It's Getting Better all the Time

INDIA.
1430
March 31, 2007

Namaste! After having been in India for five days, we are once again on the open sea (though soon to be in Malaysia). Our ship docked in Chennai, situated on the western side of the tip of India, in the state of Tamil Nadu. That first day I visited a Dalit Village for a service project—painting a school. Walking off the gangway, smog touched my lungs and soot touched my feet. Hot Indian air surrounded me sooner than the mob of rickshaw drivers did. The bureaucracy of the country was apparent as we presented various documents to the security guards in maroon berets who were stationed outside the ship. After a short bus ride to the periphery of the city, we got out of the elephant that was our tour bus and were immediately welcomed by a band playing a horn instrumental, teenage girls adorning us with necklaces made of fresh jasmine—the color of cream—and pinning roses in our hair. As we proceeded through the village, a sea of little hands grabbed upwards towards us. The “untouchables” skin touched my own as glowing white smiles excitedly appreciated our presence.

People stood in the doorways of their thatched roof homes, came into the street, held their babies out to us. Saris against the dirt road and the jingle of anklets in the dust drew my attention to women gathered around a water pump. They filled bright vessels as blonde roosters pecked at the ground around their feet. We found the schools meeting hall and were ushered inside as the crowd around us was filtered out of the door by more maroon berets. After being officially welcomed by the headmistress and performed for by a woman—who was really a man, perhaps a hijra—in orange and gold, we were given sandpaper and paintbrushes. The afternoon was spent giving butter cream yellow walls and black fences a new coat of paint. I could see from where I was painting onto the streets and alleyways below—none of the people had returned back to their daily activities—they were all waiting for a glimpse in their direction from any of us. They lingered until we left; adults craning their necks, little kids jumping up and down, waving. After the days work, the jasmine around my neck was more the color of cream soda, having been wilted by sun and sweat.

We got taken the next day, by rickshaw drivers with swagger, into the heart of Chennai. They adamantly insisted upon us visiting their “cousin’s store,” telling us wherever we wanted to go was closed for “lunch.” We weaved in and out of other rickshaws, bicycles, cars, buses, trucks and saris on motorbikes; we passed unimaginable sights and smells that flooded my mind, drowning out even the blaring horn of our rickshaw. Riding parallel to a buses wheel, in a rickshaw as yellow as a new no. 2 pencil, and as small as a riding lawnmower, I saw people seemingly strewn in the middle of the hot sidewalk, fast asleep, and toddlers wandering under bridges, surrounded by stray dogs and in some cases, cows. With such visual imagery the thoughts “how did that man just decided to lay down in that very spot next to the street to sleep?” and “does that little baby have a mum, does he even have a future?” cannot help but present themselves.

We finally arrived in T. Nagar—a shopping district in Chennai. I bought silk scarves—one for an aunt, one for a grandma—and a sari. I bought a ruby for myself and a white sapphire for a friend. Some of the stores were several stories high—all of their walls stacked with exotic beading and fine colors, Kanchepuraam silk and cashmere pashminas. Despite the palatial marble floors and glass cases filled with fabric—the noise and heat of the outside world never really stopped distracting me. I may have been looking at a garment or a jewel, but my mind was endlessly preoccupied with the fast paced, dense culture of poverty outside, where women, short and thin, held their sleeping babies, pointing to their mouths and pleading with their eyes.

With what I had seen earlier that day sliding around the back of my mind, I departed that evening by train to southwestern Tamil Nadu—to a home stay in Erode. The train station itself was a huge brick-red building with high ceilings, people sleeping on the floors and huddled against the walls. What looked like and could have been the same dogs from earlier, still wandered around. A woman’s sari brushed against my arm and as my visual and olfactory senses were so exhausted, I was reminded again by touch that I was in India. Even the word seems so exotic that I perhaps thought it would never be real.

Organized chaos lent itself to us as we boarded our train. Past the squat toilet and endless cabins that weren’t mine, I found a spot and settled next to a window. Only a curtain separated me from anyone else in the train that came and went throughout the night. I watched out the window as we started to slowly roll, and acquainted myself with the other students on the trip, wondering if they were processing things the same way I was. We played cards, a friendly guard checked in on us, inspecting the red and black deck. As I put my bunk down that night, falling asleep against a pillow that smelled like Chennai, I was reminded of family vacations that were half a world away, but considering so, didn’t feel so distant, even if I had seemingly outgrown them. I slept that night, with my L.L. Bean backpack tangled around my legs so no stray hands would find themselves inside my curtain, searching for loose belongings.

The next morning we arrived at five a.m., the light of morning was so fresh it was still dark and fires dotted the landscape of rural India. We went by bus to our hosts home, a beautiful 300 year old lavender and periwinkle establishment that covered an acre of land itself. We slid off our shoes outside and walked into the entranceway, through antique doors and underneath netting that separated us from the open air of the sky. Spatial patterns that translate into thoughts were drawn on the floors in chalky white paint. Mango leaves and lemons hung over each doorway to absorb negative energy and provide a blessing. Breakfast was served on the lanai; we drank the sweetest coffee and tea, from the plantation of a relative.

Afterwards we toured the family’s farm, surrounding factories and a school. The nutmeg trees smelled hot, even though it was not yet eight in the morning. Tik and coconut trees lined the landscape, provided water by a newly installed drip irrigation system that conserves water by allowing only the minimum amount of water needed, to be delivered drop by drop to each individual tree. Considering the state of the perpetual water crisis in India, the government offers a 30% subsidy on drip irrigation.

Our next stop was to a sugar processing plant, where a small village seemed to work eternally, harvesting sugarcane, crushing it, reducing it and rolling it to dry into brown sugar. Inside the low hut that was the “factory,” steam rolling off of the massive vat of hot sugar made the temperature and humidity nauseating. I am still unsure of how the human body can handle such temperatures. A man stirred a stewing batch of liquid as women squatted over the same product in a different stage, rolling and pounding the sugar into round balls with their bare, calloused hands.

Next we visited a school. Poor attendance was no issue there, because the children are given breakfast, lunch and a snack. The parents send their kids to school instead of having them work simply because of this. We showed the kids U.S. dollars, how we wrote our name—in return, they graciously showed us how they wrote theirs— and let them play with our cameras. The sun rose to the top of the sky and we returned back to our home for the day, for a spicy lunch. We ate red bananas, tortilla type bread dipped in coconut chutney, stew and rice cakes, all with our fingers and off of a palm leaf, accompanied by mango soda. Naptime for most followed, but I couldn’t stand to close my eyes, knowing I didn’t have much time in this new place. Instead I rested my feet on a red and white woven footstool that contrasted beautifully against the cool colors of the house, even more beautifully against dark Indian skin, and talked to our hosts. As a perk for not dozing off, I got a tour of the house, I met the servants and the cook’s kids—a little boy and his older sister, who had skipped school that day and were dressed neatly with their hair combed, the girls braided with flowers, for us. “How old are you?” was mistaken for “How are you?” and they both say “I aaam fine” with smiles so wide they suggested being more than fine.

In the late afternoon we visited the local market, filled with fresh flowers, produce, and white oxen—some with painted horns, one red, and one green—pulling wagons. That evening we ate dinner and listened to some men from the village drum while they danced. The bright red-orange sun dropped in the sky like a bindi on the forehead of India. I brushed my teeth with a twig off of a neem tree and fell asleep to peacocks meowing.

Awake early the next morning, it was noticeably refreshing to sleep on a mat, and not be surrounded by mirrors, noise or showers. We once again indulged on tea that was too sweet, said goodbye to our host family and departed for a school that would serve as our new host for that day, serving us breakfast lunch and dinner. After being welcomed there, we visited several temples, where people were bathing, gathering for ceremonies (we saw a wedding!) and having what seemed like picnics. They were bright places of worship—laid out in a campus like setting and filled with bright pinks, yellows, blues and reds that once again popped against the dark skin of the people.

After lunch and a little bit of down time back at the school, we visited a disabled children’s home. I was nervous and apprehensive of what emotion might well into my eyes. Were these kids ostracized in the villages they came from, did they see their families, or were they abandoned? Why did the teachers and nurses that worked at the school keep calling them “inmates”? These questions danced around my brain. Crutches leaned against the wall outside the room where they awaited us. I thought about bits and pieces of stories I have heard about my own dad’s childhood. How the kids with polio were separated from the kids with CP--something noticable here as well. Sometimes we are so quick to make assumptions based on fallacy. I recognized and accepted that regardless of where and what I come from, I still make hurtful assumptions as well, and that everybody has to work against falling into the path of least resistance, and believing what we are socialized to. Stereotypes happen; it’s identifying our prejudices and intercepting them that is important.

As collected as possible, I walked into that room filled with warm energy. Despite the welcome, I was shocked. Never before have I seen kids with drop foot from polio (the vaccination that we take for granted was only introduced in India as recently as 2001)—something I thought was a relic of my parents, aunts and uncles generations—or children who are paralyzed from the waste down dragging themselves along as quickly as their arms will move them so they can line up to welcome us. Never before have I seen kids that were so excited for a group of discombobbled Americans to sing and dance, if you can even call it that, the hokey-pokey.

They performed for us, too—martial arts and traditional Indian dance. Most vividly—something I will remember for the rest of my life—they sang to us. First, the song “it’s getting better all the time” and then they sang us a prayer. I didn’t understand a single word they said as their little voices sang in Tamil and bounced off the walls, drifting out the open windows. It was the promise they sang with, the trust someone was hearing their prayer, and that it would be answered. My eyes were watering, and my ears were stinging but I focused on the outline of one little girls face, and watched her the whole time she was singing. He face was full of expression, her eyes having a hard time staying shut as she smiled and sang unashamedly, feeling the words that came out of her mouth.

Soon enough we were back on the train and I was drifting off to the car swaying over the tracks. 5 a.m. came even sooner, and then we were back in Chennai for another full day of the city before departing.

In just a few hours we will be in Malaysia, but I am not done absorbing India. I can still smell the city; I can still smell the incense from our evening in Erode. I can still hear those little voices and see the eyes of the woman begging with her baby in her arms. I feel the “untouchables” touch me and I can still feel that sari brush against my skin. They say India will move from the list of developing countries to the list of developed countries within the next 35 years. I believe this not because of what is apparent upon first examination; upon first examination I felt wonder, but certainly not optimism. I believe this because what counts is that “it’s getting better all the time.”

Until next time.

-Lydia