Jaipur, the Pink City

Tomorrow, on the 8th of July, I'm headed out to China. The month plus that I have spent here in Northern India has been informative and fun, I'm sorry to leave so soon.
Jaipur, the 'Pink City', was magnificent and ancient, filled with temples, forts, and palaces which date back thousands of years. There I saw primitive astrology, the likes of Jantar Mantar, an observatory used by Maharaja Jai Singh. The city palace, also, with its armory and courtroom, still complete with decorations and thrones, was a wonder in and of itself. While it is a place where time seems to stand still, it also exudes a vibrant life force which can be felt in every corner of the bazaars, through every neighborhood. There are slums, of course, and many thousands who sleep on the dusty streets, but, with effort, hope can be felt in this extraordinary city, hope that change is coming. I stayed with a friend of my family, the Agrawals, in a quiet neighborhood, Tilak Nagar. Mr. Agrawal was quick to help me find volunteer work, he is extremely well connected in the city. After meeting with one of his friends, I was shown several orphanages, as well as other non profit clinics which dot the city. I split my time between three, the first, a nursery of adopted girls, aged 1 to 10. There I was little help, my Hindi just as bad as their English, but in such situations, words do far less than interactions. We would color with crayons, do arts and crafts projects that I brought, and play card games. With no male role models, it took them only minutes to start calling me 'uncle', as sad as it was endearing. From there, I would go to another orphanage, on the other side of the city, where 20 children live in a three floor house, sleeping six or seven to a room. They have survived who died of AIDS, indeed, all of them are HIV positive. Through philanthropy, their medication is paid for and the disease is treated to the fullest. Here, too, they recieve care from several females, who work full time preparing them meals, bathing them, and looking after them. As such I was again hugely popular, being an adult (feels odd to say), and I spent the afternoons playing football (the international kind) with them in a park by their home. In comparison with the awkward stares of passers by, their rampant enthusiasm, complete with using me as a human jungle gym, was a welcome improvement. The day I left, one of the boys sat me down on the couch, and looked up at me "you stay here" he said. Again, it was both touching and scary that, in two short weeks, children are attaching to volunteers such as myself emotionally. It also begs the question of what exactly volunteer work does for the children that are being 'helped'. On one hand, there is the rational and pragmatic arguement that, however little you do, doing anything is better than doing nothing. I agree with this fullheartedly, there is no shame in doing what you can. However, one must be realistic when approaching the subject of utility, for it grows more and more apparent to me that volunteer work is equally, if not more, about the effect that it has on the doer, the volunteer. I played father for two weeks, then left to continue my journey. If anything, I have left these kids with attachment issues more serious than those that they had before I ever met them, ever stepped foot in their cramped and dusty home. But I have emerged with new perspective, new appreciation for the lives which are being led here, in the neighborhood behind a hospital (best in India, I was told).
Finally, I spent a few days at the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti, the largest prosthetic leg facility in the world. Here, thousands of Indians flock to be fitted with prosthetics, free of charge. Here, about 330,500 arms and legs have been made since 1975, when the 'jaipur foot' was invented. It is nothing dramatic, no hidden secret, just a length of tough plastic piping that is molded around a plaster of paris model of the amputated limb. It is fit with care, with quality worksmanship, and the people who come are provided with economic support to get back on their feet, in a more metaphorical sense. I was given a tour, shown the workshop, sat and watched as several people went through the process, which takes about half an hour.
I have no doubt that programs such as this one exist in all of India, indeed, in all of the world, but it is equally comforting to see them work, see humans with genuine concern for the plight of their fellows. True mercy is a rare thing these days.

Mussoorie to Jaipur

Having completed the book-learning portion of my time here in India, I headed back to Delhi to begin the equally edifying travelling. Mussoorie was tranquil, a great place to study and focus in on my own writing. While I was there, I got to visit a Tibetan Refugee Community, apparently many of them have sprung up in the last 20 years in the hill stations of Northern India. It was an eye opening experience (an understatement considering all of India is an eye opening experience), but shocking nonetheless. Our tour guide was telling me that, in the past three years, China has fully tried to shut down the borders between Tibet and India, forcing the refugees to cross discreetly. One young girl, age 12 when she trekked down out of the mountains, arrived in Mussoorie to find that her fingers had become so frostbitten under her gloves that they disintegrated as she removed the thin wool.

Also during my stay, I went on a 14 mile trek up to about 9000 feet, to a peak named Top Tibba. The hike itself was painful enough, not to mention that we did it alongside a few of the Woodstock teachers, one of whom is an avid marathon runner and has done the path that we walked at a clip, finishing the entire route in half of the 5 hours that it took us. Regardless of relative athleticism, the views were beautiful.

Anyhow, I left Mussoorie on the 16th, travelling by train to Delhi, where I spent one final night before catching a bus to Jaipur. The bus ride was another 5 hour journey, but well worth the time spent. I was sitting in the window seat, with a 250 pound muslim man between me and the aisle. We started with the formalities, his english was quite good. What my name was, where I was from, whether or not I was married. The usual questions. He was a massive man, with skin as dark as the night, and a huge beard that sharpened to a point below his chin. I leaned back, asked him if he enjoyed futbol. He did, I let him know that Argentina had just blown out South Korea, Iguain had a hat trick. I opened up Midnight's Children, by Salomon Rushdie, and he proved as sharp a reader as he was a talker, and immediately reminded me that Rushdie was living in the USA now, because the Ayatollah recommended that he be hung for another of his novels, The Satanic Verses. I feigned ignorance, and the subject quickly changed, but not before he offered some alternative literature, namely Harry Potter. He then brought up the topic of marriage, saying that my life was not complete until I had a wife and kids. I asked him about his, he is married, with a boy and girl. He confessed that he thinks Shakira is "mighty fine", he kept saying "waka waka".

My two days here in Jaipur have been spent mainly staying out of the heat. It is regularly about 100 degrees here, and doesn't help that the water tank, which is on the roof, heats the shower water to a boil which makes bathing impossible during the daylight hours. My hosts are extremely gracious, however, and brought me to the wedding of one of their friends the other night. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible at the reception, but still managed to be the only white person there, thus I was never without the awkward hello of some curious English practitioner. The most memorable guest (that I met) was the former minister of State, who is a very well educated (albeit tiny) man, who was very outspoken about the potential of India's growing middle class. The average age of an Indian, he kept saying, is 24! In Japan, it is 41. Think about it. Proper education, and we'll be ahead in no time.

Thats all for now, the power has just gone out as it apparently does every day for a half an hour, from 545 to 615. I hope all is well in the states, and I'll be writing again soon, hopefully sooner than I managed with this entry.

Welcome to India

March 26th, 2010 began early as the plane crossed Greenland and the sun rose. The remaining 8 hours of the 14 hour plane ride from Newark to Delhi were sleepless, trapped between two overweight Americans in a middle seat. Stretching my legs as we taxied to the gate, it was too dark to see anything but the heat was obvious. 115 degrees, the stewardess said over the loudspeaker as she announced flight connections and reprimanded those who had gotten up to stretch their legs. We were herded out, up the tunnel, and into a mercifully air conditioned airport, built for the fast approching Commonwealth Games in October (You'll appreciate the irony of this later). Meeting up with the rest of the class, I waited for my luggage, last off the plane. Striking up a conversation with a woman beside me, I quickly discovered that she was Ecuadorian, here for an Indian wedding of one of her friends. She mentioned her son, who she had left behind, adding "but I'm a good mother", as if justification was needed for her week long hiatus. We exited the airport, passing soldiers with stone faces and machine guns, and were blasted by a wave of heat at the door. As we gasped for breath on the curb, dry air hanging around us, the bus pulled up, squealing its brakes as it stopped.

The next morning I was up around 5, tired but unable to sleep because of the 9 1/2 hour time difference. Throwing on some clothes, I left the shelter and cold air of the hotel, and down onto the dusty roads of Delhi. Despite numerous accounts from friends and in books, the poverty of these streets cannot be under emphacised. Within five blocks I had passed more than a hundred half naked bodies, asleep on the side of the road as the flies buzzed around their bodies. Not ten kilometers away was an airport, new and air conditioned, for the world to see, but here was a different India, emaciated, stripped of their dignity and forced to live on the rupees of the pilgrims and the guilt of the tourists.

The next day, we boarded trains early at a station (unfortunately no Slumdog Millionaire dancing) filled with a hum of activity. Moto taxis clustered outside, competing for business or simply lounging, while no one moved with any purpose. Inside showed no improvement, as women dressed in multicolor saris sat on suitcases and boxes, and men massed around the ticket windows, elbowing for position in the amorphous queue. Arriving in Hardiwar, we were picked up and then dropped off, a trash filled dead end which appeared to have little significance. "Over there" the guide pointed, directing us with broken english to across the river, which was lined by thousands of pilgrims, taking their daily dip in the holy Ganga river. Considered the holy mother of India, the Ganges stretches from high in the Himalayas down through the plains before spilling out into the Bay of Bengal. Along its path it provides water for millions of farmers, and cleanses the sins of all who believe. Its position as the holy river of India has not stopped it from also becoming dangerously over polluted, filled with sewage, trash, and the charred corpses of those cremated along its banks. Putting these thoughts out of my mind, I stripped off my clothes, and submerged my body. The current lifted me up, as I clung to the chains which line the banks, and, if nothing else, the river provided a blissful respite from the sweltering heat.

Back in the cars, we headed for Rishikesh, the city made famous by the Beatles song of the same name. Along the way we passed people, walking alongside the road, as well as cows, sacred and allowed to roam free. We passed fifty meter high statues of Hindi gods, Shiva and Hanuman the Monkey. In Rishikesh, I spent a day at the Divine Life ashram, the same one to which the Beatles had gone, seeking enlightenment. If nothing else, there is a feeling of peace there, as worshippers chant "hare krishna hare krishna hare hare krishna krishna" over and over again, their monotones blending into a harmony that can only be describe as ethreal. Later, at a yoga ceremony on the banks of the Ganga, I watched as a boy, no older than Phillip, chant along with the elders, recieving a bowl of fire which he then set afloat on the river.

Now I am in Mussourie, having survived a drive up into the foothills of the Himalayas along roads with signs warning "drink whiskey, driving risky". At the Woodstock School, an international boarding school, we are starting our creative writing class.

Thats all for now