Experiment #18: Jet lag

A young boy and his father went to the river to bathe. As they were washing, the boy saw a woman nearby also taking a bath.


He stared at the woman with great concern. "Pappa, what is wrong with that woman's chest? Why does it look so different than mine? Is there something wrong with her?"


The father explained, "No my son. One day that woman will be a mother. And when the day comes that she has a child, she will be able to feed that child milk from her breast."


At that moment, the boy's whole world changed. He was struck with an startling moment of clarity. He thought, even before we enter this world, God has already made preparations for us to be taken care of. He is looking out for us even before we exist. What is the point of feeling anger, depression and fear? He has already paved the road for our future. 


----

I'm all for believing that we have control over our own destinies. But controlling one's destiny doesn't mean controlling the circumstances in life. Once we accept that what happens is just a product of the universe's infinite colliding factors, maybe then we can stop lamenting our lack of control, and move on to appreciating each circumstance as a gift waiting to be unwrapped.

Experiment #17: Kerosene

Last week, Kiranbhai and I organized a vali meeting to meet the parents of the kids at the Sabarmati street school. On Saturday afternoon, we spent two hours going around to all of the children's homes and introducing ourselves to their mothers. Many of them didn't know where their kids have been disappearing to to each afternoon for the past seven months.

Most of the mothers were gracious. They would welcome us in, insist on making fresh chai or running out to get a cold soda for us, and turn on the light in the house - reserved for emergencies or special occasions. Some of the mothers were apathetic. They were shy, disinterested, or busy in their housework. We would inform them quickly of the meeting at 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon where a sahib, or leader, from Gandhi Ashram would come to talk to them, and then went on our way.

When 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon finally came around, Kiranbhai and I walked up to the meeting spot with a bucket of hot nasto for the kids and a bag of sweets and snacks for the mothers. We were welcomed by two of our students, and a stray dog that visits our sessions often. The children explained that their mothers were not coming.

Kiranbhai looked at me that way he often does when we're faced with a problem. His expression read, This is unfortunate, but not all together unexpected. As he continued to stroke his chin and think, I demanded answers from the children. Why aren't your mothers here? Didn't you remind them of the meeting? Why did we come to your homes personally to invite them here?

Their response was unexpected. Each month, the government rations out kerosene to the community. Usually the kerosene distribution is scheduled for the 2nd of the month, but this time it was delayed by a few days...and happened to land on the same date and time as our vali meeting. Kiranbhai asked me to go to the children's homes and try to gather as many mothers as I could, before Maheshbhai, the sahib from Gandhi Asrham, arrived.

I tried my best, but after half an hour of chasing the children around to their homes, I was exhausted and frustrated. My Gujarati, although greatly improved over my 3+ months here, is not nearly colloquial enough to express the importance of this meeting to the mothers. Most of them were squatting in the kerosene line which stretched out of the neighborhood and across the street.

The conversations went something like this:
Masi, we called you to come at half past four. This meeting is especially for you.
But we have to fill our kerosene.
When will you be done?
We might be here until late night.
Can't someone else stand in line for you until the meeting is over? 
No.
Why not?
I don't know.
Sahib is coming all the way from Gandhi Ashram. How will it look if no one shows up?
We have to fill our kerosene.


At the time, I was nearly boiling with tension. I couldn't understand why these mothers could not request their neighbor, or elder daughter, or friend to keep their spot in line for just half an hour. The meeting we had arranged was especially for them to learn about Manav Sadhna and the type of education we were trying to bring their children.


Eventually the meeting proceeded. Although there was less than perfect attendance, we were able to share with those present, the values that we hoped to impart to their children and the importance of those values starting at home.

Later that night, Kiranbhai and I were invited to have dinner at the home of one masi who has been very helpful as we have started up this street school. We sat in darkness in her tattered home as she rolled rotli by the light of a small kerosene lantern. Today, because she had guests, Masi was cooking the rotlis on a kerosene stove, rather than the slower, cheaper coals-burning stove she usually used. As she mechanically rolled perfectly round rotlis, she talked to us about the life she hoped her children could have, outside of the danger and poverty she was bound to. She told us how smart her children were, even though they love to do tofan masti, mischief, and how grateful she is that we have started a school here for them.

The women in this area know very little of the world outside of their home and their families, but they know what they have to do to survive. Even if they wanted to attend the parents meeting, the possibility of losing a month's supply of kerosene just did not seem logical to them.

I subconsciously have an ego when I interact with the people in the slum, based on the idea that I know a world much larger than they have every experienced. Maybe that's true. Maybe I've flown here from across the globe. But it is times like that moment in Masi's dimly lit home that my ego was slapped in the face and reminded to go into hibernation. I may know a world filled with much more diverse circumstances than theirs, but I cannot even begin to imagine the values and instincts they have learned in order to survive against the odds they are dealt.

In my mind, I saw as a choice between kerosene or becoming aware of how to move their children forward in life. In their minds, it was a choice between keeping their families warm in the December chill or visiting with outsiders from Gandhi Ashram who think they know what's best for their children.

Masi's dinner of thick rotli, cauliflower sabji and onion on the side, was delicious.

Experiment #16: Birthday Candles

When Nimeshbhai and I went out yesterday to buy decorations for a birthday party he was throwing for Vir (Kamlaben's son), we could not find a single birthday candle in the shape of a "1". We found plenty, though, in the shape of "0".

In addition to decorations, noisemakers, and birthday hats, Nimeshbhai went all out for the little one's big day. He ordered pav bhaji, a spicy Indian fast food-type item, and cake for more than 30 people. We went early to decorate the area around Kamlaben and Kamleshbhai's home. Within a few minutes of blowing up balloons and unrolling streamers, 15 or so kids from the slum joined in to help.

We hung balloons from the low hanging branches of the trees around the home, and wrapped the clotheslines (still adorned with clean laundry) with crepe paper. By the time we were done, the colorful and glittering toran, or decorations, tricked the eye into thinking we weren't standing in a slum.

Vir watched as this all went on, unaware that all this celebration was for him, but giggling as always as he was showered with attention.

When the time came to light the cake, I went forward to arrange the candles. As I was about to strike the match, several voices protested. Nimeshbhai and the other Manav Sadhna family who were attending, explained to me that they have a different tradition: instead of blowing them out, the birthday boy lights a candle.

"We want his new year to be filled with light," explained Jayeshbhai, "not darkness."

Experiment #15: My First Thanksgiving

I was not expecting to have a special Thanksgiving this year, in a country where “Indians and Pilgrims” has a different meaning, and “thank you” is rarely part of a person’s vocabulary.

But last night, 40 of Manav Sadhna’s friends and family joined for an internationally inspired dinner, cooked by the volunteers. We experimented with sweet potatoes to make a pudding for dessert (which turned out more like sweet potato soup), invested several hours into a decadent paneer butter masala, and wrapped up the untraditional feast with caramel popcorn balls – which were quite a crowd pleaser.

After dinner, I joined Sunilbhai, an MS staff member, to deliver some of the delicious leftovers to two children he has been very connected with in the Old City.

I had met Karan and Tejashwari once before, about three weeks ago on Karan’s tenth birthday. The brother and sister are adorable, loving, and full of spunk. Yesterday was the first time I visited their home.

As I entered, Tejashwari greeted me warmly by wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her head under my arm. I hugged her tightly back.

Sunilbhai commented on the shocking sea-green color the children had recently painted the walls, and the pictures of their parents that had been hung up.

After the death of their parents five years, Teju, now 14, and Karan have lived on their own. They spent a brief stint in a children’s hostel in Gandhi Ashram, about three years ago. During their time at the Ashramshala, Karan began showing signs of a skin infection. Medical tests soon revealed that both he and his sister are HIV positive.

The children did not find it easy to live in the hostel. The constant schedule and routine made them unhappy, as they were used to living independently and doing as they wished. In addition, the teachers at the hostel worried about them living and playing in such close contact with other children.

Although there are other hostels in India especially for children like Karan and Teju, most of them require the boys and girls to live separately, which they are not willing to do.

They returned to their home from the Ashramshala, and ever since have been taking care of each other. Watching the prem, or love, between the siblings is truly touching. Together, they manage their house – cleaning, cooking, and washing all on their own.

Although Teju and Karan live alone and have certainly matured beyond their age due to their circumstances, there is no doubt that they are still children and want to enjoy a childhood filled with playfulness and mischief.

After welcoming Sunilbhai and I into their home, Teju rushed to find a Barbie doll she had just been gifted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She sat the doll down next to me and insisted that I help her dress it properly and comb its hair. Meanwhile, Karan was excitedly showing Sunilbhai the remote control car he had received.

After we left, Sunilbhai divulged his deep worry about the children. He explained that the area that they live in one of the worst neighborhoods in Ahmedabad. Although the kids have a good rapport with their neighbors, who often supply them with groceries, they have no one to look after them continuously. As a result, they have discontinued their HIV treatment.

“They don’t go to school. They don’t have much discipline. And worst of all, they don’t have an understanding about their disease,” Sunilbhai went on. “Teju is getting older now too. She is already 14. Unless they are put in a controlled environment, they might end up in real trouble.”

I’ll end with a thought that was read at prathna yesterday morning: Gratitude and sorrow cannot coexist

It’s a simple and powerful idea. The act of being thankful fundamentally negates self-pity and distress.

Despite their tragic and unfortunate circumstances, Karan and Teju are full of life and love. They enjoy whatever little they have to the fullest, and such enjoyment of simple pleasures leaves no room for sorrow in their tiny home.

Sometimes our lives need to be shown against a different background to reveal the good things we have come to take for granted. This may have been the first Thanksgiving that I have felt real gratitude for the countless blessings in my life.

I went to bed last night with my heart filled with thanks, and my brain filled with anxiety about the sweet brother and sister.

Experiment #14: Lost in Translation

For breakfast this morning, my Australian (Korean-born) housemate Soo, made banana pancakes. I haven’t done much cooking in the volunteer house, after an incident about two months ago when a lizard found its way into a cooking pot.

But Soo’s pancakes were delicious, and having her bubbly presence in the kitchen makes our small house, often devoid of natural light, feel large and warm.

Just now, she peeked her head into the bedroom and asked if I’d like to be a guinea pig as she experiments on how to best flavor a fresh brew of chai. I can never say no to chai, though I often wish I could-- as I’ve seen how much sugar people add to it here.

What smells like cardamom and ginger delight to my Indian self, smells suspiciously of diabetes to my young, hypochondriac, American self. It’s a struggle to balance these two brains, often in contradiction with each other.

I feel like my experience here has brought me to a point of convergence of the many brains I’ve embodied, and worlds I’ve known during my life.

First, there is the world of an American college student. The volunteer house is currently filled with girls from all over the globe in various stages of their education. We share stories about the best pizza back home, and how wonderful a pedicure would feel after walking through the slum in open-toe shoes for three months. They understand the tensions of figuring out how to put a college education to use in a way that feels fulfilling and significant, and the insecurities and frustrations that arise when we work with people from different cultures. But often, I find myself wishing that I wasn’t surrounded by people who are familiar with the mass-consumption and extreme ambition I left at home. They are a reminder that the lifestyle I’ve taken a break from still exists, and will have to be faced sooner or later.

Then, there is the world of an Indian daughter. I was raised eating khichdi and khadi, like any typical Gujarati household. My mom attempted to teach me how to roll proper round rotli when I was about nine, and we always promptly removed our shoes upon entering the house. Yet, I ate Eggo waffles for breakfast and grew up in a home that cheered for the 49ers and the Giants. Despite the obvious “Indian” forces that have shaped me, I was for all intensive purposes, an American.

In Manav Sadhna, I often feel like I am a daughter to the older staff members, with a pressure to act as a proper Indian daughter should. I should touch the feet of my elders when I greet them, to ask for blessings, and keep my hair tied in a simple, modest braid, slicked down with coconut oil. I’ve definitely grown an understanding and appreciation for traditional customs, during my time here, but I have not been able to completely embrace them. Perhaps it’s the feeling of being an imposter – trying to adopt customs that are not my own, to be accepted by this community.

Finally, there is the world of a seeker of spiritualism. The ideas of karma, nirvana, and atma (soul) have made appearances in my life for as long as I can remember. My mom has been a faithful advocate of the power of spirituality in finding happiness, and forceful in her insistence that the rest of the family find a similar faith. Perhaps it was a case of teenage rebellion, or simply a lack of context in my trouble-free childhood, but these beliefs had never truly struck a chord with me.

Everyday, I see people with lives drenched in tragedy and uncertainty, who somehow manage to make it through each day. This setting has brought new meaning to the spiritual terminology I’ve been listening to for years. It is not a solution to the problem; it’s a lens through which to look at our problems and untangle the unfair or unexplainable circumstances we are dealt.

The problem with living at the edge of so many worlds is that the logical course of action in one world, may not convert so logically into another. Each world gauges value by a different metric.

I worry that the value I add to my life here will be lost in translation when I return home and to school. The importance of spirituality and service at Manav Sadhna has fostered my belief that faithful service will contribute to bringing humanity forward, even if the results are not immediate or tangible, and as a result, bring me forward.

However, in the setting of competition at college, tangible results seem to be the only thing that matters at the end of the day. We measure our worth in terms of grades and income, on an individual level, and by the abstract figures of GDP and stock values, on a larger scale. 

Yet, the single number of a GPA that is meant to embody one’s intelligence is really just a reflection of what limited knowledge a person happened to know at a given time.  It (most often) doesn’t reflect a curiosity in pursuing new experiences, or the ability to survive in a resource-poor setting.  Similarly, a country’s GDP is supposed to be a measure of economic prosperity and quality of life, though it includes the amount of money spent on advertising by cigarette companies, to build jails for convicts, and to clear trees in order to build sprawling new highways (borrowed from John Robbins’ essay, “The Economics of Happiness”).

In essence, these tools all fail as they attempt to quantitatively measure things—intelligence, success, prosperity, happiness – that are inherently qualitative in nature.

I haven’t yet decided how to translate the value I have earned in India to my life back home. And, I haven’t yet decided if I’m okay with presenting my friends and family in America with the un-translated version, and allowing them to piece together their own renditions of my experience, determined by what represents value in their world.

Experiment #13: Happy Diwali

I've been down with a cold for the past five days. While the rest of Ahmedabad has been outside setting off fireworks and lighting candles to celebrate the festival of lights, I've been medicated in bed.

Apparently, I'm not the only one with a less than perfect Diwali. On Thursday, the headline in The Times of India read "Dark Diwali for Obama; Democrats lose House polls". My experience over the past two months has shown that The Times is a less than stellar gem of journalism, with front page news often recapping what film stars Salman and Priyanka had to say about each other last night.

But this melodramatic announcement made me think-- even though I haven't had a chance to get out of the house for my first Diwali in India, I haven't been completely isolated from the celebrations. Fireworks go off outside my window at all hours of the night, and each evening my uncle's neighbors come around to distribute prasad or sweets. And yesterday, my cousin, aunt and I made a colorful rangoli in front of the house. There's really no such thing as a dark Diwali in India, so lucky for Obama that India is the first stop in his visit to Asia.

Anganwadi children light taramandal sticks

Rangoli design and lighted divas outside our home

Experiment #12: Ekatva

Do poor people in America know how to speak English? At first the question struck me as silly and obvious.

On Friday afternoon, I was sitting in Gandhi's Prathna Bhumi or Prayer Ground with 18 boys and girls from the slums, and Nimeshbhai, a Manav Sadhna volunteer. Nimeshbhai is coordinating a dance and drama production starring these children, following the example of a show created by Manav Sadhna ten years ago. The theme of the production will be ekatva, meaning oneness.

After Nimeshbhai introduced me to the group, the children's hands popped up, eager to ask me questions.

Why did you want to come to India and work with poor people? I was impressed by the clarity of the question coming from a 12-year-old. It's a question I've been asking myself for a while now, and I'm not sure I've yet settled on an answer. I rattled off a trite response about wanting to experience life in a different country, and made a mental note to think more about it later.

Are there poor people where you come from? What are poor people in America like? Do they live in slums?

I tried my best to answer their questions in my broken Gujarati. But more than the language barrier, the difficult part was expressing myself honestly and sincerely. The subject of "poor people" is not one that comes up often in my conversations, and I felt a pressure to give somewhat diplomatic answers to these children.

But when 11-year-old Vicky asked me if poor people in America know English, I realized that my diplomacy was out of place with this audience. My discomfort was stemming from the fact that the children's questions acknowledged that they were poor, and also acknowledged that I knew that they were poor. But they were not embarrassed. They were simply trying to find something to relate to in the strange land of America, which became a little less foreign once they realized that poor people live there as well.

Vicky's question, which seemed simple at first, revealed how deep his understanding of ekatva really is. He assumed that poor people in America cannot be much different than poor people in India. And to a large extent, he's right. Regardless of where they live, people who live in poverty are disadvantaged, hungry, and unable to reach they're full potential because of the economic and social limitations they've been dealt.

Yes, for the most part, everyone in America knows English. The kids were stunned. In India, English is a mark of a good education, and often a good education is a mark of money. Rather than shattering their feeling of oneness with Americans, this revelation about English made the children more interested to find out about the foreign culture.

This sentiment - the feeling of being united despite differences- is one I'm familiar with. The current Manav Sadhna volunteers are residents of four different continents. This experience we have been drawn to by of our mutual passion and interest for service is enriched by our distinct backgrounds.

Yesterday, two Americans, two Brits, an Australian, a German, a Frenchman and a Spaniard all visited the "Old City" of Ahmedabad for dinner. We shared spicy pav bhaji and kulfi from the street vendors and silently prayed that we wouldn't be running for the bathroom in the morning. Afterward, we walked through the streets, trying to take in the subtle beauty of Ahmedabad at night.

The Old City really is beautiful, but the beauty is hidden under years of dust, litter and attempts at modernization. The building facades are covered by torn and yellowing posters of Bollywood film stars from an older generation; the peeling paint and rusty windows eclipse the striking architecture and design during the daytime.

But at night, as the crowds thin and the vegetable vendors pack up their goods, there's a calmness in the streets that drew my attention to the buildings. After the founding of Ahmedabad, a wall was built along the circumference of the city to protect it from invasion. Today, Ahmedabad has expanded far beyond the original "walled city", but many of the original gates (called darwaja in Gujarati) still stand. In the yellow light of the street lamps, the intricate carvings and elegant architecture of thron darwaja (three gates) were eye-catching.

We ended the night by packing our party of eight into an auto rickshaw (meant for three) and speeding back to the Ashram.

Sidi Sayed Mosque in the Old City

Manek Chowk