Recollecting and pontificating upon my last 20 days is a daunting task. I’m still trying to organize it all in my mind.
Celebrating Diwali with rum and barbecued chicken; explaining a meaningless American holiday to an 11-year-old Indian girl while helping her carve a dolphin into her first jack-o-lantern; swimming in the Indian ocean with a new friend and watching the moon set as the men of a fishing village together heave their boat into the ocean for a morning catch; a profound meeting with 15 young children, who think I am an English teacher, who think I have something to teach them, who make me realize that though the world is not as vast and inaccessible as I once thought, it is still complex, fragile, and terrifyingly vulnerable.
There has been a shift. Whether a shift in my energy, my purpose, my understanding, I’m not sure. Something feels different. Perhaps it’s just a sense of settling in. The weather has changed and the mornings here are cooler, the earth is less damp. There is more vatta in the air—I feel like taking action.
A few weeks ago I was feeling uneasy about my purpose here. Did I really come to the other side of the world to chat up rich Indians and get foreign guests their beer? I had so much happiness at home in my safe, comfortable life. By the time I left I didn’t feel such a great need to break free, because I was so happy. So why am I here?
When one gets comfortable in a place, it becomes difficult to see the big picture. And the picture is really so immense.
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Diwali is a celebration linked to Dasara, which I celebrated in an earlier post. In northern India, Diwali is THE holiday. It is celebrated for days on each end with firecrackers and lights all over the cities. Here in South India it isn’t such a big affair. It is the celebration of Ram’s return home after his victory over a demon (this victory is celebrated on Dasara). It is celebrated on a moonless night when fireworks shoot light up into the sky and homes are decorated with more traditional diyas to light Ram’s path home to Ayodhya.
For most of the day, I was only dimly aware of the holiday. There was little preparation and not too many “Happy Diwali”s to be exchanged. As night fell, I found myself in my room, reading a book, when Maya knocked on my door.
“Do you want to come help light the diyas?”
Maya was wearing a traditional Indian dress-- the kind with many little round mirrors sewn into the fabric. The mirrors reflected the lights of the diyas that had been lit, which were sitting in a neat little row on a bench against the house.
Photos courtesy of Erin DeCou
I lit a few candles Maya had made earlier in the day with wax from last Diwali and set them next to the appetizer plate of French salami and homemade bread. The French salami had come to us courtesy of Ludwig Cramer, a dear friend of my hosts, the Goels. Ludwig is German, but lives half the year in India caring for another organic farm and guest house operation about 3 km from our own. He is the local distributor of EM, or effective microorganisms, in the area. Diwali was his first night back in India after six months in Germany, and it was the first time I’d met him, though the Goels reference him often.
After drinks by the diyas, we grilled chicken on the fire pit by the guest houses. After dinner Matt tuned up the ol’ banjo and we made the Indian jungle ring with American folk and rock classics. The undisputed apex of the night was Matt’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Isis,” as Anurag whooped into the night and Ludwig gazed admiringly, almost longingly, at the twangy stringed instrument and its skilled manipulator.
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In stark contrast to the Hindu holidays of October, which are surrounded by tradition, folklore and stories every child knows by heart, is the mixed-up bipolar American mutt we know as Halloween.
Maya was intrigued by the concept of pumpkin carving. Why on earth would you carve a pumpkin? This was the general sentiment we came up against in trying to explain the tradition. It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Matt had the brilliant explanation for the origin of Halloween: November 1st is All Saints Day in the Catholic faith, and people would dress up the night before as saints. He stopped there and didn’t quite have an explanation for how a tradition of dressing up as a saint slipped and fell into that of donning a sexy witch costume or dressing your child as a ghost and begging for candy at the neighbors’ doors. And absolutely nobody had a good explanation for carving pumpkins.
Nonetheless, it’s an incredibly fun holiday, and we celebrated by ushering Maya into the world of squash-sculpting. Our four little pumpkins lined the sill above our buffet in the dining area for all to admire, with a special dolphin pumpkin punctuating the meal at the end of the row. In our own little way, we brought a tiny bit of home to the farm for this one goofy holiday that we couldn’t not celebrate.
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Gardening is very therapeutic. It is also an excellent way to turn hard work (I mean back-breaking physical labor) into a very satisfying product. I have been spending more time in the garden lately, and it lightens my mood every time. Making a new bed more fertile with slurry from the biogas chamber and turning the soil to make a home for plants to grow is an exercise in nurturing. Everything in the garden feels very personal. Even carrying the chickens down, one by one, to work the beds is special. I love holding the bird against my chest as it clucks carelessly all the way from its coop to the 2 by 4 foot cage on our brand new bed (replete with grubs to eat and dirt to kick up). I always marvel at the richness of the soil in which we plant our tender seedlings. I think they are lucky to have such a lovely place to take root.
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For the longest time I felt strange that I had come all the way to India and seen only the Rainforest Retreat and Madikeri town. After almost two months on the farm, it’s begun to seem very normal. I meet so many people who are traveling all over the country, I feel like I’ve been many of the places I keep hearing so much about. But I still haven’t really been anywhere. So finally, after a month and a half, I left Madikeri, and went to the beach.
The trip was longer than we expected. Erin and I set out for our girl’s day at the beach at 8:30 am on the bus into town. We finally landed up at Turtle Bay Resort in Trasi village outside of Kundapur around 6 pm. But once our feet were in the sand that bumpy, dusty, sweaty bus ride was forgotten. The next 36 hours were spent on a level of relaxation only possible in a hammock on the beach. We snacked on seer fish, sipped on sweet lassis, dipped in the Indian ocean, and even enjoyed an hour-long Ayurvedic massage. It was truly indulgent.
The morning we left we woke up early to watch the sun rise. Because we were facing directly west, it was more like watching the sky lighten. We walked out of our room to see the most crisp, white moon, low in the west over the blue-ish dawn-colored waves. As we watched the colors in the sky change from nearly green to blue to pink, we also had the luck to see a boat from the next-door fishing village being launched into the water. This was intriguing because it was purely an act of manpower. Wooden rollers were placed in the sand in front of the long, canoe-like vessel, and ten or so men heaved in unison to move it forward, moving the last roller at the stern up to the bow over and over until it reached the ocean. It was just one of India’s many unexpected juxtapositions when after such a production to get the boat in the water and all ten men inside, the motor was quickly switched on and they all went chugging into the morning to catch their fish.
On the bus back home, as we began climbing back up into the hills, the air became cooler and less humid, the landscape became more forested and I was glad to be heading home. We arrived back to find several new additions to the crew at Mojo Plantation. Stella the dog had been pregnant for the previous two months and had finally given birth to a litter of puppies. Some were stillborn, but three survived. They are only a few days old now, and make the sweetest squeaks and grunts, warmly nestled beneath their mother’s thick fur in a wooden chest-turned-doghouse by the office.
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A couple of weeks ago, Erin, Chitra, Ravi, a few guests and I walked down to Kaloor River. On the way down Erin, Chitra and Ravi stopped at a few farms to interview the owners about their crop yields and chemical usage as a part of the social survey they are conducting. I was mandated with entertaining the guests so we walked behind them and then down to the river more or less separately. We met up at the river, and Erin asked if I would like to go to the local Kaloor Primary School to visit with a teacher there. I felt like I should stay with the guests so, though I was interested, I declined. Erin came back from the school about 15 minutes later with a look on her face I couldn’t place. She told me about the school: 15 kids, aged 5 to 12, and one teacher. There had been four teachers, but two were transferred and one absconded into town, so now she is alone with all the kids. She asked Erin and Chitra if they were interested in coming to teach English every once in a while and, of course, they said yes. Erin asked if I’d be interested in helping out. Easy question.
We have been busy here at Mojo Plantation, so we hadn’t had a chance to visit the school again until yesterday. We walked down to the river with one guest in tow, who was also interested in seeing the school. As we approached the schoolhouse, a straight row of four schoolrooms, we saw the children on the veranda, doing a maths lesson with their teacher. As soon as they caught sight of us, they stopped what they were doing and stood up and in unison chimed “Hello!”
We all moved into the classroom, the floor and walls of which function as one big chalkboard. It seemed dark and dreary inside until the shutters were opened and the desks filled with inquisitive, shy faces. The teacher, Helen D’Souza, called each child up separately to introduce themselves. It became immediately clear that their knowledge of English was purely the ability to parrot back sounds to Helen. She singled out a few of the children, telling us that their families are very poor, or that one little girl’s father is “a drunkard.” We listened to their English rhymes, and one in Kannada. Then Helen asked us to teach them a new English rhyme. We settled on “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” The hardest part of our “lesson” was getting the spider motion down. I was nervous, so I could barely even do it. I realized that the rhyme was totally meaningless to them, so I tried to explain a bit of what the words mean, but it was too much new information to stuff into one rhyme.
I’m not sure how to feel about these kids, or the teacher. It saddened me, to see their learning conditions, and to know that this was their safe place with a sure meal. At home they work. School is their safe haven. The teacher, Helen, is obviously the source of this security. She is familiar with each child, and particularly with Sarawati, a deaf girl (with the drunkard father). Helen mentioned that Saraswati is her favorite, and if she doesn’t come to class Helen gets bored and sends the other children to fetch her. There are always a few kids missing from the class, stuck at home for one reason or another. During the monsoon, when unimaginable rains descend for weeks on end, most of the children still trudge to school in inadequate footwear and without rain jackets or umbrellas.
The government affords this school 50 paise (half a rupee) per child per day for lunch. Helen says this is not enough. She spends from her own purse to buy decent vegetables for the children. “It’s worth it,” she says, “when there is a good vegetable and a child says, ‘Good curry.’” Without a hint of martyrdom.
All the clothes the children wear are given by the government—their school uniforms. But it’s not enough. I asked what the children need most. Helen said “Shoes.” She also wishes for a computer for her classroom, so her students can learn skills that will make them employable, so they can have enough to feed their own children some day. Of Saraswati, Helen says after primary school she will be sent to a special school for the disabled where she will learn a basic trade so she can earn a wage. It hurt me to hear a life so planned, and so inescapable. But it’s the best she can hope for.
I wonder what I can actually do for these kids. Rain jackets and shoes are good for a few years, then where will they get their next pair of chappals? How can a few months of infrequent English lessons change their lives? I can only do what I can. But it makes me wonder what is the root of their problems? There are so many obstacles to the standard of living they don’t even know they deserve. And I shudder to think how good these kids have it compared to millions of other children in India and all over the world. These thoughts are daunting, and I know many people wrestle with them all their lives. So for now, I’ll put away my philosophical musings, because these kids can use a little help right now.
Lauren
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