Rabindranath Tagore, first citizen of Calcutta, remarked at one point that his poetry was a gift to the Bengali people in the Bengali language.
How do you really translate poetry anyways? Corrupted verse aside, his poetry is lovely in English as well.
Infinite Love
It seems it’s you I have loved in a hundred forms, unending:
birth after birth, through the ages.
In many a form you have taken and swung around your neck the garland of songs my
heart has stitched in sweet enchantment;
birth after birth, through the ages.
As I listen to that old-time song of pain and primeval love –
the old, old tale of meeting and parting –
and as I gaze into the infinite past,
at last through the darkness of Time appears your form like the pole-star with memories eternally laden.
From the heart of Time without beginning, we two have floated down in a double stream of passion.
We two have lived in a million lovers,
in bashful smile of kissing and the tears of long partition,
tasting the same old love in forms for ever new.
And now that love of all the ages has met its last fulfillment in a heaped up offering at your feet.
In you are all the joys and anguish and all affections of the heart.
In a single love are blended the memories of all other passions,
and all the songs that poets have sung through the ages.
-Rabindranath Tagore, 1889
Monday, June 26
Saturday, June 24
Home Sweet West Bengal
This is where I have landed. A little house in South Calcutta - off a major road, but removed by an alley and a dirt path, and somehow strangely isolated from the greater bustlings of the city. It’s been rather fortuitous actually, as my NGO, who was supposed to facilitate my housing, had misunderstood the date of my arrival. i.e., They weren’t expecting me when I showed up one afternoon. i.e., There was no housing, nor any real plan for procuring it.
Enter my charming fellow intern, and now roommate, Jenna, who offered up the sharing of her homestay. I thought this was rather beyond the normal bounds of generosity as she’d be not only be sharing her family experience and her room, but, the facilities being what they were, the very bed itself. Upon knowing her a little better, she really is that generous. But, then again, she probably appreciates the diluting effect of having another foreigner in the house. I divert some of the anxious smothering that seems to get generated upon viewing young, [read: helpless, hopeless] foreign girls.
Our hosts, Auntie and Uncle (introduced to me as such – I have no idea what their real names are) are a hospitable, retired couple. Their adult son is a theology professor at a local college. And together, we make a somewhat odd, little globalized family. With three rooms, we’ve got Auntie and Uncle sleeping in one, Jenna and I in the other, and the son on the divan in the family cum dining room. It’s a tight fit - all in coughing distance of each other. The TV and telephone are in “our room” (so many interpretations of “our room”), so boundaries of private space are non-existent. In my various experiences abroad I thought I had covered all challenges of cultural adaptation. But really, the final frontier of personal space has never been truly breached; trod upon, but not breached. Americans need an awful lot of it, other people…not so much. …Or any really. Despite my unanticipated, full initiation into a world of 1 billion people “in an itty bitty living space,” it seems to be working out.
So I find myself culturally immersed in ways I hadn’t planned on.
- Having Auntie wait on us at dinner as we shovel rice and curry in with our hands (right only; left is reserved for bathroom duties). I had never really paid attention to the art of using your hand as a fork before – it involves neat little movements using the thumb as a shovel/level.
- No air conditioning. The high speed, ceiling fan unsettles me at night. I envision it spinning off its mount to land with a pajama muffled thud, mincing us helplessly in our sleep.
- A massi to collect our dirty clothes every morning and pound them on the pavement outside until they’re stretched out, wet and flapping on the lines.
- Sweet, dark Chai every morning with breakfast. Glorious!
- Bucket baths. Now here I am impressed. I bucket bathed for two years straight in Mongolia (granted, only when I actually had the courage to peel off my clothes and bathe), I thought I was versed in all the intimates of the act. But the difference being, there I had to bathe inside a bucket and here, I just bathe from a bucket. Huge difference. I feel just as clean and refreshed as a shower (since I can splash the dipper over my head without reserve) and I seriously use only the equivalent of maybe a large soup tureen of water. Such good conservation!
Happily my new assimilation does not include the asian toilet. We have a western one with accompanying toilet paper. Not that I have anything against asian toilets. In fact, I rather prefer the squat style. I, however, cannot due without toilet paper.
Perhaps this is inflexible of me.
But it’s a habit I continue to hold tenaciously to.
The ubiquitous bucket of water and dipper are in the bathroom as well (separate from the shower bucket and dipper). I ponder it occasionally with a certain degree of respect and awe. And fear, definitely fear. I’m just waiting the day when I’m confronted with a pressing situation and no toilet paper.
I understand the basics: you take the dipper of water and you clean yourself off.
Left hand only.
But really, I think there is a wealth of detail in technique there that escapes me completely. Utterly.
That battle…well…we’ll leave that one for a while, I think.
Saturday, June 17
Dialogue
“Dialogue” is the English translation for the Bengali word “Sanlaap” – the name of the NGO I’m interning at. And dialogue is their foundation idea – insisting on a public dialogue about violence against women. They began as a woman’s rights group almost 20 years ago, but after extensive work in the red light districts of Calcutta, they heeded the voices of the prostitutes and began to work with their children. Sanlaap has grown enormously through the years and now focuses mainly on the commercial sexual exploitation of minors. This includes working with disadvantaged children of prostitutes, former child prostitutes, and girls 18 and under who have been trafficked into prostitution.
I have been enormously impressed with how they run things. They use cutting edge ideas of peer counseling, empowerment, conflict resolution, and leadership building to holistically foster these children. With a staff of 220 they run 3 shelters for girls who have been rescued from trafficking or who are vulnerable to being led into prostitution, 14 drop in centers in various red light areas where sex workers can send their children from 4-8pm while they are busy with customers (the kids get tutoring with their homework and engage in various enrichment activities), a youth center for teenagers from the red light districts, a working hostel that offers cheap accommodation for girls who graduate from the shelters with no family support systems, a legal team that represents the trafficked girls in court, a research team, a communications department, and various other support staff.
Granted the challenges they face keep everything from being perfectly hunky dorey, but the basic approach is really inspiring. I’m finishing up my orientation now and have gotten to see all the various work and met a bunch of the kids. I’m humbled by both the places they’re coming from and the battles they will still have to face in their childhood.
Battles I can’t even wrap my head around in my adulthood.
Sanlaap
Due to ethical considerations, the pictures I post won't be of children from the actual shelters or red light districts. These kids live near New Delhi.
I have been enormously impressed with how they run things. They use cutting edge ideas of peer counseling, empowerment, conflict resolution, and leadership building to holistically foster these children. With a staff of 220 they run 3 shelters for girls who have been rescued from trafficking or who are vulnerable to being led into prostitution, 14 drop in centers in various red light areas where sex workers can send their children from 4-8pm while they are busy with customers (the kids get tutoring with their homework and engage in various enrichment activities), a youth center for teenagers from the red light districts, a working hostel that offers cheap accommodation for girls who graduate from the shelters with no family support systems, a legal team that represents the trafficked girls in court, a research team, a communications department, and various other support staff.
Granted the challenges they face keep everything from being perfectly hunky dorey, but the basic approach is really inspiring. I’m finishing up my orientation now and have gotten to see all the various work and met a bunch of the kids. I’m humbled by both the places they’re coming from and the battles they will still have to face in their childhood.
Battles I can’t even wrap my head around in my adulthood.
Sanlaap
Due to ethical considerations, the pictures I post won't be of children from the actual shelters or red light districts. These kids live near New Delhi.
Friday, June 2
The Metal Albatross
The theme of this blog is the itch of wanderlust and that mental journeying that follows from the scratching of it. I was specifically anticipating my summer in Calcutta, India and the need for a travelogue (i.e., witness to history, internet troubadouring, or some similar Homer-esque forum).
Well thanks be, I arrived in Delhi last night. This thing can now cease its cyber sputtering and blossom into a full bodied and faithfully updated blog. ...Barring the caprice of functioning internet in India, of course.
It always surprises me how you can drive away from your well-ordered world of quiet, green-lawned suburbs, predictable stripmalls, and unbroken black asphalt highways, get into a bulbous metal cage and 14 hours later...pop out in a completely different world. It is the most astonishing thing.
My flight was unextraordinary. The highlight for me is always looking out into the captivating giant, ravaged cotton balled sky. The warm glow of the sun and the muted blues of the atmosphere produce the effect of driving through pleasure gardens of ancient Roman gods and goddess, and Care Bears. My face was glued to the window contemplating the passing scenery of cotton statuary in their sublime and grotesquely twisted forms. Glued until the faint presence of the lavatory behind me intruded upon my sensibilities and turbulence induced nausea prompted me to opt for the Buddhist mode of air travel - namely attempting to renounce all ties to my physical being. Nirvana remained elusive, but I did succeed in self-inducing a fairly consistent, comatose state for the rest of the journey.
And then there I was, passing customs and spewed out into the glory of Mother India. That first sense of humidity pressing in on you heavy and wooly, and people. People everywhere, personal space inexorably halved, and then quartered.
Oh yes. 1 billion people - check.
And then weaving in and out of cars and cows, and tuk tuks and trucks through dark streets. Horns tooting insistently in a squalling urban chorus. Dirty, barefoot kids sprinting around vehicles paused in traffic - hawking their garlands of flowers, grannies in their saris squatting next to roadside stalls with bare dangling bulbs lighting cartons of fruit, the puddles of light pooling into the street and sliding past car windows and over laps.
And then, with some relief I admit, into the quiet tree lined embassy district. Whisked to expat heaven in the guise of my blessed friends' gated house and hot showers, replete with Tibetan housekeeper. A good place to ease away the graininess of jetlag, walled away for a moment from the mad cap whirl of India. That gyrating chaos that will either enter your blood and begin your passionate love affair with the country...or slowly choke you to death. I sensed that strongly my first trip here. ...I'm still unsure exactly where I fall.
Passionate love affairs are always good.
Sidenote: the albatross of the North Atlantic became extinct a long time ago under rather obscure circumstances. That aside, the North Atlantic is the route we flew - over Canada, Europe and Afghanistan and into the subcontinent.
Well thanks be, I arrived in Delhi last night. This thing can now cease its cyber sputtering and blossom into a full bodied and faithfully updated blog. ...Barring the caprice of functioning internet in India, of course.
It always surprises me how you can drive away from your well-ordered world of quiet, green-lawned suburbs, predictable stripmalls, and unbroken black asphalt highways, get into a bulbous metal cage and 14 hours later...pop out in a completely different world. It is the most astonishing thing.
My flight was unextraordinary. The highlight for me is always looking out into the captivating giant, ravaged cotton balled sky. The warm glow of the sun and the muted blues of the atmosphere produce the effect of driving through pleasure gardens of ancient Roman gods and goddess, and Care Bears. My face was glued to the window contemplating the passing scenery of cotton statuary in their sublime and grotesquely twisted forms. Glued until the faint presence of the lavatory behind me intruded upon my sensibilities and turbulence induced nausea prompted me to opt for the Buddhist mode of air travel - namely attempting to renounce all ties to my physical being. Nirvana remained elusive, but I did succeed in self-inducing a fairly consistent, comatose state for the rest of the journey.
And then there I was, passing customs and spewed out into the glory of Mother India. That first sense of humidity pressing in on you heavy and wooly, and people. People everywhere, personal space inexorably halved, and then quartered.
Oh yes. 1 billion people - check.
And then weaving in and out of cars and cows, and tuk tuks and trucks through dark streets. Horns tooting insistently in a squalling urban chorus. Dirty, barefoot kids sprinting around vehicles paused in traffic - hawking their garlands of flowers, grannies in their saris squatting next to roadside stalls with bare dangling bulbs lighting cartons of fruit, the puddles of light pooling into the street and sliding past car windows and over laps.
And then, with some relief I admit, into the quiet tree lined embassy district. Whisked to expat heaven in the guise of my blessed friends' gated house and hot showers, replete with Tibetan housekeeper. A good place to ease away the graininess of jetlag, walled away for a moment from the mad cap whirl of India. That gyrating chaos that will either enter your blood and begin your passionate love affair with the country...or slowly choke you to death. I sensed that strongly my first trip here. ...I'm still unsure exactly where I fall.
Passionate love affairs are always good.
Sidenote: the albatross of the North Atlantic became extinct a long time ago under rather obscure circumstances. That aside, the North Atlantic is the route we flew - over Canada, Europe and Afghanistan and into the subcontinent.
