true life planet

Life is getting a little more colorful…

I’m sitting here writing this blog wearing a cream colored pair of loose trousers, a tunic that is striped in bright kelly green and orange with blue polka dots, and a bright yellow scarf.

Yeah, I know. It sounds clownish.

But somehow here, it’s not. In fact, it’s totally normal.

During all of my travels so far, one thing I have noticed is how the women are brightly and beautifully dressed. They may live in gray, brown, plain places, filed with trash or in the middle of the jungle, but they are always decorated and dressed beautifully.

It’s finally rubbed off on me.

I arived here wearing ever-so-practical black and sturdy gray, and now I can’t imagine wearing such dull things.

Instead, I want sunflower yellow, bright orange, cobalt blue.

In fact, I haven’t worn boring black or Western clothes since I arrived.

What is interesting to me is that my perception of color has changed.

Before, in my old life, I was attracted to pretty things, but they were mostly pretty dull in color, in pattern, in texture.

Now, I walk the streets, attracted and intimate with it, part of the river of bright saris and salwaar kameez that flow by me.

It’s had me thinking alot about clothes and how they represent different things to different people.

Back at home, clothes are status symbols, people like brands on their behinds and on their chests and their feet.

People like subtle colors, because to them they say “expensive”.

Maybe they are also somehow kind of part of some Puritan mindset.

Here, it’s totally different. Actually it’s different in every third world culture I have had the pleasure to become aquainted with.

The world of women is actually defined by clothes, by colors.

At home, women who spend alot of time on clothes are considered superficial. Here, a woman who does not spend time looking her best is..well, not a woman!

The wearing of saris, salwaar kameez, is actually one of the ways women show rerspect to their traditions, and it’s how they express who they are. The colors tell you their mood, their state of mind.

Even the poorest woman on the street will have several saris of different colors. It tells you who she is, how she defines herself.

Walking around in the salwar suits is such a lovely experience for me. Women will often start conversations with me about what I am wearing and tell me if they like it or not.

It’s a wonderful way to meet other women that I would normally never have the chance to even talk to.

What’s really funny about it all is that they like to give advice.

You see, at first I started out slowly..wearing say, navy blue salwar suits. For me, that was pretty wild.

“Tsk.Tsk.”, Indian women would say on the street, shaking their heads.

“Is it good? Do they like it?”, I am wondering silently to myself.

“You should wear orange.”, they exclaim, and continue by telling me that I apparently can wear any color in the rainbow–why am I restricting myself to boring old navy blue?.

“Okay”, I think to myself. Note to self, try orange.

At home I was in a charchol gray rut. Now, suddenly I am wearing bright orange and feeling perfectly normal.

It helps to have a tailor.

My tailor is named Martin, and he’s Muslim. He’s very devout,and the only time he is not in his tiny shop is during prayer time.

He’s very tiny. Maybe the tiniest man I have ever seen, with a shock of dark hair and a full beard and big black eyes.

I go to visit him and he offers me cold sodas and he says, “Sit, sit.”

I sit there and look at rows and rows of bright saris, beaded saris, two tone linen, endless pashminas…in every color you can imagine.

Some how Martin makes it all look good on me.

Due to his efforts, I have the brightest, most colorful wardrobe of my life..and here’s the thing:

I’m not going back to charchol gray. It’s so dull. I’m going to go home and wear bright yellow and pea green and turquoise and cobalt blue everyday. It’s so cheering, I can’t imagine going back.

The other day, I had to do my laundry. all I were the travel clothes I had arrived here with.

I sat on my bed, wearing boring pale blue and gray and balck, feeling ridiculously practical and dull. I actually had to put a salwar suit on before it was entirely dry to cheer up again.

It’s strange, because I have always been very uncomfortable with wearing a lot of colors from head to toe.

A man I work with told me the other day that he went out to shop for candles.

He was looking for white candles, or gray ones, or blue ones.

All he could find were orange ones, dayglo hot pink ones, neaon green ones.

“It was terrible”, he said, sighing in exasperation.

I told him, “But imagine this city with no color. No dayglor candles in front of the shrines. No women in bright salwars and saris. No hot pink buildings…”

He said, “Ah, that would be beautiful.”

(Perhaps this is because he is from a cold, European country?)

I replied, ” No it would be awful. This city without color would mean all you would see would be the filth, the dirt, the grime in the streets; the moldy decaying buildings; and so on. The colors distract you and they make it beautiful.”

Of course, as I was saying this I was wearing a brilliant blue salwar suit of cobalt blue with pink elephants on it….

gigi

Journal entry from the 18th of November…

Exhausted.

Simply exhausted.

Things at dany Dan have taken a new turn: the head sister has suddenly become very ill and has left several long term volunteers in charge of the upcoming Christmas music concert.

The boys and girls that are able-bodied and are able to participate are all going to be singing and playing instruments fro two hours! They will be performing six times, including at the Motherhouse and for the Governor.

It’s a new experience for the kids, who now have to stand still, follow commands, get up on  stage, sing, remember how to play their instuments and so on.

It’s a new experience for the volunteers working with the kids, too. We’ve all been chosen to help out because we are are all there fro a long time, through Christmas.

It’s a new experience for me to have to work with a group, with no particular leader, trying to accomplish what is an awesome task. We all have to get along and do our best.

The head sister who is ill is a lovely woman but she is also very strict, so one of our biggest challenges has been to get the kids to listen to us and do what they are told without acting disruptively.

I constantly have to remind myself that in spite of the expectation of the Sister for these kids to be “normal” and behave “normally” they are special kids with their own set of issues, who aren’t going to always sing on cue or suddenly stop playing the bongos and wander off stage.

I think the main goal I have is to make sure they have fun, and that whatever they accomplish will be enough,that in fact, it will be perfect.

Working with autistic kids all day is a good way to let go of one’s urges towrds perfection–or at least redefine what perfect is.

My additional task is work with Binoy who is quite fantastic at playing the drums. It is hard for him to stop playing once he has started though! So I have had to come up with creative ways to get him to stop playing between sets consistently.

Binoy and I have become very close. We spend alot of one on one time together as I am his main teacher and volunteer. It is getting to the point that I know what Binoy is going to do before he does. It is amzing how when the children have a special individual volunteer they really bloom, begin paying attention, and become more loving and affectionate.

I know it will be very difficult for me to leave him when I go.

The schedule the volunteers–who are in charge of the Christmas program– must keep from now until Christmas is actually quite strenuous: we all work our normal shifts, from early morning until afternoon; then we take a break and return to practice fro the concert for many hours. We also have to practice with kids individually. Our only days off from now until Xmas are Thursdays.

I have had to take an additional afternoon off after working in the morning or I am too tired to take care of myself.

Off to bed,

gigi

Journal entry from yesterday, when I went to see “George” at Prem Dan…

Today I went to see “George”, the man who I found on the street and took to the hospital several weeks ago.

I went with M., the Irish nurse I became friends with here and who took care of George when I was sick recently. In fact, it’s entirely due to her and her efforts that he got a bed at Prem Dan, Mother Theresa’s home for the chronically ill and very ill of this city.

We hopped in an auto-taxi to get there.

Auto-taxis here are somewhat like tiny golf carts, which they manage to shove 3 people in the back seat and 3 (including the driver) into the front seat. It’s a tight, cramped ride and it’s deliciously dangerous….

The auto-taxi driver needs to be a man with great hand/eye coordination and possibly eyes in the back of his head, too. This is because auto-taxis are small and insignificant compared to the very large trucks and buses that it shares the road. The auto-taxi driver must know when to brake suddenly and when to go for it, zigzagging through traffic at astonishing speeds or puttering along half on the gutter and half on the road.

I try not to look out the sides of the auto-taxi today, as we scurry through the traffic. The one time I look up, it’s to see the headlights of a huge bus suddenly braking for us at the last minute.

I gulp with relief when we get out and are able to walk instead.

The relief is short-lived, however, as now we must cross the street..a large road by a busy bridge.

Crossing the  busy roads here is scary as well.

When I’m alone, I simply wait for a crowd of Indians to cross and then run across with them. For some reason I seem to feel that if I am in a crowd I will not get run over.

Cars here speed along and do not stop. Brakes are used in the last possible moment, sometimes resulting in cars stopping a hair’s length from whatever the car is trying to avoid.

Picture this with bike-carts laden with chickens and plastic tubs; rickshaws being carried by worn out men in raggedy clothes, barefoot; dogs;  three wheeled tiny “trucks” carrying people and packages….

M. and I hold hands to cross the street.

I like this hand-holding thing–it’s something people here do regularly to walk through the streets, cross a road, or just show affection–although this behavior is only between people of the same sex.

I remember when I first came here, how weird it was for me to see men everywhere holding hands, putting hands in each other’s back pockets….to see women, arm in arm, walking down the sidewalk or being carried around in a rickshaw, arms around each other.

Now I quite like it and am used to it, and even find it useful sometimes–such as when crossing busy roads!

M. and I make it across the road. Now we’ve got to cross the bridge on a narrow piece of sidewalk along the side.

Unfortunately(or is it fortunately? Why, yes, I think it’s fortunate after all..) the sidewalk is shared by lots of other people, mostly children, who are using the pavement divider as a toilet.

As we walk by children pooping and peeing, squatting with their brown little behinds to the road and to us, we glance to the left at the enormous slum that fills all of the space one can see.

These children who are using the bridge and pavement as a toilet live in the shacks that border the slum.

The slum is large and seemingly well organized, with roads going through it’s center and well-swept pathways. The sewage filled gutters are out of sight from where we are.

The shacks are made of ramshackle lean-to frames, with tied bits of this or that–mostly old bits of fabric and an occassional piece of  rotten plastic tarp–making up the walls.

Piles of trash are being stirred up by chickens. Women smile at us as they wash clothes, prepare food, or sit with other women talking.

A man wearing a dirty white shirt and a blue and gray checked lungi–a kind of wrap around skirt that gets tied between the legs–squats and smokes a bedi cigarette and stares off into space in an alleyway. He looks eighty years old, but he’s probably not more than forty.

I don’t feel like I can really look at the slum anymore, or it’s inhabitants. It seems like they are trying to live their lives with some degree of grace and privacy, and me peering into their world seems wrong somehow.

So instead I try to look at the cars, listen to the noise, smell the smells, breathe….

The traffic is loud, it’s a roar. How can these people live so close to it and sleep?

The smell is overwhelmingly of feces and urine. It has amazed me, since coming here to this city, how much of the city smells like this. You never get used to it.

It smells of smoke and exhaust and cooking fires, too. I can see big plumes of smoke coming from the slum…probably some kind of home industry is creating all that smoke.

The air is thick and brownish-grey, the blue sky above seems very far away.

We get to the steps that will lead us down to Prem Dan. 

M. knocks on a big blue metal door, and a man opens it and lets us in.

Prem Dan. What a different place this is from what is directly outside.

Outside the slum surrounds the entire area, all the way up to where Prem Dan’s cement walls soar. It’s little shacks and trash and tiny children and swept dirt floors as far as one can see.

Inside, it’s cool and comfortable.

We walk under an overhang and find ourselves in a vast courtyard, filled with plants and benches. On the benches and on the ground are men–sick men, healing men, men with broken legs, men who are mentally ill. They fill the place.

The men all sit in the sun, some talking, some moving slightly, but most seem pretty tranquil and are just doing their own thing.

In the center of the compound are enormous avaries, filled with parakeets and cockatiels, who are singing and squawking.

The courtyard is surrounded by two story cement buildings, some of which are a dormitories, some are kitchens, some are disensaries, some are the quartes for the nuns…the place is huge.

It’s all covered in a fine film of Calcutta dust, even the plants and the birds, and the trees. This dust is everywhere, even in the most beautiful of places.

M. is trying to find a head nun to see if we can  go see George.  We can’t find her, but she gets permission from someone else and we go into the big dormitory George  is in.

(I’ve decided, for the sake of clarity to keep calling him “George”, although his real name is Rahul).

George’s dorm is grand in scale, one huge room painted blue and gray, filled to the brim with ironbeds painted slate blue–not more than 3 feet from one another–that are covered in bright white and purple checked bedspreads. Most of the beds are empty as everyone is out enjoying the sunshine in the courtyard, but about twenty men remain who either don’t want to go out or are too weak to do so.

I scan the men lying on the beds for one that looks like George. I don’t see anyone that looks like the man I remember.

M. is walking towards a bed on one end, and I’m suddenly following her.

She stops in front of a bed holding  a tiny, tiny withered human being, all skin and bones.

Is that actually George? I’m thinking to myself…no!

Yes, it is, actually. They’ve shaved off all of his hair and his beard and it’s made him look tinier and more fragile than he ever did before. His jawbone sticks out like it’s broken, it juts out from his neck and face like it’s not really part of him, like it’s an extra piece.

He opens his eyes. It is him! I would recognize that spark anywhere.

Yet, he seems different to me. His spark looks dimmer, he looks smaller, he’s lying in a ball, curled up in the fetal position.

I watch M. with him.

It moves me to watch her with him.

She seems to have  a special relationship with her, and to me he seems to be responding to her presence, he seems to know her.

 George doesn’t remember me at all. I think he was too out of it that first week.

M. is visibly moved by seeing him and so am I, but somehow watching M. with him  makes it harder.

I can see my anguish on her face and it makes it so very difficult.

M. is trying to give him orange juice that she brought with her, which he doesn’t want.

M. tries to give him water, offering it  by the spoonful, and he doesn’t want that either.

We find out that George’s mouth and throat are full of ulcerations and these are making it difficult to swallow.

We are very worried. M. had been to see George a few days ago and at that time George was refusing all food and liquid.

They had tried to insert a feeding tube into him the other day but he refused it and got combative, so they gave up.

The nun in charge comes over and tells us that George has been eating, but he only eats a tiny amount of food and water. They have been giving him Horlick’s, a sort of drink mix that has some nutrients in it. Horlick’s is the cure all for everything here.

We want him to get a saline drip as he is so dehydrated but they are not set up for that.

I have tears on my face, I realize. I wipe them off with my scarf as the nun continues to speak.

There was talk of giving him a test to see if he had HIV, but the nun is going to put that off for now. She thinks he may just have malnutrition. It may not be worth it to give him the test, anyway, if he’s not going to make it. Resources here are precious and cannot be wasted. Waste here has an entirely different defintion than at home.

George’s brain has been adversely affected by his drinking habits. His brain has shrunk considerably and he has major dementia. He does not always know what is going on and he struggles to communicate. The nun seems to think that he can’t even speak bengali or Hindi, but M. says she has been able to communicate with him.

I think M. is correct and that perhaps the sisters just haven’t connected to him as M. has been able to.

George has an appointment back at the hellish hospital he was previously at this next week.

The nun, M., and I are all standing around talking about whether he should be moved to go that appointment or not.

The nun is very clear and matter of fact.

“If he lives….” she says, “through the week…”

My thoughts trail off and far away. If he lives? Through the week? I can’t face this.

Well, there is no choice but to face it. We’ll just have to take it at a day at a time.

M. is nodding and I can, once agin, see my anguish reflected on her face. She’s thinking the same thoughts I am.

I find myself telling the sister that I  am worried how thin George is, that I don’t remember him being that thin before.

The sister points to a man nearby, who is thinner than George. His upper legs are my wrists. There is no fat, no muscle, his body has literally eaten itself.

The difference between George and this other man is that the other man is happily sitting up is his bed, eating chapati and dal from a tin plate–while George has lost the will to eat and eats nothing, lying in the fetal position covering his head with a blanket during meal times.

The whole time we are there, I’m thinking strange thoughts, like:

Maybe I should have just left him  in the street. Maybe he wanted to die alone. Maybe this process has stolen something from him. What do I know, I’m just a Westerner from an entirely different culture, who am I to say what is right and what is not? What is dignity and what is not?

Crazy thoughts.

I start telling them to M.

M. sets me straight immediately.  M. tells me that he has experienced love and people caring for him. M. tells me he is in a clean place–not left in the street to die.

If he’s going to die, at least he can do it here with some dignity.

Yes, yes, you are right, I know, I say to M.

It’s just this crazy place turns everything up side down in my head.

We make arrangements to visit again on  Thursday.

We leave Prem Dan at dinner-time, and the courtyard is filled with men who are all sitting eating with their hands from their tin plates filled with dal and chapiti. Some smile at us, but most just concentrate on eating.

We walk out into the world again, the real Calcutta world outside the blue metal door, and are immediately surrounded by tiny beautiful children from the slum.

They are holding our hands, they are playing with tiny wooden tops on the pavement, the are covered in bright dirty clothes and headscarves and they are all smiling. One is wearing a bright pink shirt covered in little red strawberries and oranges.

We walk back up to the bridge and begin making our way past the slum, the feces, the traffic.

The air seemed cleaner somehow in Prem Dan.

We suddenly walk through a bunch of children and they are holding our hands, touching our clothes, grabbing the end of my long scarf.

They are all asking for money.

A man wearing a sparkling white shirt and beige trousers walking near us says something and they scurry away.

A young man, no more than twelve, sits on the cement divider, a few feet away from a pile of feces. He holds a tiny grey skinned baby with little limbs and it’s wearing a beautiful yellow and green dress. He gestures for money, too.

Keep walking. That will change nothing, I tell myself. Just keep walking.

M. and I are talking about George’s condition. We decide–even if he makes it–taking him to the hospital, even if only for a checkup or whatever it is for–would be such a shock to the man it would be unwise. He would no doubt be very afraid and disoriented and it would only make matters worse.

That’s if he survives, if he is able to be self aware enough that he has something to live for.

Prem Dan would no doubt keep him there for a long time and then send him to another home for those who have dementia and are mentally ill.

But perhaps he has lost his will to live. Who can blame him? He can’t support his family..he has a wife and three children somewhere in a slum outside of the city, who he hasn’t seen for a long time. He can’t work.

On the other hand, one thing I’ve learned here is that every human life has value. We say stuff like that at home but we don’t really mean it. We think we mean it, but we don’t. We still think we are better than other people, somehow or other.

So, to me, George is no different than someone at home in a bad desperate situation. A homeless drunk man who has lost touch with his family. A beggar woman who begs outside the supermartket to support her boyfriend’s drug habit. A teenager who runs away from home and lives in an abandoned building and does drugs all day.

One society’s social problems are actually no diffeent than another’s. They look different on the outisde, but on the inside they all come from the same thing: a human being who is trying to survive and gets discouraged.

The difference here is that there is so much need, and so few possible resources, that when someone gets discouraged they literally can’t survive and they starve to death.

M. and I cram ourselves into another auto -taxi and somehow make it back to our hotel.

I go to my room and lie there in the dark and think of nothing  and sleep.

I wake up and realize that in spite of the fact everything points to me not doing so, I have fallen for this place.

I’ve fallen for it. All the horribleness and all of the joyful moments, all sloshing together in my brain day in and day out have caused some kind of miracle to happen in my brain chemistry.

I’m falling for Calcutta.

I’m lying in my room and thinking that perhaps I am going insane. How can I love a place that was hell last week? That cares nothing for the man dying on the street?

Well, that’s for another entry.

In the meantime, I am so grateful to George, who no matter whether he lives or dies, he will never understand what a teacher he has been to me these past few weeks. I have learned more about myself from this experience than I could have learned in several years at home.

It’s self awareness on speed dial.

gigi

Everything is coming up roses…

 Well, not exactly roses, but let’s just say things have much improved.

I went out yesterday and had a lovely day..went out for a proper cup of coffee at a fancy place and then watched the new James Bond film. I don’t even like james Bond movies, but who cares? I just needed not to think so hard for awhile.

The old movie theatre here is marvelous and I felt like I was lost in time. Except for the Bollywood film previews and the crowd yelling out now and again, it was almost like being in an old theatre at home.

At the intermission, they actually stopped the film and a man walked around passing out little cups of coffee and baggies of potato chips and popcorn. It was all so formal!

After the film, a friend and I decided to go to the famous Atrium in the Park Hotel–the nicest place to eat here in the city.

They happened to be serving some sort of brunch since it was Sunday and it came with  a menu as long as my arm and was so well priced compared to ordering things individually that we decided to have the brunch.

It was a wildly extravagant meal–11 courses, a person who stood there to serve our food and put our napkins on our laps..and in was ridiculously cheap.

Meanwhile, sushi chefs prepared everything we wanted as we watched and listened to strange American music hits from the eighties and drank all of alcohol provided.

We needed the luxury though–she had been helping me with George when I got really sick and she was just as worn down as I was.

We giggled like school girls over the menu and thought that we’d get 5 courses out of the 11 on the list. We were wrong. They brought out all of them. It took us hours to eat it all and I think we got a little tipsy, too. It was pretty funny.

When I got home from the amazing meal I was suddenly depressed at the sight of the hotel room I was calling home.

I decided to find a new hotel room.

I had decided this before, but somehow the city is just so..overwhelming..that it makes it hard for me to make proper solid decisions sometimes.

Anyway, I realized that although my bathroom was decent in my current room at Hotel Neelam.. most bathrooms here are disgusting beyond belief. I knew I’d have to give that up if I wanted to change rooms and hotels.

But I knew I’d be trading that in for a little more sense of community. My problem has been that although I wanted to be on my own here, I didn’t actually want to be alone most of the time. Or rahter, I wanted to be alone but near people. Sounds weird but it works for me when I am traveling.

And unless one is in a hotel with other long term people, it’s hard to have that sense of community.

Unfortunately, the Hotel Neelam, although nice and well staffed, has few foreigners staying there. So, it’s been a little isolating.

I think when I was sick this was compounded, as none of the other guests in my hotel looked in on me to see how I was except a German couple who were only there for a day.

Today I wandered around and looked at a few places.

And this time–compared to the last time I tried to find a diffeent hotel, which proved fruitless and left me disgusted–I found a great room at the Modern Lodge on Sudder street.

Yes, it’s in the center of the tourist hub, but it’s on the third floor and has nice views of the back streets.

It’s also not one room, but two rooms. It’s complete luxury, really. I’ve got FOUR single beds (I’ve scooted two together to use as a doble bed in one room, while in the other room, the other two will serve as couches)! An old wardrobe, small little tables, and yes, a very disgusting bathroom.

I’m thinking of the bathroom more as a place where a faucet is located than an actual bathroom. Makes it easier to go in there.

As for the rooms, they are both white with hot pink trim and loads of shuttered windows with bright green shutters. I’m going to use one room as a bedroom and the other as a workspace, to write and possibly paint or draw.

It’s a very inspiring space.

Best of all, there’s no tv, which I was using as a poor escape these last few weeks at my old hotel. Now I can read and write and have the space to do it in. I think this new living situation will conserably brighten my outlook on being here.

Best of all, it’s cheaper than I was paying before!

And the new hotel has many long term travelers staying there..with out a complete party scene..so I can have community just by walking through the hallways and meeting my neighbors. I’m looking forward to that alot.

Also feeling good about returning to Dany Dan–I returned to work today. I missed the boys and they missed me so much. I got a little tired out so I am only working a half week this week so that I don’t overdo it–I’m not twenty years old anymore!

Binoy especially missed me and gave me the biggest hug when I walked in the door. It was amazing.

The head nun is busy getting descriptions together of five of the austic boys who need the most help. She’s really into the idea of getting them mateials that help them communicate and make their lives easier. It’s very exciting that she is interested in the possiblity of change.

As for George, good news: He was accepted at Prem Dan. I’ll go visit him tomarrow and tell you how he is doing sometime this week. He is aware now and no longer talking gibberish. He apparently has a wife and three childen living in a suburb of the city but he hasn’t seen them in a long time. Oh..and his name isn’t george. It’s something like Rajul, I think.

I’m sure his story is the same stoy as for thousands of men who have come to this place in hopes of earning a living and somehow ended up in the gutter.

He’s quite ill with malaria but there is hope for recovery. As he is at Prem dan, they will keep him until he is fully better.

What a miracle it is that he is there and that I am well and that life is good again.

More later on Prem Dan, going to visit it tomarrow and I will write up a description of the experience for you…

I’m also going to write about the International Film Festival that is going on this week here–it’s not all Bollywood films either. They show 5 International films a day and they are all artsy films. I’m going to see several on my next day off from work….

Hope this entry was not too boring. Nothing dramatic to tell, for once! Just feeling better, and that’s such a good feeling.

gigi

Although I don’t have morethan a few minutes, I’ve decided to spend them giving you all a brief update since yesterday..

I spent the night dreaming horrible dreams, scenes from the hospital. I’ve been dreaming of these horrors every night since a week ago–how can one not? It’s been impossible to process it all while I am actually awake.

I awoke feeling awful. Again. Not just tired, but physically sick. It seems like I have been nauseated for about 3 days. I think–and so do my freinds here–that it is mental more than physical.

I managed to eat some toast for breakfast and went to work. I was so tired by the time I got there I wondered how I would make it through the afternoon.

I didn’t. i just didn’t have the energy. I made it until about 11 am and then the urge to throw up became so strong I had to leave and go back home. There are many things we deal with at Dany Dan–kids covered in their feces, trying to feed kids rice and dal, and so forth that would nauseate one normally–let a;lone on a weak stomach.

I barely made it home. I went across the street, hoping for a few emails of support and or understanding. but….there was only one, from my boyfriend, very kindly advising me to not over do things and take care of myself.

Hey, I’m trying. I am.

I sent a friend to the hospital today in my stead. She is a nurse, so she can handle it better (she says). She’s going to meet me in about an hour and give me an update so hopefully..I will find out that there has been some improvement.

I’m going to tell her that I have spoken to my Indian friend, and he has offered to go everyday so that we won’t have to.

It’s not that I don’t want to help the sick man (we’ve named him George).

It’s that I can’t.

It’s hurting me mentally and otherwise to even go to that hellish place.

I have never–ever–been in a place where human life had such little value.

And for those of you who think I have been stupid and dangerous in trying to help George–all I can say is, you aren’t here. You have no idea what this place is like.

Even walking to work, one is exposed to God knows what here. It is a filthy place, overpopulated, with lots of sick and dying people. It’s the norm.

Still, it shocks me everyday. I hope I never “get used to it” as I have heard other volunteers say happens.

But I do want to just feel better mentally and physically. IO am overwhelmed, and when i am overwhelmed, I can’t do as good of a job with the kids at Dany Dan–and that is something I have commited to.

So, please, no lectures about my stupidity. (If you were leaning that way) this is a fourth world country, it is not a first world country. Everything is different here.

Send me your positive thoughts. I need them.

gigi

I haven’t written in awhile. I haven’t had the time, energy, or inclination. Here’s a quick entry that will have to fill in the blanks over the last week until I have time to post from my journal on Thursday…

Today I am sick. Not physically sick, more emtionally sick, maybe even mentally sick. Of course, this sickness has physically affected me too, and I find myself somewhat unsteady and unable to handle much beyond the bare minimum.

It all started about a week ago.

I had been walking down the same street every single day from my hotel to the Blue Sky Cafe, where I generally take all my meals.

Everyday, I passed this tiny man on the sidewalk. He was always lying there, on his side, on the pavement. He seemed coherent but ill.

A week ago he disappeared. I did not see him for about a day.

I cannot tell you why, but his face would not leave my head. I could not get him out of my mind, I can’t say why.

Then, one night as I was walking home, he re-appeared, this time on the opposite side of the street. He was naked and seemed near death.

Interestingly (and somewhat unusually) he had attracted a group of passerby, who were all standing around him. What was even more interesting was that the crowd was all Indian. Everyone was talking about what should be done and if any action should be taken.

I found this different–the Indians trying to help the man–not because Indian people do not help others (they do! constantly in this city) but that so many people were coming together, trying to come up with a solution.

I was standing there, just watching, when a man named Vijay started speaking to me in English about what to do.

Somehow, the crowd dissapated and it’s just me, Vijay, his shop assistant, a Muslim man who just came out of the mosque, and a Jain man wearing a face mask standing by the naked man.

The naked man is having some sort of seizure. I feel for his pulse, it’s very weak. He is very hot, he’s burning up.

It’s past midnight now, and nothing has been decided. No one wants to decide anything. Deciding anything in this city is hard. Helping anyone is harder. Nothing ever turns out properly and the politics and red tape mean that most people find it easier to let people die on the street than to bribe everyone to actually get something done. The bribes are endless.The rules, the red tape it’s endless too…

We somehow get him into a cab. We being me, the naked street person (now wrapped in a blanket) and the Hindu shopkeeper and his assistant; the Jain man; and the Muslim man. You know, it is not even occuring to me that I am suddenly in a cab with a bunch of men that I do not know. We are all thinking not about how unusual it is that I am there, but instead, how we are going to help this poor man.

He seems to be dying in the back seat.

We take him to place after place. No one will take him.

We finally try the police station, but they say they will just put him back out on the street in an hour.

We file out to the taxi from the station and get back into the cab.

Vijay, the shopkeeper, turns to me and says, ” I have never helped anyone off the street before. This is the first time I have tried. We must think of what to do. What do you suggest?”

I said, ” I think we should pray. Let’s pray that the next hospital we take him to will take him.”

And we all sit there praying–the Hindus, the Muslim, the Jain man, me…it’s an amazing experience. Everyone takes a turn and says a prayer aloud. If only things like that happened more often.

We drive to the last hospital on the list. We get out and leave the sick man in the cab, going inside to admissions. The scene in the courtyard, in the hallways, in the admissions room, is the worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

I cannot even describe it right now without throwing up. So I won’t.

Vijay pays everyone off, and somehow, we get the sick man a pallet on the floor in a hallway.

The pallet in dirty–filthy, actually, crawling with lice and cockroaches. Rats and cats run around, and the rats are bigger than the cats. A dead man in uncovered right next to us in the hall, not four feet from our sick man.

And that was last Monday.

I have been going to this hell everyday now, visiting this sick man and trying to get him the things he needs to improve. After much scene-making, and some bakeesh-paying, we have managed to get his an actual bed, some medicines, a saline drip, and so on.

He has slightly improved.

I have gotten to the point that I am unable to face this ” hospital” alone, and have asked friends and other Mother Theresa volunteers to accompany me there, as it overwhelms me. I have never seen that kind of suffering in my life.

I am unable to help any of them but this one single man. I can’t help anyone but him. If I help one of the others, I will have to help them all. And I can’t.

Everytime I go there, wearing a headscarf to protect my hair from lice, a face mask, and rubber gloves, I am surrounded by people all staring at me, at the Westerner who brought this man to the hospital. people touch their foreheads which means “thankyou”. My friend Vijay says they have never seen a Westerner do something like that, care like that.

What do I think about it? I have no idea. I am on automatic, frankly.

I went  there today with a friend who is a nurse and she helped alot, as I have been so emotionally worn out from it all that I am practically useless. Everytime I leave the place I throw up from the scene itself.

I have hardly slept all week.

Tomarrow, several MT volunteers and I are going to see if we can find a bed for him at Prem Dan, Mother Theresa’s home for the severely ill. If I can’t find a bed for him there, I have decided that I have to lessen my visits for my own well being.

I’ll write about it all more in detail from my journal entries on Thursday.

In the meantime, thank goodness I have the boys at Dany Dan. They are a real joy for me in this place.

gigi

I’ve been wanting to describe for my readers what it’s like to walk down the street–say, a fifteen minute walk down my street to the bakery I go to everyday–so that they can get a sense of what this place is like on a real, intimate level.  What follows is my attempt…

Imagine it’s lightly raining.

It’s not raining hard–it’s not even sprinkling–but its a misty, light rain. It’s almost as if someone is occassionally shaking their hands off at you and the water droplets are landing on you.

You’ve left your hotel, you are walking down the street.

You have to pay attention to where you are going–there are many things you must avoid stepping in, such as fresh spittle mixed with red betel-juice; feces; fetid food;trash;broken manholes; and gutters full of putrifying urine and a cloudy film which you imagine to be typhoid or cholera.

You start our walking down the narrow sidewalk as it seems safer than the street and it’s crazy traffic–but the sidewalk proves impossible, as it’s crowded with people actually camping out on it and people trying to do business.

You’re trying to get out to the street but you are distracted by the sights on this narrow strip of sidewalk. On just this one tiny piece of concrete real estate, you see:

A man, wearing only a checkered gray and blue cloth around his middle, like a diaper, sitting on a front step and chipping off the step he is sitting on using only a blunt hammer;

A woman, beautifully dressed, with gold jewelry, lying on a cardboard pallet, holding a new born infant, her other child calling out “Auntie, auntie” at you and motioning that they are hungry;

Two beautifully dressed women walk by, one is wearing a sari of radiant yellow silk, her hair perfectly oiled, her makeup carefully applied. Both are by your standards enormously fat, but here in India, in Calcutta, they are considered desirable and healthy;

A Muslim man, wearing an immaculate white skullcap and a blue long tunic that seems to change color to lavender in the light, beatinga stack of neatly arranged old Time magazines with a bunch of sticks–possibly to get the street dust off ?;

A man busily working at an impromtu “counter” which looks to have been hastily made from found bits of this and that, fixing–or is he taking apart?– cell phones and putting them back together again, while a line of young men wait;

A man, crawling on the sidewalk, legs bent in a strange contortion, banging a metal bowl for change. He grabs your leg, he has a strong grip, he won’t let go..he’s wailing now.

You’re cursing yourself, you’ve promised not to give money on the street, yet..he is suffering, he has no place to go…you somehow get the strength to not give him anything, you pry his fingers loose, you keep walking.

You know that if yu give him something, you will give to others..you know that it will not help allieviate anything but your guilt, so you keep walking.

You switch over to walking in the street for awhile.

The street is awful to walk in–it is, in fact, quite dangerous. People are hit by cars all the time, as brakes do not seem to be used here.

What are used here are horns. Everyone is blaring their horn at you, at everyone else, at rickshaws, at dogs, and the noise is deafening.

You’re walking as close as you can to the side of the road, to the parked cabs that line the left hand side of the street, but still, sometimes you must stand sideways and pull your feet in so they are not run over, the traffic comes by so close to you.

People are walking in the street along with you. Men don’t step out of the way for you, they don’t move aside–it is you who must move aside for them, as you are a woman.

Men also hold hands if they are walking together–no, they aren’t gay!–they just do that here. You see, men don’t pick their wives, they are chosen for them. They do not always feel close to them. They do choose their male friends, though, and so this peculiar custom of hand holding is just a way of demonstating their friendship.

You’re sharing the road with rickshaw wallahs and bicycles, too.

The rickshaw wallahs, if they see you, ring a tiny bell in their fingers–that’s their way of getting your attention, telling you you can get a ride. When you first came here, you’d look their way, start a conversation, you were distracted by their thin bodies, their shoeless feet, their sunken cheeks.

Now you give them the “namaste” sign (palms folded together, accompanied by a little bow) and nod your head “no”. You don’t need a ride–and they already know that you are the tourist who pays Palik, the rickshaw driver down the road, when you want a ride from a rickshaw.

The rickshaw drivers that are full of passengers are generally carrying fat–or plump–Indian women, well dressed and carrying packages; schoolchildren; or packages.

You’re looking at those tiny men carry those enormous women around when you almost get run over by a bike carrying over one hundred chickens, all white, hanging upsidedown, from the handlebars and bike frame. The chickens are alive but not moving, they are numb, on the way to the chicken market.

It’s back to the side walk, now. The street has become to busy to walk in.

Is it raining still? What just splashed on your face? No, that’s not rain, it’s water..someones dumping water from one of the rotting apartment complexs above you. Well, let’s hope it’s water. Don’t think about it.

Here’s a man pooping on the street, right in the gutter. Don’t look.

Here’s a dog, walking along as if it knows exactly where it’s going..a orange-y brown dog, all muscle, navigating its way through the traffic.

A man walks by, a platter of candy on his head, offering you to buy some. It’s white colored and sticky and seems to be incredibly white in the middle of all this dust and grime. It’s pristine.

A tiny woman–or is it a child–scurries by, absolutley filthy, carrying a baby whose legs seem to have been broken. She’s asking you for money, you give her nothing.

The shops have spotted you now, and the owners have all run out to pester you…

“Have a look, have a look”, one says.

“Buy something, Buy something”, another says.

“No looky charge, Madam. Silk, Silk.” says the man selling overpriced saris.

Keep walking. The last bit is the hardest, that last bit where you have to walk through a bit of street that seems to have been designated as a neighborhood toilet.

Ah, the smell is fouler than it was yesterday. You had thought the rain would have cleaned it up a bit. It didn’t.

Cover your mouth with your scarf, keep walking. God, it’s so bad you could pass out. Be careful where you step now, there’s urine everywhere, there’s feces everywhere.

A woman is doing her washing near it.

 Another woman is preparing a meal. She is preparing some sort of reddish curry looking thing and chopping up some sort of whitish meat–is it a cow’s stomach?–right in the gutter, carefully putting the scraps into the cooking pot.

 Two dead rats are being eaten by crows.

Another rat scurries by a man who seems to be a holy man, entirely naked, sitting under a tiny shrine of sorts near all the refuse and urine filled gutter.He is surrounded by marigold and jasmine flowers that have all been strung together.

Jasmine and urine blend together. The smell is overwhelming. Keep walking, you are almost there, almost to the bakery.

Made it. You’re by the bookstores now. You glance up–strange how one never looks up in this city, one is so busy looking down to make sure one isn’t stepping in anything gross..

Looking up, you notice how all the buildings are falling apart. What did this place look like when the British were here? It looks as though now one has maintained anything since they left. It’s all rotting, covered in mildew and mold and falling in on itself–yet people live in those buildings.

The bookstores’ owners have seen you, they are trying to pull you in. But you’re not interested–a few days ago you discovered the famous Oxford bookstore, only blocks away, that is clean, cheap, and has any book you want without dealing with bargaining. You keep walking.

Did I mention everyone is staring at you? Yes, everyone. Some people laugh, some people point, others attempt tiny conversations. You haven’t had a scrap of privacy since you closed the door of your hotel room and walked out onto the street. You’re an object of curiousity.

Just as the car exhaust is realis really beginning to hurt your chest, and that annoying little pollution cough is starting up again, you’re at the front door of Kathleen’s, the bakery you love.

A armed guard opens the door for you and you are greeted with a blast of air conditioning.

 The place is full of plump Indians, all standing around eating meat turnovers and iced little cakes. There are no chairs-one stands and eats one cake after another.

You get a few hot pastries, filled with vegetables, heated up and put in a box. Then you choose an iced cake–it all tastes like wedding cake, but who cares? It’s comforting, it’s sweet, and it’s freshly made everyday, so you won’t get sick (you hope). You choose strawberry cake today.

“Yes, yes, memsahib. We see you lucky tomarrow?”, says one of the owners, a man wearing a spotless white punjabi.

“Tomarrow, yes.”, you say, and turn around again, walking back through the streets to your hotel, where once you are in your room you will wash your face, hands, feet with disinfectant and drink some cold water to overcome your nausea so you can eat your pastries and cake.

You sit down at the little table in your room just as the Mosque’s call to prayer begins. The loudspeakers seem louder today. It’s so loud yo can think of nothing else, so you just listen and stare out the window, watching the rain come down on plastic tarps and rickshaws and people.

Life looks misty and fuzzy and you can’t concentrate.

Finally, the call to prayer ends, the rain dies down for a moment, and you begin to eat your melting strawberry cake, while pondering if you will actually be able to remember everything you are seeing here in India.

You won’t. It’s still fuzzy and muddled and mixed up, one scene blending into another.

And that’s only fifteen minutes in Calcutta.

gigi

I’ve got so much to write about that I doubt I will be able to get it all onto the blog, but I’m going to attempt to at the very least write a few choice bits. Here goes…

My stomach is better. Or should I say, the extreme pain is gone when I eat anything. Unfortunately, my bowels are far behind my stomach. They just can’t seem to acclimate to this place. I may have to accept that this may be my state of health the entire time I am here.

The main advantage to being under the weather this week was that I actually went out and did stuff–looked around my neighborhood and the city a bit more and actually had the energy level to socialize a tiny bit.

As usual, I’m finding it hard to hang out with the backpackers and take part in the backpacker scene. I’ve found this to be the case all over the world, wherever I have been. Sometimes–on a rare occassion–backpackers surprise me, but for the most part I find them a little embarrassing.

I’m probably going to get nasty comments on the blog now. Oh well.

But back to why I find backpackers embarrassing. Look, it’s just that they are so completely inappropriate sometimes, walking around with navels showing and partying. They make Westerners look bad, and unfortunately they don’t make a lot of attempts to blend in.

It’s strange..it’s as if they value Indian culture and it’s more Eastern approach to life more than the Western ways of their own country, at least spiritually anyway. But then they show absolutely no respect for the societal expectations that come along with that. At that point, they seem to revel in being Western and all the exceptional priveleges they get because they are, well, white.

But not all of them. I’ve befriended a few lately who I think are lovely people, and they are respectful of this culture, too.

Mostly though, as usual I find myself preferring companions who are in one of three categories: older travelers, say over 60 years old; travelers who are not actually traveling, but have a specific purpose, such as long term volunteering; and locals.

Locals here are a bit tricky. There are many social codes to follow here, so being friends with Indian men is absolutely out of the question. (Although many Western women seem to break this code and think the men actually want to be friends with them, it almost always leads to sex. Western women are thought of in one way only here. I have heard some very sad stories of late on this subject.)

This leaves Indian women as possible friends, but then again as I am a Westerner, this too comes with expectations. As I am not hanging out with wealthy people, any poorer person befriended would, of course, have expectations which would be understandable under the circumstances. Favors would be required at some point, as that is the basis for how people get by in this place.

So, outside of the Indian women I work with at work, making friends with Indian women is out of the question. I just don’t want to get that involved. I already have that kind of reciprocal relationship set up with plenty of people in Panama amongst the Ngobe, and that’s about all I can handle.

I have managed to meet several people who are volunteering long term here and befriended them. Long term volunteers are always more interesting–they aren’t going back home to their desk job in two weeks, they are more interested in the culture, and they tend to be more spiritually inclined.

You simply have to have some kind of spiritual belief to survive here if you are going to be here for more than a few weeks.

You need it to get through not just your workday, but all of the moments that come up unexpectedly and would otherwise cause you to burst into tears at the state of humanity.

You need some kind of spiritual life here to survive, otherwise this place has no continuity, no shape…it’s just an endless parade of confusion and darkness.

This place continually brings me to my knees.

Literally.

I am not kidding.

I have prayed here more than any place or at any other time in my life.

I have prayed for myself, because I was so numbed out by all the visually disturbing things around me.

I have prayed for whatever the nature of Christianity is–that it grow, develop, change into however it was to start with originally instead of what corrupt people continually try to make it–another excuse, another road to get more power.

I have prayed for people I do not know but who I have seen in the street, just that they receive some comfort–anything–to make their suffering a little bit easier.

I have prayed for  the people back at home, that they would come to this place just once, even if for a week, because it is the kind of place that changes you so dramatically, so rapidly, that you can’t go back to who you once were. And so many people I know would benefit from the experience of being in a place like this–it would take them out of their small concerns and into what it means to be more of a citizen of the world.

So I’d have to say, out of all the places I have been, this place has basicaly made me rely on God.

God is my main companion here.

God is such a no-no. God is such a dirty word in our culture. Generally the people who use this word don’t mean the God I am talking about. They mean Power. It’s just another way of one person trying to be powerful over another. Even the state of disbelief is used to have power over another.

When we hear the word “God”, we immediately make it mean something. Usually that something has absolutely nothing to do with what God is, but more with who we are and what makes us feel powerless or powerful.

The God I’m talking about is totally different. This God is just as revolted and probably discouraged as we are about the state of humanity. This God is really, actually love.

It’s bad to discuss God on your blog, I’ve been told. Why?

Look, I’ll tell all of you that I am here in what very well may be one of the darkest places on Earth, and if I didn’t have God–or some spiritual belief–I do believe I wouldn’t make it out of this place alive.

I’d die of sadness–or at least, some part of me would.

God seems to be the only one I can have a conversation with who understands the darkness I am looking at and can somehow inspire me to keep moving along in a positive direction. Otherwise, I do believe I’d splinter into a million pieces and disappear.

I came here thinking that I would discover the wonderful Bengali culture as well as be of some help in what I knew was a desperate place. And yes, I have found the Bengali culture to be interesting, but it doesn’t actually distract me too much from the larger picture here of poverty.

The poverty here–it’s different, somehow. The darkness here–it’s different, too.

It’s all out in the open.

At home we have horrors, too–but we keep them locked away, out of sight.

Here, the kid gets beat on the street right in front of you.

Maybe because it’s so out in the open is why I find the heaviness of this place so oppressive and why no matter what I think about, all my thoughts run back to these dark places and scenes I have seen on the streets.

I suppose, too, that that’s why I find myself praying so much in this place.

A new friend recently told me, after hearing some of the things I had seen that day on one of my walks around this city, “That you have to look for the joy here, because it’s harder to find than all the evil.”

I do see alot of joyful moments–street children playing a game of impromtu cricket; a man laughing, holding a wiggling puppy; a group of beautifully dressed women in candy colored saris dancing…but I have to say that I think not only is the dark side of life here harder to not look at, it’s kind of what I came to look at.

A book I am reading at the moment started out with a fascinating question:

‘People always ask: why is there evil in the world?, when perhaps the more important question is: why is there good in the world?’

It then goes into this theme on a much deeper level and examines why some people strive to be good and do good, while others lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate. I, just like everyone else, have had plenty of people in my life who have lied, or manipulated, or just done things that were completely selfserving.

This book’s point of view is that when we do these kinds of things–lie, cheat, steal, manipulate–even if it’s to protect ourselves–that this contributes to the evil of the world. That it even, in a sense, helps it grow. That it sustains it.

It’s a fascinating book, and it’s kind of reversed some of my thinking. I remember just a few weeks ago I was lamenting on this blog why there was so much darkness here and in the world at large.

Now, I’m thinking in reverse: why are there people who have a desire to put themselves into the midst of this gloom and do something about it? What makes people want to do good things? What makes someone good, or have the desire to be good, while someone else lacks that desire? Why do some people feel attracted to “helping professions”, for example, while others feel attracted to “hurting professions”?

I’m reading another excellent book right now that has a great deal to say on this very subject–but in a more down-to-earth, tangible way– and I would suggest you all go out and read it.

It’s called “Banker To The Poor, The Story of the Grameen Bank” and it’s the story of Muhammad Yunnus, who set up the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to lend small sums of money to the poorest of the poor. You’ve no doubt heard of him–he won the Nobel Peace prize in 2006.

His book has dispelled many myths I was carrying around that were taught to me in my Western culture about the poor, the poor’s capacity to take ownership in what happens to them, and how one can change the system by starting with the havenots.

It also talks about how desperate poverty makes people do terrible, dark, and even evil things.

It’s a brilliant book and a hopeful book, and I think the very sort of book that people should read.

On the first page is a wonderfully brilliant quote:

” All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

–Edmond Burke

Ah, this trip brings me to tears everyday when I think of who I was, just a year ago, living my small life, and who I am now, trying to live fully in a world that seems to challenge me to be 100 times the woman I once was.

gigi

The rat hole has been repaired in my room.

I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment that due to my efforts it actually was patched up.

You see, here in India everything is falling apart. Everything is full of rat holes. Rats are a normal part of life, and some tourist complaining about a rat hole in her room rarely manages to get anything actually done about it.

Up until two days ago, the rat hole was just an excuse for the Indian men who work at my hotel to come into my room. Sometimes they would later knock on the door and offer to fix the rat hole in secret for a bribe.

The whole thing was irritating me. I just wanted it fixed.

I had begun sleeping with the light on because it seemed to keep the rat in the bathroom. Everytime I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom I had to make a lot of noise and stomp around alot to get it to go back into it’s hole.

It seemed to have no fear.

One morning I woke up so exhausted and grumpy that I resolved that I would have to complain and pester them until they actually fixed it that very day.

Luckily for me, when I walked downstairs to the front hall, I was met by a beautiful old frail woman and her Sikh husband in a huge turban.

“How are you liking your stay here?”, the turbaned man asked me.

” I’m not.”, I replied. ” I have a huge rat living in my room and they won’t fix the hole it’s using to come in and out of the room.”

He laughed, hands on his belly and translated for his frail wife who immediately whispered something at him in return.

“I used to own this hotel.”, he said. “I sold it last year, to another Sikh, a good Sikh.”

He then asked me if I wanted a ride to anywhere. and I told him I wanted to go just a few blocks…I hopped in their enormous SUV and sat in the back with his wife a a bunch of giggling matrons who marveled at the size of my feet and complemented me on my salwaar kameez outfit.

” I would not normally give a Westerner a ride, but my wife says you are a good woman, a respectable woman, as you are wearing modest convienent attire.”, he says from the front seat, as he ploughs th enormous SUV through the streets, almost running over people, dogs, and cart-pullers.

I think to myself that Indians have a very strange way of speaking the English language. Who uses the words, “modest convienent attire”? It reminds me of my friend’s hotel, who promised “homely comfort” on their welcome sign, and when she came home to find her bathroom full of overfloing sewage the manager told her, “But ma’am, we aim to fill you and promise you homely comfort.” !!

My driver continues, “You are new to India. You do not understand how things are done. You must take the problem to the top man. You cannot talk about the problem with the middle man or the lowest man. The lowest man will do nothing, as he cannot. The middle man ill pretend to do something but will never complete what he has started. Only the top man will fix your problem.”

“That’s a problem in itself. ” , I reply. ” The top man–the owner–never seems to be there.”

He tells me that now that he knows me, my problem is his problem. He now knows about my problem and he will help me to fix it. He makes a few phone calls from his cell phone trying to locate the new owner.

We sit in the middle of the road in the SUV, and we’ve stopped traffic. We’re taking up the entire road. People are honking and shouting buut the occupants of the car–or should I say tank?–are oblivious. This car seems to have some kind of insulation. You can see the people outside shouting and shaking their fists, but they can’t see in through the dark tinited windows.

We’re sitting there for about ten minutes while he’s talking on the phone. It’s hot and sticky outside but inside this car they have cranked up the airconditioning and a television is showing a Bollywood movie.

The women I am sharing the back seat with are still giggling at me.

I feel like an enormous ostrich who has been stuffed into a basket of sparrows.

The women are fluttering, moving like birds..their hands flutter, their noses are little beaks, their mouths little heart shaped holes, their eyes darting around me. They keep touching me, but so lightly it’s as if I’m not really being touched.

I’m suddenly interrupted from this new world of women when the Sikh in the front seat turns around and says,

” It is taken care of. It will be fixed tomarrow.”

They let me out of the SUV onto the steamy street and I barely avoid stepping into a pile of fresh feces. Nausea overtakes me and I swallow hard, trying to think about anything other than poop and urine and the dirty gutters.

The next day, I’m wandering around the city all morning and I don’t return to my hotel until the afternoon. I’m still not feeling well, but the antibiotics have taken hold and I’ve decided to make the best of haing taken an entire week off of work…I’m trying to spend some time getting to know this city I’m calling home for the next several months.

I’m quite tired, and ready for a long nap,walking up the stairs, when a man calls out, ” How are you, Memsahib?”

I turn around. I have to answer. It would be rude not to.

” I am tired. “, I say.

I keep walking up the stairs.

” Ah, Memsahib. There is something here for you.” ,  the man calls out.

“What is it ?”, I ask.

” Memsahib, it is a carpenter.”, he replies.

I turn to look at the carpenter, who turns out to be an incredibly old man, with a white bird, a mouth full of broken teeth, and blue eyes, which really stand out against his skin that is the color of coffee beans after they have been roasted. He also wearing a filthy, hot pink child’s tshirt that has a picture of the Care Bears on it and says ” Know It Is Because I Barely Love You”.

We go upstairs, the carpenter, the six or so male employees, and me, to look at the rat hole.

“It’s going to take a long time to fix this rat hole, Memsahib.”, they tell me “We may not be able to fix it today.”

” No.”, I say. ” You will fix it now. I have spoken to a friend who has spoken to the owner, and he is the one who sent the carpenter. You will fix it now and I will wait.”

Everyone looks at me glumly, and then smiles and laughter break out.

Everyone is laughing, including me.

” Memsahib is knowing India, now! We do it for you ma’am.” , they tell me happily grinning ear to ear.

“Yes, but I don’t want all of you in my room. Only the carpenter and one helper. That is all.”, I say.

I go into my room and quickly lock up anything I have left out. Things have a tendency to “walk out” if they are interesting. Books are alright to leave out, but sometimes the most common things–like shampoo–is of interest.

The carpenter and his helper go to work on the hole, while I wait in the double room next door with the door open, watching the comings and goings.

One of the first things I notice is that the carpenter has no tools to speak of. He has no wood. He has nothing.

Someone shows up with an old rusty hammer that is taped together. Someone else shows up with a handul of bent, rusted nails.

But they still have no wood to put over the hole, and it’s quite a large hole..measuring 4 feet long by 5 inches wide.

They come into the room I am sitting in, reading a book.

They look around the room, decide on a board, and literally tear it off the wall, leaving a gaping hole, about 4 feet long by 5 inches wide.

My mouth is open. Close mouth, I command myself.

They go into my bathroom and after much pounding and even more discussion in Bengali, the hole in my room has been patched.

I go and inspect their handiwork. They have done a decent job.

The carpenter looks at me, his hands outstretched for payment.

“No. “, I say, crossing my arms. I point to the owner out in the hallway. “He is the one to pay you.”

“Memsahib is knowing India.”, he says, smiling his broken-teeth smile at me.

After the carpenter leaves, the owner comes to the door of my room. “Memsahib is happy now?” , He says.

“No.”. I say. ” I would like a better chair in my room.” (I had noticed a very nice-and clean–plastic chair in the double room they had just made the big hole in. I wanted that chair.)

“Is Memsahib happy now?”, the owner asks, after giving me the new plastic chair.

” No. “, I say. ” I would like a better pillow. “( I had noticed the double room I was just in had better, newer pillows, and I wanted a nicer one.)

“Is Memsahib happy now?”, the owner asks me, after giving a new white pillow.

” No.”, I say. “I would like a bucket of boiling hot water to be brought to my room every evening.” ( I had asked about getting hot water before, but there ad always been an excuse  and I had been stuck with taking bucket showers in cold tap water. I decided to push my luck and see how far I could go.)

They bring me a bucket of hot, boiling water–it’s so hot I can’t even think of taking a bucket shower with it for at least an hour, waiting for it to cool down.

” I am happy, thank you very much.”, I tell the owner.

“Yes, yes, good, good. We give homely Memsahib homely comfort.”

I think I am figuring out what they mean by “homely comfort”!
And..I’m also figuring out how this place works, day by day, little by little….

gigi

A general update…

I finally “gave in” and started taking Cipro. There was no choice, as my bowels had decided that I could not leave my room safely and I was feeling worse and worse!

Yesterday I stayed in my room most of the day. I never went to work. I felt terrible physically and anyway I could not bear it, just being on the street turned my stomach into knots.

While I waited for the antibiotic to take effect, I hung out in my hotel room all day and watched the men who work there attempt to patch a hole in my bathroom.

How many men does it take to patch a hole in one’s bathroom in India? As many men as one can find. At one point as I lay feverish and sweaty on my bed, I counted 8 men all trying to patch the hole. Everyone had a opinion and very little work got done.

The hole is still there, as large as it was before.

Unfortunately, so is the very large rat who is using the hole to come into my bedroom and attempt to nibble at my ginger biscuits.

Let’s hope this actually gets fixed sometime during my stay.

While I was hanging out in my room, 6 volunteers came by to see me. Apparently I was missed at work for the last two days. Everyone was worried.  It’s nice to know one has some semblance of community here, in the middle of all of this chaos.

It’s easy to feel somewhat displaced and lonely here. Yesterday I realized that I actually had made quite a few friends–and that’s a good thing to have in a place where it’s not unusual for a volunteer to disappear for a few days and then suddenly one finds out they have cholera or dengue or what have you.

I was feeling miserable and sorry for myself, but the Indian men trying to repair the hole and the numerous volunteers visiting kept things interesting.

I’ll write a post tomarrow that will be full of  things I have seen on the street lately and also about the experience of being fitted for a sari.

gigi