Chad's Hillstation/Ashram/Village/Vipassana Birthday Bonanza.

School's closed. Teachers are leaving. It is very sad looking at the empty playground and listening to the silent sounds of the ashram. The early monsoon is bringing back dreary memories of Washington winter depression. So, now the Chad that wanted no more than to stay in the ashram forever is gone for the moment: I am pretty content with my travel plans for the next month.

So I set out to Kausani with one of the ashramites, Ruchi. I tried to keep count of the times that Ruchi vommited on our winding, excessively long (16 hours via 3 different shared taxis and two buses) trip through the Himalayas; I lost count at twenty, the poor thing.

But we made it to Laksmi ashram an all girl boarding school founded by a British disciple of Gandhi. The school is essential a British hill station bungalow set on an expansive plot of vegetable fields, flower gardens, cow sheds and the like, completely surrounded by untouched pine forests. The school is basically a child's haven for about 60 girls ranging from 1stgrade to 12th. They are taught in the school and also responsible for rearing the cows, farming collecting wood, etc for the ashram. Ruchi parted after the first night, but I stayed for a couple more days which actually coincided with my birthday. The beautiful ashram povided me definitely with one of the most memorable and special birthdays to date.

So basically I found out that it is not just the children in our ashram that like me, apparently my likeability with children is pan-Uttarakhand. Within probably a half hour they were at complete ease around me as I was with them. The first morning, I joined about 20 girls to gather firewood in the forest, well I didn't really have a choice, some cuties, Pooja and Diksha grabbed my hands and led me to the forest, giving me a rope to tie the wood that I would collect. Diksha was adorable, she could not pronounce my name correctly, it came out 'child' so she was leading me through the forest saying, 'come Child, come Child.' The forest was covered with fallen pine needles, so it was pretty treacherous, but the paths that Diksha chose were ones where she slid down on her side, a big load of sticks on her shoulder. I basically just fell down these paths sending sticks everywhere, bloodying my hands and delighting of all of the girls watching me from down below. We then tied our stash into about twenty pound stacks which we then carried back to the ashram. The girls were also delighted to see the awkward whitey carrying the heavy load on his head. After we got back, it was wool spinning time, an artifact of the Gandhi influence on the ashram. It was really difficult for me and one of the girls basically spun most of my wool stack, but gave me encouragement whenever I got it a strand right. During this time, they found out that I knew how to sing some of the songs of our school. My mentor, Anand ji, has written over 40 songs that the children sing daily in the assembly, and he had actually come to Laksmi Ashram and taught them a few songs. He had also given them a song book of his songs which they shoved in front of me telling me to sing them. So basically I had to sing two or three songs, completely in Hindi for about 80 people. Pretty embarrassing but they seemed to enjoy it.

After that I took a break from the ashram and kiddies to check out Anasakti ashram, where Gandhi has stayed and written the book where the ashram got its name. The ashram is at one of the highest points of Kausani where I saw the most spectacular view of Himalayas that I have ever seen.

Then it was back to the ashram where I spent the afternoon climbing trees in the cool forest, picking kaphal, this moutain fruit that is like a raspberry cherry with the girls. In all honestly I must have eaten about 400 of these damn delicious berries; the girls folded their salwaars making little pockets in the front and were constantly forcing berries from their stash down my throaght.

As the sun went down, we went back to the ashram for evening prayer. When prayer concluded, one of the teachers asked me to give a presentation in front of all of the girls about my life and 'aims.' I said in my best Hindi, which is still pretty bad, that Lakshmi ashram was a very special place and that I had an amazing time working and playing with the children. I said that in the whole world, Lakshmi Ashram was my second favorite place only after my ashram and that the experience would stay in my heart forever. Then a couple girls stood up and gave speeches filled with hyperboles about how great I was. After all of the nice words, about 15 of the younger girls surrounded me and gave me hugs. They said not to forgot them and their berries when I left and to come back as soon as possible. Break my heart. Best B-Day Ever!!

But I am coming back sooner than they expected. I was invited to a village wedding in Kausani so I will be going back in a couple days. I plan to spend the whole day playing with the kids then go to wedding at night. I can't wait.

I realized just after leaving the ashram that I hadn't spoken a word of English the whole time I was there and could fully communicate with the girls, there was very little lapse in understanding. Quite honestly, the last year of rigorous Hindi studies paid of fully for the experience I had in being able to talk with the girls teachers in the ashram.

And more days of only Hindi speaking in sight. I will be staying with two friends that know almost no English in their village with their parents who I assume are in the same position. Here is a schedule of the rest of my time here.

Friend's village visits:
Ashramites Ruchi and Vimla are from villages in Kumoan. Uttarakhand is roughly split into two regions based on language and ethnicity: Garhwal and Kumaon. While I have lived and travelled in Garhwal extensively, I know nothing of Kumaon and am looking forward to the ridiculously hospitality I am about to receive.
Almora/Nainital:
These are two famous hillstations of the British Raj. Admittedly, I have a space in my heart of these vestiges of British Colonial rule. I love living in the village, but the American in me also like to kick back with a beer in an old British clubhouse watching socialites and white collar tourists playing golf or yachting on the lake.

Ashram:
A million miles away, after I am through with my indulgence, it is off to Rishikesh for a retreat with a Swami that I met a couple months back. He is actually Belgium, who has spent considerable time in a Christian monastery, became disillusioned to a certain extent, embraced Hinduism, became a Swami, and now runs an ashram. Although he is Hindu, he holds very inclusive religious views; at the inauguration of the ashram, monks of several faiths were invited to celebrate and chant together, the alter in the meditation room displays statues of the Buddha, Jesus, and Shiva. I draw my religious views from multiple traditions and I am excited to sit down with him a while and live in their community.

Vipassana:
Vipassana is a form of Buddhist meditation, typically associated with Hiyana buddhism practices in SE asia, although it is practiced by many regardless of faith. I am going to participate in a ten day silent meditation retreat in Dehradun. Ten days in complete silents, no outside stimulus in the forms of books, pencils, television, etc. and 12+ hours of meditation might sound a little intimidating, but I feel prepared enough for it. My meditation has been stagnating as of late and hopefully this will give me a boost; when I meditate in my ashram, I always have something to look forward, my bed, the day's work, the children, a book, but there it will just be me and my thoughts. I also have a lot to figure out about what I am going to do when I get back, so the reflection I believe will be helpful.
Then back to the empty ashram.

Then off to Corbett National Park, a famous tiger reserve to meet up with the rest of the fellows. Luckily it is located in Uttarakhand, so I can swoop back up to the ashram for another couple of weeks with the kiddies and friends, then it is back to states. My plane ticket is for the 23rd of July. Gawd, this year has flown by.

The New Recruits

Today, some of the teachers and I set out on a PR and recruiting mission to find some more students for next year's enrollment. We set our sites on Ghoghas, a village of about forty Muslim families very near to the school. We only have one student from the village which is a terribly low number for the village's close proximity.

The village was really strange. As in most areas in the mountains, there is a strong current of out migration by the male members of the village. No different in Goghas, but the interesting part about this town is that the Muslim status of the men give them a easy pass into jobs in the Near East (mostly Dubai, Iraq, Iran). The international stamp on this village is seen through have every man that you encounter (rare except if back on vacation) speaks impeccable English. This differs considerably from the Hindu villages that I have been to where it is just Garhwali and Hindi. In any case, these jobs are very lucrative which can be seen in the constructions of their homes. The composition of most of the Hindu villages around here are of the traditional (beautiful) stone homes with slate roofs. A sign of affluence in the village is the standard brick/cement monstrosities that predominate popular Indian architecture. With remittances flowing in, almost all of the homes were exactly of this boring ebb. There were maybe two traditional houses that I saw.

To exemplify this strangeness, take the case of Khadir. We meet Khadir actually in a traditional mountain house on the porch with his father, an elderly man completely in Muslim garb, kurta pajama, white cap, long beard, red checkered scarf. His father was smoking a probably fifty year old hookah, heated with wood coals, sitting on a haystack right next to his water buffalo in his courtyard. Pretty traditional, right? Khadir on the other hand, was was wearing Levis, a tight army shirt, gelled hair, and cologne so strong that we could smell him two houses away. The moment that the first word left his mouth ('man'), I knew that he had a lot of American friends. Every other word was 'man' or 'dude,' flavored with a 'know what I mean?' here and there. Khadir actually is a baker working for a Near East company, providing services to American troops in Iraq. Since he can't leave the army compound for the sake of not getting killed, he is dependent on the troops for friendship and has befriend many Americans, who gave him the new vocabulary, the new shirt, and presumably awkward, unbefitting strut that he tried to pull of. Khadir was great though, very kind and gentle. He was really impressed by the school and took us to many of the homes. By the last home that we visited, Khadir was actually doing all of the convincing to the families.

But we were able to recruit six students from this village. We picked up another two beautiful children from a family living slightly above Ghoghas. The exciting part of this recruitment is that us teachers had barely any part in it. One critique of the school has been that we do not have enough contact with the families of our students, which we couldn't deny a year ago. During the early years of our school, the parents really couldn't understand what we were trying to do and because of this, made them fearful. Many parents took out their children out of the school (enrollment was about 250 about four years ago, it is about 80 now). But since my arrival, we have been trying to make a concerted effort to bring in the parents to their child's education. We weren't sure how our parents have been perceiving our unique pedagogy, but through village visits recently, we have found that many families are quite pleased with our teaching methods and strong allies. Therefore, the have included the parents of our children into the recruitment process. We took four parents along with us to Ghoghas and they were amazing. They described the school, defended critiques, and ultimately persuaded parents to send the children. It was beautiful to see the turn around. It was also beautiful seeing these parents, all women, eloquently navigate the treacherous paths to the remote homes of perspective students. I have noticed that typically when an Indian woman leaves the house, even to do mundane things like shopping or traveling, she will look her best. These women were dressed in beautiful new saris and their finest jewelry, traversing rocky, steep, dense paths; paths that even my outdoorsy friends would wear hiking boots are at least shoes to travel on, these women were wearing flipflops. Amazing.

The content of the new students really pleases me as well. Right now we only have two or three Muslims in the school. Six of the new students are Muslim. Also the two Hindu children come from Harijan or untouchable background. Don't be fooled by the imposed name; all of the untouchables in our school are the cutest children and thus the most touchable. It was strange interaction, coming to that house. All of the people we were with were from higher castes than the father, so he would not offer of us chai, as for it would pollute the higher castes to receive chai from a Harijan. I was longing for a chai after the long hike; he could have at least offer the other Harijan, myself (those outside of the Hindu faith and do not have a caste are also untouchables) some chai. Actually, that is another terrible thing about India is that foreigners technically are untouchables, yet it has been my experience that I get unnecessarily exulted almost everywhere I go; people offer me chai, sweets, friendship, all sorts of things. But for many they will treat the untouchable down the street as if they were a feral dog.

This caste discrimination used to be apparent in our school, some of the students taken out of the school in the beginning because we allowed untouchables into our classrooms. But after four years of the intervention, caste has melted away. One day, I asked a friend about the caste of some children during recess. As he rattled them off I was surprised to see that almost for every Harijan that he pointed to was playing with a Brahmin, the highest caste. In terms of religion, the Hindu/Muslim divide isn't very big in our village. It is a problem in the cities where Muslims are treated like second class citizens and outwardly and inwardly discriminated against daily. But in the village it is a bit more relaxed, and it is so small that everyone kind of needs to get along to make it all work. Plus, in terms of economic status, the Muslims are on a higher rung than most Hindus with their foreign money. You couldn't even point out who is Muslim in our classrooms, they are fully integrated in our school.

Unfortunately, there is a group of students that haven't integrated as well. APV has received a growing number of Nepali children. Because of an open border with India, many Nepalis have settled in Tehri Garhwal, predominately picking up manual labor jobs. Many Aryan Indians in the mountains have met their growing presence with discrimination and xenophobia. For example, schoolteachers are notorious for beating the Nepali far more than other children. Our reputation for equality and non-violent classrooms has been a pull factor behind the influx of new Nepali students. Also, one of the APV teachers is Nepali herself, which is a large source of pride for the local Nepali community. But recently, two parents pulled their children from Kindergarten and third grade citing that the ‘Nepali students were corrupting their children.’ This is obviously an unfounded discriminatory rant. Their is one Nepali girl in the third grade, Sunita, who is probably the best mannered child in the school. If she were to say anything corrupting I would be shocked. As for KG, that is just absolutely preposterous; the children Pintu and Aju are so innocent and sweet. Furthermore, our teachers are responsible, if there was any 'corrupting' behavior, they would not let it continue. But even in the school, children tend to group along ethnic lines, there hasn't been the same integration between the children of different castes and religions. But the younger children seem to mingle a bit more freely, if we can set a precedence at younger ages of tolerance, hopefully it will build on itself. It takes time.

In any case, I am really grateful for our new recruits, I believe that they will be a great addition to our loving community.

catch up

So here is my last two months in shorthand (in no specific order of importance):

- I lost two bulleted lists of the events that happened in the last two months that I wanted to share with you (and yet I endeavor on).

- A moth flew into my shirt while I was sleeping, providing me with what might be the most terrifying wake of my life.

- I wore shorts to bed WITHOUT socks, I made it through the winter, an achievement that I regularly pat myself on the back for.

- A film crew came to the school to shoot a documentary. Two days of non stop filming from 4am to 11pm, quite possibly the most exhausting days of my life.

Side Story Digression: On top of that my 'friend' from Jodhpur that I met two years ago during my internship with Rupayan Sansthan decided to give me my very first stab in the back by a friend. So I had asked for his help on the film not because I need his expertise (we were going to hire a camera, which in India comes with a camera man) or equipment (I have basic editing equipment on my computer), but because I wanted to spend time with him and his family when we were to edit the film. I thought that he was on the same page until the last day he told me that he wanted the copyrights to the raw footage that we shot. This opened up a pretty ugly fight between him and the ashram placing me firmly in the middle. I calmed things a bit by yelling at him, but he ending up taking the raw footage. Now I had spend the next couple weeks plotting about how I could get the film back and wonder why he would try to take advantage of my friendship and an ashram of selfless individuals.

- Friends Jimmy and Ben reaffirmed my trust in humankind by agreeing to help me edit the film in the US and giving me many nice letters.

- Spent 28 hours on a train from Haridwar to Jodhpur 5 of which was spent in standstill. For those have been to Rajasthan, the scenery gives about as much as if you were to stick a couple branches in your childhood sandbox. But I did see at least 100 beautiful peacocks which was nice. I also saw at least ten gazelle looking things and some wild donkeydeer hybrid things (I'm not much for nomenclature, I apologize). The beauty of Rajasthan truly lies in it's people, with the women's colorful dress and abundant jewelry, to the Rajputs with their large turbans and larger mustaches. It lightened my heart to see my favorite sight in India once again, the Rajput, dhoti and all, carrying milk jugs on his 50's style bicycle. Although the beauty of the mountains is breathtaking, nothing beats an old Rajput on milk duty.

- Spent way to long at my friends house editing. He seemed to care more about his projects than helping me with mine, so I eventually left without editing the film as we intended, but I finished a 7 minute trailer (which I hope to post soon on the website). The whole experience was frustrating, but at least I did get to spend some time with his mother who is an absolute sweetheart, and brush up on my Indian copyright laws.

- Next I went to Jaipur where I gave a presentation about the APV school and my experience in India to the study abroad program I did two years ago, at the Minnesotan Studies in International Development (MSID). Quite interesting that the quietest person in class was the only to come back to give a presentation to date, and no less about Hindi, when I had by far the worst Hindi in the group (my inability to pick up the local language was notorious amongst my peers in the program; they deemed me, quite offensively but nevertheless not without a grain of truth, the 'hindi tard.' jerks). But it went well, it was great to see my old teachers, and the current class seemed enthused about the class and wanted to help me show my film in the US.

- In Jaipur I got an email from a friend who I did the MSID program with and traveled together after the program. In Sarnath we attended a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony where the Karmapa, the second highest Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (after his holiest, the Dalai Lama) had blessed us and wrapped a red string around our neck. He said that when the string fell off it would signify that auspicious change would come into your life. Hers had just fallen off, which coincided with the possible entrance into a great Med school program after being rejected the first round. Maybe about an hour after responding to this letter, my string fell off while drying off from the shower.

- And what auspicious events followed the parting of my holy thread? No med school, just Delhi belly, depression, and a filthy bout of heat exhaustation. Maybe no one has gotten the message yet that my string is gone, or maybe my life's just been to good to get any better.

- So next Delhi, to run some errands and see my fellow fellow friend, who is also from the good ole Washington State, Naina. I also got an unexpected encounter with a past MSID friend, Carissa, who I hadn't seen, well, exactly since the day I received my acceptance letter from AIF. She just happened to be in Delhi the same time as I, getting a work visa in Thailand. It was very excellent to see both.

But, that aside...

- I got screwed by the rickshaw walas, subji walas, the post wala, for every wala there is, chances are I got screwed by them. Added to this continuous chain of screwage was the intense heat of Delhi that I was running around in.

- The only solace that I found in Delhi was at Rodeo's, my favorite bar in the world. It the only place (or at least that I know of) in India where you can get a pitcher of beer served to you by a Indian in complete country/western gear, including red hankerchief ascot, polished boots, and lean black cowboy hat, WHILE sitting on a horse saddle barstool. I have become a bit famous there for my Hindi and since I stop there whenever I am in town I know most all of the bartenders, a few which are from Uttarakhand.

- But no amount of rodeo's can hide oneself from the muck that is the plains. Promptly after leaving Rodeo's, Naina's purse got stolen by two goons on a motorcycle. Ugg.

- And then I got heat exhaustion, spending the night moaning with a headache and body cramps. Apparently, you need to drink a lot of water in the heat when you are walking around, who knew? My temperate Himalaya abode requires very minimal water intake, and the water intaken is not like the yellowish brown sludge that is filled with critters with an itchin to make your stomach explore, nor like the kind that comes in a bottle and costs about a third of an average Indians daily salary.

But I had to move on a get back to the ashram, 55,390,200 kilometers away from India or the cruel, cruel world for that matter, so I pressed on to catch a bus back. What I didn't anticipate was that it is peak season for holy pilgrimage to the bevy of temples in my state, so all of the buses where packed. This roughly translates into smashing yourself into a seat with two other very sweaty people, and having an pot bellied, even sweatier Indian man's pelvis on your shoulder the whole 9 hour journey. Luckily, I had some entertainment, I read the news that was filled with rapes, about how a rape victim had been beaten to near death by the family of the accused raper, about how a family killed their daughter over an affair she had with a low caste man, etc. (My God!) Too much, I had to go to my book. What is that about? A true account of a motherless child who shifted out of an abusive relationship with her father into an abusive relationship with her new husband at the age of 13, also the year she became pregnant with her first child, while she too was a child (although depressing, it gives an amazing subaltern account of courage and strength amongst the many obstacle in place for India's impoverished females. It offers with great articulation and clarity a voice that unfortunately is left unheard, or articulated for. If you get a chance you should hunt down a copy, A Life Less Ordinary by Baby Halder). I thought of all of the 13 year old girls in our school and how with a twist of fate could be married with children and about cried. All of this with a sweaty dudes pelvis on my shoulder, belly on my ear, and a case of heat exhaustion. More or less, I wanted to die.

But as I approached home, I saw one of my favorite kids, Swati, coming down the other direction in a car, When she shot me a big smile on her face after seeing me all of the shit in the world that had acquired in me the past two weeks just melted off. When I finally got to the ashram and met with everybody, then promptly passed out for two days, waking up to the laughter of my fellow ashram mates in the morning, the playful chirps of the darting swallows, and the smell of the freshly blossomed roses and cherry blossoms. Pure heaven, my friends.

Call me an escapist, call me what you want, but nothing is going to get me to go back to the plains in the next three months only out of extreme necessity.

I like it here just fine.

And I am going to miss it terribly when I am gone.

Seeds of Change

So I believe I have written a blog about the dismal conditions of government schools: teacher's absenteeism and apathy, rampant beatings, rote memorization, low achievement levels, high dropout rates, etc. Our school have been working on an intervention with 28 government schools in Uttarkhand, providing trainings and materials in hope to significantly change the current educational order. Upon our initial survey of the schools, I must admit I wasn't very hopeful.

But I just got back from a week of surveying participating schools and was shocked to discover that a lot of what we introduced in the training has been applied in these schools. There were about two schools that did absolutely nothing and threw a fistful of excuses at us as to why they couldn't implement the program, which revolved around not being able to introduce anything new into the curriculum because they were already overburdened. This is pretty absurd considering that all the methods we introduced were meant to be complimentary to the existing government curriculum. But the rest of the schools showed dramatic change. At almost all of the schools, the children meditate regularly. These are government schools! This is truly amazing. The teachers were all accolades about meditation, they said that it was useful to calm the children, and by products included heightened concentration and ability to pick up new concepts easier. In many of the schools the teachers meditated with the students, just the symbolic act of a teacher sitting on even ground with her children is an amazing change from the oppressive school atmosphere we noticed before.

Also, it was quite touching to hear the children singing quite beautifully the APV songs in their school. Music is a very important piece to our pedagogy, we have about 35 songs or so and we taught about ten to the school children that came to our training. The children had memorizes many of these songs and sing them daily in school. We visited one school after school hours had concluded. The kids gathered with some of their friends to show off their skills to the APV team and gawk at the whitey. But when they began to sing for us, I was shocked to see that the children's friends, not enrolled at the school, had also memorized APV songs. This demonstrates that the children are sharing with their communities the APV pedagogy and perhaps that our intervention is having a farer reaching effect than we had initially planned.

To further this point, two teachers that participated in the program have become so passionate about it that they have set out on their own initiative to teach our pedagogy to neighboring schools. This is an amazing indicator that teachers would take time out of their schedule to spread our ideas because they feel so strongly for our methods of teaching and how it has brought about changes in their school.

Another important observation is the change in the learning atmosphere. The children and teachers seemed much more at ease with one another. In schools where previously we saw very timid, quiet children in front of their teachers, now were joking, laughing, asking questions with their teachers.

Finally, the substantive concepts that we introduced at the training, the math concepts have been covered in class, those children that attended our training have been teaching other children. For the most part the teachers have found our methods and materials extremely helpful

Hopefully this moment can be sustained. We have the government on our side which is very strange considering the uniqueness of our project. The highest educational government official, Pandey ji, is fully on board and told us that he wanted to make sure that our pedagogy is used to guide the direction that primary education in Uttarakhand. I am also working on a proposal with Plan International to expand our project under their new 'Learn Without Fear' campaign, which would enable us to touch schools all over India. Pretty exciting prospects, perhaps we are seeing the seeds to the children's revolution that my mentor has envisioned for so long.

Stars and Yars

Last night, while walking back to my room after night meditation, I became completely consumed by the sky. I couldn't make it to my room, my steps slowed gradually to a stand still, then I just stood there and gawked for about a half hour. You think that after seven months here I would become immune to the immense beauty in these parts, but not true. The new moon and power outage sucked away any possible light, leaving a cluttered fabric of stars, I would like to think all of the stars, sick of trying to shine over an overlit earth, all decided to move to this space of utter darkness to reward those in the rurals that can truly enjoy their splendor. And enjoy, I did.

My renewed beauty stupor probably has something to do with the influx of friends visiting. With every friend that comes, I get a new fresh set of eyes to reevaluate my surroundings, the extraordinary that became too ordinary when your day is spent doing ordinary things (the mountains lose their luster when I am handwashing my t shirts). My most recent visitor, Luther (or Slam Sahib 'Sir Slam' as we call him on the basketball court), probably had his hand in this star incident. He played papa with me one night and taught me all about the constellations. Actually, he taught me a lot of things, but constellations was about the only subject that didn't punch me in the face intellectually. He is a pretty smart kid, studying Sanskrit at Berkeley, so other conversations were about obscure 8th century Buddhist sects that he discovered while reading about them in original sanskrit literature, nerd. Luckily, he really isn't too bookish or really that anti social/nerdy/or just flat out strange as others in the Sanskrit field, thank god. Pretty interesting that luther fella, it was great to have him here.

Slam was here to experience Shivratri, an important Hindu holiday that I know nothing about. All I do know is that people fast all day, so I decided to join in on the self inflicted starvation for Shiva with the rest. My family is not really of the Lent persuasion, so I have never performed a fast before. And I must admit that it wasn't too hard for me, I really didn't feel too hungry. Perhaps it was because I remained busy all day. Luther and I decided to try to find an ancient Shiva temple located a couple miles below the ashram. But in the market, we got intercepted by a couple of my favorite children in the school, Heena and Shubam, who begged us to come to their house. I had been to their house previously and really loved the visit. They live in a very traditional stone house with slate roof, with a front yard of three water buffalo (quite possibly the chubbiest animal in the world and thus my favorite) and terraced fields, at this point of the year, filled with the small yellow flowers of the mustard crop. As an added benefit, they have this precious little 5 year old sister, Diya, who looks like a monkey and I love to play with. So we spent a couple hours playing cricket and drinking chai. We also ran into some more kids from the school, my other favorite family, the Balodis, at the village's small Shiva temple, where we played with more kids. After that we went to their house for more play and more chai, Preethi painted a mountain on my hand with henna, that looked more like a zen painting of shunya.

Unfortunately, no ancient temple found, but we did get climbed on by a lot of kiddus and receive quite a bit of chai and fruit in prasad, which one can eat while they are fasting and probably kept me from fainting. But I think my favorite experiences have been interacting with the children in their families out in the village. I live a pretty sheltered life in the ashram, and rarely get away from my room/school/dining room/meditation room routine, so it is always great to see how the children live outside of the school environment.

Chad's a'teachin

So it has recently occurred to me that I spend too much time on my computer doing the promotional, administrative thing, advocating for the school but not participating with the school much outside of the daily asssemblies and playing with the kids during recess. It also has occurred to me that I only have about four more months here, and to think that I will not be able to spend everyday with these children five months from now tears me apart.

So I have decided to take a more active role in their education, trying to utilize the holistic, challenging pedagogy of the school. I was inspired recently in reading an excellent book by Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence to make a lesson plan. Sen posited that recent academic thinking in regards to economics and politics has been surprisingly reductive, relying on the categorization of countries and their people's actions and decision making by overarching, stereotypical cultural norms, most commonly of the popular religion. This approach enumerates the differences between communities and puts in place large barriers in cooperation that we collectively cannot seem to surmount. But this frame of mind, views the individual and community as belonging to only one identity category, typically along religious lines (e.g. the muslim world). But this is highly flawed and is dangerous when used to shaped domestic and foreign policy, which increasingly is the case. As a result, we can clearly see that the currency in such policies in our recent history have contributed to a rise in violent factionalism and communalism in the last century, especially in the Indian context, the partition violence of 1947, Anti Sikh Riots of 1984, Bombay Riot in 1992, the Gujarat Muslim pogroms of 2002, which continues to this day with Gujarati CM Modi's dangerous rule and rhetoric.

This view denies, inherently, that every individual is made up of a complex multiplicity of identities that interact with one another. While one might ascribe to a religious tradition, that tradition in itself does not make up the totality of their existence, and while that tradition may influence and shape their decision making process, it is not entirely responsible for their every decision. If one critically thinks about who they are they will find a vast array of connections, communities, interests, etc. which can be quite contradictory to their stereotypes. For instance, I am an American who lives in India, a Christian by birth who no longer practices and is interested in the religious traditions of India, a heterosexual male who is also a feminist and a proponent of gay rights. And our varieties of identities also vary in importance contextually as we interact with others in the world. For instance, one's identity as a music enthusiast may be more important than one's national identity when at a record store, concert, or in discussions with other enthusiasts. While one is applying for a visa, the importance of one's national identity most likely would supersede music enthusiasm. But in no way are these two identities entirely exclusive: one's taste in music is regionally linked to other's musical taste and a person can take great pride in their own national identity because of the nation's musical heritage.

So I set out with my very limited Hindi skills to illustrate this fairly complex idea to the sixth grade class with a lesson plan called मैं कौन हूँ? (Who am I?). The first day, we had a brainstorm about the composition of our identities and we all made lists of about forty identities that we have ranging from familial relations and friendships, to religious, educational and political affilliations, future ambitions, character traits, passions, physical distinctions, etc. We all then made Who am I? Charts, writing all of our identities in Hindi and English and drawing a picture to represent each indentity on a large piece of paper.

The next day each child presented their identity chart and we made a group list of identities. The children were then to stand in a large circle while the teacher and I called out the identities. Those that ascribe to the identity would come to the middle of the circle and join hands. In this exercise, the children were able to see their similarities and differences with classmates that they might have been unaware of in the past. We then sat in this circle and I offered the question, 'Say that someone came from a distant country and wanted to know who you are, but they wanted a simple answer, just one trait from your identity chart, what would you say?' What happened next was quite beautiful. One child began with human being, yes, we are all human beings it is what separates us from all else in the world. Then we asked, but what about the differences between humans? Then another student piped in, oh yes, our Indian identity is by far the most important. Then organically the children started questioning each other. But South Indians live much different lives than those in the north. But I our lives are much more different than that of those living the northern plains, Uttarakhandi, that is most important. But Uttarakhand contains a loose ethnical split between Garhwali region and Kumoan, So Garhwali. Yeah, but there is quite a difference in between people living in different districts, so Tehri Garhwal district. But what about our villages. Oh, yes villages are most important. But then what about our families? That is the most important yes. Not until a half hour of discussion did we introduce religion, which then left the kids puzzled. They concluded completely on their own that it was impossible to view themselves as just one identity. It was quite an amazing experience for myself to see them work out this difficult question on their own and come to a conclusion without directly telling them it.

The next day we took the exercise a step further. The Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 to date has been the bloodiest single incident in the subcontinent's recent history. During this period, millions of Sikhs and Hindus migrated to India, while millions of Muslims went the other direction into newly carved out country of Pakistan. This dramatic flow of people, coupled with communal angers that spurred on the division, sparked unprecedented violence taking the lives of an estimated 500,000 to over a million people. I brought in the identity charts of three fictitious people who had been murdered during partition; a Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu. LIke many people living in pre-Partition India, they had many similarities, vocations, interests, ethnicity, language, familial relationship and frienships, etc. The only thing that separated them, and ultimately cost them their lives, were their religious affliation. I presented these charts to the children and they read out all of identities of each of the individuals and concluded that they had much in common and how it was unfair that the a person could be killed by one identity when they have so many important other identities. I then presented a two more Who Am I? Charts for two boys in the US. I remembered a story that I learned in class about an African American child from the North went to visit his cousin in a small town in the south during the summer break, I believe in Alabama. He said hello to a woman coming out of a store, a common practice presumably in the North at that time, but not in the South. Within a week he had been lynched by a hate group. I made an identity chart for him as well as from a white boy of his same age in the same community. I have found that working with boys in India that it is clear that boys all around the world share similar interests and I think one wouldn't be hard pressed to have find a white boy with very similar interests as the boy who was lynched. I then asked if this white boy would have said hello to the women, what would have happened?, and if they had so much in common then why was he killed? I then asked them to write a couple page paper about their feelings about the lesson and what they had learned. Pretty heavy stuff to lay on sixth graders but they really seemed to be engaged, thinking pretty critically and through their writings and presentation during assembly, I feel confident that they understood what the lesson was about and had reflected upon it.

Recently I have switched to lighter topics. I have been teaching English through basketball (we have a sparsely used basketball hoop, a situation I am trying to change), where I have also gotten to introduce to the children the joys of wall sits. Also I am working with kids on writing simple songs in English. I am currently in the process of teaching the second and third graders a song about animals that dance. I am very proud of my line about elephants, 'I cannot wear pants but I can dance.' Unadulterated brilliance.

But the more time I spend with the children the more impressed I am with their spirit, intellect, and wit. It is really going to be hard to leave this place.

A 100 pound sack of flour, donkey plop, cow urine, sore wrists, and stinging nettles.

So it's been a while since I have used this space to tell a story, well I guess it has been a while since I've used it at all. Hopefully the following story will give you a portal into my sometimes very strange life:

Every month we have to earn our coming meals by carrying up our full month's supply of food up the hill to our kitchen. Doesn't sound too bad perhaps but realize at the minimum, there are 16 people in our ashram, so times two rather large meals a day times 30 days times 16 people, it equals a very sore back. The bags of food range from 20 kilos to sixty (for reference, I weigh 75 kilos).

To add to the fun, our ashram is located on top of one of the steepest parts of the trail on our side of the month, a path cobbled by awkward jagged rocks. Once you pass this treacherous terrain, then you must walk up a series of steps that are basically flat stones built into the walls. These wall stairs look harmless, idyllic maybe, but with a hundred pound sack of rice on your back, not the case. One memorable experience, the first time around, I fell with a sixty pound bag of potatoes on my head, much to the delight of the three laughing girls behind me. Oh the other thing is nettles love to grow on these walls as well, adding another factor of fun. Many a time I have fallen off these walls carrying something to find my load spread across the field and two very itchy legs.

So I was trying to explain this to friend, Ben as we walked down the hill to gather our rations, a lesson I had planned in my head to explain how not to fall on the treacherous path. After about the time I finished explaining to him the subject of the forthcoming lecture, I found myself disoriented laying on the path, sore knees and wrists, on a pile of donkey plop. So, in probably one of the most ironic moments of my life, I had caught my foot on a stray rock, sending my body airborne on a very steep part of the hill (you could probably imagine my body being perfectly horizontal), to fall onto the rock path below...all the while, explaining to a friend how not to fall. And just to my luck, donkeys were carrying dry cement up the hill (lucky are those who have the horses do their dirty carrying work) leaving a feces trail behind them. I happened to fall atop their plop. Luckily, if one can adequately apply this word properly in regards to falling in donkey shit, it was old and dry. I guess it could have been worse, smelly and demoralized is much better than the itchiness and uncomfortableness that would have occurred if the feces were nettles, or gasp, feces on top of nettles.

Now think of what a caring friend would do if you were walking aside your bud during this horrendous event. Offer you help and support? Help him up and brush him off? Perhaps even offer to wash his sweatshirt while his swollen wrists heal. All very probably responses to a dear friend.

What do you do if you are a friend named Benjamin? Such a good friend, once perceived, that someone would lovely alter this name to Friendjamin. Well of course you would fall to the ground in hysterics. Yup. Jerk.

But it is fine, I brushed the donkey shitdust off my shirt and hobbled onwards, two swollen wrists and knees in tow. So the body is injured, but I am no sissy, and it makes no sense to give up on the task at hand with some scratches. Not to mention the fact that the women and children carry here in the mountains carrying similiar heavy loads daily, and they don't have the choice to give up. If they give up, then their families don't eat, their cattle go hungry, their family shivers through the night. I live in a much more cushy situation, so what is a little extra pain here and there, perhaps it would make me a stronger person.

Ben and I reach the rations room, the only thing left is about 120 kilos of atta, the flour we use for chapatis. The man I am, trying not to show my weakness, decided to take a probably 60 kilos sack (again I weigh 75 kilos), sling it over the old shoulder, and hobble, more cautiously, up the hill. Pretty soon, I realized my weakness as I huff, puff, waddle, waggle, drag, drudge, trudge, juggle, stagger about half way up the path, then collapse on a wall, with two very sore shoulders, two very swollen wrists, and one very broken ego. But not as broken as it could be.

Sir ji, my mentor who probably weighs 55 to 60 pounds, roughly less than the sack; a very small, ascetic, seemingly meek man, saw my situation and asked if he could assist me. I thought about it a bit, said no a couple times, but then, looking up at the rest of Treachopath, I agreed. Then I looked down from Treachopath at my very small mentor, then over to my heavy bag, and immediately regretted the decision. The offer was obviously an sympathetic gesture by an extremely nice man, with probably no idea that the recipient would allow him to share in on the torture. Upon the realization of what I had just said,I tried to grab the bag but he intercepted me, damn it, and in true Indian fashion, he sacrificed his comfort for mine, slugging the bag up the hill. I only let him take it up a quarter more of the way.

But in this process, he let me in on a little pahari secret: The middle space between the shoulder blades makes an excellent resting place for ridiculously heavy bags while navigating uphill paths, and effortlessly stabilizes the carrier's weight. Much better than the haphazard, sling it to one shoulder until the pain is unbearable, now sling it to the other, repeat, repeat, repeat, collapse. With this insight I was able to make it up the rest of the path surprisingly with ease. But the damage had been done, not just because of my body, but because I had revealed the secret; I was injured. The doctor went to work.

Now Sir ji has two treatments: stinging nettles and piss. If one shows internal symptoms, the former is to be slapped for an unnecessarily long period of time on the affected area by a conspicuously smiling Sir ji, the latter is to be discreetly rubbed on the affected area after production. If the problem is external then one is spared from the former, and the latter is to be taken orally (you read that right, one should drink their own piss). If the problem is acute or in advanced stages, replace one's self production with that of a sacred cow's, urine purified by processes way outside my cultural experience. But the substitution of animal urine for one's own raises interesting questions about the morality of methodology, or at least levels of disgustingness or of which one will induce vomit more rapidly.

Until this point Sir ji's remedies have remain merely a comical occurrence, something that I never immediately had to deal with, but could watch as other's squirmed in accordance to the above prescription. Sir ji is the resident doctor and his office hours tend to be either before or after meditation. Therefore I am privy to the ailments of my fellow ashram mates and have grown quite accustom to the Sir ji treatment:

"Hmmm... you have a gashing wound, It's become infected... Urine, it looks pretty bad, better take it from a cow. After the urine is dried, I slap you with some nettles."

"Hmmm... Sore throat, bout a week now... here stand still, nope can't get any nettles down there, better gargle some cows urine."

"Hmmm... tennis elbow, eh..."

Well I guess you probably get the point by now.

So I always secretly laugh in my head when anybody asks for remedies, telling myself, 'Is it going to be nettles or piss' then I admire my incisive wit. I duck the coming wave of piss/nettles whenever I am sick or injured by simply not complaining to anybody, something very difficult for me, given my proclivity to complain about anything to any ear available. But one must adapt in new dangerous environments.

But Sir ji knew what's up; he could see the limping, he could see the pain in my eyes, and I knew I could no longer duck it any longer. I would have to cross my fingers, pray not for piss and throw my piss/nettles dice into the piss/nettle crapshoot, hoping for the best.
'What happened Chad?'

'I fell. But it's not bad.' I added at the last minute, hoping to maybe influence the decision towards my prickly foe, over my salty one.

'Hmmm... swollen wrists. I'll slap some nettles on it.'

Pheew. Crisis averted, I could go to sleep to night without a tangy aftertaste in my mouth. After a quick meal I retired to my room and collapsed under my covers. Once my body was at rest the pain all over my body began to swell and I discovered the complexity in which I fell, unveiling areas of pain which I didn't previous think was possible. There was no way I was getting up for some time and passed out for twelve hours, missing that evening's and morning's meditation.
The next morning after our meal, I went upstairs to used the computer for some emails. The door was open to the outside and I could see Sir ji pacing back and forth outside. I knew he had one thing on this mind. Damn. I thought he had possibly forgotten. He finally peaked his head in the door, shoving a fistful of nettles into the room, with a big grin on his face.

'Time for nettles?'

'Not yet, I am typing emails and I think adding more puff to an already puffen hand might make the task very difficult.'

'Very well, let me know when you are done.'

Damn. But at least I had bought myself some time, our computer is ridiculously slow, it takes on average about an hour or hour and a half to send a email some days. Or like this day, you sit in the cold room for two hours and the phone keeps booting you off so you get nothing done.
But when the power finally went out, no more excuses, I had had to face my pending itchy hand. I summoned Sir ji and he came nettles in hand. I stuck out my arm, lifted up my sleeve, turned my head, closed my eyes and starting wincing. Sir ji slapped the nettles against my wound for about two minutes. It hurt, but surprisingly the pain subsided shortly thereafter. Some mildly itchy lumps remained on my wrists but nothing too serious.

Also, surprisingly after a couple hours, the swelling in my hand went away and my wrist was much more mobile than before. Had it worked? I think maybe so. Now don't go scouring the forest in search of nettles to slap on your chap lips just yet. I asked the resident med student in the fellowship program, Miss Vaani, about the Sir ji nettle treatment. The response I got was more or less a dubious look and a shoulder shrugged 'eeehhhh.' Maybe the power of a nettle slap is beyond the scope of western medicine. We might have to do a series of tests on this.
But in the mean time, I am going to use the nettle treatment when need be. I'll keep you posted on the efficacy of nettles on which region.

All also let you know...gulp...about the piss treatment if things get really bad.

Ben Left...

Ben left the other day.

I can already tell that he left a mark.

His departure marked several very touching scenes. His last assembly, we played the song that Ben and I had written one last time for the kids. After this the assembly was over, Sir ji asked the children if they had anything to ask or say to Ben. Everyone stood uncomfortably for a while, obviously not wanting the moment to end, having to say goodbye to their new giant blonde friend. Some awkward silence was broken by the gossipy whisper of the eighth grade girls. They asked Ben to sing him a song which made sense. Ben had song his own songs with guitar in many of our assemblies and without fail, the three gossipy 8th grade girl had been sitting at his side looking at him adoringly with those dreamboat googly eyes. Ben is one of the few singer/songwriter with a 8th grade village Indian girl fan club.

But on the fly, he played a song that he wrote about leaving when he left washington some six months ago. He prefaced the song by saying that leaving the ashram had brought about many similar emotions that he faced upon his first departure, how the ashram community had adopted him into the family and how close he became with the children made it difficult to leave, but nevertheless he had to go. The trip would be bittersweet, but to a much different tone than the departure from the states, swapping the comfort of that life for excitement of the unknown. Now he was swapping the comfort of the ashram to the comfort of his home, which apparently can overweigh a Himalayan paradise. But one can easily see why, a month of drinking nescafe and the absence of microbrew is torture for the Seattleite, or probably more likely a loving family, an excellent girlfriend, and bucketful of close friends can draw one away from social work with amazing children on a meditative spiritual path. Wait a minute, Ben is totally selfish, what a jerk.

I kid, I kid.

But after the song ended you could tell it affected the children, they didn't want him to go but couldn't think of anything to say to keep the assembly going. After a couple minutes of silence, sir ji said, 'chalo' and the kiddus sadly scampered off.

After his last meditation, Sir ji ended the session early, apparently so we could have an hour long affirmation session about how great Ben is. We went around the room saying how great Ben was, how he was the perfect fit for the ashram, how much we would miss him. Ben must have left that session pretty high, I bet.

In the morning he was presented with gifts, a shawl from the ashram and even more important, a package of pictures and fond wishes from the third and sixth grade. Highlights from the third grade was probably that everyone spelled his name wrong, calling him Ven sir and the picture that they drew of him on the back of the card which was a dead on rendition of a digital surfdude sasquatch. Those kooks.

After some hugging everyone in the ashram (which was amusing for me to watch, seeing the girls akwardly squirm through their hugs. Apparently hugging giant unshaven blonde foreign men, let alone Indian men, isn't woven into the fabric of mountain village life), we took off to wait for the bus. I decided to go down with Ben to Dehradun to run some errands and see him off.
While we were drinking some chai waiting for the bus by the side of the road, one of the KG saw Ben and immediately started dancing, doing the sprinkler. Ben taught the kids that dance in one of our dance classes with the younger kids. Way more satisfying than a mere wave, and the kid would not stop dancing, even when his father, who was walking with him was shaking his finger at him. Ohhh...precious moments.

I exited the train after making sure that Ben had found his seat. Despite it being around six in the morning, when we got on the train, the platform was bustling with activity, but when I left, I found it barren. The only things I could see is the dimly lit vendors idly looking off to the distance, and what I assumed to be a tearful lover trying to hold on to her husband before he took off to the moving train. Not the best situation to be alone for essentially the first time in a month (Ben had more or less been attached to my hip in the ashram). And then his damn song about leaving, the very one he sang at assembly, crept into my head as I walked down the dark streets to find the vikram that would take me back to the hostel. For me his departure was also bitter sweet; I loved having Ben around, our days tended to be one long joke interspersed with some creative motivation to work on our respective projects and playing with children. But I also can be a very private person who enjoys his own space, space that has been inhabited by Ben for the last month, so I looked forward to returning to that form and being a bit more productive in terms of the projects asked of me.

But as I write this during my supersecret productive time between five and seven in the morning, it is kind of sad to not to be able to share this with Ben. During this time after meditation, Ben would stay up with me and work on his personal projects. While I get a much bigger share of the terrible Nescafe coffee pot, I can no longer look over to the left of my desk, just over the space heater, to see Ben sitting upright covered completely head to toe by his sleeping bag and array of blankets stacked upon his lap, book or pen in hand, working away to the candlelight emanating from bedstand beside him.

But Ben's legacy lives on, and I don't see it fading away anytime soon. Everyday, I find a kid singing, 'and you and you and you' the chorus he wrote to the song. Mohan still makes the perfect impersonation of Ben's apparent surfer Hindi accent, 'tum kar rahe ho?' Ben's favorite phrase. The ashram girls still ask me when he is coming back, Sir ji is still slinging him compliments.

It is amazing how much a person can have an impact on the right community in such a short stay. But it isn't to surprising that Ben himself made the impact on this community. He made a great fit, his creativity, love for children, outgoing personality, communication skills. His personality, as well as his contributions to the music and input towards the documentary I am making about the ashram will long outlive his stay.

A hot ashram minute...

Here is catch up of what the last couple weeks in the ashram has been like. I am adopting a form of writing from friend Benjamin (or Friendjamin), calls memory logging, which is bulleting points that you want to remember without excessive ellaboration. Here it goes:

0. Came home to bitter cold, much more bitter than before we left. The other day it was -6 degrees. It actually snowed a little bit the other day and I joined the kids in catching snowflakes on my tongue.
0. My friends Rose and Ben, have really taken to the Ashram. I had rarely seen Rose who spent most of her time with the teachers and children. When she left she that she really wanted to come back and enjoyed her experience.
0. Two of the teachers left! Without even a goodbye. Minnie went back to Kerala, which is a shame. Also, Sanjay left for good, I think he was getting some pressure from his friends and family to leave. In an extremely patriarchal area like the Indian countryside, men are only men if they have good jobs and a family, which isn't the life one leads while teaching in an ashram school and meditating most of the day. We all loved the guy, but it was apparent that his heart wasn't completely into it.
0. But Sanjay sister, Sangeeta, who is teacher and probably the cutest thing on earth, has stayed, thank god. We taught her a call and response line from a rap song from Plastic Little: B and C: "yo sangeeta, what time you think it is.' S: 'I think it is rap o'clock.' B and C: 'rap o'clock on the dot.' Oh, the precious moments that we cherish.
0. Sanya, on of our beautiful dogs got eaten by a leopard! Actually the day I left, there was a lot of blood on the playground, but we usually lock up our dogs at night, so I thought she might of been spared. I really loved that dog and almost cried when I heard the children devoid of any emotion, say, 'oh yeah, sanya got eaten.' This is especially sad, because undoubtedly she was pregnant having gone through her first season in heat. I think we all earned playing with those puppies from having to endure all of the gross feral dogs milling around moaning hysterically for that terrible terrible month. But we miss you Sanya, rest in peace. (note: we still have her hyper happy brother Lara to keep us company)
0. To add to the danger, Shanti didi told me that five goats in the village directly under the ashram were eaten by tigers! I am pretty sure that there are no tigers in the mountains, but the is an ongoing debate in the ashram about the differences between the leopard that ate sanya and the tiger that ate the goats. In all honesty, I think tiger means bigger leopard. But lots of things are getting eaten these days, I am trying my best not to be one of them.
0. Oh and another indicator of the daily danger that I live in: I got hit by lightening the other day...I think. There was this beautiful thunder/lightening storm where these clouds descended over the mountains covering us and turning the sky this bright yellow. Then the clouds started to sour, bringing forth some of the most brilliant lightening and most powerful thunder that I have ever experienced. Ben and I were sitting in my room chatting and listening to the thunder when we saw a flash of light with a crackle of thunder simultaneously. My body seized up, leaving a nasty headache and we lost power. We immediately and inexplicably burst into hysterics, then went to the roof to watch the carnage. It was pretty neat.
0. All of the girls in the ashram are making hats, meaning ben and I will be the recipients of at least 6 hats each. There have been weird politics around the hats and who makes it. I wish I could get inside the gaggle of giggling girls heads, but it appears that if a girl has a crush on the boy than they will make them a hat. This terrifies ben and I, so we have devised a schedule where we will wear each of the hats only once a week as to not lead anybody on.
0. Ben and I have introduced basketball to the kids, there had been a hoop in the back of school that no one used, but we urged them to move it onto the concrete patch in the front of the school. There had been a basketball explosion it is all that the kids wanted to do. They played so much that within the week, the basketball hoop had fallen off the backboard. And some of these kids have such amazing textbook shooting form without any instruction it is quite amazing. As an added benefit, the basketball court provides a forum for our extreme packing of kids shots and basketball domination, which in turn makes us feel more like men.
0. One goal of mine has been that by the time I leave, I better be able to make chapatis (north indian flat bread, essentially their fork) like a 75 year old grandma. I am well on my way, I can now roll the perfect chapati. The problem now is making the chapatis puff in our wood stove, my mostly burn instead of puff, but I got five more months to hone my craft. Ben has become chapati ball rolling king.
0. I discovered that there is a baker in town! He is a really kind man and his biscuits are amazing. I wish that I couldn't say that I have eaten a whole bag of those delicious morsels in one sitting, but if I did it would be a filthy lie. We also asked him to make a chocolate cake for the other fellow megan's birthday, and the results were much more than we expected. The cake was actually much better than most of the cakes that I have had in the US. The bakery has become a necessary stop whenever I go back to town.

The mentioning of Ben transcends bulleting lists. Ben is in the middle of his month stay and it has been great. At the request of my mentor, he has brought some great recording equipment which we will be using to recording the children's songs for a cd project that we are working on. He has been at working on trying to familiarize the teachers with the equipment recently. Ben has also brought his creativity, song writing abilities, and positive attitude which has been greatly appreciated. Ben has been writing songs for the kids that are mindwarpingly catchy, and immediately are adored by the children. For a recent program that we put on for the children's parents, the kids sang his song and created a dance for it. Equally adored is ben, the man, by the children, they affectionately call him Edge ji after their favorite WWE wrestler. Also Tall boy + blonde hair+ sense of humor +musician = heart throb for Indian women. I think the girls in the ashram have internalized this formula, elevating ben to dreamboat status.

Having a good friend like ben around has been really great for me personally. His creativity is contagious and he definitely brings out a good side of me and the comfort of having a good friend around reflects on my other relationships in the ashram. Although this is not to say that there was a distance between me and the others in the ashram and the children previously, To a certain extent, I feel like I develop friendships dependent of the person I am interacting with, and from the lens of these various friendships I might appear slightly different. Obviously, in developing relationships with the Indians I have encountered a few boundaries due to language and differences of cultural experience, but nevertheless, I feel very close to them. But having Ben around, I feel like I have been able to act a bit more like good old friends know me as, more of what I perceived myself as, more relaxed and a bit more humorous, which I feel that I haven't been able to adequately convey. I feel that having ben around has definitely help to deepen my relationships with those in the ashram as well with the children.

Anyways its good to be back.

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu:

Here I am, back in the ashram. Once again getting used to the brainsmashingly slow dial up after a month of broadband bliss while traveling (it will probably take at least an hour to post this blog, this shows not only the reason why I haven't been in contact lately and also my dedication against all adversity to blog).

So recap of remainder of my brush with the south. After Kerala, Rose, Christoph, and I headed for Pondicherry, a charming colonial town that was occupied by the French until the 1950's I believe. It was a strange place. The beachfront part of town was on a grid system, there was no traffic, the streets were clean, virtually no poverty, all of the signs were in French. The town was a tempting stop for a young man who has been living a semi ascetic life for the last five months: the french residue made for fairly cheap wine, good baguettes, espresso and cigarettes, all too widely available. We rented a beautiful room with a balcony looking over the Bay of Bengal and lived like we thought a French would (with very limited knowledge of French culture albeit), by indulging in the above four vices while listening to Serge Gainsbourg on my Ipod speakers and reading Michel Foucalt. It was splendid.

We rented some scooters to cruise around the mild streets, see some beaches, and maybe to go check out Auroville, the local wierd French/Indian Hippie fusion Ashram hotspot. We soon found out that the streets weren't so mild when you got out of the grid: we were battling huge cargo trucks, aggressive motorers, dodged cows and water buffalo, the standard Indian road fare. But we did manage to find the Auroville beach which was kind of a trip. First of all the beach was by invite only, which was kind of suspicious seeing that the white foreigners including ourselves could just simply scoot on in, while the upper middle class Indian family in a jeep behind us were shooed away. The beach also seemed to be a small cluster of homes for the aurovillians and a cafe, which was amazing. I picked up a delicious humus sandwich on organic wheat bread and drank drip o-sweet-mother-of-god coffee and watched the too cool for school Indian/French Aurovillians milling about. And what is a hippie ashram without your standard naked children running around causing trouble, products of a hands off parenting style? No ashram in my book. That is why is was validating seeing these two naked, golden locked children running around the cafe knocking down sandcastles, splashing water on everyone, and causing general mayhem. With bellies filled with good food and coffee, we strolled to the beach which was quite fantastic. I decided roast my skin a bit, seeing that basically no part of my body has seen the light of day since the cold hit the mountains three months ago. I don't think the south korean tourist to the left off us could handle the paleish glow emanating from my exposed chest, and moved onwards. This may surprise you, but I am usually not the bod flashing beachbro, but a mixture of seeing exposed skin in the form of board shot bros and girls in bikinis (which I had totally forgotten that women wear anything but salwaar kaameez and saris while living in the mountains) and that before I left, every morning I woke up with headaches from the cold and that it had only gotten colder since I left, I decided to go for it.

After a mild freakout of not hearing from friend Ben Sellon, who was suppose to be in mid flight to India after spending an unintended and presumably desparately lonely christmas and New Years by himself in Turkey, He had forgotten to get a tourist visa for India while traveling, and they Turkish authorities definitely reminded him, while punishing him pretty severely. The next two weeks were spent badgering officials, pleading, etc. until he finally got his visa after the holidays had passed as well as the fun had in Bombay and Kerala. Poor chap. But he met up with us in Pondy, which excited me greatly, although celebrations were short lived. Rose and I soonafter, probably in a matter of hours actuallyafter Ben arrived, fell ill with a bubonic respiratory infections, slapping a heavy 103 ish tempature on our poor systems for a couple of days. Soon Ben was fetching our meds and banana porridge and joining us in our day long National Geography dubbed in Hindi sick binges. It was great though, Christoph had left us to resume his Hindi program in Jaipur, and seeing that it felt like scaling a mountain to get up to go to the bathroom, Ben's help was greatly appreciated.

While still sick, I had to make a break for Chennai to see a friend from my Hindi program at UW, Rowan and some of the AIF fellows placed there for an exposure visit. The first night I was feeling a little better (my hypothesis is that after we experienced some rain in Pondy our room was converted into a cesspool of mold, reinforced by the neon space mold that we found in our bathroom, which filled our lungs accordingly) and stayed with Rowan who is doing her dissertation research currently and living in a pretty posh area of southern Chennai, right on the beach. It was very interesting catching up with Rowan hearing about her research (although my semi delirious state prevented me from comprehending anything too complex). I also got to play with her daughter, Avery, who she brought along for the year. This kid is amazing, she has fully embraced living in India and is enrolled in a English medium school where she is the only foreigner and is learning Hindi. Aahh, now that is a childhood to be jealous of! It was pretty apparent to me that Rowan is a terrific mother and that Avery is going to grow up to be an amazing person.

After my too brief of stay with Rowan I made my way in town a little further to stay with Krishna, Ja, and Gia, three AIF fellows. I came to do an exposure visit with Krishna who is also working with education. Although still feeling like a dumpster, I enjoyed talking about his curriculum projects and listening to him play music. He is a terrific Carnatic violinist and vocalist. Their neighborhood was great too. They lived in a Muslim gali, where most people speak Urdu, which is almost identical to Hindi, with persian script and a more Persian/Arabic influence on vocabulary. I was able to brush off my Hindi and chat with Krishna's shopkeeper and chai wala. After a couple days, Ben and Rose met us in Chennai and we made the couple day voyage back up to my Himalayan abode. Even at the onset of my trip and although I enjoyed traveling in the south immensely, the whole time my heart was left in the ashram, and I was ready to get back to the community and children.

APV Website

I have forgotten to put up a link to a website that I made for the school, with the help of my visiting friend, Nick. On the site you should be able to get a good idea of what we are trying to do with plenty of pictures. I also included a music section where you can listen to a couple of our songs performed by our children. It turned into a hellish project requiring me to spend my evenings and mornings in front of a computer in a giant room with near freezing temperatures, but its done and you should check it out.

http://www.sbmahimalaya.org/APV/home.html