Happy Birthday remembrance to WP "Bill" Youngblood today, my dad's dad, whom I think about each August 5. And happy birthday to my cousin Will, who's probably 8 or 9 this year in Atlanta. Amazing. And there's someone else on this day...shucks. Well, happy birthday to you too, I know this is a special day.
Sitting in the airport in Varanasi, tons of glossy floor space, high ceilings give space for the pigeons to fly. We've seen this in every airport here, this strange inefficiency of space, so much square footage, no little revenue being generated (few shops, few airline counters, no ATMs, etc.) There are decidedly more tourists here than we've seen anywhere else. In fact, the majority of passengers heading to Delhi are from Europe, probably due to August vacations. We overlapped a large group of Spanish tourists at the Taj Gateway in Varanasi, a few Germans, some Japanese and Chinese even. This is a real tourist hub these days, although I hear folks still don't stay for very long. I have to admit, I'm rather jarred by the young European ladies in short shorts and tank tops here. It is so inappropriate for the local culture--what are they thinking? Didn't they do any research?
My luggage was again overweight at 23 kgs. Sanjeev again saved the day and I didn't have to pay for the 3 kgs over. I have no idea why it's so high, as I haven't bought that much (I tell myself), but my small suitcase is always the heaviest in our whole group's. Everyone else is bottoming out at 16, 17 kgs. Mine keeps getting plumper. I ditched a few pieces of clothing today, hard to part with them. And I'll do the same in Delhi, forcing myself not to overthink. We are gearing up for a marathon 2 days of activity, 4 really, considering what kind of day Thursday is going to be. Some of my colleagues have to go to work with students on Monday, a week from today. I cannot imagine. I need to spend the flight today prioritizing, developing an action plan, then go go go.
My late night is starting to catch up with me. It's going to be tough to think straight for the work I want to get done. And when we get to Delhi, Wendy and I have decided to go to the new temple (insert name here) rather than do any shopping or go to the Red Fort, considering we're going to Agra's tomorrow. I must admit, I look forward to the environs tonight. Lovely hotel. We leave at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow and return late the following day. It's going to be a "fasten your seat belts" kind of experience.
This flight is not long, slightly less than 90 minutes, but it's going to be a packed and smelly affair. They use a P.A. system to announce boarding info here, you can't decipher a thing of what he's saying. There will be no room in the overhead bins. I'd better get in line.
We made it back to Delhi after a rather hairy landing. It was funny to feel the familiarity of the Delhi airport, we knew the carpeted concourse well. I finally landed an ATM after days of missed opportunities in Varanasi. The air outside was soupy with heat and humidity, rain speckling puddles stretching across the parking areas. The bus is probably our nicest so far, though my standards have adjusted to the environs. This one makes me think of a hockey team bus (for small teams), circa 1979 or 80. Graphic patterns of red and blue, attempts at a futuristic look still tough enough for industrial use.
I understand better the reputation of Delhi traffic. The first time we came through was really la4 August: Heading to Bright Star School for girls and boys, residential facility for girls
In the back of a bouncy car with questionable suspension winding through the streets of Varanasi. Dennis and I are in teh way back, he's clutching the headrest in front of him. Wendy and Catherine are talking about the cultural forms of negotiation...how a high (or low) starting number isn't meant to be insulting it's a starting point for the elaborate dance that is bargaining here. And Gene is up front with the driver, wearing a seatbelt for the first time in India. He's no dummy.
We need to stop fir sweets to take to the girls. This venture is happening because of a conversation Catherine had last night with a woman at the sitar concert. In a nutshell, she helps run a residential facility for abandoned children outside Varanasi. Her husband has been a Fulbright fellow and is a good friend of Adam Grotsky, the country director for USIEF. She and her kids were fun to talk to, and when she issued the invitation to come out and meet the girls at the center, we jumped at the chance.
As we drive, we can't help but comment more on the traffic here. What I keep coming back to is the men on bike carts, with one tire in front and two in back supporting a flat panel that extends 4-6 feet out behind. A guy just rode by with at least 10 mattresses piled on the back. We regularly see guys with 8-9 propane tanks on the back, 15 sacks of grain (and we're talking big sacks), or stacks of 5-meter PVC piping in tow. The bummer is when you see these guys have to put the brakes on for some yahoo traffic move by a bigger vehicle. Then they have to start the momentum drive all over again. I have seen just one facial expression on these men: resignation. It's strange: it both fortifies and hurts the heart to see. I wish I could cut these guys--universally--a break. I just don't know what that would look like.
Back to Little Stars. We had a meeting with founder Asha, her sister Dolly and Rishi, Asha's daughter. They started the school with 7 kids in Dolly's house. Now teaching 850 kids, from playgroup to Grade 2 is in this building, from 3-10 is in another building. Wants classes 30-35, parents beg for more space, so they keep increasing class size, because if they don't take the kids, the kids spend day on street. At least they can get some study, some small work. So many classes have 60 students ("please, just one more" is a constant parent refrain).
Rishi is 22, looks much younger. Helps out teaching younger classes, doing masters in linguistics at BHU, helps with office work. She's the one Dennis targeted to show the structure, purpose and strategy of www.globalgiving.org. He believes she'll use it, but he says she might need help. Fortunately, and wonderfully, I think he'll actually follow up and advise her.
The schools has 35-40 teachers, more for younger kids. We walked through the first room on the ground floor where a group of girls was working at a table, focused on their copybooks even though it was Sunday morning. These are the girls who live here, orphans or children of single parents, they live here because their parents cannot take care of them. The building is concrete slab, very squarish construction, high ceilings, brightly painted walls. In fact, the mural on the ground floor in the opening room (where the girls were working around a rectangular wooden table) was beautiful in its pastel depiction of Lord Krishna and his entourage.
The school has only private funds; its financial future is uncertain. There is not a designated director of fundraising, and toward the end of our visit Dennis spent some time showing Rishi about www.GlobalGiving.org. He also asked if their school/organization was connected to a legal entity in the States. In addition to teaching full-time, Dennis provides a wealth of legal services to the kids (and families) in his school. He knows the landscape well of what foreign NGOs need to operate (or at least receive donations) from individuals and organizations in the US. We learned that Little Stars gets donations where they can. The new school, a gorgeous 3-story cement building, was funded by a Dutch donor who apparently ran out of money 80% through construction. Serendipitously, another tourist came by soon after, saw the school, heard about its financial troubles, and the next day contributed the remainder to finish the new building (500,000 rupees, about $10,000). Amazing. Currently, costs run about 6000 rupees per year for each student to provide all materials and uniforms. Teachers get 4000 rupees for month. Some donors sponsor a child, a teacher, etc. To run an organization, you need good staff, well-trained, well-educated, must provide salary for them so they can sustain their families.
We saw their facility, the classrooms, including a really nice (for a neighborhood like this, with peeling paint and intermittent basic services) computer lab. It had 20 computers, most of which function in a way teachers can count on. Folks who aren't teachers might not get the gravity of that--it is often the case that a computer lab with 24 machines will have 80% functional use when you're scheduled for a lesson/research. This means you constantly have to troubleshoot for some students. It's not an educational calamity, but it keeps you on your toes.
The girls sleep in bright blue metal bunks on the second level, beds which are pushed aside each morning so the room can be swept. Next to their bedroom is the kitchen, a galley-type with a big bowl of brown potatoes, sacks of lentils, and pots that are (mostly) very clean. The girls do the cooking and the cleaning up, supervised by a neighborhood woman. Similarly, the new school building is maintained by a local family who gets to live below it rent-free in exchange for their maintenance. The upper school does not provide lunch ("too much to take on") but it has clean, new classrooms, though they hardly look big enough to accommodate the 60 kids squeezed in to each room. Asha said initially she taught kids for just 1 hour a day, but quickly realized that the kids needed and wanted more. Over time, parents saw the benefit of having literate children who also knew math and even some English. Remember, parents were weighing this against the money their kids brought in through work. Over the past 13 years, the neighborhood has embraced her. Theirs is one of the groups ChildLine (remember them from New Light and Kolkata?) calls when little children are deposited at the train station.
Thanks to Catherine's foresight, we brought candy to share with the girls and with the family who runs the place. The girls showed off their hairstyling skills (future metier for some) by giving Catherine and Wendy S. new "dos" and by trimming Gene's moustache. This was on the 3rd floor of their 4 story building. Over 2 dozen girls live in this space, and the school is unable to house the number of girls who need its services. We heard heart-rending tales today where the director had to say no to people who really, really need the services, simply because there's no more space to responsibly take another child. At least not right now. The building is basic. It's concrete, airy, spare. It functions precisely because, as Dolly said, we ask the girls to take responsibility. They take care of themselves, of each other, in ways that facilitate day-to-day management: cooking, laundry, helping the younger or the less intellectually able get ready for the day, etc. We spoke to a few girls who've been there since they were 2. The sense of responsibility, the air of kindness and ownership...was beautiful to behold. The school is English medium through 5th grade, then Hindi medium through 10th (can't afford English medium for all). Students who wish to study beyond 10th are sponsored individually, some even in English medium schools. These add to the difficulty of financial decisions for the group.
I gave them $40, and I'm looking forward to sharing their story with my students in the fall.
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Wendy and I laid low in the early afternoon. Then we went to Fab India and I spent a bunch of money on awesome clothes and gifts. Like, completely awesome. It's wrong to brag, so I won't go into details. I also won't talk too much about the stinking VAT (value added tax, whatever that means). It is so freaking high in this country, probably because very few people a) participate in the formal economy, and b) pay their taxes (if in doubt, see "a"). Then we had a really funny autorickshaw ride...getting a "cab" here is a deeply psychological affair for a foreigner, as you have to receive the onslaught of offers from various transport purveyors. "Madam, I can take you", "Madam, come with me", "Madam, where you go?", "Madam, this way". It goes on and on. "Only hundred rupees" (for a 30 rupee ride, typically). "Madam, come with me right now". It takes energy to enter the fray, but our vigilance was worth it, or maybe it was just the luck of the draw. Our young, paan-spitting driver saw that we were taking videos of the ride, and he made the most of it. The traffic was about 50% of what we'd seen the previous day (why am I always missing the best filming times?), and it seemed like every time I turned off the camera I immediately saw something worth filming: another near-accident (we had two en route to the theater), men urinating against walls, pigs in the street, hordes of orange-clad Shiva worshippers carrying their precious loads of Ganga water slung over their shoulders on poles decorated with silver, orange and green tinsel. But then we hit the cow slalom course, and it was all worth it.
So we arrived at the mall for the show, and met everyone at McDonald's. That's right. You have it: 4 August 2013, I went to McDonald's. I even ordered and ate something, a Diet Coke, a small fries and a McVeggie Burger (peas, green beans, and a masala-y lentil mash). I ditched the mayo-laden bun and ate half the veggie pattie. It was...okay. Wendy and I hit the Nike store for her to buy an official India cricket jersey (a little jealous there) and then killed an hour by walking through the unairconditioned 4 floors, peeking in shops, having a coffee, and then waiting a stifling 15 minutes in the 4th floor cinema lobby for the theater to open. We had "gold seating", the back row. My seat was in the far left corner, the last one. Row Q, seat 25. Truth be told, the seat looked 100% skeevy, slicked down with sweat and general wear. The movie was Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Run Michael Run, about the famed Indian sprinter Milkha Singh in the 1950s and 60s. I really enjoyed the film despite the fact that it was 3+ hours long and had an intermission. Oh, and about 30 cell phones went off during the film. And it was entirely in Hindi...with a little Punjabi thrown in, but I don't speak that either. Having said that, I only missed about 5-10% of the plot because the film (and most Bollywood films, so I hear) are so obvious that you don't need language at all to get the story. Like, at all. I look forward to watching it in English, though it's got a few graphically violent scenes so I don't think it will be good for Liv and Ruby. And Chris will find it too predictable, too facile to hold his interest, especially for 3 hours. But I'd like to see it again.
I walked home with Sanjeev and Gene. Everyone else took a bike rickshaw. I was tired at first, kind of envied that, but the walk ended up being just the ticket to clear my mind and mood. I was really grateful, although I walked up on the sidewalk (uneven and dog-ridden) while the guys walked in the street, facing oncoming traffic: no thanks.
It's almost 3:30 now, and we were bumper to bumper for quite some time. We're driving down a broad green avenue, divided by a manicured median, past rows of embassies. Not sure if I mentioned before how many rotaries mark Delhi's major roads, at least the new section designed by Luytens. I wrote so much more about history in the first 2 weeks than I did the last 2. I guess if you have a particular interest in any part of the narrative, you know by now to ask me a question or google it yourself. We're coming up to the Taj Palace, and I have to admit: I'm so happy about that. Goals for today: workout, pedicure, temple visit, enjoy dinner without dropping a dime.
7:00 p.m., out of a hot bath and dressed for dinner. I decided to join a group at the fancy restaurant here, Wasabi, one of the Morimoto line. With the afternoon rain, Wendy and I opted not to go to the (outdoor) temple complex. She went to the spa and I to the gym, where I had perhaps my longest run of the trip (45 minutes, but no distance recorded, just time...how did that happen?) I watched test 3 of The Ashes, the nearly 6-week long cricket contest between Britain and Australia. I wasn't listening to the sound, so I am aware the Australia was doing really well (after having dropped the first two tests in previous weeks) until a questionable call by an official changed the course of things. Not really sure, and to be honest, I haven't been bitten by the cricket but as I'd expected. After the run, I agreed to do some stretching with the trainer, Arun. I don't know why I usually say no to those things, this was a few minutes of free massage and stretching. It was a little Jennifer (last name?) from Absolutely Fabulous. He was pushing my legs and stretching my back, I was partly enjoying it, partly screaming inside. What came out was a serious of deep-throated chortles, the kind my family would recognize as "can you believe this is supposed to be fun? It's miserable!" Actually I was fine until he demonstrated some grasshopper/frog yoga move to open the hips up. No. Way. These hips are locked. This buff dude was lying face down, pelvis flush with the floor, knees akimbo, flat on the floor, heels together and flat on the floor. Then he reached his arms out and pressed upward. He's looking at me saying, c'mon, you can do it. No, your legs should be flat on the floor. Touch the bottoms of your feet together. Now press UP. Um, no. Not possible. I collapsed in laughter at the absurdity of my rigid lower limbs. But I was reminded of some good stretches to do pre- and post-running, since I've been ignoring those steps. And I know I'll sleep well tonight.
We leave early for Agra tomorrow. I haven't even looked at the itinerary. Too tired, after not much sleep last night. And I read more of Diana Eck's Encountering God on the plane here. Good book. I finished ch. 2, Frontiers of Encounter, mostly about the World Religion Expo in 1893 in Chicago. I'm into ch. 3, The Names of God, which is a good chapter to read before talking to Western (Christian-influenced) kids about Hinduism and Buddhism. Lots to think about. If anyone's interested, I'll post a few key thoughts from her book. I can tell I'm tired...losing steam for blogging big ideas!
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