I just visited a ghost-gold-mining-town where men cut off their thumbs to afford for their daughters to marry and then couldn’t mine the gold so that we can do it in style. Blood-diamonds-bloody-gold. And thirteen million tons of useless rock heaped on the fields so now nothing will grow there, rock that will put holes in your lungs and the doctors say to drink up and keep working. Hail Brittania, who tore up the country-side in search of shiny things and tore up the people and taught them to speak english. The widows-of-the-mine have to pay for water that comes in a tank on a truck every few days will Jesus painted and chipping on the back of it (and a church every two miles, yes that was Bethany Lutheran Church where are we anyways?) all the water they need for cooking for drinking is holy water.
and then I climbed a mountain this morning and I watched the sunrise like a blood-orange and then met a girl who raped-by-her-cousin-with-a-child-no-family-will-touch-her and she tried not to cry when she said that no one blames him not a speck. They hide him away somewhere and say it was some shepherd from a lower caste but he never touched her and all she wants is for her daughter to know who her father is. Then girls at a convent school learning to be office assistants who give me a bindi and kiss my cheeks and say “oh, so pretty!” and dance about their mothers beaten by drunken fathers and say their dreams: to live a good life in fear of God, to care for my mother-and-father-in-law, to go to the U.S. I can't stop smiling because they smile so big, like suns. Sister Stella is teaching them self-confidence. They ask us to pray for them.
We have a saying here: T-two. In roman numberals: TII. This Is India.
In India we shower in buckets. There is never toilet paper. On the street you can buy a coconut and a man will hack off the top with a machete and stick in a straw. I wear a scarf every day: a dupatta. The word for hello means “I see God in you.” “Namaskara.” The trucks are painted bright colors. Today I saw one that said “We Two, Ours One”. What does that mean? The women wear strings of flowers in their hair every day and saris in colors I didn't think existed. The men wear checkered dhotis, like a towel around th e waist. There are more motorcycles than cars. Cheese is nearly non-existent, but homemade yogurt is at every meal. Eat with your right hand, wipe with your left. I speak “swelpa swelpa Kannada” and no Tamil, Urdu, Hindi, Malyalam, Telagu... but I can hear them all on the street, or could if I could tell them apart. There are dogs everywhere, and cows. In some places, pigs or goats or cats. And everywhere trash lining the sides of the road. There are mountains that are piles of impossible gray rocks and long grass. There are temples on top of them. There are not clothes-dryers. You see women washing clothes violently in the same slow river where one man washes his motorcycle another his cow. We rode for an our on top of a bus, like Indians do. The kids try out their english “Which country? Your name is?” “America, U.S. Nanna hessaru Bay-ta-ny. Ninna hessaru yenu?” “oh, chenna-gee-day!” I can't write the loopy blunt alphabet. My favorite word: Sundara, beautiful. I say this when the girls smile, when someone hands me a baby, when I see the mountains, but I don't know how to express in any language what it is to hear the story of a woman who is holding her child and they are both crying.
This Is India.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
the doctor ordered a week in the countryside.
We got back in to Bangalore early this morning on the overnight train from Koppel, a region in the northern part of the state of Karnataka. It's among the poorest areas around, and quite rural. The elevation is considerably lower and the temperature considerably higher, although it rained (out of season) almost every day. During the monsoon, there was a drought. We stayed at a grungy hotel, ate dry oatmeal and honey for breakfast, worked on building a meditation center and school, saw the second biggest set of ruins in the world (after Rome)(!!), and talked to a lot of people. Real Indian people. Little girls, temple prostitutes, impoverished Dalit (P.C. for untouchables) villagers, child laborers, farmers, women working in a factory, men on the train, the superintendent of police and everyone asking "what country?" and "what is your name?" and we are always saying "Nana Hessaru Bay-tanny" "America" "Nina hessaru yenu?" and repeating these names that don't roll off of any of our tongues-- Gangama, Vishwasager, Shilaja, Nazzer, Shilpa, Mumata, names I can never remember but repeat to myself over and over again anyways because at least I want to try.
Some entries from my journal:
I am so inspired by these women, who in the face of extreme poverty, in the face of hard labour and harassment and 1000 years of tradition say "With our generation it will stop." Devidasi women, dedicated to the god at 10 years old, are condemned to a life of single-motherhood, serving the whims of men who will not acknowledge their own children in the street, who might bring some vegetables when they visit. They are the untouchables among the untouchables. They said to us "I know you can't save us, but won't you please do something for our children?" These women were so beautiful, with their laughter, their determination and their premature wrinkles. I pray to have their strength.
-------------------------------------
We talked to some child laborers and their landlord in a cotton field. The children had all dropped out of school-- some as early as second standard, to work from 9-6 in the field. They get 1 hour's break for lunch, and are paid 60 rupees (about a dollar) a day. The work they are doing is cross-pollination, producing seeds. A big company gives the farmer seed, fertelizer, and money for labor on loan, and the farmer gives up his traditional and eco-friendly multicrop farming, stops the production of food, to grow a cash-crop.
-----------------------------------
Yesterday was hard. We went to a rural village with a large (150) Dalit population. They were very hospitable, singing and playing us wonderful music. They asked us questions, and they cheered when they heard how women's rights had progressed in the U.S. Then they told us about their lives, first by answering questions, then by inviting us into their homes. Most of the community works as laborers, althoguh some own land. Even those with land are very poor because of the drought. As Dalits, they are not allowed into key places in town-- temples, tea shops, the well-- but are asked to do the village's dirty work. Because of drought and poverty, the government has allotted some relief money to the area-- but these Dalits never saw any of it. The upper-caste local government leaves them out of the equation. One family we visited struck me especially hard. Their house was one small, dark room, where more than 5 lived. The husband had lost the use of his hands to leprosy and couldn't work. The wife made 30 rupees a day laboring in the fields-- when she could find work. I asked "what is one thing you'd like to see change?" and the father told me "Who am I to talk about change? My struggles is to fill my stomach."
Some entries from my journal:
I am so inspired by these women, who in the face of extreme poverty, in the face of hard labour and harassment and 1000 years of tradition say "With our generation it will stop." Devidasi women, dedicated to the god at 10 years old, are condemned to a life of single-motherhood, serving the whims of men who will not acknowledge their own children in the street, who might bring some vegetables when they visit. They are the untouchables among the untouchables. They said to us "I know you can't save us, but won't you please do something for our children?" These women were so beautiful, with their laughter, their determination and their premature wrinkles. I pray to have their strength.
-------------------------------------
We talked to some child laborers and their landlord in a cotton field. The children had all dropped out of school-- some as early as second standard, to work from 9-6 in the field. They get 1 hour's break for lunch, and are paid 60 rupees (about a dollar) a day. The work they are doing is cross-pollination, producing seeds. A big company gives the farmer seed, fertelizer, and money for labor on loan, and the farmer gives up his traditional and eco-friendly multicrop farming, stops the production of food, to grow a cash-crop.
-----------------------------------
Yesterday was hard. We went to a rural village with a large (150) Dalit population. They were very hospitable, singing and playing us wonderful music. They asked us questions, and they cheered when they heard how women's rights had progressed in the U.S. Then they told us about their lives, first by answering questions, then by inviting us into their homes. Most of the community works as laborers, althoguh some own land. Even those with land are very poor because of the drought. As Dalits, they are not allowed into key places in town-- temples, tea shops, the well-- but are asked to do the village's dirty work. Because of drought and poverty, the government has allotted some relief money to the area-- but these Dalits never saw any of it. The upper-caste local government leaves them out of the equation. One family we visited struck me especially hard. Their house was one small, dark room, where more than 5 lived. The husband had lost the use of his hands to leprosy and couldn't work. The wife made 30 rupees a day laboring in the fields-- when she could find work. I asked "what is one thing you'd like to see change?" and the father told me "Who am I to talk about change? My struggles is to fill my stomach."
Friday, September 11, 2009
Living
It is dark still,
as dark as cities get,
when the sounds of metal-
on-metal, the breakfast smells,
the strange music, the
musical words begin. The
rushing-by of traffic
and lives-lived from other
people's windows, and
it is all in
my ear my nose like
India is digging itself a
home in my eyes.
(here is the ancient world
being born as the sun rises,
or as we turn to face it. Across
the globe it has already set.)
Already it is living on my
tongue, behind my teeth,
it is living in my stomach.
Here is India settling too
on my skin. I try
not to brush it off, though
it is strange to me--
gold dust, spicy smell
and dogs in the street.
And here are the people twisted
like trees, here the children
who tug my sleeve, here a bright woman,
heavy with unborn birth, balanced
on the roof, pouring cement -- and
here I strike the heart of it,
this leathery-old place that cries
as it is born, a new thing in an
old skin (or is it the other way?)
Here are the unhappy rich and
the smiling poor, who are,
after all, still alive despite
the failing monsoon, and the rain,
when it comes, comes through the roof.
In Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, in Hindi,
Malyalam, in thick-tongued english they
tell me we are citizens of a thing called
living.
It is all we know how to do.
And then across the skyline--
churchtemplemosque
and the temples, too, of
glittering commerce
where all night the phones
ring off their hooks--
the siren-call to modern
prayer. And the young man
who answers the phone
“HellomynameisBill
How Can I Help You”
tells me that India is moving
up
in the world.
“becoming a part of the Global
market, you know, a so-big power!”
so that I, a citizen of said Globe,
can call mynameisBill to fix my
computer so that I can write this
poem
about being in India,
where my blue eyes make me
strange, where I do not know the
names of various fruits where my
eyes ears tongue bowels say
you do not
belong
here.
But I, too, am a citizen of living.
in the end,
it is all that I (we?) know how to do.
as dark as cities get,
when the sounds of metal-
on-metal, the breakfast smells,
the strange music, the
musical words begin. The
rushing-by of traffic
and lives-lived from other
people's windows, and
it is all in
my ear my nose like
India is digging itself a
home in my eyes.
(here is the ancient world
being born as the sun rises,
or as we turn to face it. Across
the globe it has already set.)
Already it is living on my
tongue, behind my teeth,
it is living in my stomach.
Here is India settling too
on my skin. I try
not to brush it off, though
it is strange to me--
gold dust, spicy smell
and dogs in the street.
And here are the people twisted
like trees, here the children
who tug my sleeve, here a bright woman,
heavy with unborn birth, balanced
on the roof, pouring cement -- and
here I strike the heart of it,
this leathery-old place that cries
as it is born, a new thing in an
old skin (or is it the other way?)
Here are the unhappy rich and
the smiling poor, who are,
after all, still alive despite
the failing monsoon, and the rain,
when it comes, comes through the roof.
In Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, in Hindi,
Malyalam, in thick-tongued english they
tell me we are citizens of a thing called
living.
It is all we know how to do.
And then across the skyline--
churchtemplemosque
and the temples, too, of
glittering commerce
where all night the phones
ring off their hooks--
the siren-call to modern
prayer. And the young man
who answers the phone
“HellomynameisBill
How Can I Help You”
tells me that India is moving
up
in the world.
“becoming a part of the Global
market, you know, a so-big power!”
so that I, a citizen of said Globe,
can call mynameisBill to fix my
computer so that I can write this
poem
about being in India,
where my blue eyes make me
strange, where I do not know the
names of various fruits where my
eyes ears tongue bowels say
you do not
belong
here.
But I, too, am a citizen of living.
in the end,
it is all that I (we?) know how to do.
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