavan, until they were a bit older, when they were both moved to Daya Dan.

Now, brother and sister are still together, just living on different floors, although they spend time together each day.

Mongol has the mind of any 15 year old boy. Perhaps he is even smarter than the average 15 year old–it is hard to say, for although he is a quick learner he only recently(within the last few years, with a change in nuns in charge of the place) began recieving proper lessons and learning difficult subjects.

His prognosis is not good, and it is assumed that he will die there, along with his sister, at an early age.

He, of course, doesn’t know that. He has the goal of becoming a priest–although this would require special dispensation and so may be unlikely.

Sister Jonafa is trying to encourage him to study a great deal so that not only will he pass his exams, but so that he will also be able to teach the other children for as long as he is with us.

Mongol spends so much time studying that he rarely does anything fun and relaxing.

Sister had the idea that Mongol make something to present to the people we are performing the Christmas program for…and we decided on little Jesus’ in mangers.

An appropriate gift from a represnetative of the Sisters of Charity!

But how to go about making them?

I had to first spend several hours finding and buying the supplies. I went to New Market-the large public market nearby- and asked my friend, Martin (the tailor) to help me.

He sent his guys running around trying to find everything from plaster of paris to paintbrushes.

I needed swaddling for the baby Jesus and other supplies, and Martin (being a very good Muslim) promptly provioded me with everything for free. Amazing.

Finding clay proved close to impossible, which was surprising in a city where entire sections of the streets are permanently devoted to making clay effigies of Hindu gods all day and all night!

I decided to make my way to this neighborhood and buy clay from these makers of gods.

I took the metro the next morning to the stop closest to where I thought the neighborhood was. oh, wait a minute..I’m making it sound so easy.

Well, it wasn’t.

You see I was loaded up with big bags of white powder. Big heavy bags of white powder.

And since the terrorist attack in Mumbai, things here have gotten incredibly more interesting insofar as bag checks and guns and armed men running about. Especially after it was discoverewd that the phone card the terrorists used was actually bought here, in this very city.

Therefore, they 9the armed guards–the very armed guards) did not want to let me onto the metro.

In fact I was searched 3 times.

The white powder was poked a few times with sticks, but that was about it.

I was delayed and missed all three trains, each time.

And each time, a metro employee came to my rescue and told them I took the train everyday and worked for the Sisters.

Thank goodness!

Anyway, finding the neighborhood was easy, as it’s near Daya Dan.

Explaining what I wanted was impossible. I attracted a huge crowd of on lookers and an equally huge crowd of dogs (I had a big bundle of samosas for the children in my bag!)

Think about it: a big white woman wearing a a bright orange salwaar suit, carrying 6 bags of stuff and also 60 samosas shows up in a very Hindu neighborhood that doesn’t see any tourists and starts waving her arms around wildly trying to explain that she wants to make baby Jesus statues. It would attract a crowd. Logical.

I decided that the samosas would be better put to use at that moment, and after sharing the bag with the crowd and a few lean dogs and puppies, I was promptly whisked to a tea shed where a tiny man brought me several bags of powder (and the requisite cups of chai as we talked over the price, of course!).

Apparently I was to mix the powder with water and glue, and then it would magically become clay.

At least that’s what I thought he was saying.

The clay and supplies were so heavy that I hired a rickshaw driver to carry them(not me. Just the supplies, which weighed as much as I did. Whoever knew plaster of paris could be so heavy?) and we walked to Daya Dan.

As soon as I walked in, Sister Jonafa sent me up to Mongol, who was waiting in the art room. He was so excited he had this giddiness about him that I have rarely seen. He is normally a very serious boy.

I explained what we were going to do–how the man had said to make the clay–and that we would make little baby Jesus forms out of the clay, let them dry, and then paint them.

We started to mix the clay, water, and glue…would it work? Oh, I was a bit wary, I have to admit, and nervous that if it didn’t I would have some explaining to do to Sister Jonafa (which I was not looking forward to whatsoever).

Mongol thought I would be doing the mixing.

“Oh no”, I said. “We’ll be doing it together.”

“But my hands”, he protested, looking down at his hands like they were useless foriegn objects that had just appeared on his lap.

” Well, it’s true that you can’t do it like me. But you will have to figure out which part you can do. You’ll just have to think creatively.”, I said.

He looked extremely forlorn.

But minutes later, when we had sucessfully mixed the clay together, using teamwork, he was glowing and laughing.

“I did it! I did it!” , he sang out. He was so happy that his happiness filled the room.

I told him that now we were going to knead the clay like dough.

“I can’t do that.”, he sighed.

“You know, Mongol, you can do it. We will do it together.”, I said.

And we did–we kneaded the clay, formed it into a loaf, cut it into pieces, and wrapped them in plastic..all doing every step of the way together.

He was so jubiliant that I figured he’d be ready for the next step.

Making the forms themselves.

He started to tell me that he couldn’t do it, and I interrrupted him.

I showed him how to make the first form, a simple figure of a baby, lying down, arms folded.

Then I sat and watched as Mongol spent the afternoon making 10 of these little figures, using his hands that he had seen as worthless in this task only a short while ago.

It was an amazing afternoon, and we spent it completely quietly, not speaking, just being creative, stopping only to eat chocolate bars and steaming hot milk in metal cups.

The boy was smiling and laughing more than I had seen him do the entire time I had been at Daya Dan.

Sister Jonafa came upstairs and examined his handiwork, and said to me out in the hallway, “Now, when he’s finished you will stay behind and “fix” them, right?”

I told her, no, there would be no “fixing”. The figures were Mongol’s gift, they were perfect as they were. These were not store bought things, they were made with love and such concentration that I thought they were in fact bettert than anything I could have made.

“Yes, you are right.”, she said, after doing the Indian head-wobble several times and thinking it over.

I told her that Mongol had something he wanted to ask her.

She went in to see him.

“What is it, Mongol?”, she said.

“Sister..I would like to have real art classes with Auntie Amy. Please.”, he said.

I stood there, somewhat surprised but happy.

Sister said, ” I will think about it. You have your studies.”

After Mongol left, Sister Jonafa came up to the art room and we sat talking for a long while while we both worked on our own art projects. It was the only time I have ever actually been alone with her, and the only time I have ever had a conversation with her that was deeper and more intimate.

The conversation that afternoon was wonderful–we talked of what her life is like as a nun, what she is hoping for for the children, and we even managed to talk about some of the disipline practices they use which I don’t agree with.

It is a difficult life, being a Sister of Charity. They live like the poor, they have no luxuries, they work daily and they get little time for rest or relaxation. They rarely see family members and they are not encouraged to develop freindships even amongst the Sisters they live with.

They would be lonely at times if they were not so busy. they do not have time for the luxury of loneliness, it seems to me.

Talking to the Sister was good for me…I developed more compassion for her, which I needed, as I have not always found her easy to work with. I actually ended up liking her very much!

I steered the subject to Mongol and the possibility of art lessons.. She didn’t think he should have “proper” art lessons. She wanted him to keep to more formal study.

I told her that I thought a once a week time of learning some sculpture, painting, or more formal art would probably be relaxing and fun for him. Up until now, the only art he has made has been when his assigned volunteer teacher is able to make the time for it, and then it has been simple projects like making cards.

She replied that it had seemed like he was really having fun, that was true.

But she wasn’t going for the art lessons.

“Well, he needs to use his hands. It’s good for him to use them. He also could learn to paint on a canvas holding a paintbrush with his mouth. That would be a god skill for him to have as well.”, I said.

She smiled a big smile.

Mongol starts art lessons next week with me. I’m going to buy some stretched canvases and proper paints so he can learn to paint.

It’s moments like these when you know you are really making a difference. These kind of small moments where you can see the impact you are having and the goodness that is coming from your efforts.

These kind of small victories keep me going in this city that seems to confront me with problems so immense one does not know where to begin.

Working with Mongol is a very nice begining.

gigi

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