January 28th, 2012. Its 4:13 am, my legs are sealed to the couch, and I mindlessly uncover forgotten spaces of the Internet. My tapping on the screen a metronome clocking through a friend's cousin's beach album from 2007. I watch the transformation from gangly limbs to braces to insecure body fat covered by tight expensive clothing to self-assured senior with hair dribbling down in blonde ringlets. Our paths so easily tracked, envy made easy too. She is perfect, I think, through this screen, pores airbrushed into smooth pixels to tantalize freshman boys, teeth whitened to smirk and smoke and smile too and I fall for the illusion.
I forget my beauty, my family, my friends, wish for hers. I want to tour in Florence, kiss Grecian sun and bask on yachts cutting through dimple-less water in Antigua. I want, I want.
I remember then, as I watch the gas assistant pump air into flat and threadbare tires, his hat gathering greasy hair into knots, hands begrudging the car. I remind myself, every day, and starless night, and before every festival fire and firecrackers and fire-red bindis and red skin disease and hands dipped into pots of crackling chilies and standing before the black pools shining with white lights. I remind myself, until I remember.
And then until I forget again.
I count my lucky stars, even though the reflective light shining from a city still awake and still dreaming obscures them. As I rub the back of Mary, who cannot talk, cannot speak her name (it is forgotten), who nods and smiles and remembers me, I count them again. And as I wipe the moisture, tears maybe, but it doesn't matter, from Punja who cannot herself lift to do so, and as she doesn't thank me, and as I don't need affirmation, as I crouch next to her, and as I wonder if she will live another week, I count again.
I count them, my graces orbiting, my fixed points and my realigning pulls of gravity, changed in time, but even when obscured with smog and dust and curry powder curling in the air, still illuminating the dirtied windows of my soul.
I wish I knew how to give thanks, so that it would mean something, so that the people who have radiated love in my direction would feel the warmth returned, so that their pain would be eased just a little.
So that a friend would know my flawed love from thousands of miles away, my offering of incense and flowers and silk and thanks, and love, love, always, love.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
White linen, please
January 15, 2012. New volunteers arrive in bursts, and the flat is alive. We talk about ourselves, I talk of India and which areas to avoid and coffee shops and drinks to order, but I don't try to explain the culture, the feel of traffic, the smell of incense burning over a tray of roasted nuts. Alex comes last, and I am not alone.
I talk of Mother Teresa's center, the patients, the tiny happiness in the feel of a cold palm, rough calluses from years of wandering dirty streets.
Some pretend to be unaffected, and some stare at the laundry hung from six stories above our heads, blankets drifting in breeze funneled through the blocks of apartments.
Rebecca, a forty something from San Francisco with a hoarse voice and wise eyes asks me everything, seems interested in my life. She calls me courageous, they all do. She carries her body with power, with presence, and she falls asleep on the small leather couch as the rest chat about flights and Calcutta.
I wait for a friend arriving in Delhi at the Subway station, moving from one end to another, alone, singing to myself. I watch from above the young and old and mostly men as they scrunch themselves to fit into cars, full. The metro seems human, energy seeping up to me, as I pace for over an hour, the unassuming clock tracing my solitude. Men kiss at me, the policemen overeager, my feet tired. I pick at crusty nail polish, littering the patterned floor with flakes of red falling form my dry hands. I walk back to the apartment, sore and frustrated and ready to punch any attacker. My keys are clutched in my palm, a jagged fist. Aladdin, one of the strays that begs for food outside our door, emerges from under a dark car, and I remember my humanity.
I watch American Beauty alone in bed, warm under blankets, and I see the beauty in a dancing bag, a dead bird, the same as the beauty of malnourished children in dirty sweatshirts beating drums behind cars and next to buses, girls cartwheeling and bending and contorting and haunting the pavement, offering themselves for spare change.
I talk of Mother Teresa's center, the patients, the tiny happiness in the feel of a cold palm, rough calluses from years of wandering dirty streets.
Some pretend to be unaffected, and some stare at the laundry hung from six stories above our heads, blankets drifting in breeze funneled through the blocks of apartments.
Rebecca, a forty something from San Francisco with a hoarse voice and wise eyes asks me everything, seems interested in my life. She calls me courageous, they all do. She carries her body with power, with presence, and she falls asleep on the small leather couch as the rest chat about flights and Calcutta.
I wait for a friend arriving in Delhi at the Subway station, moving from one end to another, alone, singing to myself. I watch from above the young and old and mostly men as they scrunch themselves to fit into cars, full. The metro seems human, energy seeping up to me, as I pace for over an hour, the unassuming clock tracing my solitude. Men kiss at me, the policemen overeager, my feet tired. I pick at crusty nail polish, littering the patterned floor with flakes of red falling form my dry hands. I walk back to the apartment, sore and frustrated and ready to punch any attacker. My keys are clutched in my palm, a jagged fist. Aladdin, one of the strays that begs for food outside our door, emerges from under a dark car, and I remember my humanity.
I watch American Beauty alone in bed, warm under blankets, and I see the beauty in a dancing bag, a dead bird, the same as the beauty of malnourished children in dirty sweatshirts beating drums behind cars and next to buses, girls cartwheeling and bending and contorting and haunting the pavement, offering themselves for spare change.
They turn the heaters off, I stiffen
January 13, 2012. I plant sunflowers furiously, my pointer finger trembling, striking down to harvest sunlight. The tencho music is sounding in the cafe, and Indian men chatter behind me, but I am focused, ready. The gas station is overflowed with dented cars and men carrying black briefcases, rickshaws standing in the waning angled light, curtains drawn around hiding passengers. I plant my first pea-shooter, and the screen changes. A pixeled Zombie, shaking, tongue hanging as he limps and strides towards my plants. You will be struck down, and I will reap a silver coin from your death, I think. Peas fire across the screen, the zombie loses first his arm, then comes quaking onto his knees. This one has a cone on his head, harder to kill, but my Starfruit, shooting happy yellow twirling stars from five sides, lights up the nighttime screen, and after waves, and waves again, I beat the level.
Still traffic hums, birds flap through pale sky above tired buildings, and I break from my game to connect.
Tea is served to me at placement in the room where patients with physical disabilities sleep. The green birds chirp, a woman named Lalita calls back to them, mimicking them, as they reflect her voice. They sing to each other, and I wonder if she envies them, those with wings, while she lives without three limbs.
I sit on a yellow-sheeted bed and sip chai from an ivory cup, watching a man hoe in one of the gardens, watch through a dirty screen, watch the furrows grow from week to week, the plants growing and shrinking, watch, watch. I wash sheets, pink flowers dipping up and down and through clean water, now sudsy and rosy and grey, and my knees are soaked. My arms lift and lower, the muscles contracting and relaxing, the pair an inverse. Water slashes and splashes, and I lift leaking buckets into other containers, and my hands are clean after.
I've been here a month and a half, away from home for four.
My sweetest girl, Nazima, Nazima, the best girl, the best girl in the whole world, I sing to the fourteen year old, and she smiles, her eyes nearly shut, and I wipe the drool that snakes from the corner of her mouth with a faded bib.
Still traffic hums, birds flap through pale sky above tired buildings, and I break from my game to connect.
Tea is served to me at placement in the room where patients with physical disabilities sleep. The green birds chirp, a woman named Lalita calls back to them, mimicking them, as they reflect her voice. They sing to each other, and I wonder if she envies them, those with wings, while she lives without three limbs.
I sit on a yellow-sheeted bed and sip chai from an ivory cup, watching a man hoe in one of the gardens, watch through a dirty screen, watch the furrows grow from week to week, the plants growing and shrinking, watch, watch. I wash sheets, pink flowers dipping up and down and through clean water, now sudsy and rosy and grey, and my knees are soaked. My arms lift and lower, the muscles contracting and relaxing, the pair an inverse. Water slashes and splashes, and I lift leaking buckets into other containers, and my hands are clean after.
I've been here a month and a half, away from home for four.
My sweetest girl, Nazima, Nazima, the best girl, the best girl in the whole world, I sing to the fourteen year old, and she smiles, her eyes nearly shut, and I wipe the drool that snakes from the corner of her mouth with a faded bib.
Paint
January 10, 2012. Women catch fever, and fear too. Jaya covered on an old metal frame, her face partially visible under a plaid dishtowel, blinks slowly, legs shifting occasionally. She remembers to smile when I crouch down next to her, and then stares past my face, a point below my eyes. A small heater runs, warming little in the drafty room. Windows are broken, air slithers through with chill. The stretcher placed next to Punja, who shivers under shawls and blankets, becomes a symbol in this space, this world. I perch next to Punja, my favorite patient, and she talks in shrill Hindi, her crone voice resonant, and I motion with my hands. I act out sickness, my body retching, pointing to Jaya. She affirms with a grunt, and we both stay on her bed, her eyes on the stretcher, mine on the others, darting to look at the fading light on the ground. Few come close, but clean floors and sort clothes and bathe and pretend not to notice the girl dying.
She is taken to the hospital, and because the doctor is not in, sent away for later. The stretcher is carried past, the living woman in a funeral procession, the vital dirge, and we are told to pray.
I sit with Anita at the back of the room, and we watch men sweep the newly paved road. Flowers bloom and wither and open next to the lane, crawl up the surrounding stone wall. I ask if many get sick in the cold. Yes, she says, her voice a shaky frozen whisper. Does Jaya have the same as Gita? Yes, the same.
Lunch is exaggerated, donated by the owner of a hotel who eyes me as he passes out food. People clap and sing and yell happybirthday DO YOU happybirthday DO YOU, and the women rush to gather flowers to give, and he carries a multicolored array of weeds.
They have forgotten Jaya, waiting in line at the government hospital, and sit with eyes opening and closing for the sun.
She is taken to the hospital, and because the doctor is not in, sent away for later. The stretcher is carried past, the living woman in a funeral procession, the vital dirge, and we are told to pray.
I sit with Anita at the back of the room, and we watch men sweep the newly paved road. Flowers bloom and wither and open next to the lane, crawl up the surrounding stone wall. I ask if many get sick in the cold. Yes, she says, her voice a shaky frozen whisper. Does Jaya have the same as Gita? Yes, the same.
Lunch is exaggerated, donated by the owner of a hotel who eyes me as he passes out food. People clap and sing and yell happybirthday DO YOU happybirthday DO YOU, and the women rush to gather flowers to give, and he carries a multicolored array of weeds.
They have forgotten Jaya, waiting in line at the government hospital, and sit with eyes opening and closing for the sun.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Wouldn't it be nice to
January 8, 2011. In sanded and shining shades of brown, differentiations of color, this city is defined. In puddles collected on the sides of honking roads, paint chipped from walls and windowsills, leaves of scrawny trees in medians, covered by dust and pollutants. The skin of wealthy women, lustrous, illuminated and exfoliated, almost golden reflecting off shining Chanel purses, the faces of poor boys, cracked and grey, infections pushing on skinny limbs. Rotting teeth of old men, changing from yellow to deep and fading ivory, the speckles of black.
Dogs, mangy and mud covered trot across humming streets, the cars unclean and dented. Cows with hipbones jutting, connected by sagging skin to a protruding spinal cord, dig in plastic bags of trash for food, cast from trucks carrying laborers crammed, standing, into loud hustling compartments. The exhaust pouring onto motorcyclists, wrapped in faded leather and shoes with holes, toes poking through. Monkeys screaming in bushes next to highways, the bridge below filled with children and families and women, few men. Cats shrieking on the porch outside my flat, one throwing a mouse, bloody and still alive, against my glass door, again and again, long past death, still, again. Used books curling and cigarettes, yellowed and discarded.
Brown, here too, my shoes tattered and jackets dusty, my fingernails discolored from polish. Except for me, my shoulders fair, my legs untanned,I am immersed in dust, in dirt, in ruddy Bollywood lyrics, in burnt tones of the man selling newspapers, calling in resonant chants outside my ground-floor window, disturbing my colored dreams.
Dogs, mangy and mud covered trot across humming streets, the cars unclean and dented. Cows with hipbones jutting, connected by sagging skin to a protruding spinal cord, dig in plastic bags of trash for food, cast from trucks carrying laborers crammed, standing, into loud hustling compartments. The exhaust pouring onto motorcyclists, wrapped in faded leather and shoes with holes, toes poking through. Monkeys screaming in bushes next to highways, the bridge below filled with children and families and women, few men. Cats shrieking on the porch outside my flat, one throwing a mouse, bloody and still alive, against my glass door, again and again, long past death, still, again. Used books curling and cigarettes, yellowed and discarded.
Brown, here too, my shoes tattered and jackets dusty, my fingernails discolored from polish. Except for me, my shoulders fair, my legs untanned,I am immersed in dust, in dirt, in ruddy Bollywood lyrics, in burnt tones of the man selling newspapers, calling in resonant chants outside my ground-floor window, disturbing my colored dreams.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Empathyempathyempathy
January 6, 2012. It's my cafe now, my flat, my patients. Tiny specks of water filled the windshield this morning, the air is cold and heavy, and my pants are thin and jade, my socks thick and wool. I eat pomegranates brought to me in plastic bags, sitting in a quiet apartment, curled on a couch staring at a dark television set. The cracks obscured by threads of incense twirling, draping the air in detailed tendrils, the smell filling empty space. I drink soup, listen to wordless electronic music, trancing and beating the time past.
I miss home less. Maybe I forget more, having found my sanctuaries elsewhere. American pop music plays on the speakers here, in the chain coffee shop. I recognize none. The music sounds corny and cheery and fabricated from some hollow place.
I try to imagine college, with designer bracelets and designer clothes and groomed people and essays and textbooks, and hot dorms and cold dorms and sororities and rush and living in America.
Where will I fall, when the cliche pieces topple from the Himalayas into the little town of Charlottesville, from the dirty traffic whizzing three inches from my elbow. From the wide and wise sky of Africa, from the tomb standing for thousands of years watching the birth of an overpopulated nation building tiny fires at her base, into buildings of brick and columns, into art studios with track lighting, into manicured lawns.
Where will I land?
I miss home less. Maybe I forget more, having found my sanctuaries elsewhere. American pop music plays on the speakers here, in the chain coffee shop. I recognize none. The music sounds corny and cheery and fabricated from some hollow place.
I try to imagine college, with designer bracelets and designer clothes and groomed people and essays and textbooks, and hot dorms and cold dorms and sororities and rush and living in America.
Where will I fall, when the cliche pieces topple from the Himalayas into the little town of Charlottesville, from the dirty traffic whizzing three inches from my elbow. From the wide and wise sky of Africa, from the tomb standing for thousands of years watching the birth of an overpopulated nation building tiny fires at her base, into buildings of brick and columns, into art studios with track lighting, into manicured lawns.
Where will I land?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
I should be doing laundry
January 5th, 2012. Didi, they call. Didi, badjo. Sister, sit down here, where I lightly pat with my crooked hand, covered in withered skin. I learn new Hindi phrases, slowly, learn names slowly too. I feel there is progress, at least for me. I do not dread the morning so much. Occasionally, I seek the clock, will it faster, talk to the two green parakeets in their tiny cage and sing them sweet lullabies. I sit cross legged and paint nails to women with Parkinson's, the stone cold, and the fields whisking chill air into the courtyard. Often I talk to them, words about my life, asking them about theirs. They respond in a different tongue, in babble, in Hindi, in silence, and I cannot tell the difference. I have conversations, neither of us knowing the other person's words, but I feel it doesn't matter.
There are moments of joy. Anita, a reclusive woman in her fifties shakes when she talks to me, her voice quivers in English, beautiful English. We watch the others exercise, race from one end of a dirty, hard field to another, and I laugh, because most are walking, some barely move from the starting line, and some trot, cheating by not touching the bench at the other end, and I am reminded of Africa, of my children there, and because I hold these two memories together, I laugh.
I smile constantly, many times a forced expression of happiness and hopefulness, eyes crinkled, remember to smile with your eyes, but every morning, as a patient tries to hand her broom to my full hands, I smile, and say, for you. She laughs too, we both know she is joking, and I continue to scrub the floor, the marble speckled but shining, the stone damp with streaks of soap and towels and disinfectant.
Many try to give me their cake, their sweets, their jewelry, precious items to those who have little of their own. I gently push their hands back. For you, I say.
I see love everywhere. The fourteen-year old, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, carried between bed to washroom to floor, unmoving, unspeaking, is fed every meal by an older patient, the matriarch of the center, powerful and tall and broad. A mother feeds her child who shakes her head across the metal beams of the bench, crying out in garble. The blind woman holds my hands and rubs my skin in circles and trapeziods turning them over and back again. Her hands are smooth too.
My dad read me a passage, part of an essay published in a collection of the best essays of 2011. The writer talked of chapels, of finding silence and peace in a world of screen and images and lights and stimulation.
I look for my chapel, here, too. For silence, for peace, for those words seemingly unattainable in a country of honking and dirt and cows and dogs and crying and sales. Maybe I find my serenity in the spooing of grains of rice into a tired mouth, wrinkled and toothless, in the rubbing of backs, in the cutting of dirty toenails, in the combing of lice infested hair.
There are moments of joy. Anita, a reclusive woman in her fifties shakes when she talks to me, her voice quivers in English, beautiful English. We watch the others exercise, race from one end of a dirty, hard field to another, and I laugh, because most are walking, some barely move from the starting line, and some trot, cheating by not touching the bench at the other end, and I am reminded of Africa, of my children there, and because I hold these two memories together, I laugh.
I smile constantly, many times a forced expression of happiness and hopefulness, eyes crinkled, remember to smile with your eyes, but every morning, as a patient tries to hand her broom to my full hands, I smile, and say, for you. She laughs too, we both know she is joking, and I continue to scrub the floor, the marble speckled but shining, the stone damp with streaks of soap and towels and disinfectant.
Many try to give me their cake, their sweets, their jewelry, precious items to those who have little of their own. I gently push their hands back. For you, I say.
I see love everywhere. The fourteen-year old, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, carried between bed to washroom to floor, unmoving, unspeaking, is fed every meal by an older patient, the matriarch of the center, powerful and tall and broad. A mother feeds her child who shakes her head across the metal beams of the bench, crying out in garble. The blind woman holds my hands and rubs my skin in circles and trapeziods turning them over and back again. Her hands are smooth too.
My dad read me a passage, part of an essay published in a collection of the best essays of 2011. The writer talked of chapels, of finding silence and peace in a world of screen and images and lights and stimulation.
I look for my chapel, here, too. For silence, for peace, for those words seemingly unattainable in a country of honking and dirt and cows and dogs and crying and sales. Maybe I find my serenity in the spooing of grains of rice into a tired mouth, wrinkled and toothless, in the rubbing of backs, in the cutting of dirty toenails, in the combing of lice infested hair.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Drivers veer from cows, less so from children naked in the road
Things settle, eventually. January 2nd, 2012. I am alone now. Pat, the former Navy officer turned wolf-sanctuary worker, and stand-in mother to a lonely girl in India, left on Friday. She said, I wish you could come back with me. No, I'll be fine here, but I'm happy for you. New suitcases filled with trinkets and fabric and noisemakers and a little less shampoo, we hugged and the taxi drove down our fogged and bumpy lane. The heaters give a warm glow to the silent flat. Our remote for the TV is gone, the Internet is spotty and I am tired of my music. I Skype often, driving virtually to stocked supermarkets with my mom, the smell of newness, of fresh, packaged food, permeates somehow, and I could be across the house, upstairs in my cream and silky bed, asking for milk and Milanos.
I painted nails at Mother Teresa's, "lal" always the most requested. I match, my red tips chipped from drying floors and dancing. Someone died last night, a woman said. She speaks nearly perfect English, and I do not recognize her. Is she a patient, and she says, I'm here to help. Do you have a family, I ask, a husband, children? And she says no, and I've been sucked in enough to think, for a second, that there must be something wrong with her. Who died, I ask, hoping I don't know the woman, part of me that I do. Gita, she says, and I recognize the name, unable to match a face. Another patient sticks her tongue out, eyes closed, mimicking the death. She is pretending to be Gita, and I say, I know.
I curry my coffee habit, looking always for cozy rooms and soft-spoken waiters. I sit now in Cafe Coffee Day, the Starbucks of India, my drink finished and sweating into the napkin below. The barista knows me, and he laughs when I come. The couches are red, and the backs of chairs too short, the women wear pants and the men stare as I enter, and as I leave too. I dream of anonymity, and yet I accept, and maybe need, the attention.
Balloons still pinned on the wall, remnants of New Years, droop, deflating slowly. I can see all from my seat, and there's another white man here, hair cropped close to his head and silver jacket with ironed badges of flags decorating his arm, and I wonder who he is.
Lalit asked, are you scared in the flat by yourself? No, just a little lonely, I said, but I like being alone, and I say that to myself, over and agin, and if I say it enough, maybe it will become so.
I painted nails at Mother Teresa's, "lal" always the most requested. I match, my red tips chipped from drying floors and dancing. Someone died last night, a woman said. She speaks nearly perfect English, and I do not recognize her. Is she a patient, and she says, I'm here to help. Do you have a family, I ask, a husband, children? And she says no, and I've been sucked in enough to think, for a second, that there must be something wrong with her. Who died, I ask, hoping I don't know the woman, part of me that I do. Gita, she says, and I recognize the name, unable to match a face. Another patient sticks her tongue out, eyes closed, mimicking the death. She is pretending to be Gita, and I say, I know.
I curry my coffee habit, looking always for cozy rooms and soft-spoken waiters. I sit now in Cafe Coffee Day, the Starbucks of India, my drink finished and sweating into the napkin below. The barista knows me, and he laughs when I come. The couches are red, and the backs of chairs too short, the women wear pants and the men stare as I enter, and as I leave too. I dream of anonymity, and yet I accept, and maybe need, the attention.
Balloons still pinned on the wall, remnants of New Years, droop, deflating slowly. I can see all from my seat, and there's another white man here, hair cropped close to his head and silver jacket with ironed badges of flags decorating his arm, and I wonder who he is.
Lalit asked, are you scared in the flat by yourself? No, just a little lonely, I said, but I like being alone, and I say that to myself, over and agin, and if I say it enough, maybe it will become so.
People flit in and out
December 27, 2011. I was dropped at Mother Teresa's this morning, the sun angled through the pink smoggy sky, tips of buildings grey masses above. Jesse, a tall and broad Sikh who rarely slows for speed-bumps and whose beard trains outward, sped away toward the city, and I started walking on the moist newly-paved concrete, jumping down into the twisting paths of the vegetable garden that surrounds the center, roses unbloomed through the cracking earth, dust everywhere. My coat is warm, my legs bump as I shiver. Can I call this morning beautiful? Can I call this center, sundar, the Hindi translation?
A sister meets me as I walk towards the nuns house, a separate building, apart from the patients. Another nun hangs up white habits on lines, she is cold too. I'm sorry I wasn't here, I was sick. Yes, the hospital, but I feel better, thank you. Merry Christmas to you, too! What do you mean, closed? Because the road is drying? Ok. And I understand and accept, because this is India and all passes here.
She invites me in, the house that is always locked to volunteers. You can call Jaggi here, he will send for your car. You may wait in the chapel, it seems the phone does not work.
And I sit cross-legged on red velvet carpet, the shrine to Mary, the Altar to Jesus, the shrine to Mother Teresa, all decorated in blue and green and red flashing Christmas lights, plastic flowers drooping in buckets on the floor. The green curtains are closed, and it is warmer here, alone. I wonder what to think about, what I should be thinking in a nun's secret chapel, what do they think about when sitting here? I pick up a book, the cover wrapped in ivory paper, written in black, unsure letters, 'with praise and joy'. I read rhyming songs of belief and happiness and sacrifice and night and angels, and I don't see any of the phrases. I try reading aloud, my my voice is hoarse and not joyous, and I wonder if this is blasphemous, or wrong, me being here. I pick up the bible, and flip through, hoping a line, something, will jumps and excite and stimulate. I turn to the last chapter, Revelations, because I like the word, and I read and mumble, and an older nun comes into the room, bows to the altar, and sits in a chair in the corner.
I talk to God, hi, it's been a while. Remember when I came to the chapel at school to cry about boys and my parents, college applications and eating disorders? I liked the sounds of the creaking wood, the space that never felt empty, the organ almost to sound, my voice held more power there, echoing across shallow pews, over hymnals and under carved archways, the stained glass radiating light from inside.
I start to pray for everyone I know, my family first, my friends, then myself, and I pray for us all to be fixed, healed, our cracks sewn with glue.
I don't think this is the way to do it, so God, just give me endless love, don't try to fix anything.
The clock moves across birds flying at each number, and the phone rings and we drive home. These are the laborers, waiting for work, he says, and we swerve and honk past the hundreds of men and men and men and women and children and more men that wait to build houses or shovel garbage. A few are picked, thousands more stand huddled in the chill.
A sister meets me as I walk towards the nuns house, a separate building, apart from the patients. Another nun hangs up white habits on lines, she is cold too. I'm sorry I wasn't here, I was sick. Yes, the hospital, but I feel better, thank you. Merry Christmas to you, too! What do you mean, closed? Because the road is drying? Ok. And I understand and accept, because this is India and all passes here.
She invites me in, the house that is always locked to volunteers. You can call Jaggi here, he will send for your car. You may wait in the chapel, it seems the phone does not work.
And I sit cross-legged on red velvet carpet, the shrine to Mary, the Altar to Jesus, the shrine to Mother Teresa, all decorated in blue and green and red flashing Christmas lights, plastic flowers drooping in buckets on the floor. The green curtains are closed, and it is warmer here, alone. I wonder what to think about, what I should be thinking in a nun's secret chapel, what do they think about when sitting here? I pick up a book, the cover wrapped in ivory paper, written in black, unsure letters, 'with praise and joy'. I read rhyming songs of belief and happiness and sacrifice and night and angels, and I don't see any of the phrases. I try reading aloud, my my voice is hoarse and not joyous, and I wonder if this is blasphemous, or wrong, me being here. I pick up the bible, and flip through, hoping a line, something, will jumps and excite and stimulate. I turn to the last chapter, Revelations, because I like the word, and I read and mumble, and an older nun comes into the room, bows to the altar, and sits in a chair in the corner.
I talk to God, hi, it's been a while. Remember when I came to the chapel at school to cry about boys and my parents, college applications and eating disorders? I liked the sounds of the creaking wood, the space that never felt empty, the organ almost to sound, my voice held more power there, echoing across shallow pews, over hymnals and under carved archways, the stained glass radiating light from inside.
I start to pray for everyone I know, my family first, my friends, then myself, and I pray for us all to be fixed, healed, our cracks sewn with glue.
I don't think this is the way to do it, so God, just give me endless love, don't try to fix anything.
The clock moves across birds flying at each number, and the phone rings and we drive home. These are the laborers, waiting for work, he says, and we swerve and honk past the hundreds of men and men and men and women and children and more men that wait to build houses or shovel garbage. A few are picked, thousands more stand huddled in the chill.
Titles seem superfluous
December 28, 2011. I prepare for solitude. Pat and I walk through INA market, hundreds of stalls with fabric, jewelry, shoes, fruits, live animals caged in wooden bars, butchers wringing necks of shrieking chickens, the smell of fish in the top right corner of the alleys. Best price, one hundred rupees, very good, come in, looking is free, come in, downstairs, yes yes, very good.
A tattered woman in a pink headscarf pulls on my sleeve, the baby she carries is unhealthy and quiet, and she cups her hands, holds them out, shakes them, and raises her dirty fingernails to dry lips, back again outstretched, and the shop owners surround, watching. I am on a mission to find shoes, the cheapest possible, and I brush past, not looking her in the eye. She grabs my arm and I walk under awnings and concrete roofs and plastic canopies, and releases. I have no hope for her, today.
My placement is closed for the week, and I go to Earth Saviors Fundation, a school and hospice and orphanage and a home for abandoned old. The children cling, and a little girl in a white hoodie holds me and kisses the back of my hand, again, and I pull away a little. We play duck duck goose, the same girl is chosen by all, wearing pink and marron and green, and she runs, smiling nearly perfect white teeth and shining pigtails and the white hooded girl is never chosen, except by me.
A for apple, b for ball, c for cap, d for dog, are shouted by all, robots, they seem, and I draw a ball, what letter does this start with, a for applebforballcforcapdfordog, and some have books, but they draw pictures of white Santa and Christmas trees with presents below. I pick my jacket from the top of a dusty metal closet, and the teacher in the tented classroom, the roof plastic and damaged, says to me, "you are a good teacher." I laugh, thank you, not really, I just love kids. And she says it again, you are a good teacher. Do you come again tomorrow?
Yes, tomorrow.
A tattered woman in a pink headscarf pulls on my sleeve, the baby she carries is unhealthy and quiet, and she cups her hands, holds them out, shakes them, and raises her dirty fingernails to dry lips, back again outstretched, and the shop owners surround, watching. I am on a mission to find shoes, the cheapest possible, and I brush past, not looking her in the eye. She grabs my arm and I walk under awnings and concrete roofs and plastic canopies, and releases. I have no hope for her, today.
My placement is closed for the week, and I go to Earth Saviors Fundation, a school and hospice and orphanage and a home for abandoned old. The children cling, and a little girl in a white hoodie holds me and kisses the back of my hand, again, and I pull away a little. We play duck duck goose, the same girl is chosen by all, wearing pink and marron and green, and she runs, smiling nearly perfect white teeth and shining pigtails and the white hooded girl is never chosen, except by me.
A for apple, b for ball, c for cap, d for dog, are shouted by all, robots, they seem, and I draw a ball, what letter does this start with, a for applebforballcforcapdfordog, and some have books, but they draw pictures of white Santa and Christmas trees with presents below. I pick my jacket from the top of a dusty metal closet, and the teacher in the tented classroom, the roof plastic and damaged, says to me, "you are a good teacher." I laugh, thank you, not really, I just love kids. And she says it again, you are a good teacher. Do you come again tomorrow?
Yes, tomorrow.
The light overhead is yellow, white
December 20th, 2011. I say to myself, I don't write because I'm busy, because I'm learning of new cultures from Hyatt, the beautiful Saudi woman who chooses to wear color, because I'm waiting to get an objective view of India. I don't write because Nick and Sally and Jeff are here, and now because they are gone, and because I miss them and I don't write because how can I start, what stories can I tell? I can talk of the sunrise over the Himalayas, the sunset too, and I can talk of illuminated white temples, glittering water a shimmering lake reflecting bowed men in turbans and clean children, and of the mall with a red Christmas tree glowing four stories high, frantic shoppers spending thousands and corny music blasting.
But I can write of the hundreds of poor that weave between cars selling blankets and fake roses and asking me, only me, for money. I could write of the thousands of stray dogs that curl in the dust and sleep. I could write of drivers wrapped in ripped jackets, threadbare scarves, fingerless gloves, cold air tumbling through the cracks in the windshield and open walls.
I painted nails, red the color most requested by my patients. I take tea, and see hundreds of people sitting outside the front of the center, children standing, adults quiet mostly, the sisters gathering in a huddle on the stone porch. They say, it's the Christmas pageant, will you sing a song? I try to remember the words of carols, and this time last year I knew all words, but I haven't felt cheer, and so I say, I know one, and only the first verse.
They pray, and they sing, loudly and off tune, the words in Hindi and the songs are unfamiliar, and all eyes are on me, as always, even though I stand behind a think white column, hiding. The priest in residence tells the story of the annunciation, I catch tiny glimpses through English words dropped. And he says, come. I stand in front of the microphone, and it's too short, and all are quiet, and I sing Silent Night, the first verse, because it's all I can remember, and I am not scared because these are people I have no reason to be nervous in front of, and still, my voice shakes a little. I back away, saying thank you.
Would you like to say a few words? I will translate after. And so I say,
Thank you for letting me come to your beautiful country, and for opening your hearts to me, especially over Christmas time. It's been very hard being away from my family, and I don't think I would have been able to be here without the love and support that the people here have shown to me. So thank you, donyvad, and I wish everyone a merry, merry Christmas.
And the priest translated, and a woman in front started crying and they all clapped, and felt more joy than I have in weeks.
We handed out food, sacks of rice, backs of flour and tea and lentils and blankets, to all. They are the poorest of the poor, one of the sisters told me. I wished each a merry Christmas, and some didn't know how to respond, and some just said thank you, some didn't meet my eye, mostly the men, and a few who knew, said Merry Christmas, God bless you, God bless you. the sun was slanted in the sky but shining through the dirty trees, and I took off my jacket because I felt warmth.
But I can write of the hundreds of poor that weave between cars selling blankets and fake roses and asking me, only me, for money. I could write of the thousands of stray dogs that curl in the dust and sleep. I could write of drivers wrapped in ripped jackets, threadbare scarves, fingerless gloves, cold air tumbling through the cracks in the windshield and open walls.
I painted nails, red the color most requested by my patients. I take tea, and see hundreds of people sitting outside the front of the center, children standing, adults quiet mostly, the sisters gathering in a huddle on the stone porch. They say, it's the Christmas pageant, will you sing a song? I try to remember the words of carols, and this time last year I knew all words, but I haven't felt cheer, and so I say, I know one, and only the first verse.
They pray, and they sing, loudly and off tune, the words in Hindi and the songs are unfamiliar, and all eyes are on me, as always, even though I stand behind a think white column, hiding. The priest in residence tells the story of the annunciation, I catch tiny glimpses through English words dropped. And he says, come. I stand in front of the microphone, and it's too short, and all are quiet, and I sing Silent Night, the first verse, because it's all I can remember, and I am not scared because these are people I have no reason to be nervous in front of, and still, my voice shakes a little. I back away, saying thank you.
Would you like to say a few words? I will translate after. And so I say,
Thank you for letting me come to your beautiful country, and for opening your hearts to me, especially over Christmas time. It's been very hard being away from my family, and I don't think I would have been able to be here without the love and support that the people here have shown to me. So thank you, donyvad, and I wish everyone a merry, merry Christmas.
And the priest translated, and a woman in front started crying and they all clapped, and felt more joy than I have in weeks.
We handed out food, sacks of rice, backs of flour and tea and lentils and blankets, to all. They are the poorest of the poor, one of the sisters told me. I wished each a merry Christmas, and some didn't know how to respond, and some just said thank you, some didn't meet my eye, mostly the men, and a few who knew, said Merry Christmas, God bless you, God bless you. the sun was slanted in the sky but shining through the dirty trees, and I took off my jacket because I felt warmth.
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