The India Chronicles: The Wizard of Aurangabad; Letter #10

My desperate desire was to do something of value, something that only I could have brought, something utilizing my skill set and passion that would be worthwhile to give.

So I wrote a show. Because it’s the only thing I know how to do.  I didn’t know if it actually would be worthwhile to give, but it was at least an idea.

Now, my heart is so full. This week has been an incredible way to end a trip to India.

If you read my last blog post, last Tuesday we got rained out. We were going away for the weekend to visit the home of one of our partner’s sister’s house. A nine-hour train ride to Aurungabad where we were going to see the historical caves and forts with her family. (which were incredible. pics below)

Because I wrote it with the whole team in mind, we needed the whole team there to do it, and the subtle lack of enthusiasm/general skepticism about the success from them was less than encouraging. So because of the trip, I thought if we didn’t do the show on Tuesday, it would never be performed. And when the hour-late train (and later the torrential downpour of rain) caused the show to be cancelled, I had resigned myself to defeat. This country had defeated me. I was to go home, having learned a bucket-load of patience, and accomplished nothing. 

But then Dr. Meera (our partner here) asked us to do something for the school we’re visiting in Aurungabad—her sister’s school—present something or just say hello. We asked if we could do our presentation about substance abuse and our short skit about getting to college. She said, “ok” with the Indian head bobble.

When we arrived at the school, they treated us like Ambassadors. An army of children—literally marching in lines—shouted their national anthem with gusto—came down the stairs seated boys on one side and girls on the other. A few select children introduced us and one by one hung beautiful floral lays around our heads. We shook a lot of hands of administrators and local newsmen. All before we even said anything.

(Side note: the undeserved celebrity here is ridiculous. It is cultural to treat your guests like gods, they are such gracious hosts, so we always feel slightly uncomfortable at being waited on. And our white faces make us someone really interesting, though I’ve done nothing in my life to deserve their attention. I figure if posing for this picture with this person handing me a pamphlet I can’t read cause it’s in some local tribal language, gets them donors because they have support of an International NGO, or whatever, it’s maybe not a terrible thing. Leverage my white face for some sort of good—even if it’s just to smile at a little girl who’s star struck and try and make her day.)

After the crazy welcome, we gave our presentation: Anti-drug and alcohol/goal setting/helping your friends avoid substances. Then we awkwardly, hastily set up for the show. We were expecting about 100 kids, and over 500 were there. So we had to re-arrange a little bit.

 Then we did the show. It was messy and disjointed. Music cues were difficult to hear. Remembering where we stand, and what lines we added only the night before were forgotten or stumbled through. Our costumes were minimal and silly—the scarecrow was wearing an old curtain, for example—and the parts I had scripted in to be interactive were sort of lost in translation. But they LOVED it.

Dr. Meera loved it. She told us that the teachers loved it, and the school children loved it. They were absolutely enraptured. She told us they recorded it so they could reproduce it for the younger kids who couldn’t come. That made my heart smile.

In India, creativity is not particularly encouraged in their schools. It’s not discouraged; it’s just not cultivated. If a child draws a picture, he or she often grabs another picture to copy. They don’t know many songs besides the national anthem. I wanted to show them that if they can hold up their hands, with imagination they can be a field of poppy flowers. Or if they moved their arms in a monkey-like dance, they had the capability to be become for the moment mischievous monkeys. My hope was to give them a small sense of wonder, a small spark of the magic in creativity, and it felt like a success. Who knows if it actually was, but it felt like one. I could not have paid for a better reception.

In our version, the Wicked Witch is not actually wicked, she’s just lonely. Laxmi (Dorothy)(me) helps the Witch find her lost friends, her only friends, the monkeys (the audience), and Laxmi reaches out in friendship, the Witch becomes nice. Cheesy? Absolutely. Ridiculous? Certainly. But for this arts-deprived community, Dr. Meera claimed it was brilliance.

My best friend, Ann, both in the show and in India. Wicked Witch and Laxmi!

Some of the feedback we received included a teacher saying that she now had the courage to confront her husband about his alcohol abuse. Another teacher said that sometimes we view those who use tobacco and alcohol as below us, but learning from the Wicked Witch’s story, He said that we are all the same and you can only change people with love. That was really neat moment, hearing that he got that out of our show.

When we did the show back in Hyderabad the next week, a little boy not more than 3 feet tall said, “I learned that we should try to be friends with our enemies, and what it takes is understanding. Sometimes enemies are friends.” Another little boy said, “We need to share what god has given you. Use each other’s talents to reach your goals. And find the self-confidence to share that.” Maybe they are just really well trained to say the right things, but it felt like they really gleaned something beautiful and important, even though it was just a silly little show. The whole experience has renewed my faith in the arts, especially theater, as a tool for teaching.

We gave to our incredibly gracious host (and principle of the school) our face paint crayons, in case they did end up reproducing the show. Or if the kids just wanted to play with them. She was choking back tears when she said, “You are so kind.” Truly she had been so kind to us, it was even another moment of gratitude wherein we were able to give her something so simple but meant so much to her.

Sometimes you just need to start. You need to have courage and faith in your own idea and abilities. Sometimes you don’t produce something in order to fill a need, but a need is filled after you produce something that you didn’t know existed. Create even through the noise of things telling you not to. You need to be able to take the adversity that you will no-doubt face; even if that adversity is simply apathy from others. Apathy can produce doubt as quickly as antagonism, maybe even quicker.

 When we got back to Hyderabad, we had another meeting with Dr. Meera about all of our projects, and she again cooed about how wonderful the show was—how coupled with the substance abuse class, it inspired ambition, courage, and friendship. She wanted to do it at every possible venue she could fit it into. She wanted to talk to as many schools as would have us. Dr. Meera is one of the most incredible woman I’ve ever met in my life; she’s dedicated her life to hard development, and brought thousands of people out of the depths of abject poverty, and here she was, so passionate and excited about a silly little show I wrote.

Total, we did the show four times in three days, for approximately 860 students. It was a thrill to be so positively validated and encouraged to do something that I love so much. And it was an incredible privilege to (hopefully) bring a little bit of magic or wonder into these children's lives. 

"Munchkins" giving Laxmi a friendship bracelet

Tiger (not a lion) :)

"mischievous monkeys" doing the monkey dance

the cast in character. Dr. Meera filled in for our good witch!

India Chronicles. Not a letter, just a thought on a rainy day

July 15th, 2014

I’ve mentioned India in the sun. There’s another side of India: the one in the rain.

An eventful day of non-events: we were our way to the bridge camp (the school for labor-rescued girls) to perform an original, thirty-minute, Indian version of the Wizard of Oz, (put together in a mad dash of two days), bags of costumes and props in hand. The bus was late. And then the train was late. Not just late, an hour late. So we were two hours behind initial schedule and our translator couldn’t wait for us any longer at the school, so we had to cancel the show, get off the train, and turn around.

Then it started to rain. POURING RAIN.

We walked to our new stop in the torrential downpour. Costumes and props and bags (and dreams of today’s show) drenched.

In our various hours of waiting along the way, I finished the book 1984. For those of you who have read it—the ending is a terrible, horrible, wretched vision of the future of humanity.

Our whole day having fallen through, my paradigms on humanity questioned, as we were waiting for the train home I felt utterly…deflated.

I decided to get out from under the partial covering and just stand in the Indian showers. As if I don’t get enough looks being blonde and white, I was standing in the rain in a Dorothy costume, my braided pigtails dripping with water. I would have broken into a rendition of “Singing in the Rain” but there was a wall full of Indian people laughing and pointing already, I figured I’d maintain some semblance of dignity (even if my sanity was shot for the day).

We continued to walk through the rain for another 10 minutes to get on our bus; whose windows were open and whose roof was leaking. There was no escaping the rain.

I’m issuing a challenge: picture your typical rainy days—hot chocolate, soup, a good book, warm blankets. I love rainy days. I know many people do, in part because we have the luxury of staying dry. Every day here I am reminded of how much I have, the conveniences I never thought twice about that come with the first world wealth (running water, clean water, temperature-controlled clean running water, public trash cans, waste disposal systems, public-center cleaning, microwaves, stoves, to name a few).

Even the life of a poor college student is incredibly comfortable in comparison to everyone we work with here, and the majority of the world.

But in this moment, getting soaked beneath the covered roof of a public vehicle, I was struck with the privilege it is to stay dry on a rainy day. I thought, most of the rest of the world lives wet days in rickety, leaky buses. Soon I’m going to go back to my fun, privileged rainy days. 

My bus-riding companion and very wise member of my team, Kennerley, asked me, “So what are you going to do with your privilege?”

What am I going to do with my privilege?

What are you going to do with your privilege?

The India Chronicles: Our day-to-day. Letter #9

We do go on all sorts of crazy adventures here, especially on weekends. But the whole purpose of my trip to India is to serve, and help where I can. I get a lot of questions about day-to-day activities. Quite frankly a lot of it is being flexible and changing plans last minute because of the nature of volunteer work, and general communication differences in India, but our team is always up for the challenge.

An example of one of our projects is the Bridge Camp. We work with a school for girls who were previously in child labor situations. They are so sweet and so adorable and so loving. Every time we walk through the doors they greet us with ginormous smiles, and that outrageously darling head bobble. "sista! sista!" Now they remember my name, "A!" bobble "A" It's the cutest thing in the world. 

We've been starting a program where on Tuesdays we teach them a little bit of English, and then do a dance. They are fabulous dancers. Truly one of the most fun moments/days of my life.

That next Thursday when we arrived at the camp, we got swarmed with a hundred smiling faces all saying, "Hello sisters! Dance! Dance! Dance!" and they put hands together and moved their heads back and forth like we did in the dance we taught them, “Dance? Dance?” It was so adorable.

On Thursday, were there to teach a lesson on women’s health and empowerment. The four girls in our team split the lesson up, while using our rockstar translator, Nivruthi. We taught for about an hour a campaign entitled “proud to be a girl.” About goal setting, basic menstruation facts and health, and just a general women empowerment conversation. Another really fulfilling moment. It was great to collaborate as a team, and use our teaching experience to share a really worthwhile message. The Indian people are very modest, in every sense of the word. They're very aware of even their conversation, which I greatly respect. It was cool that we, as foreigners, could bring up the sometimes uncomfortable topic of women's health that those girls might not have gotten so directly. 

We also get the chance to teach women at a night shelter English so they could get a job. We went to the shelter the other day, and no one was there. The worker said, "They're all gone. They've all gotten jobs." So that was wonderful! It was sad that we won't be able to teach them anymore, we'd developed some friendships, but I'm so proud and happy for them that they now have work. 

We're on a few other projects for publicity about child marriage and child labor, and awareness for unnecessary surgeries, etc. We have really incredible local partners from whom I'm learning so much by the chance to work with them. 

Things change daily, projects are dropped and picked up all the time. But we're always looking for more opportunities to work and serve and help out among these incredible communities. 

Also, As I was writing this, a sweet little girl found me and my Nutella in a back corner during sunday school. She was thrilled by the chocolate and the pictures, so we indulged in both. :)

The India Chronicles: Golden Triangle Trip, Letter #8

July 7^th,  2014

This past weekend we did the tourist thing. “The Golden Triangle” or Jaipur, Agra, and Delhi, in that order. It was interesting to see a different side to India (I think probably the side most people see, but very different from the slums of Hyderabad). Before I get into the trip—I learned that you can be comfortable anywhere in the world. Someone visiting the states in Beverly Hills vs. the inner-city Detroit would have a very different experience. I love high culture, I love Indian culture. I also love the slums, but for different reasons. I was grateful for the opportunity to see both I suppose.

 

Highlights from Jaipur:

We got into our hotel late Thursday night, and met an incredibly friendly man outside, with the biggest smile I’ve yet seen in India. He told us he could drive us around Jaipur for the day (for about $3 a person) and we didn’t have another plan, so we agreed. Turns out he was the sweetest man, Salim. He played our tour guide, and took us to some places we’d have never found on our own. He also showed us some great music. 

The day in bullet points: (a lot of the pictures hopefully to come)

•     The world-famous Lassi shop. Best Lassi of my life.
• A floating castle

•  Amber fort. (on the way we met a snake charmer)·             
• Elephant village (those pictures are coming, they were taken on a different camera) where we rode elephants!
•  One of the scariest/most awesome moments in my life was climbing an elephant by way of his trunk.
• My elephant’s name was Rangoli.
•         A Monkey Temple.

Monkey Temple

o      A post-apocalyptic image of what the world would be like if monkeys took over all our buildings.

       Not really…but a little bit.

·             A gorgeous royal cemetery

·             We watched the world cup match at our hotel and ate dinner on a rooftop restaurant riddled with international tourists.

·             Then we took a night/sleeper bus to Agra. That was an experience in itself. Just picture trying to sleep on a bus in India (remember what I told you about the buses?)

from the cemetery

cemetery 

Amber Fort

We arrived in Agra at 4:30 am. A little bit out of sorts, we had to kill an hour until the Taj Majal opened; we loitered in the lobby of a hotel with a backdoor open. Wandering around the surrounding city of Agra, I’ve never gagged so much in one setting.  It was a really interesting juxtaposition: this pristine city behind walls, one of the most beautiful sights in the world, next to the most foul disintegrating surrounding buildings. 

            The Taj Mahal itself was incredible. As incredible as the hundreds of years of conversations about its beauty; every moment of marveling is completely justified. You walk through the giant entrance gate and are just struck by this other-wordly beauty as the giant white temple comes into view. The building was erected as a monument to emperor Shah Jahan's wife, who died during the birth of their 14'th child, out of grief for his loss. 

  It wasn’t a fort for war, or a utilitarian palace, it’s sole purpose was to honor the love of his life. Isn’t that sweet? 

 I marveled.

 I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to stand in the midst one of the greatest wonders of the world We took a four-hour taxi ride. Stepped out of the taxi in Delhi into an OVEN. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that in Hyderabad it’s HOT, and HUMID—In Delhi, it’s WORSE. The air is oppressively thick with a heavy, moist, sweltering wall you have to slug through. One does not simply walk in Delhi, you trudge. Even breathing feels like a chore.

Also have I mentioned that Hyderabad is loud and heavily populated? Delhi is more so. The streets are packed with people; every corner, every crosswalk, every inch of sidewalk is just littered with bodies trying to shuffle from one side of the city to another. Your tolerance level for chaos shoots up very quickly, or else you are consumed by a sensory overload. I never thought I would miss Hyderabad; the heat, the trash, the noise, and the crazy death defying street-crossing acts, the underdeveloped roads and the lack of police attention; but initially walking around in Delhi I did miss it! Yes Hyderabad is dirty and hot and loud, but it’s my dirty and hot and loud. (There are advantages to underdeveloped roads and a lack of police attention, you can turn around quickly, and can fit as many people as possible into an auto.)

            We walked through a bazaar and soaked in the masses of people and spices and smells and shops. Now that I’m used to Indian markets, they’re kind of fun. You just have to be focused, and not look like a white person able to be taken advantage of.

            That night, it was the 5^th of July, the U.S. Embassy was throwing a party for American Independence day. It was quite the party. On the lawn of the embassy, (which is a baseball diamond) we sat and ate hamburgers and hot dogs and drinks, by far the most expensive meal I’ve had here. (Typical America.) There was a live band (which ironically was British) that played the all-American anthem “Footloose” during the firework show.            

My team is awesome. We danced with vigor and vim; Ashley and Ann sporting the greatest American flag leggings the world has ever seen. We took advantage of the children’s booths and got our fingernails painted (with sparkles of course) and our arms painted with face paint. I got a cool butterfly.           

 As the party was fading we met some people who worked for the embassy. They were incredibly friendly and wanted to invite us to watch the world cup game (Belgium vs. Argentina) at the Belgium Embassy. The only catch was they didn’t know if there was enough booze. When we told them we didn’t drink, we were enthusiastically welcomed! We were “cheap dates.” At the game, I met some of the most interesting people—a giant room full of political dignitaries, mediators, culture preservers, sous chiefs, foreign consultants, reporters, and artists, from all over the world.

Everyone was very nice, and willing to answer questions about their endlessly interesting lives. The butterfly “tattoo” on my arm got a lot of compliments at the party.
That lifestyle, the state department foreign diplomat, moving anywhere in the world and creating a network of interesting people for a few years, then living somewhere else, is so cool. Extremely glamorous, romantic, exciting, and interesting. And after having spent the evening with the group that I did, I think I could fit into that lifestyle. I don't know if I deserve to, but I could get used to it.
As I looked out among the crowd I was suddenly mingling among, I was struck with the simplicity of this party. Yes, we were at an Embassy in the capital city in India, and yes, it was wall-to-wall packed with wildly intelligent, impressive, and intimidatingly accomplished people, but everyone there was just sitting around watching a soccer game together. The same soccer game a large portion of the world was watching. It was poetic.

The next morning we went to church: a really incredible testimony meeting with the branch members in Delhi. It’s really pretty wonderful how the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the same anywhere in the world.

Lotus Temple

We then visited a non-denominational lotus temple. I love the tradition here of removing your shoes. It adds a level of connectivity to the place where you stand. I also love the way they greet and leave each other. Hands to a prayer at heart center with a small bow and a “Namaste” which translates to something like “my light honors your light” It’s peaceful and respectful; a lovely way to say hello and goodbye to one another, especially through a language barrier.

 Then went out to lunch again with one of our new friends in a hip part of Delhi, with modern shops and restaurants right next to some old beautiful ruins.

Because of the traffic (I’ve mentioned Delhi has a few people right?) and rickshaw problems, we very nearly missed our plane back. But when we walked into the airport, every single airport employee seemed to know we were late. “Hyderabad?” they inquired with haste and concern. When we nodded, they pushed us at the front of every line. With the personal escorts of a few Air India employees, some back “staff only” routes, and a good solid adrenaline rush, we made it onto the flight, and safe and sound back home to Hyderabad.

It’s kind of cool calling Hyderabad home.