In India!
journal entries for the last two days, mega-long and crossposted from www.emilindia.blogspot.com:
Oct. 11
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. It’s hard to believe. The voyage here was a draining ordeal - a 7-hour flight to Amsterdam, a 4 hour stopover, an 8 hour flight to Delhi, almost 12 hours in the Delhi airport, then an hour’s flight to Varanasi. By the end of the journey (39 hours door to door) we were barely dragging our weary bodies through the airport chaos. We’d slept briefly in all kinds of odd ways and places - on the plane, twisted in the seat, curled up on top of our suitcases in the Delhi airport. The relief of stepping off the last plane and discovering that all of our luggage had actually arrived, and then seeing one of our organizatoin’s managers beaming and waving at us was a wonderful moment of relief.
We were greeted warmly, and driven in to Delhi in a jeep with the luxury of A/C - much appreciated in the 30something degree heat. The drive in to town from the airport, which is on the edge of town, took close to an hour, and Andria (the other Canadian-born intern) and I satred transfixedly out of the window. At first, the streets were tree-lined, and the cars and people were relatively few, but soon the trees petered out, the dusty haze grew thicker, and there were cars and trucks and men and women and children and cattle and sheep and goats all fighting ffor a spot on the narrow road between the jumbled shops and ramshackle stalls selling everything imaginable. The car was hardly moving quickly, but it was still passing things too quickly for me to process and comprehend what I was seeing. Finally, we turned down a narrow alleyway between decrepit buildings, forcing pedestrians to flatten themselves against the wall to let us past, and stopped just behind our new office and home, the Ganga Mahal, giving us our first view of the sacred river Ganga.
We were greeted by several of the WLC managers, and by Meeraji, the housekeeper of the Ganga Mahal, and the woman who will be cooking us two yummy Indian meals each day. Meeraji performed the traditional welcoming ceremony of placing garlands of marigolds around our necks and streaking our foreheads with orange. The garland is hanging by my bedside now, and I inhale its sweetness every time the stench of open sewers and other interesting things wafts overwhelmingly through the window.
We stood on the balcony overlooking the river for a little while, drinking sweet milky chai and talking with our new colleagues, until fatigue overwhelmed me and Andria, and we excused ourselves to pass out for a couple hours in the clean, pleasant little room we’ll be sharing. When I woke at six, to the sound of a bell being rung as part of an evening prayer,I was disoriented and unsure for a few moments where I was. The sun had set, and the Ghat (stone steps to the river) was lit with candles and lamps. The third intern, Prashant, had been out for a few hours. He was here for three months last winter to volunteer, and knew exactly how he wanted to spend his first few hours here - he took a boat out to the middle of the river, where it’s cleanest, and dove in, and then made his rounds greeting old friends around the neighbourhood. He returned just as we woke up, and we sat down to the superb meal of an eggplant and potato dish, daal and chapattis that meeraji had prepared. In the evening we went for a short walk on the ghants, with prashant guiding us, and stopping to greet his acquaintances at the chai stalls. He speaks pretty good Hindi, and so is able to communicate with everyone and do a little translating for us. Though it was early in the evening it was completely dark out, and lamps hung from posts near the river - a part of the lead-up to the Diwali, the coming festival of light, these are lit for the ancestors. We bought little candles nestled among marigolds in a bowl made from a pressed leaf, and lanunched them amongst the others on the Ganga, as a little prayer as thanksgiving. After a quick email-check (we have high speed here in the Ganga Mahal, which is a nice comfort) we collapsed wearily in to bed.
Oct. 12, morning
I awoke at 5:06 this morning to the Ding! Ding! Ding! Of a bell being rung for a morning pooja (prayer) on the riverbank below us. The sky was light and rainbow-hued in the east across the river, and people and animals were moving about. Prashant was still sleeping, so Andria and I ventured out for the first time without his guidance, climbing down the stone steps to the area near the river, and heading to a chai shop for tea. We passed several groups of women gathered in circles chanting and doing something with flowers and holy water in the middle of the circle - some kind of pooja. At the chai shop, a little stall right on one of the sets of steps, a young boy of about 10 intruduced himself to us as Bablo, and started to talk with us in remarkably good English. He was the nephew of the chai-wallah, and talked to us about his family, Varanasi, and other foreigners he has met, and asked us a lot about ourselves and Canada. When we were done our tea and ready to go for an exploratory walk, he offered to be our guide. We wandered along the river, passing people bathing in the river up to their necks at some of the Ghats. Several boys and girls, no older than 7 or 8, followed us for a while trying to convince us to buy the candles they were selling, to launch them on the river and “bring good karma”. As they walked with us they chattered to us about various subjects in hindi and English, and one little girl named Nandini pointed out a troupe of monkeys leaping across the balconies above us, and told me their hindi name. After a while we left the river, and Bablo led us through some of the narrow, winding streets between the houses and shops and high walls, dodging the odd motercycle or child or cow. It was good to start to see what the city looks like as you move away from the waterfront.
Afternoon:
The morning at the office started at 9:30 with the ataff I’d met yesterday, a few new ones, and six of the kids from the morning’s childrens’ programming gathering for morning prayer, and then the morning was spent in getting to know the staff, and a visit to Tulsi Kunj, the new building around the corner that was just acquired, to see it and visit the childrens’ program which has now been moved there. The building is beautiful - two stories of marble floors and white archways around a courtyard - and the spaces where we plan to have the new library Andria’s working on, and the gallery/boutique for the items sewn by the womens’ income generation projects are perfect sizes and well laid out. The ground floor, where the childrens’ program is located, has a number of lovely small classrooms. The childrens’ program serves 2 groups of kids - those who are in school but need extra help with homework, tutoring etc (from poor families, and often with illiterate parents), and those kids who are not in school but are hoping that, with some extra help, they can catch up and pass school entrance exams. Ths morning the group at Tulsi Kunsj were non-schoolgoers, mostly little girls of about six or seven. It was fun to visit their classroom, make weak attempts to greet them in Hindi, and check out some of the classroom’s beautiful Varanasi handmade wooden toys, one of which Andria and I used to practice our shaky hindi counting on in front of a classroom full of children, to general amusement.
After the Tulsi visit, Pravin took us to visit a very ancient holy place - a kind of very deep well, with rough stone steps leading down to it on three sides, perhaps a100 feet down. Near the bottom of the steps is a shrine to the sun, and apparently during the monsoon season, when the water level rises to cover the shrine, it is believed that the combined power of the holy river Ganga and the sun make the site even more powerful. This is a site of pilgrimage and bathing for women hoping for fertility. There was no-one else there, and we were able to sit in silence for a few minutes. It was breathtaking - I wish I had a photo to share, but photography there wasn’t ok.
We’ve had another yummy Indian lunch, and are now hanging about and dozing for a bit. This afternoon we meet with the managers to discuss our work plans for the next six months. This place is wild, and I love it.
Oct. 11
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. It’s hard to believe. The voyage here was a draining ordeal - a 7-hour flight to Amsterdam, a 4 hour stopover, an 8 hour flight to Delhi, almost 12 hours in the Delhi airport, then an hour’s flight to Varanasi. By the end of the journey (39 hours door to door) we were barely dragging our weary bodies through the airport chaos. We’d slept briefly in all kinds of odd ways and places - on the plane, twisted in the seat, curled up on top of our suitcases in the Delhi airport. The relief of stepping off the last plane and discovering that all of our luggage had actually arrived, and then seeing one of our organizatoin’s managers beaming and waving at us was a wonderful moment of relief.
We were greeted warmly, and driven in to Delhi in a jeep with the luxury of A/C - much appreciated in the 30something degree heat. The drive in to town from the airport, which is on the edge of town, took close to an hour, and Andria (the other Canadian-born intern) and I satred transfixedly out of the window. At first, the streets were tree-lined, and the cars and people were relatively few, but soon the trees petered out, the dusty haze grew thicker, and there were cars and trucks and men and women and children and cattle and sheep and goats all fighting ffor a spot on the narrow road between the jumbled shops and ramshackle stalls selling everything imaginable. The car was hardly moving quickly, but it was still passing things too quickly for me to process and comprehend what I was seeing. Finally, we turned down a narrow alleyway between decrepit buildings, forcing pedestrians to flatten themselves against the wall to let us past, and stopped just behind our new office and home, the Ganga Mahal, giving us our first view of the sacred river Ganga.
We were greeted by several of the WLC managers, and by Meeraji, the housekeeper of the Ganga Mahal, and the woman who will be cooking us two yummy Indian meals each day. Meeraji performed the traditional welcoming ceremony of placing garlands of marigolds around our necks and streaking our foreheads with orange. The garland is hanging by my bedside now, and I inhale its sweetness every time the stench of open sewers and other interesting things wafts overwhelmingly through the window.
We stood on the balcony overlooking the river for a little while, drinking sweet milky chai and talking with our new colleagues, until fatigue overwhelmed me and Andria, and we excused ourselves to pass out for a couple hours in the clean, pleasant little room we’ll be sharing. When I woke at six, to the sound of a bell being rung as part of an evening prayer,I was disoriented and unsure for a few moments where I was. The sun had set, and the Ghat (stone steps to the river) was lit with candles and lamps. The third intern, Prashant, had been out for a few hours. He was here for three months last winter to volunteer, and knew exactly how he wanted to spend his first few hours here - he took a boat out to the middle of the river, where it’s cleanest, and dove in, and then made his rounds greeting old friends around the neighbourhood. He returned just as we woke up, and we sat down to the superb meal of an eggplant and potato dish, daal and chapattis that meeraji had prepared. In the evening we went for a short walk on the ghants, with prashant guiding us, and stopping to greet his acquaintances at the chai stalls. He speaks pretty good Hindi, and so is able to communicate with everyone and do a little translating for us. Though it was early in the evening it was completely dark out, and lamps hung from posts near the river - a part of the lead-up to the Diwali, the coming festival of light, these are lit for the ancestors. We bought little candles nestled among marigolds in a bowl made from a pressed leaf, and lanunched them amongst the others on the Ganga, as a little prayer as thanksgiving. After a quick email-check (we have high speed here in the Ganga Mahal, which is a nice comfort) we collapsed wearily in to bed.
Oct. 12, morning
I awoke at 5:06 this morning to the Ding! Ding! Ding! Of a bell being rung for a morning pooja (prayer) on the riverbank below us. The sky was light and rainbow-hued in the east across the river, and people and animals were moving about. Prashant was still sleeping, so Andria and I ventured out for the first time without his guidance, climbing down the stone steps to the area near the river, and heading to a chai shop for tea. We passed several groups of women gathered in circles chanting and doing something with flowers and holy water in the middle of the circle - some kind of pooja. At the chai shop, a little stall right on one of the sets of steps, a young boy of about 10 intruduced himself to us as Bablo, and started to talk with us in remarkably good English. He was the nephew of the chai-wallah, and talked to us about his family, Varanasi, and other foreigners he has met, and asked us a lot about ourselves and Canada. When we were done our tea and ready to go for an exploratory walk, he offered to be our guide. We wandered along the river, passing people bathing in the river up to their necks at some of the Ghats. Several boys and girls, no older than 7 or 8, followed us for a while trying to convince us to buy the candles they were selling, to launch them on the river and “bring good karma”. As they walked with us they chattered to us about various subjects in hindi and English, and one little girl named Nandini pointed out a troupe of monkeys leaping across the balconies above us, and told me their hindi name. After a while we left the river, and Bablo led us through some of the narrow, winding streets between the houses and shops and high walls, dodging the odd motercycle or child or cow. It was good to start to see what the city looks like as you move away from the waterfront.
Afternoon:
The morning at the office started at 9:30 with the ataff I’d met yesterday, a few new ones, and six of the kids from the morning’s childrens’ programming gathering for morning prayer, and then the morning was spent in getting to know the staff, and a visit to Tulsi Kunj, the new building around the corner that was just acquired, to see it and visit the childrens’ program which has now been moved there. The building is beautiful - two stories of marble floors and white archways around a courtyard - and the spaces where we plan to have the new library Andria’s working on, and the gallery/boutique for the items sewn by the womens’ income generation projects are perfect sizes and well laid out. The ground floor, where the childrens’ program is located, has a number of lovely small classrooms. The childrens’ program serves 2 groups of kids - those who are in school but need extra help with homework, tutoring etc (from poor families, and often with illiterate parents), and those kids who are not in school but are hoping that, with some extra help, they can catch up and pass school entrance exams. Ths morning the group at Tulsi Kunsj were non-schoolgoers, mostly little girls of about six or seven. It was fun to visit their classroom, make weak attempts to greet them in Hindi, and check out some of the classroom’s beautiful Varanasi handmade wooden toys, one of which Andria and I used to practice our shaky hindi counting on in front of a classroom full of children, to general amusement.
After the Tulsi visit, Pravin took us to visit a very ancient holy place - a kind of very deep well, with rough stone steps leading down to it on three sides, perhaps a100 feet down. Near the bottom of the steps is a shrine to the sun, and apparently during the monsoon season, when the water level rises to cover the shrine, it is believed that the combined power of the holy river Ganga and the sun make the site even more powerful. This is a site of pilgrimage and bathing for women hoping for fertility. There was no-one else there, and we were able to sit in silence for a few minutes. It was breathtaking - I wish I had a photo to share, but photography there wasn’t ok.
We’ve had another yummy Indian lunch, and are now hanging about and dozing for a bit. This afternoon we meet with the managers to discuss our work plans for the next six months. This place is wild, and I love it.