Sorry I haven't posted in a while - these things take a long time to write! Anyway, this is the part of the journey where I deviated from my original course. When I was in Pune planning my trip, I had intended to strike out north after Delhi to the Golden Temple of Amritsar and the Himalayan villages of Manali and Mcleod Ganj. This was all well and good until we were in Goa and I was appreciating how perfect the weather was and I thought "Gee, I wonder what the weather is like in the Himalayas in February?" and checked it out on the internet. Yikes. I didn't think sub-zero temperatures would agree with my distinctly "summer" wardrobe, and so I realigned my trajectory along the eastern compass point, through the cities of Varanasi, Bodhgaya and Kolkata. Those 3 cities are all lined up in a pretty little line from Delhi with Kolkata lying on the far eastern coast, so I decided to hit Bodhgaya on the way there and Varanasi on the way back (my plane home leaves from Delhi on the 28th).
My train ride from Delhi went as smoothly as possible, apart from a group of 7 to 8 men illegally climbing into our sleeper car and presumptuously sitting on my bed for 2 hours until the train guards game with guns and, yelled at them for a while and kicked them off. I read the entirety of Slaughterhouse-Five on the trip, and I slept well till the next morning when the train pulled into Gaya, the transport hub for Bodhgaya and the surrounding area. I pulled on my pack and walked down the stairs out of the station - the moment I did there was a throng of rickshaw drivers wanting to take me to Bodhgaya. One weathered old chap broke away from the group and bounded up the stairs to meet me before everyone else. I don't know if this was against their etiquette or something, but when we got to the bottom of the stairs on of the other drivers started screaming at him and nailed him across the face with a loud *POP*. It was about a 20-minute ride into Bodhgaya (the driver was muttering to himself all the while, probably about how young Indians these days have no respect), and once we arrived I started looking around for places to stay - I first tried a few of the monasteries which had acommodation for travelers, because I thought the tranquil setting would be a good place to relax and meditate and pray. However, none of the monasteries were open for guests at 8:00 in the morning, so I trudged along in the mud (it had rained the night before) and checked out some of the other hotels. I ended up at the Rainbow Guest House, an amiable place with a shocking pink color scheme in its lobby, where I napped and listened to music for a bit and then went out to explore the town.
Located in Bihar, India's poorest state, Bodhgaya is home to Buddhism's holiest site, the bodhi tree under which Siddhartha Gautama meditated for 6 weeks and attained enlightenment, becoming the Buddha. The tree draws pilgrims from all over the world, and built next to it is the towering Mahabodhi Temple, built by Emperor Ashoka in 250 BC, where reverent followers come to pray, chant, and meditate. The first place I went to was the bodhi tree, which is awe-inspiring to behold, given the incredible importance of the site in world culture and history. I simply sat there for a long time, enjoying the atmosphere and the shocking reverence devotees show for the tree, adorning the surrounding area with prayer cloths and scuttling over to delicately pick up one of the sacred leaves when they fall to the ground. While I sat there a man strolled over to me who looked like your classic Eastern spiritual man - lank white robes, long matted black hair and beard and a very spiritual, floaty gait. He sat down next to me and started talking about spirituality and meditation and happiness, so we took a walk together and sat down next to the lake adjacent the temple, where according to legend Buddha was sheltered from a violent storm by the lake's snake god. We chatted and ate what I now know was pomegranate (I'd only drunk the juice previously), and as we did so it became increasingly apparent that he fancied himself a sort of guru, that his "spiritual" appearance was no accident, and he certainly knew how to work wealthy young spiritual seekers - he pulled out a handful of email printouts from people who had learned from him, and sent him sums of money so he could continue to give guidance to others. He showed me a message from a Harvard student (according to the email address) who was sending him $150 USD a month. "His father is a very rich man," said the guru. And you are a genius, Mr. Guru.
On my second day in Bodhgaya there was a party happening on the roof of my guest house, the grand opening of a weekly french fry and beer bar run by two jolly Belgian fellows. I mustered up the courage to go and check it out, being alone and not knowing anyone. I was my typical self for the first 10 or 15 minutes, incredibly awkward (it was my first "real" party, with cigarettes and alcohol and marijuana and all that), but eventually I got talking to some people and it ended up being a fantastic time. I was overwhelmed by how many interesting, friendly people were there, world travelers from all over the globe (I was the only American) speaking a slew of languages, and everyone had fascinating stories to tell about their lives and their travels. I was by far the youngest - everyone else was at least 7 or 8 years my senior - and they were amazed to hear that I am 18 and traveling alone. It was just a delight listening to them, people who have led such amazing lives, and I had a splendid conversation with a 25-year-old French-Canadian woman who lives in Rishikesh with her Indian husband. She really encouraged me about my dreams, and her talk about pride in being American (in the sense of "the Americas", not the USA) shifted my thinking and gave me a bit more pride myself. Everything that night was just so wonderful and rosy (the beer might have been a little part of this), and I zonked out in bed that night happier than I had been in a long time.
My next few days in Bodhgaya were super chilled-out, just a time to read a lot and pray and walk around. There isn't all that much to do in Bodhgaya, per se, because despite the fact that it's a major pilgrim and tourist destination, it's still really just a rural town, but there are good cheap restaurants all over and a calm atmosphere pervading the place. On my last day, though, I did get to visit a public school in the area, started and overseen by a delightful older Scottish man named Edan, who I met at the party. He's really an amazing guy - builds boats in Scotland for part of the year, and travels and does social work around India and other developing countries for the rest of the time. Meeting him was a real encouragement - I was under the impression that most people got burnt out social work and solving the world's problems before they were 35. I thought Michael Caine had stepped right out of Children of Men. Anyway, he invited me to come to his school, where they were going to perform a puja (essentially an offering to the gods, and an important part of Hindu culture) for Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. It was really fascinating to witness, and watching them perform the labyrinthine rituals involving manifold powders, foods, fabrics, incense and liquids reminded me that a whole lot of Hinduism is just completely off-the-wall crazy.
I departed Bodhgaya on the 12th, and realized a few minutes after arriving at the train station that I left my scarf I bought in Udaipur for 400 rupees in my room (damn it!). My train to Kolkata (for those of you wondering about the city name, the spelling was changed from "Calcutta" to a more phonetical spelling in 2001) arrived fashionably 2 hours late, and I couln't fall asleep for the first 2 or 3 hours of the ride, not because of the cacophonous snorer below me, but because for some reason my bed was 4 or 5 inches shorter than regulation and didn't quite accommodate all 6 feet of me. I got off the train and took one of Kolkata's trademark large yellow taxis to Sudder St, the indisputable epicenter of tourist- and foreigner-accepting lodging in the city, packed with cheap continental food, guest houses and handicraft shops. I got a decent room pretty quickly (actually, it was on the 4th floor of a building, up a laborious flight of stairs) then collapsed on the bed, exhausted from lack of sleep on the train. For the next 2 days I spent much of my time in my room or in the cafes on Sudder St, half because being alone in a city as enormous as Kolkata makes it difficult to break into and begin to figure out, but also half because in Bodhgaya I had traded some old books for The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it had me completely gripped. It was a gorgeous book, and I highly, highly recommend it.
On my third day, though, I visited the Motherhouse, the volunteer center for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, to find out about when I would be able to help out. They told me to come back on Monday, Wednesday or Friday at 3 PM, so I disappointedly checked out the displays tracing Mother Teresa's life, as well as her tomb and her sparsely furnished bedroom. Walking around the place, I was actually a little bit turned off by the sort of off-putting glory given to "Mother" by the nuns and people there - the sculptures and paintings adorning every corner, the people praying to her at her tomb. I don't think it's what she would have wanted, and I don't think it's what God wants, either. I started chatting with a pair of friendly Swedish chaps also visiting the Motherhouse, and we decided to hang out - we went first to one of their homes for orphaned children, and any cynicism or pretension that had been planted at the Motherhouse melted away at the first sight of one of the Sisters cradling a baby born blind who was found lying abandoned on the road - they do beautiful, important work there, and it touched me deeply.
Me and the 2 Swedish guys, Anton and Mikael, walked after that to the Victoria Memorial, one of Kolkata's most recognizable monuments. Built buy the British Raj, the Memorial is so imperial it would make Emperor Palpatine proud, but today it serves as a museum and park area for romantic Kolkatans to canoodle under the trees and bushes surrounding the many park's many ponds. The structure itself is nice (everything else seems a bit bland after the Taj), but the park is nicely-tended and a good place to sit and read for the day. After that we went back to the Sudder St area and walked around New Market, Kolkata's teeming shopping center, which has an underground 4-floor mall busting at the seams with handicrafts, saris and fabric and super-annoying touts trying to pull you over to "come look my shop, nice cheap price". After that Mikael and Anton and I got pizza at Domino's, which was tasty, then said bye for the day.
We ended up hanging out together for the next day, as well, mostly in the New Market area, and they flew back to Delhi the next day (they only came to Kolkata for 1 1/2 days! By air!). They were incredibly nice guys, though, and hanging out with them helped me get a feel for the city making me much more eager to explore it on my own. On Monday I attended the meeting for volunteers at the Motherhouse, got orientated with how the mission works, and registered to work the morning and evening shifts on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (Thursday is the rest day for volunteers). On the way out of the Motherhouse I met two friendly young women, an Israeli and a Swiss-German who were also volunteering. We started talking and then took a taxi to the city's planetarium and watched their mediocre star show. The best part of the show was that it was narrated by an elderly woman who was indignant every time someone would turn on their cell phone during her presentation. We had dinner together and agreed to take a taxi to the Motherhouse together the next morning for our first shift of work.
We got to the Motherhouse at 7:00 in the morning, where all the volunteers gather to pray, sing and have breakfast together before departing to their respective workplaces for the morning shift. In the morning I worked at Daya Dan, the home for mentally handicapped boys. I was at a loss for how to help out for the first day, but after a while you get a feel for how things work, and you just see things that need to be done and do them - dressing the kids in the morning, getting them showered, taking them to the toilet when necessary, doing exercises with the more disabled kids to work their muscles, and keeping them relatively quiet and attentive during their lesson. And then there's prayer, which pretty much involves holding the kids facing the Virgin Mary as much as possible and singing and clapping their hands for them. It's bedlam. The kids are difficult to work with almost all the time, and taking care of them is a completely different ballgame from dealing with "normal" youngsters, but it's a pleasure to be with them and serve them, even if they can't appreciate it themselves. Especially inspiring are the Sisters, who literally give their lives for these kids.
Located in Bihar, India's poorest state, Bodhgaya is home to Buddhism's holiest site, the bodhi tree under which Siddhartha Gautama meditated for 6 weeks and attained enlightenment, becoming the Buddha. The tree draws pilgrims from all over the world, and built next to it is the towering Mahabodhi Temple, built by Emperor Ashoka in 250 BC, where reverent followers come to pray, chant, and meditate. The first place I went to was the bodhi tree, which is awe-inspiring to behold, given the incredible importance of the site in world culture and history. I simply sat there for a long time, enjoying the atmosphere and the shocking reverence devotees show for the tree, adorning the surrounding area with prayer cloths and scuttling over to delicately pick up one of the sacred leaves when they fall to the ground. While I sat there a man strolled over to me who looked like your classic Eastern spiritual man - lank white robes, long matted black hair and beard and a very spiritual, floaty gait. He sat down next to me and started talking about spirituality and meditation and happiness, so we took a walk together and sat down next to the lake adjacent the temple, where according to legend Buddha was sheltered from a violent storm by the lake's snake god. We chatted and ate what I now know was pomegranate (I'd only drunk the juice previously), and as we did so it became increasingly apparent that he fancied himself a sort of guru, that his "spiritual" appearance was no accident, and he certainly knew how to work wealthy young spiritual seekers - he pulled out a handful of email printouts from people who had learned from him, and sent him sums of money so he could continue to give guidance to others. He showed me a message from a Harvard student (according to the email address) who was sending him $150 USD a month. "His father is a very rich man," said the guru. And you are a genius, Mr. Guru.
On my second day in Bodhgaya there was a party happening on the roof of my guest house, the grand opening of a weekly french fry and beer bar run by two jolly Belgian fellows. I mustered up the courage to go and check it out, being alone and not knowing anyone. I was my typical self for the first 10 or 15 minutes, incredibly awkward (it was my first "real" party, with cigarettes and alcohol and marijuana and all that), but eventually I got talking to some people and it ended up being a fantastic time. I was overwhelmed by how many interesting, friendly people were there, world travelers from all over the globe (I was the only American) speaking a slew of languages, and everyone had fascinating stories to tell about their lives and their travels. I was by far the youngest - everyone else was at least 7 or 8 years my senior - and they were amazed to hear that I am 18 and traveling alone. It was just a delight listening to them, people who have led such amazing lives, and I had a splendid conversation with a 25-year-old French-Canadian woman who lives in Rishikesh with her Indian husband. She really encouraged me about my dreams, and her talk about pride in being American (in the sense of "the Americas", not the USA) shifted my thinking and gave me a bit more pride myself. Everything that night was just so wonderful and rosy (the beer might have been a little part of this), and I zonked out in bed that night happier than I had been in a long time.
My next few days in Bodhgaya were super chilled-out, just a time to read a lot and pray and walk around. There isn't all that much to do in Bodhgaya, per se, because despite the fact that it's a major pilgrim and tourist destination, it's still really just a rural town, but there are good cheap restaurants all over and a calm atmosphere pervading the place. On my last day, though, I did get to visit a public school in the area, started and overseen by a delightful older Scottish man named Edan, who I met at the party. He's really an amazing guy - builds boats in Scotland for part of the year, and travels and does social work around India and other developing countries for the rest of the time. Meeting him was a real encouragement - I was under the impression that most people got burnt out social work and solving the world's problems before they were 35. I thought Michael Caine had stepped right out of Children of Men. Anyway, he invited me to come to his school, where they were going to perform a puja (essentially an offering to the gods, and an important part of Hindu culture) for Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. It was really fascinating to witness, and watching them perform the labyrinthine rituals involving manifold powders, foods, fabrics, incense and liquids reminded me that a whole lot of Hinduism is just completely off-the-wall crazy.
I departed Bodhgaya on the 12th, and realized a few minutes after arriving at the train station that I left my scarf I bought in Udaipur for 400 rupees in my room (damn it!). My train to Kolkata (for those of you wondering about the city name, the spelling was changed from "Calcutta" to a more phonetical spelling in 2001) arrived fashionably 2 hours late, and I couln't fall asleep for the first 2 or 3 hours of the ride, not because of the cacophonous snorer below me, but because for some reason my bed was 4 or 5 inches shorter than regulation and didn't quite accommodate all 6 feet of me. I got off the train and took one of Kolkata's trademark large yellow taxis to Sudder St, the indisputable epicenter of tourist- and foreigner-accepting lodging in the city, packed with cheap continental food, guest houses and handicraft shops. I got a decent room pretty quickly (actually, it was on the 4th floor of a building, up a laborious flight of stairs) then collapsed on the bed, exhausted from lack of sleep on the train. For the next 2 days I spent much of my time in my room or in the cafes on Sudder St, half because being alone in a city as enormous as Kolkata makes it difficult to break into and begin to figure out, but also half because in Bodhgaya I had traded some old books for The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it had me completely gripped. It was a gorgeous book, and I highly, highly recommend it.
On my third day, though, I visited the Motherhouse, the volunteer center for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, to find out about when I would be able to help out. They told me to come back on Monday, Wednesday or Friday at 3 PM, so I disappointedly checked out the displays tracing Mother Teresa's life, as well as her tomb and her sparsely furnished bedroom. Walking around the place, I was actually a little bit turned off by the sort of off-putting glory given to "Mother" by the nuns and people there - the sculptures and paintings adorning every corner, the people praying to her at her tomb. I don't think it's what she would have wanted, and I don't think it's what God wants, either. I started chatting with a pair of friendly Swedish chaps also visiting the Motherhouse, and we decided to hang out - we went first to one of their homes for orphaned children, and any cynicism or pretension that had been planted at the Motherhouse melted away at the first sight of one of the Sisters cradling a baby born blind who was found lying abandoned on the road - they do beautiful, important work there, and it touched me deeply.
Me and the 2 Swedish guys, Anton and Mikael, walked after that to the Victoria Memorial, one of Kolkata's most recognizable monuments. Built buy the British Raj, the Memorial is so imperial it would make Emperor Palpatine proud, but today it serves as a museum and park area for romantic Kolkatans to canoodle under the trees and bushes surrounding the many park's many ponds. The structure itself is nice (everything else seems a bit bland after the Taj), but the park is nicely-tended and a good place to sit and read for the day. After that we went back to the Sudder St area and walked around New Market, Kolkata's teeming shopping center, which has an underground 4-floor mall busting at the seams with handicrafts, saris and fabric and super-annoying touts trying to pull you over to "come look my shop, nice cheap price". After that Mikael and Anton and I got pizza at Domino's, which was tasty, then said bye for the day.
We ended up hanging out together for the next day, as well, mostly in the New Market area, and they flew back to Delhi the next day (they only came to Kolkata for 1 1/2 days! By air!). They were incredibly nice guys, though, and hanging out with them helped me get a feel for the city making me much more eager to explore it on my own. On Monday I attended the meeting for volunteers at the Motherhouse, got orientated with how the mission works, and registered to work the morning and evening shifts on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (Thursday is the rest day for volunteers). On the way out of the Motherhouse I met two friendly young women, an Israeli and a Swiss-German who were also volunteering. We started talking and then took a taxi to the city's planetarium and watched their mediocre star show. The best part of the show was that it was narrated by an elderly woman who was indignant every time someone would turn on their cell phone during her presentation. We had dinner together and agreed to take a taxi to the Motherhouse together the next morning for our first shift of work.
We got to the Motherhouse at 7:00 in the morning, where all the volunteers gather to pray, sing and have breakfast together before departing to their respective workplaces for the morning shift. In the morning I worked at Daya Dan, the home for mentally handicapped boys. I was at a loss for how to help out for the first day, but after a while you get a feel for how things work, and you just see things that need to be done and do them - dressing the kids in the morning, getting them showered, taking them to the toilet when necessary, doing exercises with the more disabled kids to work their muscles, and keeping them relatively quiet and attentive during their lesson. And then there's prayer, which pretty much involves holding the kids facing the Virgin Mary as much as possible and singing and clapping their hands for them. It's bedlam. The kids are difficult to work with almost all the time, and taking care of them is a completely different ballgame from dealing with "normal" youngsters, but it's a pleasure to be with them and serve them, even if they can't appreciate it themselves. Especially inspiring are the Sisters, who literally give their lives for these kids.
In the evenings I worked at Kalighat, or Nirmal Hriday, the famous Home for the Destitute and Dying. Working there was a completely different kind of experience, since most of the patients who are brought there don't have anyone else in the world, and they come to the home to die. Kalighat's aim is not as much to save lives (though they try), but rather to give love and dignity to people who have had none in their lives. It's a quiet place, and the volunteers' duties are much more laid-back than at any of the other homes - changing bedpans and urine bottles, washing clothes and dishes, giving and administering medication, handing out food, and feeding the patients if need be. Looking at the patients there, who have seen so much suffering in their time, and suffered so much, all you really want to do is ease that pain as much as you can and give them t
he respect and love they deserve. It's a difficult job to do day-in and day-out, seeing life and death before your eyes and the hazy line that's in between, but the Sisters and the long-term volunteers serve with grace and love shining from their faces - and their hands.I will never forget one man who I spent time with there. I was giving pills to patients, and was given a pill and a bed number to take it to - he was sleeping, an old man, shrivelled and emaciated. I roused him, but he didn't give a sign that he knew I was there - his eyes rolled in their sockets and then flicked back to center, foggy and unfocused and looking at nothing. I tried to tell him that it was time for his medicine, but everytime I brought the pill to his mouth he would moan and turn his head to the other side. I asked someone to help me, a kind Norwegian man named Magne, and he tilted the man's head forward while I put the pill on his tongue and poured some water in his mouth. He drank it, with some difficulty, and after we laid him back down and arranged a more comfortable sitting position for him with some other blankets. We just sat with him for a while as I gazed at him - he was so gaunt I couldn't believe that he was able to move his skeleton arm, wrists half-an-inch thick, a body literally of skin and bone. He looked like a skeleton shrink-wrapped in brown wax-paper, his breaths coming so, so shallow. Magne took his wrist and felt for a pulse, then gave the arm to me - the light pump of blood was barely perceptible under the fragile skin. Then he words I'll never forget - "He is dying," so obvious, but so terrible in their truth. Soon that man would exhale the last of those shallow breaths, and that sad excuse for a body would be cold and rigid, maybe that night, maybe the day after that, but soon. And he knew it, too. I wanted to comfort him, to do something more, but all I could do was sit there next to him and hold his hand.
Sadly, I only got to work at Missionaries of Charity for 3 days, but it is something I am so glad I did, a great experience, and there were more than a few moments that I will remember for the rest of my life. I left Kolkata on the 22nd, after a wonderful week and a half there. I really love the city, crowded and dirty as it is, and it's got so much flavor and life in it that you can't help but enjoy yourself. Despite the fact that it's known for its poverty, it's the cultural capital of the country, and it's a daily festival of human existence every way you turn, one of my favorite cities in the world. Note to anyone going to Kolkata: try one of the city's trademark "Kati Rolls" - you won't regret it.
Leaving Kolkata, I was feeling good, headed to the sacred Hindu city of Varanasi, the second-to-last city on my route before the end of my trip.
2 comments:
You have a beautiful soul! May you do wonders for more in life!
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