Looking ahead

Kids from the Udana Tsunami camp (a special meditation program for kids from the tsunami-hit areas) visit Nilambe Buddhist meditation centre, near Galaha, Sri Lanka in 2005.

These kids were all from the most affected (east coastal) areas of Sri Lanka.

The camp was organized free of charge for them by Nilambe Centre, my favourite place in Sri Lanka. It's one of the best meditation retreats in South Asia and very reasonably priced. You spend some 8 hours a day in silence, which I loved.

In this photo, they seem to be looking forward with hope.

In my neighbourhood

Kumar Shubankar
Originally uploaded by Sirensongs

Shubankar lived downstairs from me in Koregaon Park, Pune - where the restaurant bombing just happened on Valentine's Day. He lived in a traditional "joint family," with a bit of a twist - the husband and wife (Shubankar's parents) had moved in with the *wife's* parents, rather than with the husband's as per tradition.

The family were my landlords, it was their building. They were entirely accustomed to having foreigners come and go, they just asked that I be in before 11 or so.

Shubankar was all dressed up for his school Fancy Dress Competition as Chhatrapati Shivaji, the Marathi leader and hero of not only the Marathi region but Hindus everywhere.

He won the contest, so I took these photos and not only printed them for the family, but took them to be laminated and mounted with a stand.

This type of remembrance will make you very popular with Indian friends and landlords. It really is all about the family.

English lessons

The Aura of Auroville
Pillaichavady, Tamil Nadu
This is a journal entry from my time teaching English in a small town in Tamil Nadu, 2004.

Distances in and around Auroville are vast, and most local people do not have access to motorized transport. For me, a delightful highlight of life here are the local hitchikers on the verdant Auroville red-dirt roads. Usually women and small children, they stand on the roadside, armed with school bags, a bucket of fish, or a basket of vegetables, and flag down zooming scooters, mopeds and motorcycles.

Enge po kirrai? I ask in my limited Tamil. Kuilapalayam, Edaiyanchaady or Periyarrmudialarchavady , the polysyllabic village names come tumbling from their mouths. I scoot forward so they can hop onto the back (sometimes as many as 3 schoolgirls sitting behind on the pillion). Naturally, this slows down my own commute, but I don't mind....the village ladies with their crooked teeth, nose discs of gold and bright floral saris, the tiny school kids whose chubby little arms clutch round my tummy,
their squeals of fear or delight each time we hit a bump in the road - my being a few minutes late for class seems a small price.

Yesterday a tiny boy wearing a red puja mark on his forehead flagged me down on the Boommayapalayam back road at 7:15 AM. He was on his way to school, and took the opportunity to both practice his English (what is your name? My name is Danil. Where are you going? I go to New Creation School in Kuilapalaym) and instruct me in Tamil - as we passed things (tree, cow, dog) he yelled out the English and Tamil names.

Danil was not well-dressed and was very tiny. It brings a tear to a middle-aged eye to see such eagerness to learn and so much sweetness. It was easily an hour's walk to his school, but there he was trudging down the road bright and early.

My Language Lab English classes are a mixed bag. One class will be a runaway success with everyone yelling out answers and getting into it - the next will have a bunch of dud, dead spots where lose momentum and the kids begin to lose itnerest (begin to chat amongst themselves, etc). It's still very gratifying - but the new car smell (novelty of an American teacher) has worn off a bit, which means, I must figure out the challenge of actually teaching them, not just entertaining them.

Today some of the girls tried to stand up when I came into the room and I insisted they sit down (traditional respect for the teacher, but it was alarming to me).

I try to get them to talk about their lives and their world - instead of just repeating the lines about shoppes, prices and places in their textbooks. The last 2 assignments I gave: write a story about yourself and your day.

"My name is Vijayalakshmi, I live in Boomayapalayam. My house is behind the banana tree...
...I am eating rice every day. I am watching the television every day.
...Every day I go to work in Auroville at the Health centre, then I go home. "

They are too polite to tell me when they are bored or don't understand. Once I even asked them do you like this exercise, or do you want to do something else? and was met with blank stares - then I realized that, probably in their entire lives, no one had ever asked them what they WANTED to do. As they see it, a teacher, particularly, is supposed to be giving orders - not engaging in some kind of touchy-feely dialogue.

Calcutta: the Great Unwashed

Hi, everyone. I'm too freaked out by all the blank space and white bread to write much now that I'm back in the States. So I am resorting to re-runs.

This blog originally appeared as a Lonely Planet "Don't Forget to Write" entry in December, 2003. It was one of several entries I wrote about Calcutta, so don't flip on me if I left something out.


India has a genius for complicating things, and I'm not exactly straightforward and clutter-free myself to begin with.

Your faithful correspondent came North to Calcutta see the Kali Pujas (Oct 25-28, 2003), decided to stay a few days to volunteer at Mother Theresa's homes, and, as though in reward for this altruistic decision, promptly got deathly ill - a very nasty 6-day bout with diarrhea, cramps, indigestion, nausea, etc., and had to resort to a short round of antibiotics.

To further complicate things, when I became well enough to stagger past the ever-present gauntlet of Calcutta's professional beggars down to the local net joint, I found there was a SNAFU with my usually trusty email account.

Mother Teresa's home for mentally handicapped kids (Shishu Bhavan) was pretty amazing and unexpectedly fun, if you can ignore the smell of antiseptic floor wash (barely masking that of urine and feces). You should see the way these kids, many of whom are autistic or worse, light up when you just strum a few chords on a beat up old guitar and sing "Old MacDonald."

Calcutta - (India's second largest city, which in terms of sheer numbers, is quite a statement) is simultaneously the most medieval and most modern place I've yet visited here. Where else in the world can you take a foot rickshaw (yes, with huge wooden spoke wheels and a snowy-bearded barefoot man trundling you along the street) - a foot rickshaw, past limbless beggars and snarling street dogs, to the gleaming, punctual, immaculate, safe, uncrowded, *air-conditioned*(!) Metro station?!

In the Indian tradition of religious assimilation, Mother Teresa has been added to the local pantheon of saints and deities. The ferocious Kali Ma stares you down from nearly every street-corner shrine, alternating with Durga, who smiles benignly while spearing a demon. Amidst what must have seemed pagan idolatry to her, Therese's wrinkled walnut of a face has earned an enduring place of honour.

The city has been awash with activity honoring her recent beatification; everything from a Mother Teresa film festival (mostly documentaries and one docudrama starring Geraldine Chaplin), a ceremony for the first official veneration of her relics (including a few drops of blood - don't even want to know how they acquired that), and various cultural ceremonies, mostly featuring acoustic guitar renditions of "Amazing Grace" sung in Bengali.

Park Street - the hip, happening yuppie street with all the bars, trendy shops and nightclubs - has officially, and not quite appropriately, been dubbed Mother Therese Avenue. Calcutta municipal corporation seems to have a real sense of humour in this area; in the midst of a somewhat perverse PC renaming orgy, they also rechristened Calcutta's most commercial thoroughfare "Lenin Street." The US and British consulates both reside on what's now called "Ho Chi Minh Avenue." (I'm not sure what significance, if any, to read into the fact that these names appear only on maps and signs, but never in the local parlance.)

The post-colonial purport behind this nomme-nouveau frenzy (which seems to have primarily benefited the sign-painters and map printers) strangely didn't stop several streets from being renamed with, of all things, British names. Thus the former Theatre Road, rather than being named after a worthy Bengali playwright, of which there are many, became "Shakespeare Sarani." Another street, albeit a small one, swapped the decidedly British "Middleton Row" for the equally Limey "Sir William Jones Sarani." And one can only wonder what nationalist purpose was served by giving the name "James Hickey Sarani" to the former Dacres Lane.

I've found it surprisingly difficult to leave Calcutta, described by...well, some old writer whose name escapes me as being composed of "new mud, old mud and more mud." Repetitive, but accurate. Weather here, which was monsoon marsh and dripping humidity upon my arrival, has greatly improved, as has my health.

Give Calcutta a chance to first entrap you with its bewildering network of former cowpaths impersonating actual streets, or prevent your plane from departing due to poor visibility, and you'll find it eventually ensnares you with its unique charm - a sort of "creme de la grime." It ranks with Rome as an eternal, infernal city.

Recommended in Calcutta:
Kolkata Film Festival
Victoria Memorial including the Calcutta History Museum
Dakshineswar Kali Temple
Park Street British Cemetery
Howrah Bridge at dusk
Asiatic Society Museum (no admission for foreigners without passport)
Indian Museum on Chowringhee (Nehru) Street