Missionaries of Hilarity: B and T in Kolkata

Home (Sweet?) Home

2006-01-07T00:02:00.000+05:30

On the groggy morning after my 40-hour return trip to the USA, I rode to the mall with my mother for some last-minute Christmas shopping.

"Did I tell you I was in line at seven in the morning at Best Buy last week?" she asked.

"No, what was that for?"

"Well, one of Lois's friend's uncles wanted to buy an X-Box 360 for his nephew, and they heard that Best Buy was getting a secret shipment of them that morning. So Lois called me and said, 'Hey Lin, what are you doing Sunday morning?' I said, 'Just going to church.' She said, 'How about before church?' And I was like, 'Okay, what do you want me to do?'"

"Yeah, okay," I said, moving the story along.

"So I woke up Sunday morning at about six, and what did I see in the paper but a big Best Buy ad with the headline, '24 X-Box 360s available starting at 8 AM!!"

"Oh no," I said, out of sympathy for my unselfish, early-rising mother (not for the ill-fated desires of my aunt's friend's uncle's nephew, obviously).

"I ate quickly and drove out there, and here people have ice shanties set up outside the door, they've been there since the night before, and the Best Buy workers have already given out tickets to the first 24 people who were there. They were letting them in one at a time, with security guards at the door and everything. I talked to the guy who got the last ticket and he said that he'd been there since four."

"Oh my god," I said. "If my friends in India heard about this, their heads would explode."

X-Box 360s cost four hundred dollars. Eighteen thousand rupees. Essentially, they're mini computers for playing video games. Those savvy Microsoft engineers have scrapped the frivoloous features of personal computers like word-processing, photo-editing and web-surfing in favor of graphics processors that can simulate sweat on the faces of digital basketball players. Or the smoky haze of a synthesized battlefield. Or the puffy upper-eye bruises of ones-and-zeros prizefighters. Or, perhaps, the palpable disdain on my face, should I ever, sadly, be video-gamified. You get the point.

It's too cliche to calculate what my Calcuttan friends could/would do with four hundred dollars' worth of rupees. I won't do it. I think they'd be more shocked at the idea of people competing in such inane fashion for a mere super-toy. Sure, Indians can be ferocious line-budgers, but only when it's a matter of catching a train or booking tickets to see their national cricket team. They go to rude extremes in order to see their families or to contribute to the athletic heartbeat of the country, not to fry their brains racing digitized sportscars.

And speaking of ice shanties and inanity: the week I came home, at least a dozen ice-fishers' automobiles broke through the ice of local lakes and came to their final resting places amidst schools of trout and retired skipping-stones. As a Ford Ranger pickup slowly sunk on Lake Onalaska, my local newspaper reported, an elderly gentleman peered out from his shanty and gleefully declared, "There she goes!"

The driver of the truck blamed the tragedy on "too many people parking in the same place." Of course it's not his fault for DRIVING A TWO-TON MACHINE ONTO A BARELY-FROZEN BODY OF WATER. It's those other bastards who parked him in.

You've gotta love Wisconsin. Forty-year-olds who rise earlier in the morning for toys than they ever would for work or worship. The supposed injustice of the law of gravity. Oh, and don't forget the mob in Milwaukee who beat a man to within a whisper of death simply because he honked at them. He honked. Now he's barely clinging to life.

Indians have some things backwards too, of course. They can certainly make the simplest public procedures into epic battles against bureaucracy. But at least they know to spend their money on basic living necessities, to keep their vehicles away from bodies of water (ice-covered or not), and to move respectfully out of the way of honking drivers. And bell-ringing bikers. And marching-band-toting wedding processions. And pleading-women-with-thirty-pounds-of-guavas-on-their-heads. And cows.

If not for the Badgers' big win over Auburn in the Capital One Bowl, I might have moved back to Calcutta immediately. Thank you, Barry Alvarez, you modern-day Wisconsin hero, for convincing me to stick it out in this dazed-and-confused dairyland. As long as the men in red are still beating the jambalaya out of self-important Southern boys, I'll be proud to be a cheesehead.

Man, there's nothing like hyper-violent athletics to bring the stingy, provincial American back out of this long-term evacuee.

Loves and tootles,
Brian

Amra Khub Dukkhito

2005-12-17T17:28:00.000+05:30

We are very sad. We are suffering a lot. That's what "amra khub dukkhito" means in Bengali. We're flying back to the USA tomorrow, and despite all the exciting white-Christmas revelry awaiting me back in La Crosse, I still can't shake the dukkhito feeling here in Kolkata. I wish Christmas were still three or four months away, perhaps because my body still functions on the school-year timetable and feels that any project that starts in August must end in May. Who knows. Dukkhito, bhalo or otherwise, we'll be home in a blink to move on with the next project.

For me (Brian), it will hopefully be a teaching placement with Teach for America, either in Chicago or Phoenix. For those of you who don't know, Teach for America places young university graduates in struggling urban school districts in the US - school districts with poor facilities, high drop-out rates and few dedicated teachers. After a college career full of international adventures, I feel that it's time to turn my social-justice eyes to the deprived communities in my own country. In many cases, students in these poor school districts in the USA are much worse off than my Indian formerly street-dwelling pupils, believe it or not. Why Chicago and/or Phoenix? Both are big baseball towns, obviously. Plus, Chicago is my favorite big city in the US, and in Phoenix I would be working with a majority of Navajo students (a population I've worked with twice before on brief service trips to AZ). If I don't get accepted to this program, I think I'll round up some musically-inclined friends, form a band and take over the world of rock.

Theresa, so far as I know, will be in Mankato for a short spell, leaving to pursue nursing work once she passes her board exam. I think she wants to put in a couple solid years of hospital work to build her confidence in her nursing skills. It's not really one of those things you can become great at simply by studying books, you know? I know she's also thinking seriously about travelling back to Europe to visit a British girl we worked with in Kolkata and some college friends working over there (Kamman, Casey). I think that this idea is, for the time being, a "serious pipe dream," if that makes sense. She's also hoping to return to South Africa in the not-too-distant future, perhaps as an assistant to the CSB/SJU study abroad program.

As for "us," I think we're going to stay out of each other's hair for awhile, after five solid months of constant companionship. It will be nice to be in the company of a wider variety of fluent English speakers. But just because our hairs are in different places doesn't mean we won't continue to be khub bhalo friends, if you jano what I mane.

(That's what we call Banglish: Bengali-aka Bangla-and English crammed together).

It will be nice to hear Christmas songs, play in the snow, have a couple hundred Wendy's Frostys and see all the loving faces that have been to us for so many years what we've tried to be to the family-less Rainbow girls for this brief spell. Gotta give thanks where thanks is due.

Gotta be true to your school, as the Beach Boys say.

About-to-leave events of note:

1. I donated my bicycle to school. The domestic staff (kitchen workers, carpenters) will use it frequently for their supply-gathering missions. I wanted to give it to my favorite muri-wallah (man who sells delicious puffed-rice, spice, onion and potato snakcs), but he left just a few days ago for his village home.

2. As you may have figured, I bought a guitar here. Yes, it's pretty hard to write songs and/or call oneself a musician without an instrument. It was mega cheap, and unlike my mega cheap Australian guitar, I actually like this one a lot. It's black and really twangy and I put a ton of quintessential stickers of India things on the back (you know, Sachin, Shah Rukh Khan, Shiva, the usual). It basically resonates with the itness of India. So, after hours of painful consultation, Theresa and I decided that I should bring it home. This seems obvious enough EXCEPT for the tremendous packing-space repercussions. One guitar case means one less large piece of luggage means NOT ENOUGH SPACE FOR ALL OUR OTHER STUFF. And, speaking of stuff, that is exactly what we had to do. Our backpacks and suitcases are bursting, and-insert sigh of embarrassment here-we've even removed the strings of my guitar and stuffed the body full of clothes. Hey! That's like two more square feet of storage space!

3. At least we finished packing with two days to spare. That's a new record for me.

4. We've been out to dinner the past four nights, I think. The whole idea of the "farewell dinner" is sweet enough but OH MY GOSH we don't have to treat our stomachs like our suitcases, do we? I felt so sick last night that I had to (amidst sobs) turn away a delicious plate of Bengali-style shrimp and crab, fearing another explosion episode like the one I endured in Jaipur (don't ask). Tonight, Thakur Das and his family are making dinner for us. I haven't eaten a thing all day, hoping that I'll have room (and explosion buffers) enough to handle the onslaught of culinary deliciosity.

I can tell that I'm journalling/blogging as a therapeutic attempt to deal with my sadness about leaving. It's pretty lame, and I'm sure not many of you will make it this far through this post. Shrimp and suitcases - not that interesting, I know.

Sorry. I'm sorry, India, for not being able to give you any more time right now. I'm sorry, family, for making you feel like I don't want to see you. I'm sorry, Mom, for sticking my finger up your nose and making it bleed on your first Mother's Day. I'm sorry, parents, for faking sickness and convincing the babysitter to call the movie theater to have you come home that time you went to see "Ghost." I'm sorry, Theresa, for driving you crazy for five months AND for ruining our blog with this horrendous post.

It's just that I'm totally falling apart with grief... AAH! There goes my right leg... and my head! I cnat relaly see waht i'm typngi anymre.. ahh my lfet arm....... oh nooooooooo

(head explosion).

__________________________
B

Wedding Season

2005-12-13T11:52:00.000+05:30

They say there are two seasons in India: monsoon season and wedding season. The rains stopped a couple months ago, and since then the love has been a-flowin' (along with the delicious food, funny outfits and fluorescent marching band processions).

We attended two weddings, looking burnished in our ethnic Indian dress. Feast your eyes on us.

I'm anxiously awaiting the ceremony with two silly second-cousins of the bride.

Theresa's pink Benarasi sari and my blue panjabi-and-dhuti set. Um, all I can say is BOO-YA!

A better look at the Maharani.

Here we're joined by Munu, cousin of the bride and our ever-gracious Calcutta host. She's wearing her 'wedding sari,' in the fancy up-from-behind-the-right-shoulder style. What a good-looking bunch.

B

In the Beautiful Forest

2005-12-13T09:44:00.000+05:30

As our last pre-departure adventure, we spent three days on (luxurious) safari in the world's largest delta: the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve. This immense tidal plain/mangrove forest results from the confluence of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and their 10,000+ square-kilometer collision with the Bay of Bengal. The location of rare river dolphins, the world's only man-eating wild tigers, and the tragic cyclone/flood of 1970 that killed 300,000+ inhabitants, the Sundor Bon (beautiful forest) is a region teeming with mystery and hidden danger. (Sorry to be writing like a brochure here... but the place really demands, as Tagore would say, 'words heavy with import.')

Theresa and I spent long hours cruising through the labyrinth of estuarine rivers, sipping Coca-Cola and searching for deadly creatures. We also visited a characteristic rural Bengal village of the tide-lands and several watchtowers placed throughout the reserve. Visitors rarely see tigers here, despite the large population of the beasts. No one from our tour company had seen a tiger in the wild for TWO MONTHS when we came, but...

We saw FOUR.

Just hours before our safari was finished, after waiting for a potentially fate-inspired half hour while our launch-boat was malfunctioning, we spotted a massive tigress and three well-grown cubs in the distance below a watchtower. Theresa and I both had the experience of photographing the Royal Bengal tiger IN THE WILD, an opportunity that not many people (especially from our part of the world) have a chance to do. Boo-ya!

Check out the photos below. They will do a tiny bit of justice to the place, and the BEASTS. If you're really interested, you could read the novel I mentioned in my last post, "The Hungry Tide" by Amitav Ghosh. There, you'll find very informative passages about the river dolphins, tigers, tidal ecosystem and the sad history of dispossession and natural disaster of the Sundarbans inhabitants.

And no, neither of us was eaten by a tiger, unfortunately. We'll have to die in some other, less interesting way, hopefully a long long time from now. We're all disappointed.

Brian "I hope you know I'm being ironic" Heilman

Who knew Theresa would move on with her romantic life so fast? I guess she's into the one-foot-tall hairy bleating type.

White egrets perched in a (to quote Theresa) MAJESTIC location.

The tigress, mega digitally-zoomed. We were at least 150 yards away... way to go photographer Theresa and our camera!

One of the cubs (quite big, huh?) snooping onto us as we snoop onto him. If the forest department hadn't cleared this portion of the forest, we would never have known we were so close to the MAN-EATERS.

This is Theresa, wearing a silly hat with a tiger face on it. I dared her to buy one and wear it for the entirety of our 6-hour boat-and-bus ride home. She did. She got a free soda.

THANKS FOR LOOKING!

My Patients (Sorry HIPPA)

2005-12-09T16:42:00.000+05:30

Let me update you on the progress of some interesting patients. Luckily, in India I’m out of the legislative jurisdiction of the HIPPA confidentiality guidelines.

• In one of my previous posts, I described an elderly woman whose foot injury was left untreated for 7 years. Now, almost three months since we first met her, her foot is well on its way to being completely healed.

• Another man came to our village clinic about a month ago with a crater in his foot where his big toe should have been. A year ago, he stepped on something. As the size of his wound increased, he began to lose sensation in his foot and his big toe disappeared into this one-inch deep crater.

Now, his crater is about 1/4 of an inch deep and he has sensations in his foot once more. His sandals were completely worn through, so Rod gave him a new pair of shoes. The old man's eyes were glazed with held-back tears as he accepted them.

• Another interesting long-term patient of ours is a teenager who has spent the last year of his life hidden in his family's straw hut. Due to a soccer injury on his shin that refused to heal, his family confined him to his dark bedroom in shame, believing that he had been affected by black magic. They believed that his injury was not healing because he had wronged the gods in some way.

When we arrived to the village two and a half weeks ago, his father called us to his humble hut and pushed back the curtains to the room where his son was lying on the bed. We examined the wound which was badly infected and concluded that treating his wound on our regular trips to the village wouldn't be enough to heal him. His family was extremely hesitant to allow us to treat him daily, fearing that they would be interfering with the will of the gods if they were proactive in his treatment.

In our first encounter with this man we had to cover his wound with makeshift gel-o-net due to our lack of proper medical supplies (Betadine soaked gauze). As we were bandaging him up, some of the betadine soaked through the clean gauze and turned the saturated areas black. The father spoke frantically in Bengali, and our translator turned to us and said, "He’s scared he has made the gods angry! He thinks black magic is turning the gauze black!"

After repeating the procedure on ourselves with the same black-stained result, we assured the father that Betadine can turn the bandages black. Through much translated conversation and deliberation by his magic-fearing family, he now visits us daily at our clinic at Loreto and his wound is almost healed.

-Theresa

Fireworks, Kaleidoscopes and Other Shining Things

2005-12-09T16:24:00.000+05:30

It’s a normal Thursday morning. My co-worker Rod and I walk to the Sealdah train station to make our rounds. During these rounds we treat the station-dwellers’ wounds and hand out packages of rice, lentils, and bread. As always, we encounter the frail but friendly woman who lives on Platform 4. Every day, she sits with her legs crossed under her faded green sari, her lonely eyes watching passers-by. As soon as she sees me, she reaches up with her wrinkled, plastic-thin hands, eager to grasp mine. Receiving her food, she flashes me an equally welcoming toothless grin. Our spirits lightened by this cheerful woman, we move on.

The woman living outside the public toilets wears broken spectacles, their cracks making two-inch fireworks over her eyes. I imagine that her world looks like a kaleidoscope. Today, she stops us before we leave and points to her legs. She has an infected gash on her left knee. We bend down and begin cleaning her wound.

In under a minute, a crowd of thirty men have gathered, watching as if we were dressing the wound for their entertainment. After we finish her dressing, Rod turns to the exponentially-expanding crowd. Temporarily hiding his mischievous smile, he holds out his hand asking, "One rupee! One rupee! C'mon, you watched! One rupee!" The men look at him, bewildered. Unsure of what to do, some of the men reach into their pockets and place a single rupee in his hand.

Rod's smile returns as he hands his 8-rupee profit to the old woman. "Sometimes, being a foreigner has its advantages!" he quips as we continue through the station.

When we arrive on Platform 9, I almost miss seeing a man camouflaged in a filthy blanket lying under a bench. Beneath his blanket he wears only a stiff dust-covered shirt. His skin is stretched thin over his bones, revealing muscle-less legs no thicker than my wrists. As we lift him up into a wheelchair, the smell of stale urine rises up with him. After making our way through the nearly impenetrable station crowd, and take him via taxi to Premdan, one of Mother Teresa's homes for the dying.

* * *

I can't think of many things more fulfilling than seeing the man one week later smiling with his eyes, resting in the home. He had received a bath and haircut, and didn't lose his appreciative glow throughout our entire visit.

Often when we think of helping the poor, images of malnourished children enter our minds. While many children are in dire need of help, we quite often overlook the elderly.

In order to provide the elderly with the same love people often show to the children, Rod's charity, Calcutta Stations Mission, has initiated a sponsorship program for the elderly people just like the old man we found. Donors to this charity directly affect the lives of the destitute elderly inhabitants of the streets and stations, in addition to the village communities and Rainbow children with whom Rod and his other volunteers work.

I know that when I return home, images of these endearing train station characters will stick with me. Even now, I think about them all the time. Doubtless, when I find myself in some fancy-shmancy Minnesota hospital, I will remember how a simple pack of vegetables and a handshake “healed” my Indian patients’ biggest malady: loneliness.

For more information on Rod’s charity, please visit www.calcuttastationsmission.com, email reception@calcuttastationsmission.com or contact me.

-Theresa

13 Days, 13 Thoughts

2005-12-07T12:59:00.000+05:30

Yes, 13. That's all we have left. As I've been writing to my friends via e-mail, I'm feeling 93% bummed, 6% excited, and 1% milk. Read on.

Bodhgaya. The location of Lord Buddha's enlightenment and my recent 4-day jaunt. It was tough to leave Kolkata even for a few days, certainly, but I enjoyed myself very much in this land of monks-on-bicycles and devout-Buddhist-pilgrims-shooing-ants-to-safety. Yes, I meditated under the Bo tree, in the exact location of Buddha's great awakening 2500 years ago. No, I'm not enlightened. I'm quite far actually - I couldn't even participate in any live-in meditation courses (as I had hoped) because I had my guitar with me. Duh, enlightened ones don't sing or play music. Who knew? I guess I'm not destined to be a reclusive Buddhist monk after all. Look out ants.
Puja and Teresa both failed their English Literature final exam. I'm not going to lie here and give myself and my work a big glittering happy ending. They failed. Teresa will most likely have to repeat Class 8 and Puja might be restricted to studying only Home Science, Bengali and Tailoring. I can say honestly that I prepared them to the best of my abilities. I can also say, biased though I may be for being an American unaccustomed to the Indian memorization-before-knowledge education system, that their exam was ridiculous. I would have scored 70% or less. Some of the questions were simply inconsequential sentences torn from the short stories, with words plucked out and replaced with blanks worth two points each. I'm obviously disappointed, but I know that by my own standards the girls made huge strides in their reading comprehension and study skills, and I will continue to insist this to their teachers and to Sister Cyril.
As for my confidence in my own teaching skills... Let's just say that I might see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the third time tonight, hoping it will cheer me up. Then again, with Voldemort back in his body and all, it might bum me out even more.
I recently finished reading The Hungry Tide, a highly-acclaimed new novel by Amitav Ghosh. It takes place entirely in the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, the enormous tidal plain/mangrove forest at the mouth of the Ganges. The book is very well-informed and suspenseful (in plot terms, anyway), but read too often like an essay masquerading itself as a novel for my likes. BUT! Theresa and I will be in the Sundarbans for a three-day safari this upcoming weekend and the novel has got me primed and extremely excited for the adventure. Yes, mom and dad, this is the only place in the world where the wild tigers eat humans regularly. I'll try to be safe but come on - what a way to go!
I also read a novel by the British comedian Ben Elton called "Blast from the Past." I have completely forgotten whatever it was that motivated me to spend 110 rupees on a secondhand copy of this crapalicious 360-page horror. It was awfully written and, well, awful all around. Please don't ever even lift this book off a shelf, people.
These have all been long thoughts. Not this one, or the next two.
Theory of Tragedy: "You will go America and you will forget us, sir," said Puja.
Theory of Tragedy: Elliott Smith.
Back to Bodhgaya. My harsh rejection at the hands of the silence-loving monks had one benefit: I had the time and attention to write three new songs. My little project-within-a-project of writing music while teaching in India has proven successful, and I'm happy to announce that with any luck I will be able to put out a nice album of 12ish songs by my birthday in April. My current album title options: How to Act, Pilgrim Age, Not My Popsicle and Living the Dream. Feel free to vote for your favorite by posting a comment.
Theory of It-Won't-Be-So-Bad-To-Go-Home: "I'll be over again soon, Grandma," said Brian. "Maybe next week."
Theory of It-Won't-Be-So-Bad-To-Go-Home: Steve Devereaux.
Remember the word I created in my last list of thoughts - "itness"? Well, I've come up with both a dictionary definition and list of "India's Top Five Itness Locations." Here goes: it-ness. noun. 1. the degree of quintessence of a location or experience. 2. the sensation of excitement which results from a characteristic or quintessential experience. Ex. I sensed the thrilling itness of Wisconsin as I ate my cheesewurst outside Lambeau Field. INDIA'S TOP FIVE ITNESS LOCATIONS (in no particular order): 1. The ruins of Fatehpur Sikri 2. The atrium of the Loreto Day School, Sealdah, Kolkata 3. Beneath the Bo tree in Bodhgaya. 4. Taj Mahal (duh) 5. The queue outside Eden Gardens cricket pitch on gameday. Ta-da!
Grand Unified Theory of Itness: Kolkata.

That's that. Grandma and Devereaux aside, I'm still not that happy that the countdown is at 13. But, is it better to feel stuffed after a meal, or to leave a little itch of hunger so that you enjoy the next meal that much more? I know I'll be back to Kolkata, and by then I'll be starved.

Brian

Only in India, Part Two

2005-11-21T15:52:00.000+05:30

As our time in India is drawing nearer to a close everyday, we can’t help but reminisce. I (Theresa) have decided to share a few of my memories and experiences in India that make me laugh, smile, or sigh and say: “Only in India!”

• There is a man who sits in a wheelchair outside the sweet shop near our flat. I give him a sweet whenever I go into the shop, but he is happy to see me whether I give him something or not. He never asks me for anything, which is a welcome change from the posse of young girls who live on our block and plead incessantly, “Auntie, one rupee!” or “Chipspenchocolate!” And that’s to say nothing of the several erstwhile suitors-passing-by who ask, “Will you marry me?”

• Everyone pushes and shoves each other out of lines and subway cars. It’s ridiculous. And it’s not just kids, it’s adults – people old enough not to want anyone to know their age. Before exiting the subway trains, they wait with their noses pressed to the door. As soon as the doors open, they burst through the crowd of platform passengers and sprint to the subway gate. Then the battle for first place begins, complete with kindergarten-esque budging, shoving and squeezing. It’s funny how often the madness of the moment makes the mob blind to the unencumbered gate three feet away which I pass through uninhibited.

• Instead of going to the bathroom or someplace private to get rid of phlegm, men and women (phlegm-hacking knows no gender) choose to clear their throats and spit anywhere. The streets, the buses, shops, anywhere. I hate this phlegm-hacking army, so in order to tolerate it, I rate the depth and grossness of the guttural sounds.
Hguaagh...pit-hew: 4.1. Weak. Better luck next time. HGHGHGHHHHHUUUUUAAAHHGGGGHHH! PHITH-EW! Ten! Ten!

• The worst is when they don’t spit. Ew.

• Calcutta’s temperature has been steadily declining (Hallelujah!). Yesterday, the temperature was about 70 degrees, but the students in Brian’s class complained that the classroom was too cold. They demanded that he turn off the fan. The newspaper has warned people that the demand for power (and thus, the chance of blackouts) will increase due to this “nip in the air.” Bring out the winter jacket! Strangely enough, as the Kolkatans were braving the cold air, I got a mild case of heat exhaustion!

• Every day I treat Pinky, a 8-year-old Rainbow girl who has a cut on her middle finger. This morning, she didn’t come to get it bandaged. I assumed that her teacher wouldn’t let her leave class to come up anymore because the cut was healing. As I descended the stairs, Pinky leapt in front of me and thrust her middle finger proudly in the air. I chuckled and resisted the natural urge to feel insulted by this action. What a cutie.

• I had the best shower of my life recently. I was in the Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal, riding an elephant bareback. My showerhead: the elephant’s trunk. You can’t find that kind of luxury at Menard’s!

• While an average businessman of Kolkata wears dress slacks, a shirt and tie, a standard laborer or shopkeeper wears a lungi, which is basically a man-skirt. They’re like sarongs, but in manly tones of blue and black plaid. The lungis themselves are silly by American standards, but when paired with rolled-up, belly-baring tank tops, the image becomes purely hilarious. Who knows, maybe in a couple years the style will hit the USA, and men from Mankato will strut down to Hiniker Pond in a skirt and sports-bra.

• To our delight, the cutest family in the world lives next door to us and looks over us. When we met them, Thakur Das (the father/husband) proudly introduced us to his wife and daughters. “This…mommy!” he said, pointing to his wife, trying mightily to use the correct English vocabulary. Next, he pointed to the twelve-year-old girl next to him. “This… BIG baby!” Finally, his hand shifted to the shy six-year-old hiding behind her sister. “This… LITTLE baby!” We have since learned that Big Baby’s real name is Jaya, but Little Baby remains Little Baby because she is too shy to tell us her real name.

• Due to a shortage of proper public toilets, the men here urinate whenever and wherever they feel the urge. It is uncommon to walk one hundred feet without seeing a man turned towards the wall, doing his business. I will be glad to return home where this isn’t a common sight. Nonetheless, it is amusing to take a picture of a monument, for instance, only to realize after developing the film that I’ve captured anywhere from one to three men having pee-pee time at the entrance gate.

- Theresa

P.S. Thanks for the help, Brian. You are my favorite person on earth, apart from Bobby Richter. Come on, he has a yacht.

A Third Conversation

2005-11-14T17:54:00.000+05:30

I know that you remember my post from about a month ago called "Two Conversations." It was the one in which you fell in love with Puja, one of my Class 8 Rainbow students. Yeah, that one: the one that has sent you back to this blog repeatedly hoping to read more about HER and much less about uninteresting me.

Well, I had another sticks-in-the-mind-as-well-as-the-heart-and-refuses-to-leave conversation the other day, and it related to Puja. Allow me to share.

It was the eve of the school's post-Holiday re-commencement, and I was in the school kitchen flipping chapattis over the gas stove. You know, nothing unusual. I recall being particularly proficient that night, flipping with expertise and very rarely burning one of the delicious round discs of unleavened bread. In fact, I made a century that night: a century of chapattis. I finished with 120 chapattis, not out. (And all of you non-cricket-lovers will just have to languish at the fact that you don't get the joke of the last two sentences. HA!)

After my impressive flipping display, Sister Cyril called me into her office to chat. For the girls, Sister's office means big trouble. For me, it usually means another new work assignment. Tonight, however, Sister sincerely just wanted to chat. How nice.

SC: "So, Brian, how is everything going for you here?"

BH: "It's fantastic, Sister! I'm having so much fun. I just made a century of chapatis - I'm on top of the world."

SC: "Great. And how are you coming with your teaching? Who exactly are you with right now?"

BH: "I'm still preparing some Class 8s for their English exams; I've picked up some Class 7 girls who need help in Maths; and of course I'm playing with the Rainbows whenever I get a chance."

SC: "Oh, that's right, you're with Puja Das and Teresa Raphael and them. That's great. How are you finding Puja? How are her studies coming along?"

BH: "Puja works incredibly hard. She takes everything very seriously, and hardly lets a sentence go by without insisting that I make her understand. Moreso than the other girls, Puja really wants to understand, rather than simply to memorize what she needs for the exam."

SC: "Well we think she has some brain damage, you know."

BOOM.

BH: " - incomprehensible muttering - "

SC: "Well you know when we found her she was eating clay. That's how impoverished she was. It was just her and her little brother Toofan. You've met Toofan now, I suppose."

BH: "Yeah, he was here over the holiday."

SC: "Well he was just a baby; Puja was maybe 3 or 4. Their father had gone, and their mother had died giving birth to Toofan. We had no idea how long they had been living like that."

I'm not exactly sure why, but here in India I've had a lot of out-of-body experiences in the middle of conversations like these. You know the feeling - the same one you got in eighth grade the first time you uttered "Will you go out with me?" or "Wanna go steady?" (depending on your era) to your crush. Although it's you saying the words, it feels as if you're hearing them from someone else, watching the scene from a few feet away, reflecting on things as they happen, rather than making them happen. My previous experiences of this sort have all come from being intensely nervous. In India it's not nerves that cause me to float out of my body, but rather the soul-clenching power and importance of the topics in the depths of which I am swimming every day.

SC: “For the first year or so, Puja never said a word. She always mumbled ‘Aaaahh ohhhhh’ and things like this but would not speak with words, even to the other Rainbow girls.”

SC: “You know, when your brain doesn’t get any nourishment at all, there are bound to be problems. We couldn’t figure out how to get her speaking, until finally one night we made a breakthrough.”

Imagine the following scene. I like to.

SC: “I was sitting in my office with some of the Rainbow girls just playing with them. I had out my little Dictaphone, you know, and I was letting them speak into it and hear their voices. They loved it, you know.”

SC: “And then Puja, as determined and feisty as ever, came to the front insisting in her ‘Ahhhs’ and ‘Ohhhs’ that she get her turn to use the recorder. So, I let her speak into it, and she did her usual mumbling, you know, and gave it to me to play back for her.”

Focus now, this is the big moment.

SC: “Brian, you wouldn’t believe it, but when Puja heard herself on that Dictaphone it was like something clicked in her brain. I could see in her eyes that she realized that the noises she made were not the same as those of the other girls. And that was the moment. From then on, she started speaking and improving her vocabulary every day. The words were there inside her, you know, they were just waiting to come out.”

BH: “Wow, that’s incredible. I would never have known. Her English, especially her spoken English, is just as good as her classmates’.”

SC: “Oh, that’s great.”

The words were there inside her, you know, they were just waiting to come out.

I love that image: Puja finding herself there amongst her new brothers and sisters, looking inside and discovering a new way to communicate. And now, almost 12 years later, she’s on the verge of graduating from one of Kolkata’s most well-respected schools – a credential which will undoubtedly (with Puja’s determination) lead her to a life that would otherwise have been pure fantasy.

Phew. I know that a good teacher isn’t supposed to have favorites, but I can’t help the feeling that Puja was the one girl I was destined to meet in India, to transform a library-load of human rights issues into a face, an array of opinions into a person.

I’m getting long-winded (AGAIN). It’s the Brian-story syndrome. I can’t tell any anecdote, no matter how tiny, without a disproportionately huge amount of back story. Not that this is a tiny anecdote, of course.

I still haven’t written about the rest of the conversation, in which Sister explains the following:

• Puja’s older sister’s tragic aneurysm and death. This older sister (whose name escapes me at the moment) appeared shortly after Puja’s entry into Loreto.
• The life-threatening cyst on baby Toofan’s back, the repeated reports from doctors that “He’ll just die anyway,” the subsequent kidney removal surgery that saved him, his incredible talents and Puja’s limitless admiration for him.
• My role as the only “somebody” Puja and Toofan have in their lives (apart from Sister Cyril and everyone at Loreto, of course). Why she will make an exception in her “no individual gifts or preference” policy so that I can write letters and send photos to Puja after I return to the US.

AND

• Why I should write a song and perform it at the Children’s Day festivities on Monday (today – more on that in another post).

After an hour or more of heavy chatting, I realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. I thanked Sister for what I called “a feast of insight” (hey, I’ve gotta stay on her good side) and dashed out to make sure that my chapattis hadn’t all vanished.

Thankfully, there were four left.

-Brian

A Chronicle of my Dreamland Love Affair with Rani Mukherjee

2005-11-09T14:42:00.000+05:30

Throughout my travels in India, I've had a lot of success relieving "who the heck are you and why are you in India" awkwardness by showcasing my knowledge of Bollywood films and personalities. I introduce myself to strangers and new students alternately as Shah Rukh, Aamir or Saif Ali Khan, and always insist that I am married to or dating Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherjee or Aishwarya Rai. At the very least, these comments produce laughter and an easing of spirit from my fellow conversants. At the most, they lead to hours-long discussions about favorites-and-not-favorites, who's-dating-whom gossip, sing along sessions and (among the most gullible) the story of how my humble midwestern American life became intertwined with the lives of India's heart-throbs.

All of my students, to my delight, now call me "Shah Rukh Sir." They still insist that I sing or dance to their favorite Hindi film songs every day. But lately, there has been an exciting new development in my faux-Bollywood life... and it is the impetus for this article. I'm having a well-publicized dreamland love affair with the number one heroine of Bollywood, the Bengali-born beauty herself, the one and only Rani Mukherjee.

It's true. Or, it was true. Read on.

At first it was completely innocent. I occasionally mentioned Rani's name when asked if I had a girlfriend, but more often I would profess my love for the younger Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh's love interest in my two favorite Hindi films. Then, while my students went home for the Durga Puja holiday and I jumped off mountains and rode elephants in Nepal, Cupid (or was it Puck?) came to sprinkle my life with a little love-dust. Rani started appearing in my students' dreams. Her mission: to keep them informed of her feelings for me.

November 5th. Dream number one, reported by Joycelyn Rahman:

"Sir, last night Rani came in my dream and she told me that she is in love with you. I'm not telling lies, Shah Rukh Sir. Rani loves you!"

Wowee!!!!!!! I was thrilled. Destiny, for once, was on my side. Hindi film stars don't just pop up in dreams proclaiming their love for Wisconsinite teachers every day; this was big news. I instantly told everyone in the school.

RANI

November 7th. Dream number two, again reported by Joycelyn Rahman:

"Sir, Rani came again last night. She said that she loves you but only if you cut your beard and look like a nice boy. I'm telling true. You need to cut your beard."

Okay, this is obviously influenced by Joycelyn's dislike for my beard, I thought. Rani surely doesn't mind my manly bristle. Right? Right?

Meanwhile, several students informed me that only if a dream comes three times will it come true. Joycelyn, the 15-year-old holder of my hopes and aspirations, needed to see Rani again.

November 8th. Dream number three, reported by Joycelyn Rahman, Teresa Shaw, Natasha Marcelline, and Angela Ryle:

"Rani came, sir. She said she hates you."

Ouch. Big ouch. And to think that I actually believed them the first two times! I thought destiny was speaking to me through the unconscious mental wanderings of my students! I thought Rani and I had a real chance! I had already begun Hindi and Bengali language lessons, dance class and film school. It was meant to be, wasn't it!?

Now I know that all along it was a vicious plot by the student body to crush my soul.

What about the chalkboard game we played, where the phrase "Rani loves Brian" scored 86 points out of 100, the highest score anyone had ever seen!? I know that people think she's actually in love with Abhishek Bachchan, but come on! "Rani loves Abhishek" only scores 80 points!

Today. Dream number four, reported by the entirety of Class 8 Silver and Class 7 Orange:

"Sir, Rani came again. She said she will bomb you."

BOOM. Thanks, girls.

Brian

Microcosm

2005-11-09T13:44:00.000+05:30

How about this:

Two days ago, thirteen US Air Force fighter jets engaged in tactical practice (or, in media terms, War Games) with Indian Air Force fighters. Here in Calcutta, we were far from the action (the exercise took place in the middle of the night, over the Bay of Bengal) but the brief US visit received a lot of attention from the media and West Bengal government, the latter having opposed the operation from its beginning stages. The Left Front, West Bengal's Communist-by-name-but-not-necessarily-by-practice government, had been requesting the cancellation of the exercise for some time, but met only resilience from the national government and Air Force personnel. Therefore, on the morning of "Operation Cope India," the training exercise, the Left Front organized a massive protest at the Kalaikunda Air Force base.

The government had hoped to attract over 150,000 protesters, but in the end only 80,000 comrades showed up (still an impressive figure). Upon arriving, the political fuel inside these protesters faded away and they became (in my mind, anyway), a fascinating metaphor.

Rather than rallying together or chanting anti-democratic slogans, they fought each other for the spots closest to the runway...

so they could see the fabulous F-16s up close.

The fired-up cadre members had to expel more effort gathering the comrades together than they could expel in their protests or demonstrations. The community had united to oppose the United States, but still couldn't help but gawk at their impressive force.

Quoth the PA system at the protest stage:

"Comrade, don’t stand near the runway, there’s nothing to see there. You are wanted near the stage!"

Anger and admiration. Fear and wonder. Fascinating.

... on the other hand, the only gawking attention I get these days is from young boys envious of my ever-more-bushy beard. "Comrade, turn away from the beard! You are wanted back in school!"

B

Things to do today

2005-11-08T11:23:00.000+05:30

An India artifact. A crumpled piece of paper from early September, on which Amresh and I both made humorous lists of "things to do today." Please, enjoy.

Things to do today
by Brian Heilman

1. Beat up Amresh
2. Beat up Amresh more
3. Eat lunch
4. Go to the toilet
5. Beat up Amresh again
6. Take Amresh to the toilet, give him a swirly
7. Go home

(I'm joking, of course. I actually don't perform violent acts to my students)

Now, the good one.

Things to do today
by Amresh Kumar Sharma

Now you thing what will happen to today/do you know?

beat up Brian
and put oil in his
head and take him
to toilet and let
him do toilet
and pushed him
in the
toilet water and

let him
drink toilet water
and bring him
home and slap
him and
therisa will take
you in
americka
and let him
cry how much
he will cry in
a day.

God I love that.

Faces 3

2005-11-06T14:16:00.000+05:30

Theresa waving from her truck ride with Laxshmi and Ganesh. We rode in a big Durga Puja parade through our neighborhood of Bhowanipore.

A drummer at a Durga Puja immersion accompanies the mad twirling of the idol.

I'm in flight over Pokhara, Nepal. This is minutes before I lost my lunch 500 meters up. Ha!

Death, almost. (Not really)

Carrying the child of our Nepali friend Beni on a steep part of our trek to Astem.

B&T

Faces 2

2005-11-05T15:39:00.000+05:30

I lost my waist again. These kids are helping me find it.

A quick photo break between the rapids.

A Nepali shower. Ha Ha Ha ha?

Canoe ride at Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal.

Sniffing through the vast array of mirror ornaments, seeking the very best for my friend Joe (the one who likes every girl he sees).

B&T

Faces 1

2005-11-05T15:17:00.000+05:30

Durgas on their way to the river.

T-Momma and some other mommas.

Gorkhified Theresa. And a basket.

The ferris wheel ride that gracefully let us photograph it while almost killing us.

Dancing with the drummers and pot-twirlers at our community puja.

B&T

Rising things, Floating things

2005-11-02T19:20:00.000+05:30

Photos from Darjeeling and Nepal - an entirely inadequate collection, featuring mountains, clouds and very little B or T.

1. Theresa and Jenny, after frolicking in a mountainside meadow, gaze upon KANCHENJUNGA, the world's third-tallest mountain.

2. Sky. 5:30 AM.

3. Ridge, Cloud, Mountain, Sky. 5:45 AM.

4. The explorer pose.

5. Woman from Darjeeling with traditional head dress. Theresa donned a Gorkha outfit similar to this one, but we can't find that picture.

APOLOGIES! We have thousands of pictures to search through and very putsy computers. More soon.

B & T

Notes from Nepal

2005-10-27T22:59:00.000+05:30

1. Dear Blog-readers,
Please don't be upset about the recent drought in blog postings. Theresa and I have been away-from-home-away-from-home, hopping around North India and Nepal during the Durga Puja school holiday. We're currently trapped in the gorgeous lakeside tourist hub of Pokhara, refusing to leave the peaceful mountain views and dirt-cheap local handicrafts. It's like something out of a Twilight Zone episode, this town - we may never be able to leave.

TO SERVE HUMANS!?!?!? IT'S A COOK BOOK!!!

Love,
Brian.

2. Dear Tandem-Paragliding instructor,
Thank you for gracefully turning the parachute this morning so that I could - um - release my anxious breakfast omelette to the winds. I swear I didn't feel sick, but my body couldn't handle the exhilarating experience of free-flight. My mind was way into being a bird for a half-hour, but my stomach couldn't digest the heights.

Yes, I have successfully rinsed the right sleeve of my jacket. I have no word yet about whether my rain of liquid-omelette reached any unwitting onlookers. I'll let you know.

Love,
Brian.

3. Dear Kali Gandaki River,
I miss you. You and your angry water, your frothing life and smooth stones. The three days we shared together last week were the true wilderness-Nepal experience I was hoping for. And you didn't even swallow me once! Perhaps that means I am victorious, or maybe just lucky.

I did have the raft of confident-rowers. I have them to thank also. But you, and your forested gorge and collection of fragile suspension footbridges, YOU were the one who gave me a true break from the horn-honking masses of urban Asia.

I hope to see you again.

Love,
Brian.

4. Dear Early-Morning Darjeeling Jeep Driver Man,
The next time you allow three silly Western kids to ride on the roof of your jeep to the top of Tiger Hill for the sunrise over Mount Kanchenjunga, please do not speed up for the speed bumps. Remember, sunrises look more beautiful to those with unbruised behinds.

Love,
Brian Theresa and Jenny.

5. Dear Clouds and Rain,
Aren't you supposed to be gone? Didn't the monsoon officially withdraw from this region about two weeks ago? Why do you have to keep showing up to dampen (literally) our elephant safaris and paragliding adventures and treks to remote Nepali mountain villages?

Why can't you let us gaze upon the rare one-horned Asian rhino from a dry elephant back? Why can't you let us awake to a shiny sunrise over the Annapurna range?

Why don't you just make like a tree... and leave?

Love,
Brian Theresa and Jenny.

6. Dear Nepali bus system,
Thank you for always giving us the three back seats in your rickety buses. We've been very very comfortable for all of our road journeys throughout the Terai and Mahabharat Range.

Yeah, right.

Love,
Brian Theresa and Jenny.

7. Dear Gangetic Dolphins,
What a great surprise it was to see you jumping out of the water beside that big red bridge we were stuck on between Janakpur and Sauraha! We thought we had NO chance of seeing you unless we got really lucky in the Sunderbans reserve... but you showed up unexpectedly and made our day! Your snouts are so long! Woo-hoo!

Love,
Brian Theresa and Jenny.

8. Dear Nepali television stations,
World Series!?!?! HELLOOOOOO!!!

Love,
Brian.

We have to catch a bus to Kathmandu at 7AM tomorrow morning. I should quit with this e-post office experiment. Namaste, Good night and Happy rebellions to you all! -B
_______________

TO ALL,
The opinions expressed in these notes are not affiliated with Ms. Theresa Guentzel or Ms. Jennifer Allsopp in any way. Brian was arrogantly imposing his views upon the whole of the travelling trio. What a Jark.

No Love,
Theresa and Jenny.

Durga Puja Photos

2005-10-14T15:30:00.000+05:30

These ought to compliment the previous two posts quite smashingly!

Only in India, Volume One

2005-10-14T15:08:00.000+05:30

Theory of (Pseudo)Success:

I found it. Yesterday, at the "Planet M" music shop at 22 Camac Street:
Kanye West, Late Registration.

A months-long search is over, and in my hand I now hold...

A CASSETTE!?!?!?!?!?!?

Only in India do cassettes of popular musicians still release before CDs. But I have to do as the Monty Python boys say and "Always look on the bright side of life." I get to have the true hip-hop experience of encountering a fresh new album on my runs-extra-slowly-or-quickly-depending-on-the-juice-in-the-batteries 100-rupee walkman. It's probably the first time I've bought a tape since Warren G, Regulators.

Only In iNDEa - Our Near Death Experience

Ferris Wheels. You've seen them in the final ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong final scene in Grease, the sing-song coffee breaks of Bollywood cheese-fests, Navy Pier and every Bumsville, Idaho town fair. They're for leisurely catching a bird's eye glimpse of the fairgrounds or movie set, right? They're for snacking on cotton candy and taking a breather from NVEs (Near-Vomit-Experiences) on The Zipper, right? They're for making out or spitting on onlookers or other mischief, RIGHT?

Only in India are ferris wheels cut-throat hang-on-for-your-life we'll-sell-you-the-whole-seat-but-you'll-only-need-the-edge thrill rides. We nearly died at the Puja pandal fair just 100 meters from our humble Bhowanipore apartment. I bet the thing was going 40 miles per hour.

And we had no seat belts or guard-rails. Phew. I'm happy to be here.

Rise and Shine

Kolkata is a ginormous metropolis of over 14 million people. Yet, every morning, I am awoken by...

A rooster.

Only in India, only in Kolkata do barnyard animals serve as alarm clocks for big-business executives and rice-paddy-pickers alike.

__________
...and there's more where that came from.

Brian

Festival Fragments

2005-10-13T13:44:00.000+05:30

Durga Puja, the biggest Hindu festival of the year for Bengalis, is upon us. The city is drenched with light and music, loaded with magnificent temporary temples to the visiting goddess, and absolutely teeming with energy. We've spent the last couple days hopping from temple to temple, admiring the various incarnations of The Great Mother and staying up waaaay too late. Please, allow me to share these most exciting excerpts of Puja life.

First, Durga Puja 101. Durga is the mother goddess for Hindus, revered most passionately in the state of West Bengal. Facing the threat of defeat at the hands of the demon Mahishasura, the myth goes, all the gods donated their greatest powers to create one great female entity who might triumph over this shape-shifting evil one. Mahishasura, you see, had previously received the boon of invulnerability to any attack from a male. The ten-armed lion-riding mother, after fighting courageously with Mahishasura's varied animal incarnations, finally achieved victory while the demon was in the form of a buffalo. As the demon's true essence emerged from the buffalo corpse, Durga stabbed him in the heart and thus eradicated all evil from the earth.

This instant of good-vanquishing-evil is immortalized in nearly 3,000 clay statues spread throughout the city for this annual festival. Durga, her right foot on her lion consort, stabs the demon who is emerging from the dying buffalo. Surrounding Durga in most cases are her four children, Ganesh (the universally popular elephant-headed god of luck and prosperity), Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kartik. The intricately-crafted and elaborately-adorned statues reside for 5 days in temporary bamboo-framed structures called pandals which appear across the city, in narrow lanes and open parks, rooftops and swimming pools. During the three main days of adoration, the whole of Calcutta, dressed in brand new stylish clothes, takes to the streets to visit the pandals, which nowadays compete with each other for various city-wide prizes (based on everything from pandal design to lighting to idol decoration to true puja spirit). The city is alive with music, happiness and energy literally all night long.

At the end of the adoration period, each Durga is transported to the banks of the Hooghly River to be immersed in the holy waters that return her to heaven. Yes, that's right, 3,000 Durgas get dunked in just two days' time. It's a sad experience for Hindu Bengalis, as their most joyous season and beloved visitor are gone for another year.

Plus, as the river is inundated with clay and paint which poisons the river's marine inhabitants, fish-loving Bengalis are forced to go without their favorite dishes for over a month, lest they risk disease themselves. Sad.

SO. Now for My Puja. If I don't start with the absolute tip-top skin-tinglingly-exciting top-five-experience-of-my-life fragment, I fear I may lose you. Here goes. Last night, I was really tired. Pandal-hopping can really take it out of a person, especially a person who is forced to hold the hands of two timid middleschoolers while navigating a million-person mob (more on that later). But somehow, somehow, as if my soul had heard a distant come-and-live call from Durga herself, I mustered the energy to brave the streets--with my guitar, no less. "I think you like bringing attention to us, Brian. I hate it," quoth Theresa. "Theresa, no matter what we do, people stare at us. We might as well make it worth their while," quoth Brian. "I don't want to end up merely having visited this world," quoth Brian-quoting-Mary Oliver.

And so I/we did it - we hit the streets with a surefire attention-grabber/energy-booster instrument strapped over my shoulder. Five minutes later, and after one rollicking Puja-fied version of the Joe Mailander hit "Sticks," I was garlanded with flowers by an over-eager youngster. Ten minutes later, and we were in the midst of an enormous croud chanting and cheering for the viciously, almost possessedly-pounding drum circle in the center of the croud. Clapping. Shouting. Cheering. Young men dancing in the middle of the drums, infused with the spirit of Durga-or-Shiva-or-Michael Jackson-or-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Think loud. Then think louder, and you might understand one-tenth of the energy. And this was all at the mediocre pandal just 30 meters from our apartment.

Five minutes later, and I'm dancing in the middle of the drums, amidst a couple hundred clapping onlookers.

Five minutes later, and a young lady miraculously convinces Theresa to join in the dance. Imagine that!

Five minutes later, and everything goes quiet.

"You must play!"

"Just one song, sir! You must play your guitar!"

!!!!!!!!!!!

"Okay, I'll play one song. One!"

BRIAN: Okay, we're going to have to slow it down a bit. I only know how to play one Hindi song, and it's a little quiet for this occasion BUT! The message is right. It's all about how we have to party today, because tomorrow might never come. You all have to sing along, okay? Okay.

ALL: Har ghadi badal rahi hai roop zindagi, chaav hek ghabi ghabi hai dhoop zindagi...

ALL: Har pal yahan, jee war jiyo, jo hai samar, kal ho naa ho...

BRIAN: Jo hai samaaaar, kal ho naa hoooo

ALL: WOOOOHOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOoooooooo!!

It was easily a top-five experience of my life, right up there with tossing "The World's Greatest Skipping Stone" in Montana, picking-till-I-bled at Battle of the Bands 2005, living with my grandparents during my childhood summers and coming from behind to beat the Woodbury Warriors 13-12 in a downpour of rain at the 1997 Woodbury Warriors Invitational Little League baseball tournament.

Do I still have you? That was only one night! I have yet to write about the Rainbow girls' excitement about being allowed to visit the pandals, their sari-clad made-up teenage-excitement beauty! About how they held firmly to my hands to "protect me," while they were nervous themselves to be smashed up with the millions of others on the street! About how in just one night I probably saw 4 or 5 million people! About the Sphinx-floating-in-a-swimming-pool pandal! About my own fancy clothes and Theresa's array of saris!

About the waaaay-too-fast seatbelt-and-gate-free ferris wheel that nearly killed us!

About any of the Durgas we saw!

About even one-ninetieth of the real living experience of the PUJA!

_____________

Brian

Two Conversations

2005-10-04T14:25:00.000+05:30

These two experiences are reluctant to leave my mind.

Conversation 1: The Five Functions of the Family

Every morning at 8:00, I eat peanut butter-and-pineapple-jam toast sandwiches. Then I take the metro train from Rabindra Sadan to Esplanade, and catch a bus to school. I peek my head into the teacher's lounge, find it brim full of women once again, and retract my head in shame (the fierce army of Loreto teachers, all female, strike fear not only in their students' hearts, but also in mine). Then, I walk to the Class 8 Platinum classroom to request the company of Nikita, Teresa, Puja and Helen - my fab four morning English class members. I give these girls individual lessons, quizzes and homework, and secretly enjoy their company (even though the difficulty of my tests may make the girls think otherwise). That should be sufficient background material to qualify this as a "Brian story." Now cut - to the important part.

Lately, my girls have been reluctant to come to English class because they are preparing for a big Home Science test. I told them that if they focused on English during our morning classes, I would tutor them in Home Science during the afternoon study period (of which I am the supervisor). Puja, a spunky throwball-playin' Phil Collins-singin' RFL (Rainbow For Life) was the only one of the four to take me up on my offer.

"Sir, teach me about this chapter," she said, pointing to the big bold words: MY FAMILY. "I don't understand."

Wow, so suddenly I need to talk authoritatively about families with a young lady who has lived on the roof of a schoolbuilding all her life, meeting her father only briefly at a young age and never knowing her own mother. I flipped the page to the beginning of the chapter and was shocked again.

"We all know what a family is," the obnoxiously uninclusive textbook opened, "we are surrounded by our families every day. Our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are always there with us, sharing our daily experiences and growing along with us." WHAT!? Of course she doesn't understand. I sat quietly for awhile, thinking about whether I could proceed without crying.

"Sir, teach. What means nuclear family? I don't understand."

"Sir, what happened?"

"Okay Sir, teach this one - What are the functions of the family?"

PUJA

Now when I say that the girls were studying Home Science I wasn't exaggerating - in this textbook subjects such as family, childhood, education and the culinary arts are all pure science, with plenty of equations, graphs, charts, theories and, of course, bulleted lists. Even on the verge of tears, I felt I could copy the bulleted list of "Functions of the Family" on the blackboard. I wrote:

The Five Functions of the Family:

1. Safety and Protection
2. Education
3. Financial Security
4. Emotional Support
5. Recreation

Puja, intimidated by the size of the words on the blackboard, asked for clarification on the meanings of all five functions. As an English teacher in India, I've developed something of a knack for changing difficult words into easy words, complex sentences into simple ones, and so on. It's what I do here. So, I adapted the list for Puja's purposes. Next to the original list, I wrote:

1. Home
2. Learning
3. Money
4. Feelings
5. Fun

I did my best to explain the many functions of a family, trying mightily to use examples and situations Puja might understand (When you win a certificate in a throwball competition, and show the other Rainbow girls, they are happy for you, right? They are happy because you're happy. That's called Emotional Support.). Still, the power of the moment overwhelmed me and I couldn't focus on the pretentious textbook's science-ization of family life.

Without any experience of what the textbook calls "The Family" Puja will probably receive poor marks on this important test. Meanwhile, the majority of girls in the school will breeze through this seemingly-mindless exam, then return home for the Durga Puja holiday to receive countless gifts from their parents and relatives. And these girls are only half the villains that I am, constantly hopping around the globe on my myriad travel whims, remembering rarely to call home or write to those people who have always provided me with The Big 5.

Later on, I went Christmas shopping for my family, spending a little too much on fabulous Indian handicrafts which will (hopefully) provide them with an abundance of delight when I return to the USA in December. I've obviously missed the purpose of this powerful moment.

Conversation Two: Broken Buildings

I teach the fab four from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM. Then, they have a break (recess, essentially) and I move on to my next assignment: Muhammed. Muhammed, a 15-year-old ROS (Rainbow of Sorts), sleeps at school every night despite having a tiny home a few minutes' walk away from school. He works in the kitchen, cooking the huge pots of potato curry and steamed rice that satisfy the bellies of the study-starved masses during each day's lunch period. This work requires him to wake up at 4 AM and start a 5-hour stint of peeling and cutting potatoes. Understandably, he saves himself the pre-dawn walk across AJC Bose Road from his mother's dilapidated hut. His bed is the cement floor of the kitchen.

He was once a student in the school - as a ROS, Sister Cyril attempted to prepare him for a boys' boarding school by placing him in classes with the Loreto girls. Apparently, all the female attention got to Muhammed's head, and as Sister Cyril says, he began worrying more about his clothes and hairstyle than his studies. "He was always trying to look like Shah Rukh Khan and all these other television heroes," she told me. (As yet, Sister still hasn't dissuaded me from emulating Shah Rukh, my favorite Bollywood heart-throb, but that's neither here nor there.) Sister took him out of school after he failed to receive passing marks in class three, at the age of twelve.

Lately, however, the little hero has been showing a spirited effort in the kitchen. Having been given a real purpose in life for the first time, Sister Cyril concludes, he finally feels useful. Thus, he works hard and now has aspirations of being a world-renowned chef. Maybe if he keeps his stylish looks, he can become the Indian Jamie Oliver (You know, that glam-chef guy from Britain.) Sorry.

Whenever it fits into his work schedule, I tutor Muhammed in English from about 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM. He speaks English very well, but his academic understanding of the language is weak, and he has a lot of trouble piecing words and sentences together when reading. I enjoy teaching him because he is truly excited to be getting another chance at learning, and because we can talk about boy stuff (you know, cricket and, well... more cricket). And that's what I set out to do with Muhammed on my very first day tutoring him - just to chat, feel him out, get a sense of his speaking skills.

As usual, after I told him that I was from the USA, the fireworks started exploding.

Muhammed: "Sir, I saw that one time, some man fly the plane, broke your building."

Me: "One man... Ohh, you mean September 11th, the planes crashing into the towers in New York."

Muhammed: "He, Laden, he broke your building. Why?"

And again, I'm suddenly over my head, needing to teach a seemingly infinite topic to a youngster with every right to know but no way to comprehend the depths of the issue at hand. How could I possibly sum up, in excruciatingly simple English, the reasons for the attack on the World Trade Center which has become such a crucial liminal moment in my life. How it slammed my life into a new direction, fired up all sorts of fierce energies amongst people all around the world, how my country and his have never been the same since, how even he (were he in America) might receive suspicious treatment because of the actions of some radicals sharing his general physical appearance, how hatred and fear drove this action and the retaliatory actions by my country's executives, how the world changed permanently that day????

Me: "So many people think USA so rich rich, so much money, so powerful, they get angry. They think it's not fair. Then some people get so angry they attack us."

Muhammed: "Many people dies that day, I think."

Me: "Yes, so many people died. And now many people still dying from wars. So much fighting fighting now. My country always fighting now."

Muhammed: "Ohhhh. I don't like fighting."

And then we went on to talk about sharks ("Sir, this one eat the people?"), food ("Sir, You want eat raita?"), and, of course, cricket. You know, boy stuff.

Brian

A Pictorial Tour of My Clinic

2005-10-04T13:15:00.000+05:30

Lean, Mean and Green: A Day in the Life of a Loreto Nurse

2005-10-03T18:04:00.000+05:30

The tall green doors separating Loreto Day School from the city life of Kolkata unfold to reveal an imposing woman behind the wheel of a cream-colored bus. Halting inside the school doors, Sister Cyril Mooney (the school principal) steps out of the bus and is bombarded by six staff members grabbing for her attention. After obliging a couple of her subordinates, she disappears into her office, where a homely calico kitten lies sleeping amidst her desktop papers.

A young girl reads a morning prayer to the student body, assembled in the atrium of the school. When she has finished, Sister Cyril (pronounced more like "Sister Cereal" by the staff and other workers), takes over with instructions and announcements for the day. Suddenly, her calm Irish voice erupts with a bellowing admonishment to her students: "SCATTERBRAINS, ALL OF YOU! Now, I want EACH of you to take a minute to collect your silly, SCATTERBRAIN thoughts for ONE MINUTE and listen up!" The silent girls file into lines and march to their classrooms to the beat of a strange polka tune. The morning assembly is over, and another day of school commences.

I have been working for this boisterous woman for two months now. Although I love attending the morning assemblies because of Sister Cyril’s bold remarks, her imposing nature makes me a bit scared of being the one to disappoint her. Generally, I tread lightly around her, and prefer to encounter her when I have exciting news to report, as her compliments can be as genuinely kind as her admonishments are fierce.

In addition to my work at Sister Cyril’s school, I have also been working with another charity, Calcutta Station Mission. In the mornings, I assist an Australian nurse (Rod, the founder of Calcutta Station Mission) in caring for the Rainbow children and other students. After the morning clinic, we follow a rotating schedule of visits to a neighboring village and the nearby Sealdah train station (home to many impoverished families). My work with Rod has given me access to the needs of a diverse population and also keeps me busy with an exciting, un-technological type of nursing work.

I particularly enjoy my visits to the village because simply getting there is an adventure. The adventure begins with ten minute ride in an auto-rickshaw, basically a go-cart that seats six people (somehow). Halfway to our destination, we transfer modes of transportation. I hand the auto-rickshaw driver 4 rupees (approximately 9 cents) and hop on a bicycle cart equipped with a rickety wooden platform on the back. This bumpy ride, which costs another 9 cents, winds past a three-foot high curb of clay chai cups and rotting trash. Despite the unpleasant roadside condition, most of this ride is pleasant on the eyes. Unlike central Kolkata, trees, flowers, open fields and the color GREEN are abundant here. For a short while, anyway.

As our village journey comes to an end, an imposing mountain of trash complete with vultures soaring overhead interrupts the beautiful green scenery. Our village site lies within Kolkata’s Municipal Sanitation Disposal Grounds. Here, farmers plant their cucumbers, cabbage, and various vegetables in fields of burnt rubbish. Minimally paid city workers use their bare feet to stomp even more garbage down in to large plastic bags.

Our hard-working bicycle chauffer halts at the base of Mount Trash, and rides away to seek new passengers. Medical equipment in hand, we cheerfully greet the village people. They are incredibly welcoming but only a handful of them speak English. As a result, I have learned a few necessary words/phrases in Bengali: What is your name? Pain? Where? Finished. No scratching. Do you use that water?

We set up our make-shift clinic on a three foot by four foot table created from bamboo spilt in half. The whole village gathers to watch the spectacle as my colleague and I dress wounds, treat ear infections, and tease the children. Due to the poor water quality and close proximity to the dump, we see a lot of skin infections. It is very difficult for the villagers to get proper medical treatment because they are too far from the city of Kolkata to be able to afford trips to the city hospitals. One woman we see regularly has been living with an enormous open wound on the bottom of her foot for about eight years. Untreated until our arrival, this wound is finally beginning to heal.

After we finish dressing the old woman's foot and clean up our supplies, we say our goodbyes amidst the giggles and brisk handshakes of village children. We hop on the back of another bike-taxi and return to Sister Cyril’s frenetic school grounds. Our day of work has finished; and we will visit the village again in two days. In the meantime, I wait for my friend Brian to finish teaching by playing games with the Rainbow students.

After an exciting and rewarding day of work, I think I deserve a little playtime (if only to rest my bikeride-bruised body).

THE END (for now)
Theresa G-dizzle

Live 2005 from SEALDAH STATION!

2005-09-24T19:46:00.000+05:30

The computer gods are smiling upon us (for the moment) and we have been rewarded for our intense file-sharing efforts. Feast your eyes on this new installment of photographs.

PHOTO ONE: These monkeys who live at the base of Jaipur's so-called "Monkey Temple" are anxiously waiting for the bicycle man who might give them a ride to the fruit market where they can wreak some havoc.
The temple is named "Monkey Temple" not for any important religious reason, but rather because of the large population of monkeys who live on the temple premises.

PHOTO TWO: We always enjoy walking through the narrow lanes of Kumartuli, the potters' district of Kolkata. Here, 300 families of potters construct clay idols of gods, goddesses and national heroes for the multitudinous festivals going on around the city. This bright idol of the beloved god Ganesh, son of Shiva and bringer of good luck, will be honored in a local pandal and them submerged in the Hooghly River. All that hard work - constructing a straw skeleton, shaping the clay perfectly, painting and clothing the idol - will be washed away into the Bay of Bengal.

PHOTO THREE: Here Theresa is staring deep into the eyes of a fierce cobra, who consequentially turned to stone. I finally convinced Theresa to turn her wild Medusan angst toward the natural world and away from the schoolchildren (7 of whom she's already petrified). What a rugged beast this woman is at heart.

PHOTO FOUR: The Loreto Girls get freakishly excited whenever special guest presenters enter the school and disrupt their class timetable. In addition to guest appearances by writer Arundhati Roy, filmmaker Sanjay Kak and numerous local TV channel representatives, the students also witnessed performances by the school's students and teachers on Teacher's Day, a holiday honoring former Indian President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (the editor of the Indian Philosophy book I used in my Asian Philosophy class!) and all the teachers around the country.

PHOTO FIVE: Here I am dancing during the Teacher's Day party with Amresh, my would-be Loreto little brother. One of five boys living amongst the 200+ Rainbow girls, Amresh is always eager for male company! He teaches me cricket techniques, and I embarrass him in front of girls. It's a symbiotic relationship. If Amresh keeps up his good grades (and avoids the wiley snares of the ubiquitous womanhood surrounding him) he will be placed in a prominent boys' boarding school soon.

PHOTO SIX: Guess what - sometimes we see BOYS too!!! It's truly a breath of fresh air (which is hard to come by altogether in Kolkata). These boys were engaged in an epic mud soccer battle in the Kolkata suburb of Tangra... until I came with my camera, that is. Check out the little guy in the middle fighting for his glimpse of glory. YOU GO BOY!

And that's that.

Say your prayers, take your vitamins, and nourish the Hulkamaniac that lurks within you!

____________________
Brian (and the other one)

51 Days, 51 Thoughts

2005-09-17T21:00:00.000+05:30

Wow. It's already been 51 days since our humble United Airlines flight left the Minneapolis International Airport, commencing this huge adventure. Now that we've reached our half-century, I think it's time for another list. I'm sorry if this gets really long.

Recently, I met a couple semi-prominent Bengali poets. I even got to read, amidst a barrage of flashing press cameras, two poems at the book release of Mallika Sengupta's new anthology of her collected poems in English. Subodh Sarkar, Sengupta's husband and the first poet I met, wants to give a joint poetry reading with me. I think it's terribly easy to break into the poetry scene in Calcutta.
I met Arundhati Roy also. A much bigger deal, some may say. I was more impressed with the book than the person.
It's cheaper to buy Mentos individually here (they're 1/2 rupee each) than to buy the rolls (10 rupees for 12 candies).
I can now name 8 Hindi film heroes from the top of my head: Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, and Saif Ali Khan.
Shah Rukh is still my favorite (although he hasn't put out a film since I've arrived, the jerk).
I am now teaching 8th grade English in the morning and 6th grade English in the afternoon. My students, all girls, very rarely ever obey me. I now know that whenever God feels like punishing me, he will do so by giving me 5 twelve-year-old daughters.
All you can do is the best you can do.
It's surprising how well T and I are able to follow the plotlines of the Hindi films we see, despite the lack of subtitles and our very limited Hindi vocabulary. We can easily retell the whole story, after having understood practically nothing.
Hindi words I learned from watching films: Dil = heart. Sabkuch = everything. Zindagi = life. Pyaar = love. FASCINATING, huh?
To my dismay, children in Calcutta do not understand what whales are. They call them fish.
Theory of Sadness: One taxi driver, alone on a night-shrouded alleyway, blares his horn to no one but himself.
Theory of Sadness: Heart, Everything, Life, Love.
Are you dangerous?
A couple days ago, an Indian woman-friend of mine (I met her while she was working at my favorite bookshop in Calcutta) met me to go out for, as she said, "A nice time." To avoid her frequent attempts to hold my hand, I clapped repetitively and danced around aimlessly. Tell me, what's up with this? Is it a cultural norm in India for non-same-sex friends to hold hands? I don't think so! But she knows Theresa!! Why would she be after me like that? Help.
The phrase I hear most often from students: "Sir, dance."
The phrase I hear most often from teachers: "You are looking sad."
As if my hand-holding debacle wasn't enough, last night at the "Bangla Rock" outdoor music festival a fairly intoxicated young Bengali MAN named Rahul danced "just for me," then pronounced that he loved me, and kissed my hand, before I ran away. This time I know it's NOT just a cultural quirk (to dance for, love and kiss same-gender acquaintances). Help.
Today I wished that "itness" was a word. As in, "I was overwhelmed by the intense itness of it."
My students always want to know how much I spend on items I buy in India, which makes me feel bad for several reasons. First, it becomes immediately apparent to them that I have an immensely larger amount of dispensable income than their families (those who have families, anyway). Second, they always estimate that the prices are about 1/3 to 1/4 of what they actually are! And I thought I was a good bargainer.
This post is going to be very, very long and certainly annoying. I wonder if I can make it a separate link or something.
Still, I have to admire the overall itness of this post.
Being this far away from home, for this length of time, brings out a very solitary/lonely/semi-mopey side of myself. I've yet to figure out exactly why.
In Australia I wrote a poem about this dilemma in which I compared myself to a first draft of a piece of writing. I've always liked that metaphor. Aren't our lives just sequences of revisions, hopefully bringing us closer to that great final draft of self-actualization?
To read Rabindranath Tagore is to electronically jack into a pure stream of vital divine energy. "The Home and the World." READ IT.
To my simultaneous dismay and delight, I've discovered that the little deep-fried balls available for purchase on our street corner are NOT cheese curds. They're dal pakoras - ground, deep-fried lentils with green chilis. Still delicious.
I felt confident about my integration into Kolkata life today when I realized that not only had I conquered the process of catching (and I mean literally catching, sometimes at a full sprint) the local buses, but I'd also begun folding my 10-rupee notes just the way the bus toll-collectors do (so they can slide them conveniently between their fingers for easy change-distribution).
Theory of Beauty, Kolkata: 20-meter high spurt of fountain-water glory, glowing with cool blue light and cheered on by blaring Bangla-pop grooves. (Citizen's Park musical fountain)
I can now name 8 Hindi film heroines from memory: Preity Zinta, Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee, Kareena Kapoor (The Ann Mailander look-alike), Karisma Kapoor, Bipasa Basu, Susmita Sen, and Tanushree Dutta, if she counts.
One of my students informed me today that Preity Zinta is not married. One more reason to break into Bollywood stardom.
Theory of Theories: Brian's attempts to be deep and poetic at every turn, perenially unsuccessful.
Theory of Success: The moment that I find Kanye West's new album in Kolkata.
Theory of West: If I tell people here that I'm from the USA, they look confused. If I tell them I'm American, they say "North or South?"
Theory of America: When they do eventually discover my nationality, they inevitably deliver a knowing/disapproving/surprised "Ohhhh..."
Theory of Nationality: I think it's the constant excitement of even the most trivial daily tasks that makes me feel as if I was, in some small way, meant to be Kolkatan. No action can be mindless here; each step--even if it is only to avoid stepping in a mucky puddle--must be deliberate.
Bengalis are by far the kindest, most helpful group of people I've encountered in this world of ours. Yet, some of them can infuriate me (like the cab driver who took us on two laps of Salt Lake before taking us to Nicco Park last night - a blatant attempt to rip off tourists who don't know their way around. Jerk.)
In a song I'm trying to write, I compare this India trip of mine with taking a "Scenic Highway" in life, rather than the Interstate or whatever the non-scenic life alternative would be. Contrived or Clever?
Look how time flies - the official No Door Day (July 10th) has come and gone quickly and quietly. Life is but a dream.
I've also discovered Jonathan Safron Foer while in India. This will delight several Literature geek friends of mine, I suppose.
I've become addicted to Coca-Cola, a pleasant plight perhaps more serious than my infamous Dr. Pepper addiction of 2001-2003.
Poor Peter. Every time a ridiculous online blog list "peters out," as this one is, the world looks at him with ever-increasing shame. Poor guy.
Ami dushtu chele. I'm a naughty boy.
Ami boca chele. I'm a foolish boy.
Ami Shaktiman. I'm Shaktiman. (Shaktiman is a popular Indian TV superhero who fights Power Rangers-esque constumed monsters).
Matcaro! Chupcaro! Don't do that! Shut your mouth! The two most common teacher-commands in Bangla. Yes, I've taken to them.
A word to bring back into vogue: lad.
Tiger Balm is about 75 cents per jar here - a baseball player's dream, I suppose.
5 more. Can I do it? Shiva, Krishna, Shaktiman, BE WITH ME NOW!
A problem with Indian pants: the crotch is constructed in such a way that they tear upon the slightest quick crouching motion. I've ruined two pairs already.
Here, if you're fat, you're just fat. And people will tell you this to your face. It's a trait not unlike your hair color, temperament or health - if someone makes a comment about a Bengali's weight, HE/SHE ISN'T INSULTED BY IT! Let's bring this to the US!
Durga Puja is on the way - the drummers arrived en masse via the Sealdah train station this morning. Boys are flying kites more frequently... Taxi and bus drivers are tying banana leaves and garland to their vehicles... and the town just feels festive.
Every day, without fail, I eat a Kwality Wall's Choc-o-bloc Drumstick Ice Cream treat. I buy it from the same shop on AJC Bose Road, at about the same time of day. STILL, the man who works there doesn't recognize me or predict what my order will be. Bummer.

What does that say about all of you, back in America, who won't have seen me for months or years or eons when we meet again!?!? Will you know that I want to buy a Choc-o-bloc from you!?!?

Namaste

Brian

PICTURES

2005-09-14T20:37:00.000+05:30

The Little Gurus and their Loyal Devotee

2005-09-10T18:02:00.000+05:30

by Theresa "The Gonz" Guentzel

For the first three weeks of my Indian adventure, five other students from The College of St. Benedict/St. John's University joined me in India to donate their time and energy to the Loreto Day School. Due to our size and the short time span of their visit, the principal, Sister Cyril Mooney, placed us in charge of transforming a dusty, back-closet storage room into a gleaming, functional library for her students from Kindergarten to Grade 4. It was the perfect project for our group and we finished it just before four of the group members returned home. Brian and I will continue to use this library for tutoring sessions and to acquaint the Rainbow Children with proper library etiquette.

The Rainbow Children are formerly street-dwelling children who live within the school and join the mainstream classrooms if/when they are ready. There are over two hundred rainbow children living at the school. During the day, they are tutored by the other students from the school and by volunteers like Brian and me. They are a handful, but spending time with them is incredibly rewarding. Many of them speak Bengali and very little English, but we have been able to bridge the language gap with uncountable hugs, entertaining dances, and a modest knowledge of a few Hindi dance songs. In addition to assisting the school nurse, I will be playing with them, helping them learn English, and providing them with healthy adult contact.

The reality of the amazing Rainbow Program didn't hit me until I encountered a little boy on the street one day. I saw him near a pile of bricks sleeping with a fly hovering over his lower lip and a coat of dust covering his body. This sad image was ingrained in my mind and I recognized him a few days later when he emerged from the back of the school kitchen with a plate of potatoes and rice in his hands. He later joined our game of cricket and accompanied me on my walk back to my hotel. He wasn't hungry after his big meal at the school, but as we parted ways I saw him walk back onto the streets, rush up to a stranger and bring his fingers to his lips to request for food. Maybe it was the fear of meals few and far between or maybe he didn't know what else to do, but something instinctively made him beg on a full stomach.

The Rainbow Children are free to wander in and out of the school as they please, but many of them stay on their own accord to learn and interact with the other children. I pray that this boy, new to the school, will stay.

Another day, I was playing with a small girl and her little sister during some free time. Another volunteer leaned over and told me that their mother had put the two of them on a train from one of the villages and told the oldest child (who was two and a half) to get off in Kolkata. The Loreto staff found the older sister wandering the train station, crying and carrying her baby sister. They were starving, scared, and without a home. Unfortunately, these heart-wrenching stories are all too common.

Every day, I encounter people with remarkable strength and unconcealed affection for the people around them: the volunteers, Sister Cyril, and especially the Rainbow Children. It is humbling (yet not unexpected) for me to discover that these children will be able to teach me more about myself , about spirituality, and about life than I will be able to teach these little gurus.

Brian has been watching cricket all day, and he wants to watch MORE?

2005-08-28T18:05:00.000+05:30

India got to me today.

Everytime the man in the room next door tried to HghUAAAAK yet another piece of phlegm from his throat I wanted to set up a picket line outside his door protesting ridiculously loud gutteral throat noises from the hours of 1 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

After a phone call with my mom, I think I left behind a sweat puddle large enough for a duck family of four at the bottom of the phone booth.

I'm over it.

I am ready to close my eyes and wake up again in India, with phlegm man, and with some new duck friends.

Theresa

See You (Mon)soon!

2005-08-23T10:27:00.000+05:30

I've discovered that whenever I post pictures the "About Me/Worthwhile Links" taskbar moves to the bottom of the entire page. I don't know why. In the meantime I've made the pictures a bit smaller (which has distorted some of them, unfortunately) in the as-yet unfruitful attempt to remedy this problem. Stick with me, people.

The goats in the street are pure Kolkata - just a couple blocks from the busiest commercial area of this 14-million-plus city.

Theresa playfully hopping over a water trough at the "Baby Taj" in Agra, a Mughal-mausoleum precursor to the Taj Mahal.

And then there's me, staring into the Ganges sunrise in Varanasi...

and cartwheeling in front of the Taj Mahal.

ENJOY! I'm off to bed after a long night of computer battles!
Good morning to all of you, I guess!

Brian

Bollywood Looks and Children's Books

2005-08-23T08:20:00.000+05:30

In India, one must sieze opportunities of convenience lest he/she crumble in the haze of bureaucracy, paperwork, and all-around slowness. In other words: I have a fast Internet connection, so I'm going to post some pictures. I might not get this chance again soon.

PICTURE ONE: Theresa is overwhelmed at the enormity of the stacks of books that we had to sort, clean and rearrange. The books ranged from infants' counting books to computer-skills workbooks (Not to mention the Yoga coursebooks and ubiquitous stacks of 'Moral Science' textbooks - think Ethics or Social Justice but with a Hindu flavor).

PICTURE TWO: In between our hours of work in the library, we met and played with the Rainbow Students. After discovering that Theresa and I had seen the Bollywood movies "Kal Ho Naa Ho" and "Veer Zaara," they constantly demanded that we sing the hit songs from these movies. When they got sick of our mumbled Hindi singing, they preferred to hear us repeat the most beautiful English-language poem they knew, which you all may recognize. Roses are red, the sky is blue - Oh my darling, I love you. Touching (and after a million recitations, painfully touching - trust me).

PICTURE THREE: Here I am killing time by learning to dance Indian-style. Yes, of course, I had already taught all of the Rainbow girls the (in)famous Brian Dances (Copyright 2005). I can't shivvy or shake like this little prodigy, even with my world-renowned dancing prowess.

PICTURE FOUR: And, after two full weeks of hard work, the library is complete! With separate sections for students and teachers, and all the books divided by age-level and subject-matter, the new Junior Library will be tremendously valuable to the school, whose class KG through 5 students previously had no library facility and access to a thin range of books (the rest of the donated books sitting dormant in the boxes in which they were delivered).

So that's that. Now I'll put on some pictures of our travels through North India.

Brian

First Impressions

2005-08-18T18:04:00.000+05:30

The next time someone asks you how long it takes to fly from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Calcutta, India, you can confidently reply,"Fifty-seven hours, during the monsoon season." Don't be fooled by the "Thirty hours total travel time" advertisement on your itinerary; you may very likely end up 200 feet from touching land (or water?) in monsoon-drenched Bombay, only to be whisked skyward by your fearful captain. Yes, we got close enough to see people walking through flooded streets, but in a flash we were back in the air, back to NewDelhi for, yes, the third time in the same day. Darn monsoon. After a sleepless night in the Delhi airport, we finally booked a new flight directly to Kolkata, finishing our ridiculous Minneapolis-to-Chicago-to-London-to-Delhi-to-Bombay-to-Delhi-to-Bombay-to-Delhi-to-Kolkata flight path.

Getting to India was an adventure in itself, but it was worth it the second we stepped off the plane and a rush of sticky, humid air hit our faces and fogged up our glasses. The heat is similar to the experience one has stepping out of the shower into a steamy bathroom, except that it is inescapable. I have always been curious to find out what it is like to live in a place where I am constantly sweating.Now that I have sweat more in the past month than I have in my entire life, I think my curiosity has been quenched.

When we ventured to our hotel in our luggage-filled yellow taxi I was overwhelmed by all of the movement, color, and captivating things that were going on around me. I saw in one city block many brown-skinned women in their beautiful saris, a man getting his face shaved on the sidewalk, clothes and purses for sale, all in front of buildings with secret beauty hidden under their impermeable coat of grime and car exhaust. To my delight, I saw fruit stands with fresh pineapples, guavas, pomegranetes, grapes, mangos, papayas, and coconuts! A fruit-lover's dream!

I love the food here. A meal usually contains steamed rice with curry (potato, chicken, or goat) and a piece of thin bread. Some of it is very spicy, but even someone who isn't fond of spicy foods can find something delicious to eat. I made the mistake on the flight of getting really excited to see a green bean in my rice and potato curry, so I ate the whole bean in one bite. Well, it was long and thin like a green bean, and it was green like any self-respecting green bean should be, but it was NOT a green bean. Instead, my tastebuds were to discover the breath-stealing fiery sensation of an Indian green chili. I thought my mouth would never recover! It was a lesson I learned the hard way.

Because of its vitality, Calcutta (Kolkata) is draining. The constant motion, heat, sweating, and horn use get to be too much for me. But I am adjusting well I think. Kolkata is not a city with which one instantly falls in love. It is busy, dirty, confusing, and noisy. It assaults all five senses and every single day is utterly exhausting.

Nevertheless, each day brings me a renewed sense of confidence and accomplishment. As my culture shock wears away, Kolkata's shroud of unfamiliarity is giving way to incredible beauty. Kolkata has a lot to show me, and I am excited for the adventures to come (I've still only written about my very first experiences!).Undoubtedly, my experiences teaching and nursing will reveal even more beauty hidden behind the gloomy exterior of Kolkata. I just can't wait to jump back into the frantic streets and make sense of the initially-disorienting frenzy of activity and color.

~Theresa

Explosions, etc.

2005-08-15T00:38:00.000+05:30

I swear we were twenty feet from the runway in Bombay when our captain decided, to our shock and dismay, that due to the monsoon-mania weather we were unable to land. He yanked his joystick back towards his chest (or, I should say, pressed the autopilot button marked 'Emergency Take-off') and we were back in the grey atmosphere, headed to Delhi for, yes, the THIRD time. In a day.

Upon landing, Jessica DeLoy and I commenced an operation I now refer to as "Fighting the Big Monster." The task should have been simple. Air India cancelled our flight to Bombay, which made us miss our connection to Kolkata. Thus, Air India was contractually obligated to cover the cost of a replacement flight to Kolkata. Ah ha ha ha... to think that the phrase 'contractually obligated' means anything to anyone here... hilarious.

Jess and I scrambled through the militarily-blockaded Delhi International Terminal, bouncing upon command from office to office to hallway to toilet to Shiva knows where else. Thanks to the help of Mr. Chintan something-or-other, a saintly Hanuman of an Indian man now living in, yep, WISCONSIN, we were able to find the right desks and paperwork, some of the time. After a five-hour battle, in the middle of the dripping Delhi night, Jess and I emerged from the mouth of the beast with replacement tickets in hand. And by replacement tickets, I mean (of course) a flimsy half-sheet of ancient perforated-edge printer paper with some random numbers and fabulous misspellings of our names (Theresa Guentzel's pseudonym T. Quenter was easily my favorite).

By the time we made it to Kolkata, we were 8 hours behind schedule (not bad, considering), had broken a world record by staying on board one aircraft for 29 consecutive hours (Chicago-London-Delhi-Bombay-Delhi-Bombay-Delhi), and logged 57 total hours of travel time.

BOO-YA!

Since then, things have been (almost) smooth and (somewhat) predictable. On our second day volunteering at the Loreto Day School, we were assigned the fabulous project of cleaning and organizing a useless back-closet room and turning it into a Junior Library for girls in classes kg through 4. After about two weeks, the project is finished and the library is sparkling. Theresa and I are very excited to use this room as an impromptu office, where we will conduct library training sessions for teachers, tutor our own students, teach the Rainbow children how to care for books, and, most of all... READ TO THE LITTLE KIDS! Fun.

There have been more adventures, and other manifestations of the Big Monster (some of which may or may not deal with gastro-intestinal efficiency), but I don't have time right now to describe them. I'm off to play a huge cricket match with some of the Rainbow boys at the school. Go Team India!

Namaste
Brian

P.S. Every time you're in public and (how shall I say this appropriately...) need to expel some gas but fear the social repurcussions, please think of me and get jealous. For I live in a land where the air smells worse than whatever stench my bowels might provide, and thus I needn't worry about drawing any disapproving attention by releasing my contribution to the delightful REEK of India. Ha ha.

I Need an Eraser

2005-07-28T08:38:00.000+05:30

It’s going to be hot. That is the only thing that I can be sure of as I anticipate what my experience in India will be like. Of course, surreal images of lovely women in saris, crippled beggars, and congested streets of people bombard my imagination. Curious images such as these are inevitable as I prepare for my overseas experience. However, I need an eraser. I need to remove these preconceived expectations and fully open my mind to an unbiased, un-Westernized experience of India.

I have done some further research to discover insights that may help ease my questioning mind. Facts make excellent mind erasers. While in India, the majority of my time will be spent in Calcutta (Kolkata) in the state of West Bengal, a city of approximately fifteen million people. Bengali and English are both spoken in Kolkata, so I may have to brush up on a little Bengali on my flight! Ei jay, amar nam Theresa. I know it is going to be hot. I know it will be dirty. I know I will be overwhelmed with the smells and the noises. I am predicting that the phrase sensory overload will be an understatement to the diversity and vitality Kolkata has to offer.

So, bon voyage. I am off to discover Kolkata and to practice what I preach in terms of living for others and seeing Jesus in everyone I encounter. The two organizations I am going to work for (Calcutta Rescue and The Loreto Day School) will provide ample yet perplexing opportunities to serve the world in which I live.

I am prepared to be unprepared. I am prepared to feel helpless. I am prepared to have all of my expectations shatter as the real Kolkata surfaces to the forefront of my mind. Reality will be my eraser.

Theresa
(whoo hoo! Celebrate my first log entry of my entire life! This was a big moment for me. C'mon, hands up, CELEBRATE!)

Calcutta, in Anticipation

2005-07-27T12:42:00.000+05:30

(my new India poem, inspired by the Bengali poet Bishnu Dey)

Dam up the river today,
Stomp down your backyard bluffs,
Bulldoze the town in blood-white fury.
Black paste let darken your mind, come—
Find fear on a cloud platter.
Silence your riot of competing anxieties,
Be the peace of the shrieking causeway,
Teem with fantasy. In the electric night,
See the ancient pristine, identify
The fourteen-millionth soul, meet your enemy
Face to doting face. And enter—
Empty as a half-crafted jewelry box,
The city of anticipation. Destroy all
First, both trophies and wounds let blow
Away in your turbulent new-lust.
Shatter your world, I say, scatter it in the sky,
And come to me in the dark.

Thanks for reading.
Brian

PS - check out this picture of the Sealdah Train Station - Just a couple blocks from our home!

Hairy Scary Primary Itinerary

2005-07-27T03:31:00.000+05:30

Keep in mind that in India, crazy things happen and plans morph and/or disappear uncontrollably, so please expect changes to this schedule. It is tentative, but it should give you a good idea of how our days will (most likely) work.

Monday, August 1st - arrive very very early in the morning, check in to our hotel and SLEEEEP. In the afternoon, we will make our first visit to the Loreto Day School and let Sister Cyril introduce us to her school in whatever way she sees fit. We will most likely eat lunch and dinner at the school, and have a free evening to catch up on sleep and prepare for a week of work.
Tuesday, August 2nd - work for the day at the school, through dinner. This is how we will spend the majority of our days. Potential evening activity: meet up with Professor Madhu Mitra at her family's home in Calcutta. Visit, eat dessert, etc. (I anticipate that Madhu will want to spend time with us many nights this week, and will hopefully accompany us on our evening activities, making them more rewarding for all of us).
Wednesday, August 3rd - work through dinner at school. Potential evening activity: Walk through College Street, the district of universities, bookshops, and famous coffeehouses of Indian revolutionaries.
Thursday, August 4th - work through dinner at school, probably transferring to rural locations for the "Barefoot Teachers" program that customarily takes place on Thursdays. Potential Evening activity: Bollywood movie night - go out to a Hindi film somewhere in Calcutta.
Friday, August 5th - work through dinner at school. Potential evening activity: Walking around New Market and the tourist district to get a feel for Saturday's destination.
Saturday, August 6th - Market Shopping mania day. New Market, Chitpur Road, Barabazar, Bowbazar. Free evening to do what you like (perhaps shop EVEN MORE!) But don't stay out too late, because:
Sunday, August 7th - Wake up VERY early, attend morning worship services at Missionaries of Charity Motherhouse (Mother Teresa's). Spend the morning volunteering at Missionaries of Charity Homes for the Dying. We will finish our volunteer work here after lunch, then head back to the hotel for naptime and/or reflection upon the morning's sure-to-be-intense work. Group Dinner with Madhu somewhere nice (as she leaves the next day, I think), free evening.
Monday, August 8th - Work through dinner at school. Evening activity: Kalighat.
Tuesday, August 9th - Work through dinner at school. Evening activity: Maidan and Botanical gardens.
Wednesday, August 10th - Work through dinner at school. Evening activity: Walk through Kumortuli to watch potters preparing idols of national heroes for Independence Day celebrations.
Thursday, August 11th - Work through dinner at school, hopefully with the Barefoot Teachers again, like last Thursday. Evening activity - out for dessert/coffee/etc at rooftop restaurant in downtown/New Market area.
Friday, August 12th - Work through dinner at school. Evening activity - Indian Museum on Nehru Road.
Saturday, August 13th - Imperial Day. Victoria Memorial, Fort William, homes of famous babus and sahibs, Tagore house, Marble palace, Eden gardens cricket pitch, zoo ???
Sunday, August 14th - A couple options. Work at Mother Teresa's again, perhaps... or attend mass at another fancy colonial church in Calcutta. Free time, rest time, observe preparations for Independence Day Celebrations.
Monday, August 15th - Indian Independence Holiday. Observe/participate in school and city celebrations. I'm not sure what this will consist of.
Tuesday, August 16th - Full day with SANLAAP, an NGO dedicated to eradicating child trafficking and violence against women. Visit their headquarters and ashram for removed children. Watch dance performance by these girls.
Wednesday, August 17th - Full day at St. Mary's Orphanage in Dum Dum, a boys' school run by the Christian brothers. Learn about their school and perhaps volunteer, if they need it (this day is not confirmed yet).
Thursday, August 18th - This is the day I that I anticipate Jess, Aisha, Sarah and Melissa will depart for Varanasi/Delhi/Jaipur/Agra... If you want to leave earlier, that would probably be okay. Perhaps I can schedule our visits to SANLAAP and St. Mary's earlier.

_______________________

submitted lovingly by Brian

23 Days, 23 Thoughts

2005-07-06T12:20:00.000+05:30

I bought laxatives and anti-diarrheals today. Look out big C and big D, here I come!
I hope to write a poem entitled "Calcutta" which is modeled after Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" at some point during my stay. A syntactical imitation, with respect and homage to the master.
"The God of Small Things" is now an official member of the "Top 5 Books I've Ever Read" club.
Any Americans out there interested in Bollywood films? Please check out Veer-Zaara. The Lodi scene provides a fantastic opportunity for singing and dancing along.
I have purchased a portable keyboard for my palm-pilot upon which I hope to write a travel memoir (with poetry) while living in Calcutta. I tested the space on the little guy earlier today, and found out that I have room for two-and-a-half Great Gatsbys. WOO-HOO
This will be my second trip to India, my "Second Expedition" if you will. In Ray Bradbury's novel "The Martian Chronicles," the second manned mission to Mars fails when the astronauts encounter people whom they believe to be their deceased family members and friends on the Martian surface. The family and friends, actually disguised Martians, murder the crew members and bury them in Earthling style, out of respect. Who knows which family members, dead or alive, friendly or cruel, whom we will meet in India. What aspects of home will I find on the distant surface? Will these familiar glimpses bring me life and vitality, or blast me into a suffocating spiral of homesickness? Sorry for the lame sci-fi reference.
I wonder if India is as excited to see me as I am to see her.
The dreams have started - the dreams of India.
In a bathroom today, I read a quote by Dorothy Day about living a life of poverty. I can't recall or find the quote verbatim, but day urged us to rejoice when we have the opportunities to live with simple shelter, poor food, lack of luxuries and so forth. Thoreau-ian, I know, but it made me think of Calcutta and the challenge I'd like to make to myself: to live simply and deliberately, and rejoice in doing so.
Did I seriously make reference to the Martian Chronicles in one of these?
Sister Mara: "I'm just curious about all the different ways in which India will change you, and what that will do to your career goals."
Theory of Beauty: a dirt-and-worm-guts-laden leaf, stuck to my shoe.
Theory of Beauty: a soul waxing like the silver moon, becoming its full self once again.
I ordered 7300 rupees today. When I replied to the teller's question, "What currency would you like?" she said, "Oh, wow."
The pharmacist says that I cannot take anti-diarrheal or laxative medicine within two hours of my doxycycline malaria medication. Note to self: ensure safe, regular bowel motion before ingesting doxycycline.
Theory of Love: a thrown stone returning swiftly downward, its glide ever-faster back to earth.
Theory of Love: child, 10, throws baseball back to the outfield after opposing team homerun.
Do all of my thoughts have to be about India? What percentage of all of my thoughts does India hold at present? 80, 90 percent?
Are lists interesting to read, especially those that make repeated references to diarrhea and science fiction?
Man walks up to mirror, stares with conviction at his own eyes. "Namaste, soulji."
And cut--to the important part.
It will be hard to leave baseball behind, especially for October. It is the second time in my life that I will have to do so. I will be crying green and saffron tears if any of my teams survive very far into the autumn. Pray - that they do or that they don't?
Theory of Perfection: Shah Rukh Khan.

___________
-Brian

Discovering How to Upload Pictures (Volume 2)

2005-06-17T02:24:00.000+05:30

I threw on another picture from my first trip to Kolkata:

This is the classroom for the Rainbow Children, soon to be our "office."

Discovering How to Upload Pictures (Volume 1)

2005-06-17T02:23:00.000+05:30

A picture from my first visit to Loreto Sealdah:

This is the main atrium of the school.

What We Believe

2005-06-17T01:41:00.000+05:30

Four core values of Loreto Day School, Sealdah.

We believe:

that every child has the right to experience those great human values of freedom, justice, sincerity and love as she/he grows to maturity;
that every child has the right to be happy;
that every child has the right to be introduced to the spiritual element in her/his nature, which transcends the narrow barriers of religious and communal considerations;
that every child has the right to be reared in that spirit of love, concern and tolerance which is his/her secular inheritance in India.

B&T

A Poem from the Past, Remembered

2005-06-17T01:31:00.000+05:30

a poem I wrote about India the last time I visited:

Ablution 4 : Benares

The smell doesn't stay. In two
Steps it will change. It’s thick and sweaty—
Now bread, egg and stale shit. From the roof,

The men show me the burning Ghat.
I breathe in the smoke
Of past flesh—crumbled.

The men talk, must sell me
suffering. Two hundred rupees
For auntie's pyre, the wood is expensive.

The river is wide. The smoke is black.
The ashes are light and life is too simple.
I want to make the world a pyre and burn it all.

But I am rooftop in Benares, breathing
Dead bodies, watching the oldest city in the world
Keep on going. I hand the men

My two hundred rupees and wonder when it will
Happen. When this too, all of it, will ignite
And exhale to heaven.

______________
It came to mind
Brian

Half-Price Books and a Half-Full Brain

2005-06-17T00:17:00.000+05:30

At the recommendation of Kim at the U of M Human Rights Center, I have started this blog for my upcoming trip to India with Theresa. All of you (my friends, teachers, family members, co-Human Rights fellows) should check back regularly for updates, stories, and pictures. Hopefully, once we arrive in Calcutta we'll be able to update the page regularly, but considering the lack of efficient internet access, that might not always be possible.

For now, I'm still working at St. Ben's for the Upward Bound Program, hanging with cool high school kids from around St. Cloud all day. It kicks. Yesterday we visited Half-Price Books in St. Louis Park where I picked up my next installment in pre-India readings:
-The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
-Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World by Louis Fischer, and
-Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
I think Theresa and I will try to read them simultaneously.

I'll throw more stuff on here whenever I get a great idea, burst of inspiration, or have a big INDIA MOMENT.

Loves and tootles,
Brian

My Favorite Things

1990-04-12T07:13:00.000+05:30

What follows is a Powerpoint presentation I made in jest while waiting for the internet connection at CYBER PUB to heal itself.

My favorite things
By Brian Heilman

My most favorite thing: Bad Internet connections

They promote patience.
They show that technology shouldn’t rule the world.
They help me focus on the fact that I should really go to the bathroom before I explode internally.
They keep me away from computers, which are the devil.

My second most favorite thing: Squat toilets

They are a fun alternative to the Western style toilets
They strengthen leg and crotch muscles
They promote healthy, regular bowel movements in a way that seated toilets do not.
They are easier to build, I’m sure (I’ve never actually built a toilet of any kind)

My third most favorite thing: Streets that have no rubbish bins

This situation helps a person limit his/her amount of waste.
The litter on the sides of the street are colorful and add to the overall beauty of the scene.
They keep my hands occupied with the task of holding trash items, which prevents me from having idle hands (which we all know are the work of the devil).

My fourth most favorite thing: Misbehaving students

They teach me that 14-year-olds do not have the internally-motivated discipline of 40-year-olds.
They allow me to sing many Hindi songs, learn new dances and be teased incessantly.
They make me feel as if the American education system isn’t so bad.

My fifth most favorite thing: Loud phlegm-hackers

They remind me of one of my favorite phrases, “Hack the planet.”
They keep me conscious of my own vocal health amidst the filthy air of Kolkata.
They fill the air with a noise other than car horns
Better out than in, that’s what I say.

B