Monday, March 12, 2007
Home again in Nanoose Bay
We came home January 30th. I wanted to write something but there was too much to write. At first, all I could do was stay home and be quiet. I walked around the house like someone who had found a quiet cloister after years of a 24/7 social setting. I so enjoyed the quiet. I admired the mountains, Northwest Bay, the trees, the green, the rain, the softness of the air and all the good things in our home. I did not want to go anywhere. The cats did not look too perturbed about our absence. A tree had fallen over during the storm and had landed on our house. Strangely, it had not gone through the roof, but just sort of sat there. At first it was alarming, but we said "we'll deal with it tomorrow" and then that tomorrow was finally 3 weeks later. It seemed quite normal to live in a house with a fallen tree on the roof.
Every day was full of things to do, but nothing seemed to be needed done in a hurry. We went about our business as if we had never left, but with a reflectiveness.... each of us with our memories and thoughts, sometimes talking about Dubai and Delhi and "that time in Varanasi". I thought a lot about my friends in India. The kids started going to school at Ballenas High School, part time, and were really happy to be with their friends again. So many of the friends complained that things had been really boring for them while we were in India. Since we came, the house had one or two or several friends over every day. The kids had a big party sometime in February and it went really well.
Nothing has really changed for me. I am quieter. I will go back to India, there is so much unfinished business for me there but now that I have "shown" the kids, I can go alone next time. As Sunny said, "India is an abstract concept". It's not really a country, but a collection of feudal tribes with thousands of cultures and ideas, and histories, and concepts about how to live and die. Borders aren't clear, either geographically or emotionally. The India I longed for, even knowing before I left that it was naive of me to do so, never really existed except in my heart, one already jaded. But I found that India in my best friend: Mehdi. He is my India.
Then there's the country India. It's my mother and my father and my worst enemy. It's the proverbial impossible therapist. The one who treats you badly and expects you to submit and then get enlightened. :-) You know, boot camp. Survival of those who are best at transcending, denying and/or opportunism.
I am touched by the everyday lives of people. Here and over there. The moments of grace, of euphoria, of affectionate recognition by someone you know, even if I have been in conflict with them. I feel bonded with them; we are friends. They are part of my life, my landscape. I love them.
My children are great. I mean, great. How did such symphonies happen?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Excellent
In our Benaulim Goa hotel, a small Indian woman called to me across the court yard. I looked up and she hurriedly came over to say to me: "You know, I have been looking at you, and you have very excellent features!". I said "why thank you, no one has ever said that to me before".
"Well, they cannot have been looking properly. I have been studying your face, and you have very excellent features. You must have been very beautiful when you were young!". She was beaming.
I thanked her and she hurried off.
Good News
In my last few days in Goa ( I am in Delhi now ) I was uplifted to see some really good coverage in the national newspaper, as well as places of the environmental crisis that India is facing. There are two magazines worth reading that I know of, and probably many more: Hard News (hardnews.com) and Himal Mag (himalmag.com). India's challenges, environmental, human rights, law & order, etc. are all concisely and squarely faced. The national newspaper had a huge spread last week covering success stories of people who were fed up with the politicians, and cleaned up rivers all by themselves, and started mini revolutions of people taking action. I also met an American couple who are living in Varanasi for a year. She's a writer and he's a professor of Hindu religion. I don't have his last name handy, but David wrote a book : A River of Love in an Age of Pollution. In it he traveled the country and among other things interviewed river activists. He made a friend in Kanpur, my home town, and this fellow, Rakesh, pictured above, has given up his personal life and career to clean up Kanpur. More on him at www.ecofriends.org. I plan to follow and support the Kanpur cleanup. I had read in a November Time magazine report that Kanpur was among the ten most polluted cities in the world. This man has taken on factories, the city, but in a positive and motivating way. He has personally hauled out bodies from the Ganges to give them a proper funeral. A Sikh man in the north got so fed up waiting for politicians, that at a meeting he personally jumped into the water and starting hauling out garbage. That has now become a legend, motivating thousands, and they now have a pristine river. Good news.Thursday, January 18, 2007
Blogged down
Here we are on the beach in Goa, trying to do some vanilla flavoured R&R by the sea, before heading up for the journey home which starts January 26th from New Delhi, via Dubai and Zurich, and ends up at home January 30/31st. Goa is not like India. It's a different place, an expensive Guatemala or perhaps a Jamaica without the music. I have avoided getting excited about inequities or bizarre prices, because it's not good for my health or Zaman and Bashu's enjoyment, but it can be aggravating. A 2 km ride on an autorickshaw, bargained down from Rs 100 is Rs 65. In Delhi, supposedly expensive, a 20 kms ride is Rs 100 in a real taxi, and Rs 75 in an autorickshaw. Kian and Mehdi are in Sri Lanka, and claim it is totally laid back and completely different. We have met a great American Quaker homeschooling family, dedicated and working for peace in the world. We had many common experiences in India, and so it was good not to feel alone. Also, at errol.ca, you can see the blog of a Canadian man, of Indian origin, but born and brought up in Edmonton, wherein he copes with his experience of India.
From www.photoryan.com/pages/essays/dalits/dalits_image06.html
The humiliation and trauma are not consciously inflicted, but that is the result. It is just the way things are. No one seems to think that there is a discrepancy between loving your child and ignoring their psychic pain. And so it is with animals, spouses, and the earth, all treated with equal amounts of insensitivity. As many of my Indian friends have said, it is a disconnect that happens when you are thrust unceremoniously from village to city, in search of wage work, robbed of your land by a feudal mafioso that rapes and tortures you if you object. This is all compounded by living under colonialism for hundreds of years: the Moghuls, the British, and now globalization; self esteem is so low it's hard to measure.
Who's got time to do anything but survive? I get that it is a priority to make it through each day for the vast majority of people here.
This is not about comparing India with Canada. I can list what ails Canada easily. This is about my experience here. There is no race for first place, or last place.
==========
India has been difficult for me this time around. I have tried to fall in love again, but it didn't happen. I don't suppose it ever happens, with countries or with people, when we "try". I felt obliged to try, because I was in love with it before, and because it is the place of my emotional roots. That place of my childhood lives in my heart now as an emotional abstraction, an imaginary number, such as the square root of negative one.
India is racing towards something, I know not what. Various claims to superpowerdom, economic booms, world class competitive edges, all fall flat and sound like so much hype orchestrated by a few, for a few. The benefits of such growth are largely for a few, living it up in posh flats in city centres, and five star resorts in Goa and other beaches. The cost of such growth is borne by every poor child for the next 50 years, in the form of mind boggling air, water and earth pollution, and staggering poverty. India's rich history of architecture, religion, intellect, music, art, mathematics, spirituality, multiculturalism, all mean nothing, as they are eclipsed by the one main system of belief that money is God. Money is the one most important item of worship. This is of course true everywhere, but only India has temples, mosques and altars every 20 meters, adulating everything from Christ (in Goa) to Shiva, Kali, Islam and so many more. Only India has the fantastically profound and explicit philosophy of transcending materialism. Philosophically, theoretically. Not in practice.
The Taj Mahal lays like a humongous breathtaking jewel, in a city of unbelievable dirt, pollution, chaos, and open sewers. I would trade all the monuments and buildings of India, all the gold and jewels of India, transport them away, in exchange for an ecologically sustainable economy where every human being had enough food, shelter, education and protection from abuse: verbal, physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse. An India where there is breathable air, recycling, clean water and land enough to grow pure food for everyone, locally.
The pollution that I have been objecting to stridently in my postings, is a metaphor for the incredible neglect that I have seen human beings have for one another here. If we cannot respect each other, there is little chance that we can respect our earth. While there is a huge amount of love and attachment to children in families, I have seen them by in large be treated with disrespect: hit gratuitously, yelled at, pushed aside, laughed at, scorned, in the community by strangers, but also within families by parents and grandparents. The archaic education systems condemns them to days of rote learning and horrendous fear-mongering by teachers ready to physically punish with a ruler and ridicule the child in front of everyone. This is terrorism.
From www.photoryan.com/pages/essays/dalits/dalits_image06.html
The humiliation and trauma are not consciously inflicted, but that is the result. It is just the way things are. No one seems to think that there is a discrepancy between loving your child and ignoring their psychic pain. And so it is with animals, spouses, and the earth, all treated with equal amounts of insensitivity. As many of my Indian friends have said, it is a disconnect that happens when you are thrust unceremoniously from village to city, in search of wage work, robbed of your land by a feudal mafioso that rapes and tortures you if you object. This is all compounded by living under colonialism for hundreds of years: the Moghuls, the British, and now globalization; self esteem is so low it's hard to measure.
Who's got time to do anything but survive? I get that it is a priority to make it through each day for the vast majority of people here.
This is not about comparing India with Canada. I can list what ails Canada easily. This is about my experience here. There is no race for first place, or last place.
My India is a big wounded, bleeding family with open sores. It hurts. It really hurts. It hurts so much I want to run away to wallow in my own brand of soma: Life in Canada.
Yes, there is "resilience" amongst my people. Yes, there is tenacity, Yes, there are thousands of dedicated intelligent people working to change things in India. Yes, there is hope. Some hope.
I just hope that the big change comes before too many people, animals and the environment have suffered unnecessarily and die horrible deaths.
KaliYuga can't finish soon enough for me. Come on, the new age. Come on, the big change. Come now. My door is open, and I will gladly be your handmaid, your coolie.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
So much India
We have covered so much of India since the last time I wrote. It's really hard to keep up as there is so much to process. We have been to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho to see the erotic temples, and meet up with old friends, Delhi to visit with Manzil House, an alternative school, where Mehdi worked a little with some of the students, and then Mehdi went to Sri Lanka with Kian on January 11th. Ryan, Zaman, Bashu and myself went off to Rajasthan and visited with the only homeschooling family I know in India, in Udaipur City, and that was a blast. Aside from being tourists, we participated in the cooking and music at Shiksantar, an alternative learning center started by Manish Jain and Vidhi Bandhari, with whom we were staying. I gave a bellydancing workshop, which was prematurely ended due to the electricity being cut off. But also, we had a meetup with about 30 people, to discuss homeschooling. From Udaipur to Jaipur for a day on January 13th, and then on the 14th, I saw Ryan off to Europe.... this left me and the boys with one more day in Delhi, and then we flew off to have a vacation within a vacation, in Benaulin, Goa. Goa is to India, as Hawaii is to the USA. It's beaches, relaxation and a good book.
I have so much to process. I have met so many great people in India, who are working very hard to effect real change in India. I have met so many people who are sad, or lonely, or frustrated with the way things are, and feel helpless. I have been the recipient of so much generosity from so many people, while at the same time being the target of a thousand ripoff artists, due to my inherent touristness. There is much to write about.......... when I get home. :-)
Monday, December 25, 2006
The Kids' Blog and Comments
Allo, Hola and Namasté
So, just a reminder that the kids' have a great blog at http://www.moghog.blogspot.com and that in my posting "Down and Out in Andal" there are a couple of good controversial comments that are worthy of a much longer conversation.
We all went out looking for a drink and Christmas company on Christmas Eve. We didn't find it, but we had fun. We took a couple of autorickshaws, aka as "tuk-tuks", to a fabulous rooftop hotel restaurant/bar, complete with a green lawn, but alas, there wasn't a soul there, so it was hard for us to get into the spirit .... the relucant manager told us to go to the Taj, a chain of five star hotels in India. We got there only to find that the place was swamped with soldiers and eager looking tagalongs who were fawning over the Minister of Railways, whose name I forget. We made our way to an empty dance floor in the back, where a well intentioned rock and roll band were churning out old western hits. Much to our dismay, we found that that neither Mehdi or I had brought our credit cards, so we had to make do with about 1500 rupees, which is normally a fortune, buit not at the Taj. A beer cost 165 rupees... mind you it was a big domestic Kingfisher beer.
So after a little beer, and lots of snacks which were on the house, Mehdi and I danced, all alone on the dance floor which had these funky square lights.... between the Bollywood moves, bellydancing, blues-y dancing, chacha, salsa, Ricky Martin moves, we just had so much fun.... the staff were really appreciative as they had otherwise had a really slow night. They smiled and waved and egged us on. So did a Japanese couple who appeared to be on their honeymoon, and said my dancing was better than the singing. I invited the railway minister to join us, but I don't think the waiter actually gave him my message. . The waiter also volunteered that perhaps the minister was too fat... too bad for him. It would do him good. At some point, Bashu and Zaman asked if they could perform, and since it was a slow night, they said yes.
We took the tuktuks home, as they had been waiting for us. The streets were deserted, and we crawled into bed, exhausted and happy that we had made ourselves a great Christmas Eve. :-)
Merry Christmas....
Sunday, December 24, 2006
My father
I miss my father. He died in 1995. I would love to talk to him about India, his family and his life here in India and why he left; what he felt after he left, and how he felt when he came back. As a matter of fact, I did travel with him for three weeks in India in 1982. We had a lot of fun together. It was summertime, and really hot. We used to laugh at a lot of things together. He was on a business trip, but as he always did, he took time out to go to Calcutta to visit his mother and his sister, and a host of nephews and nieces.
Baba enjoyed being a Bera Sahib, taking taxis, and drinking scotch in the late evening when the somewhat cooler breeze would come through the verandah doors into the living rooms with high ceilings, slow fans, and perpetual attendance of house servants, at his friend Lal's house in New Delhi. He also enjoyed going to the market and buying vegetables and fruits and bantering with the kaprawallahs about the textile business.
Baba never haggled for very small amounts... he said the sellers and rickshaw drivers worked hard and deserved the money. He did haggle shrewdly with his suppliers for large amounts of hard dollar cash.
Baba never haggled for very small amounts... he said the sellers and rickshaw drivers worked hard and deserved the money. He did haggle shrewdly with his suppliers for large amounts of hard dollar cash.
Baba left India for good in 1963 and though at times he lamented all things western and threatened to go back to India in his old age, he never did, except to visit. After three weeks of visiting, he couldn't wait to get back home to Canada. Not only because his family was there, but because after three weeks, he couldn't stand it anymore here. He would use the dirty toilets as an excuse, but it was much more than that. He wanted to keep it as simple as possible, and liked it when things were reasonably reliable. He had gotten used to that. Baba was as ready to spend 6 minutes studying an eggplant in a Canadian supermarket, as he was to spend it talking to a man with a cart full of eggplants in Kanpur. But, at the end of the day he wanted to go home to a quiet place, with lesser stress levels.
What I have not blogged about, and will not do in public in detail, is Baba's pain and suffering. Much of it is common to all Indians, much of it is common to all humans in the world. What I can say is that I have a great deal more respect for him now than I did in the past. Baba escaped a very tight stranglehold of a culture, where there was a great deal of love, in the family and in the community, but very little of it was unconditional love. It was nearly all conditional. He had to perform. He had to perform financially, morally, educationally. Oh, he got a lot of perks, all sons in Indian families do, especially the oldest, but he also had to do the dirty work. He was not free to be himself, not even remotely. And that is what he got away from. It wasn't easy. You can take the boy out of India, you can even take the Indian affectations out of the boy, my father was very western in many ways, but what could not be taken out of the boy was the unhealed wounds inflicted on him by a very ancient culture. And this I know, not from conjecture, but from what he told me.
And so, I love my father more than ever. I miss him. Yes, I have been angry with him for things, and that was a natural reaction on my part, and one I wouldn't take back. I had things to be angry about. But now, I would love to drink a couple of beers with him in Varanasi. Not on the ghats, overlooking the holy river, but at the Taj Hotel, with bearers at our bidding, with him bantering with them about anything and everything, including life, love and death.
Back in Varanasi
After picking Mehdi up in Kolkata, we are back in Varanasi. It's so good to have him with me to share in the responsibilities. I realise now that it takes a fair amount of energy to balance being a tourist, visit family, write, and connect with the all the wonderful people I would like to connect with.
During our last visit, Deobrat and Pandit Shivnath Mishra, classical sitar artists, were very kind in hosting us in their Academy of Indian Classical Music, which was under construction at the time. During that time I had been doing during daily drawing sessions with their 10 or so tabla students, aged 7-15, and working in a little bit of English lessons, based on Deobrat's suggestions. The process was incredibly popular, and therefore successful. I think it was popular because though they have art lessons in school, it is never with the freedom to draw nonsense, or scribble, or draw what they want. This new freedom resulted in a proliferation of wonderful drawings, from wild tactile experiences to concise drawings of fruit, landscapes, flags and tablas. So when we came back after a week, we were all very happy to see each other.
Mehdi took over, and added to the process by bringing wooden building blocks, intended for his Sri Lanka trip. These were also a big hit. The Mishras were in and out, doing a concert in Delhi and then in Chennai. They had various aggravations with cancelled train tickets and construction delays on their academy, and together we commisserated on what didn't work in India.
The question of what to focus on during this trip to India comes up for me every day, as someone recently commented on my blog. There is so much in India that is beautiful, and so much that is not, such as in any country. I realise I may sound snotty and uppity about the pollution and other unacceptable aspects of India, but I don't mind if I sound like that. The bottom line, for me, is that the health of India is compromised severely, and I do not wish to see India die a slow painful death. I am sure that won't happen, but I am wondering whether the rescue will have happen in the eleventh hour, after much pain and suffering has already happened needlessly. Today on the way to the Main Ghat, to have Bashu's head shaved, I suddenly envisioned how painful it must be for a cow to die on the street, as a plastic bag gets clogged in its intestines. Would anyone notice? Would anyone see the cow's suffering? I had heard these things happen and in Delhi some people do emergency surgery on cows.
On the way back from the ghats... unbelievably, I saw a cow lying in its death throes on a pile of garbage at the very spot that I had envisioned this. I am not given to clairvoyance, so I was startled. The cow's eyes were rolling, its head was thrusting this way and that, and it was covered in thousands of flies, an unusually high number. I did not rescue it. I moved on, and I saw beautiful children playing a hundred meters further on. Both the cow and the children are reality and both existed. But I choose to describe the cow, in its death throes, as the cliche of beautiful Indian children has been done over and over and over again. I will no longer take photos of beautiful children only.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Down and out in Andal
Mehdi has arrived in Kolkata and it has been wonderful for all of us. We all missed him, in particular his sense of humour and big hugs. We were heading to Kolata from Varanasi, knowing there was a general strike in West Bengal from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. but having no idea that it would mean that the train would stop in its tracks at 6 a.m. and sit there for 13 hours. Even at the last hour, we were told that perhaps it was a 24 hour strike. This would mean that we would not be there for Mehdi's arrival. It was really frustrating. We were stuck in a small town station, using the same toilet, no water, whose function we could smell on the tracks all day. However, it was a peaceful town, Andal, with the occasional cha seller and Communist Brigade doling out hot food as a good will propaganda gesture for the stuck commuters. We did not complain ... no use.... there were no buses, cars, or any alternatives. One fellow in the next town had tried to open his shop for business, and not only did his shop get closed, he got killed by goons for trying to do so.
We made friends with our fellow travelers and talked about... once again... homeschooling and unschooling. Everyone loves the idea, but always say "but it can't work in India... you need your certificate to get a job". At any rate, thanks to our good friend Ashish Bejoria, a car was sent to the airport to pick him up at 4 a.m. the next morning. Thank goodness for mobile phones. We did arrive safely around 11 p.m. and took a cab home, through deserted streets. It's amazing how fast you can get through the normally crowded noisy streets of Calcutta, but at night.
