Renaming and other ramblings

By the way, in case you are wondering at the new blog heading, I grew tired of "life beyond the hill"... i mean, this still is life beyond the hill, but one year onwards, i felt like it should be more than jsut that! This afternoon, i started reading Neruda's memoir, and this line on the first page jumped out at me. Yes, I thought, this is why I blog even amongst the maddest of times at work and oherwise. It's also why i daydream, which i do A LOT (sometimes, i think i do it too much). But he's right, these intervals of dreaming help me stand up and keep goign when the work is hard (and by work here i don't jsut mean office, i mean a lot of things that are just hard work). This blog is those "intervals of dreaming" so that seemed like the right name.

The rest of what I would write about today is a dilemma i face every time i write for a public space: what is appropriate to share? Usually, I would limit a blog space to external stuff... in my mind, the blog and the diary have very different spaces. But, as I mentioned some posts ago, i increasingly find this blog going personal because there are lot of external things i cannot comment on without going inwards. And I am ok with that, generally speaking.

But today i have spent a lot of time online reading people's writing on different fora, discussion groups, and blogs. Basically, I have been trying to research patients' perspectives on some new treatment my doctor wants to put me through, because i am not yet convinced she knows what she is doing (if you don't know me and my medical history that well, you'll wonder at this attitude of mine. But i have seen way too many doctors mess up and mess me up as a result... so now i double and triple check every treatment and medication through support groups for the two major diseases i have. And say what you like, patients know WAY more than doctors do!). Anyhow, as i read all this stuff out there, i was incredibly grateful to the people who put that information out there, a lot of it very personal. I was looking at the blog of one particular woman who seems to have started that blog solely to document the effects of a particular treatment she was undergoing for that disease... it's updated regularly after every session of her treatment, and it even has photos. On one hand, i was so grateful because she had the exact information (and lots of very valuable advice) that i had been looking for. On the other hand, I felt a little squeamish... I don't think i would ever put such a detailed and personal report of my illness up on a blog. I don't know why, it just seems inappropriate. Maybe it depends on the particular blog and who your audience is... i know that most of that info is meaningless to all of you who read this blog, but maybe i would be more comfortable putting it up on a support group where i know my readers are interested in knowing how things are and what will help (come to think of it, i think i did post something like that on the support group once-- Chris, you might remember. But later I was so embarrassed and really, really wished i hadn't. Especially not if nayone i knew was going to read it). Why? Don't know. Maybe there's still some shame associated with the disease, maybe i, just I, struggle with the private-public line, maybe i should stop wondering and go do something more productive with my time.

OK, me likes that last idea. Good night!

Happy Birthday Blog

How time flies! I first posted here on December 16 2007, and i can't believe it's been one year and one week since then. Then again, when i read those entries, it feels like it was written in another lifetime...

I found one post there, which i wrote on the airplane home from California, listing things I thought i would miss about SUA life. Now, i feel like revisiting that a year later. Here's the original list with comments:

The neighborhood cup-- YES! I miss that place!
Walking to town center- Well, not the walk but the company (Masako, call me!)
dark chocolate- nah, you get decent dark chocolate in India now!
being mistaken for mexican- YES
running hot water 24/ 7- Surprisingly, no. I guess I re-accustomed pretty fast to life here.
brewed coffee- Nope, manage that at home now
being able to eat sushi and pancakes in the same meal-- YES! And Sushi in general. And pancakes in general.
California sunrises and sunsets- YES!
Midnight conversations- Oh, so much!
Signboards in Spanish- Not really. Maybe when i think about it, but not every day.
feeling safe walking alone at night- YES. It;s a good thing I have nowhere to go in the evenings these days, because i have no idea how i would get there. This is a big one.
Being able to laugh at my professors- Oh, I still manage that long distance! yay facebook!
Peace Lake- I miss Peace Lake!
moments of cultural-outsiderness- No, because after all that globetrotting i am still as much of a cultural outsider here in Delhi as I was there in other countries.
hugs- yeah, sometimes... because hugging isn't nearly common enough in india and because most of my friends are no longer within huggable distance.
all the people who come to the writing center for a "candy fix"- Hehe, only when i think about it!
watching people get high on too much work- yeah. At office, overworked people seem to get stressed and cranky. But I do miss the noise and madness of the cafeteria right around exam time...
clean public restrooms- ALWAYS!

Huh, interesting... I wasn't so far off the mark, was I? :)

Writer's Block

This blog entry is simply an attempt to break through Writer's Block, as i sit staring at an empty word document an hour before bedtime, longing to have at least one draft of this essay done tonight. Once the ball gets rolling, i know i can get a draft down in half an hour... but right now, the ball isn't rolling.

I'm trying to write an autobiography. One of my grad school aps and one fellowship application want me to write an autobiography. Of up to a 1000 words. Sum up my life in a 1000 words. And I don't even know where to begin.

In some ways, all personal statements have stumped me in this way... even jsut the idea of summing up all your academic interests, your interest in this program or that school, your dreams for the future, your work expereince... and then trying to make that essay seem interesting (applying to writing programs, the essay better be interesting!) is a lot of work. But at least, there you have your broad area of focus delimited for you. In this case, this "autobiography" is in addition to that kind of personal statement AND another statement about why I want to go to that particular school (yes, 3 essays for one school). At first, I really liked that because, after playing mindgames trying to sum everything up in 300 words for another school, I felt liberated by the amount of space. More than that, I felt that here, finally, was a graduate program that actually wanted to get to know me, not jsut my work but me. I still feel that, which is a large part of why i want to take this autobiography thing seriously. And yet, and yet, where does one begin?

In some ways, writing is always this process of overcoming self-doubt, isn't it? For a couple of weeks I was struggling with an essay for the internal newsleter at work, sure I was making no progress whatsoever, sure I could never get it done. And then one evening i forced myself to sit down at the computer because it was due the next day (had been due the previous day actually!)... and I got it down in an hour. I'm still amazed at the way that happens, even though I have expereinced it hundreds of times. Just sitting down, trusting the process that even when it seems like i have nothing meaningful to say i just need to keep saying it and suddenly it will all fall together (ok, the first couple paras will probably get thrown out at that point). And yet, every time, i wonder where to begin.

I jsut answered my own question, didn't I? Stop wondering what to write, just write. And trust the process. Oh, when will I learn to take my own advice?

Autobiography time now!

Kids and Disability

Today was a whole day's work and involved lots of screaming over the voices of noisy students, which might be why i feel really tired just now. But there's something from today that has set me thinking... and feeling. This was going to be a diary entry, but then it felt like the kind of diary entry i might want others to read, so here it is. (as time passes, i'm letting this blog get more and more personal!).

This evening, I had a meeting with someone who works in an inclusive school (disabled and non-disabled kids). The point of the meeting was to discuss possible ways of working together, doing workshops with kids there, having them work with our teachers on inclusive classrooms, etc. It was a great meeting in many ways- the people we met were lovely, and so many possibilities emerged that i really felt it could open a new chapter of my journey as a would-be educator. And yet, I returned feeling slightly disconcerted, not feeling quite at ease, feeling like something in the evening was bothering me. this blog post is an attempt to examine that feeling.

At one point, while talking about teacher sensitization to disability issues, i shared my concern that we sometimes focus exclusively on students with visible and obvious disabilities, forgetting that the word covers a whole range that we cannot ignore... yes, there is the blind student but there is also the severely visually impaired student... in the first case, the teacher certainly knows about it and probably won't be too insensitive (provided he/ she is a decent human being), but in the latter he/she is more likely to be hurtful. I shared an example of a teacher who once scolded me bitterly for walking up to the board to read what she had written and how I internalized guilt for not being able to read from my seat-- like there was something bad about me if I couldn't do that. I know, it may sound like a small thing to you-- i know it did to them-- but think about it. I was 10 then; I'm 23 now, but I still remember the scolding and the bitter shame I felt afterwards. It obviously left a strong impression and, in retrospect, I believe it really affected my perception of my own illness. Even today, I am embarrassed to ask for help reading something at a distance or requesting a "favor" like larger print copies.

Another example: In 5th grade, I used to hide the pink chalk. I am partially green-pink blind, and pink chalk against green boards used to make classrooms impossible for me. So, once I was thought of as "responsible" and given duties like making sure there was enough chalk near the board, I used to hide pink chalk at the back of the box and keep putting out other colors. Then, when I knew we were running out and only pink chalk remained, I used dread the coming weeks. Looking back, I can't believe I didn't simply tell my teacher that pink against green didn't work for me and request her to use different colors; I highly doubt she would have told me to deal with it and continued using pink. But somehow, the fear, the sense of shame, took over, and I pulled myself through those dreaded "all pink" weeks.

Once, in 7th grade, I couldn't copy down all the Math HW questions from the board, and I was sick of always losing marks over "copied wrong" questions (even if they were solved right, the teacher would give you no marks if you had copied a question wrong from the board). So I called the girl I then thought of as my "best friend" and asked her to give me the questions over the phone. Her mother took the phone from her and screamed at me, telling me not to take away her daughter's precious study time, and telling me that if I didn't copy the questions down on my own, it was my problem and no one else's responsibility. The woman had known me through 4 years and 3-4 surgeries, so it's not like she could pleade ignorance of my eye condition. But there she was, telling me, just as my 5th grade teacher had, that this was all my fault. And, once again, I believed her. I remember crying after I hung up, and I never called this friend for help again.

Over the years, many "larger" issues emerged. I had to study through audio tapes. I needed to take frequent long breaks from school for one surgery after another. On many days, my teachers had to accept that i was still listening to them even though I would keep my head down for the entire period because my eyes hurt. I had to give board exams with a scribe, which was complicated because i was giving exams in the "blind student" category although I wasn't blind (the exams have been broken up into "seeing" and "blind" categories-- the first are the normal exams; the second are the ones that someone else writes for you. No one seems ever to have thought of a "large print" category). In college, I had to make my own large print copies of texts, had to convince professors to give me extensions on papers when i suddenly took unwell, had to even write exams with my left hand when my glandular problem got really bad. Lots of big and small things like that came along in the way to my education.

Strangely, though, none of the supposedly larger issues left as strong an impression as those 5th grade scoldings. They hurt, they were struggles, but the emotion with which i now look back is triumph, is pride, is the sense that I proved stronger than the obstacles. Those long ago scoldings, though, still inspire an inexplicable sense of shame and, yes, even fear.

Of course, that's partly because as i grew older, I learned to deal with all these emotions, learned to talk to my teachers about my struggles. I was lucky to have some incredible teacher sin high school; not only did these women understand and support me completely, they also voiced their admiration for my efforts and went out of their way to help me succeed, recording books on audio cassettes for me, giving me photocopied notes when I couldn't take notes in class, exempting me from mapwork...thanks to them I completed school with good grades and with a strong sense of self. I owe them a lot.

But yeah, coming back to today's conversation, all these reflections really forced me to go back to the important role a teacher can play- incredible damage and incredible healing. They reaffirm to me why it is so important for teachers to be aware of, and sensitive to, the needs of their individual students. Also the need to involve the parents in the process-- i don't know if I ever told my Mom about those scoldings; I'm sure she would have taken it up in school if I had, but maybe the 9 or 10 year old me was too scared/ ashamed to do so. Not every disability is immediatley obvious, but over months of working with a child, reading their letters of absence, observing them in class, one should be able to tell if something is amiss. At the very least, we need to equip kids with the skills and the courage to articulate such fears, worries, and insecurities.

"How" is question number two. This blog post is still at "Why," written from a very personal space.

So, here I am after another disappearance. I am guessing there's no need for long explanations-- most of you know that i had an eye surgery about ten days ago, so i was out of action for a while. Back again, little by little now.

After surgery, i slept straight for 4-5 days, really, i have no track of time, of when i awoke, when someone called, nothing... those 5 days are a complete blur. Just as well, because i wasn't awake long enough to be in too much pain! The next five days were more interesting (OK, that depends on what you consider interesting!) because i was awake but unable to do much except lie around in a dark room, periodically popping pain meds. No, that's not my idea of fun either before you ask, but it was interesting because it became a sort of forced reflection time... time to think about so many things that i would never otherwise bother with. As a result, this is likely to be a very disjointed blog entry, with random little bits of thoughts from the last few days.

First, I felt like Rip Van Winkle when I awoke... the world changed so much while I was sleeping! The Mumbai attacks were still underway when i went into surgery... it had already been a nightmarish couple of days in front of the television, with scenes that looked more like war than terrorist attacks (a bomb blast is one thing; 50 hours of sustained gunfire and grenade attacks is another). Anyway, that's how things were when I went to bed after my surgery. When I awoke, i could only hear war-mongering. So-called solidarity marches one week after the attack descended into little more than cries to go to war against Pakistan. I lay around in bed, feeling helpless but amazed at the sheer stupidity of even thinking about another war between two openly nuclear states... over and above the madness of thinking that such a war would end terrorism anyway. Then I heard people hailing Guantonomo Bay and the Iraq War as models of how to fight terrorism, pointing out that the USA had never suffered another attack post 9-11. Gosh, i don't even know where to begin answering that question... having lived in a college campus in the USA for a few years, i had naively begun to believe that everyone acknowledged the erros of Iraq... clearl, i was wrong. And the two situations-- America's and India's-- are so different in so many ways that any comparison, either in terms of situation or possible responses-- feels totally futile. Really, what is common between the way 9/11 happened and the way the Bombay attacks took place, except for the fact that we have placed both under an arbitrary category of terrorist acts?

Speaking of which, I had an interesting conversation with some of my students about what constitutes terrorism anyway. Significantly, none of them talked about the actual loss of life as much as they talked about violence specifically aimed at creating a sense of fear and hatred, creating panis and insecurity, in the minds of people far beyond those directly affected by the violence. When asked why, then, we call these acts "terrorism" but don't use that word for Hindus raping and murdering Christians in Orissa, they shrugged, then finally said "I guess it's because we are hypocrites." Yes, I guess so.

Except, where does that leave us? Now we have not one but mulitple perpetrators of terrorist activity in the country. How do we respond, and where do we turn? The answers are unlikely to be easy and will definitely not be immediate, so let's leave the questions open for now. Perhaps the quest to answer them will itself prove to be the answer.

And, while all these events were disturbing the wrold and the country, i lay in bed, almost unaffected... that felt strange, felt WRONG, but there it was. Ot affected me all emotionally, yes, but still it felt wrong to be able to go on with life as usual in the midst of all that. Besides, life was not usual... i was recovering from surgery and had other stuff to worry about, stuff that seemed petty in comparison and yet stuff that was hugely important.

One of which was love. Amidst all the hatred and cynicisim that, I think, was eating at all our hearts, i was receiving message after message of love an friendship from all over the world. Expressions of solidarity with people in India. Expressions of concern from classmates who weren't sure which part of India I live in. And then of course, expressions of live and support in light of the health crisis in my personal little corner of the world. When I finally did get to my email and facebook after a week's post-op break, I found beautiful messages from some 25-30 friends, all in different parts of the world, literally messages from all 6 inhabited continents. It was one of those moments when you see so much hatred amongst peoples and cultures, thn see so much love amongst other peoples and cultures, and choose which you will believe in. I choose to believe in love, perhaps it is a desperate hope rather than a belief, but i must believe in it.

I'll close this entry here now, but in truth it hasnt even begun to detail all of this week's reflections. More soon, I hope.

In defense of the imagination

Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days I have experienced in a long time. Today was one of the most frustrating. In both cases, it's amazing how the whole day-- not jsut work, not just the evening, not jsut the morning, but the whole day-- turned out the same way. Anyhow, I won't get into details of either, because talking too much about yesterday would be disrespecting several confidential spaces, and because talking too much about today is unfair as i will be presenting very one-sided versions of a story that clearly has many sides. So, let's drop them both.

Instead, I will focus on one thing from today (and from several months in some sense of the other) that has been on my nerves. Below is a fictional letter (which i probably will send sooner or later) to the director of the Transformative Language Arts (TLA) program at Goddard college and, by extension, to all TLA practitioners out there whoahve contirbuted ot the amazing reader "The Power of Words".


Dear Caryn,

Remember me? We met at the "The Power of Words" conference held at Goddard in 2007... I was the odd international student (both, student and international, were odd) who flew up to Vermont from my college in California. What a beautiful four days they were! What a delight to meet so many people, attend so many workshops, and learn so much together.

Caryn, did I ever tell you just how relieved I was to discover TLA? To discover that somewhere out there, there were other people like me, people who had a sneaky suspicion that creative writing and stories were intrinsically connected to personal and social change... people who have devoted their lived to exploring this connection. Honestly, I am tired of people telling me that art is irrelevant in the context of society, that it is more the "fancy (read: superflous) stuff," or at most that it is a tool for self-expression... I hear that about poetry above all, and that stabs me because I love poetry, I live through poetry. For too long, i too had grown up thinking that my passion for creative writing (reportage bores me) somehow contradicted my desire to work for social change. TLA was such a perfect coming together, such a comfort, because suddenly I saw that my life could be whole, my two greatest passions could speak to each other, could even work together to create something even more powerful and beautiful.

I have written to you, haven't I, Caryn, about the Creative Writing for Personal and Social Change workshops I did here in Delhi? I worked off of your book "Write where you are" and Linda Christenson's "Reading, Writing, and Rising Up" to create the curriculum. It was such a beautiful expereince for me to facilitate that workshop, to see how these two passions of mine could indeed converge, to experience rather than just read about TLA.

And yet, despite everything, i seem to always hear people say that creative writing is irrelevant to the real world, to the world beyond "I." Have you heard that, Caryn? And do those words hurt you too? They hurt me deeply-- TLA, or my interpretation of it, has become what i really believe to be my life's passion, the meaning i find when all else is muddy, and it just hurts to have people tell me it does not, cannot, even exist.

Today was one such day. So after I got home from work, I opened "The Power of Words." First, I read Katt Lissard's story about her work on HIV in Lesotho-- that's always been one of my favorite TLA stories. Then I went to the dramatherapy for troubled teens one, because i too work with teenagers. And then I just read through a bunch of other essays like the one about making the journals and finding the students writing their names in it... lots of other ones. It felt so good to read it all.

Earlier, i have read this book for ideas, made little notes about how i could try out some of these techniques. Or i have read it as stories about the power of words. But today, the stories themselves were the words that had so much power. They reminded me that I am not alone in these dreams, that stories and poems and theater do indeed have so much transformative power, that even if a million people disbelieve in the sheer power and beauty of the imagination, there are a handful who believe... and that changes everything.

I think I can take up this conversation again at work tomorrow, this time more equipped with a sense that it IS possible and important, even if others don't think so. I think I'm going to take this book along to try and prove a point to those who still won't believe. Anove all, I think that now even if this project were to fall through, i will be disappointed but not totally disheartened. Because i will know that I have succeeded with one small group, that many others have succeeded with many other groups, and that even if not yet, eventually, I can work on making TLA my life's mission.

Thank you, Caryn, for opening up this space. And please convey my deepest thanks and warmest regards to everyone I met at the conference and to everyone who contributed to this book.

With love,

Aditi

Yet again

While facilitating a workshop this morning, I suddenly had a shooting pain through my left eye. The pain subsided soon, then became a kind of dull, annoying ache that lasted through the day. Not terrible, just annoying. Not the kind of thing that would usually have carried me to the doctor, but this time instinct said "GO!", and so i did.

Good thing too, because this time i have not 1, not 2, but 3 broken stitches inside the eye! Fun times.

I'm amazed at instinct, though... at how the body just knows how to tell me when something is severely wrong as opposed to my random everyday pain. All three times that this has happened, the pain/ grittiness/ discomfort hasn't been much out of the ordinary, or much more than a regular day. But each time, i have just known that I need to see the doctor immediately. I still don't know how i have known, but i have. Instinct. It's amazing.

I'm a little exhausted from all this. It hasn't even been 3 months since the last surgery (tomorrow is three months to the day), and here I am going back into the OT. The memories of the last one are still too fresh, the pain too real... over time, the memory fades, and forgetfulness helps one be brave. But right now, the memroy is fresh, and I really don't want to go through that again!

Oh well, at least this time i can prepare for it. Download lots of auidobooks. Buy lots of snacks and cold foods (have i mentioned how, when i am sick, i can only eat cold food or i want to throw up?). Stock up on pain meds. Hand over the most urgent things at work. Finish important-to-finish-now writing. And then I'll go back into that sterilized room. Ugh, I've spent way too much time in OTs, the memories make me shudder.

So yeah, I'm ranting. But right now, at moments like these, I also have a vauge sense of pride. Just pride that I have made it this far. Sometimes I forget all the struggles to get through school, to get through college, to balance (not always successfully) a working life and taking care of all these chronic illnesses. Sometimes, I get caught up in little stresses, start doubting my life's capacity for limitless growth, limitless expansion. Then, something like this comes along and forces me to reflect, just for a moment, on everything I have fought and won over. Not immediately, perhaps, but eventually. And that brings me pride and comfort anf faith in the future, faith in my life's capacity to defeat obstacles and open up further.

In the newspaper this morning, there was a short essay by Sensei (don't ask me how it got there-- i have no clue-- but it was perfect for today). He wrote about a 19th centruy mountain climber who was trying to conquer a particular mountain (i'll dig up the details another time). He wrote about each expedition, about all the ones that failed, about the ones where the mountaineer was seriously injured, and then about the 8th one, when he finally conquered the mountain. He wrote about how, even if you fall down seven times, the important question is whether you get up the eighth. I guess that's my question to myself right now as well. Even if I fall down seven times, will I get up the eighth?

And the answer is yes, I will, I always have so far. Moments like this remind me of this simple fact. And although that cannot alter the fact that I have a very not-fun few weeks coming up, although it cannot prevent me from wishing i didn't have to deal with all that pain yet again, although it cannot really change anyting, it does remind me that this, too, has meaning.

And maybe that reminder sums up all the change I need right now.

It's been a long time since i wrote anything. Not just on the blog I mean... I mean wrote, in general. For reasons that some of you know well, I am spending too much time writing about writing these days... too little time actually writing!

It isn't for want of things to write about. It is partially because some of the things i would write about might invade the privacy of others; a lot that's on my mind right now has so much to do with other people in my life that it cannot go up here. And partially because I don't want all of you to know about some of the other things going on in my life. Argh, sometimes, I wish i had kept the blog anonymous, but then again, if i did that, how would I stay in touch with all the people who do know me?

I've typed two LONG emails today. Why do i write so much when i sit down to write? It's exhausting for me, and I am sure it's exhausting for others too. Old habits die hard.

Certain things that have happened in the last... say, 2 weeks... have really made me think about the ways in which my life has changed and grown over these last 4-5 years. Sometimes, I am blown away by my own journey through so many lands, so many cultures... my interactions with so many people. I am amazed at everthing and everyone I carry in my heart. I had an interesting conversation with someone at work a few days ago, where she felt strongly that the more people you try to stay in touch with and be connected to, the harder it is to make space for new people... she felt that we each have a limited amount of love and energy to offer, and it gets distributed depending on how many people we choose to give it to. I've thought about that, but i am pretty sure i disagree. My life tells me a different story. With each new place I have travelled to, with each new person I have loved, I feel my cpacity for love growing rather than diminishing. Sure, I don't have te energy to keep up with everyone-- I am out of touch with too many people from Argentina, from Mexico, from SUA, even from right here in Delhi. But I don't feel out of touch. I know I could pick up the phone tomorrow, and it would be like we had just talked. We would have a lot to tell in terms of filling each other in on news, but i don't think we'd feel for a moment that we havent talked in months. I'm not sure how that has happened, but I am glad it has. It keeps me from getting lonely. I feel lucky to have so many SUCH beautiful people in my life.

I could ramble forever once you get me started on this topic, but I think I'll goeat dinner now. I have an especially challenging workshop session early tomorrow morning, so I want my full night's rest! Hope to find time for some more meaningful writing/ blogging this weekend.

Life Lessons Learned at the Pottery Wheel

1. Patience. Rush, and the clay is sure to collapse.
2. Trust the process, even when you can't see immediate results. It's quite incredible how you keep thinking the clay isn't rising at all, and how you suddenly find that it did rise. You're never quite sure when or how. and if you are me, you often think that this one is just not happening, until it does.
3. Starting right is crucial: If you haven't got the clay properly centered when you begin, forget about completing the pot. As a beginner, I thought of centering as just an annoying little ritual before the real work of pottery began. Over time, I realized that proper centering is at least half the real work of pottery
   
4. Small mistakes have huge repercussions. Leave in one air bubble while kneading the clay, and your perfectly shaped pot will collapse, either while you are making it or (worse) in the kiln.
   
5. A second's carelessness can undo hours of work: So you have the perfect pot, 12 inches high, beautifully straight sides. And then you pull too fast just once. The top spins off center, your pot collapses. You have to focus throughout, or there's no way you'll complete it.
6. With practice, almost any mistake can be remedied: I don't know what to do when my pot has spun completely off center, but my teacher can pull it back together almost effortlessly. And today, I was able to do that a couple of times too (of course, the "almost" is key-- for instance, an air bubble is an air bubble is an air bubble).
7. You know more than you think you know. After more than a year away from the wheel, I was convinced I had forgotten how to use it. But the moment I sat down at it, my hands just knew what to do. The body has an amazing memory.
8. No matter what, you can always start over. So, make your mistakes and have your fun. When one pot is beyond repair, you can recycle that clay and begin another new one, with new hopes for how high it'll go, new confidence if how beautiful it'll be. You may be right, or you may be wrong, but what counts is that the process is fun.
   

Nanu's illness

My Grandpa (Nanu) had a stroke yesterday. Fortunately we caught it really early and rushed him to hospital immediately (despite his objections that he was really ok and didn't need help! Nanu!), and so the damage seems to have been minimal. As of now, it's mostly that he cannot raise his right hand, and the docs are still hopeful that this, too, could heal. Although given his age and other medical complications, it will probably be a very long time.

I stayed with him in the ER for most of the day, having sent my grandma home to rest because she was exhausted, physically and emotionally, from the last few years' battles against illness. And at some point there, i had a weird realization: this is the first time I have stayed alone with a relative in hospital. In fact, it is the first time in my (somewhat) adult life that i have been to hospital because someone in the family was ill: roles have usually been reversed, or like last year, I have usually been out of town.

Now, have I mentioned that I hate hospitals? That smell... youknow how they say that smell is the sense most closely connected to memory? Well, I have a LOT of not so great memories that I associate with the smells of hospitals... even the ones that try to look all sparkly clean, they only nauseate me further because, really, what are they trying to hide? And who are they kidding? As we were wheeling nanu from the ER towards the ICU, I had a faint sense of deja vu, remembering a time 3 1/2 years ago, in another hospital in another country, where I was the patient. That hospital corridor had been dimly lit. Someone was pushing the wheelchair, and I was dizzy from all the drugs. I remember the distinct feeling of being alone in an enormous maze, with just one person pushing me along, but I wasn’t scared. Just curious, in a dazed sort of way. Just wondering at how large the place was and whether the corridors ever ended.

They did end. The strong smell of antiseptic made me gag, woke me up a little. And then, for the first time that day, the fear set in. Not for long, though, in only a moment, I was in the operation theater. I had a moment to wonder at how tiny the place looked. I felt that operation theaters—places where, every day, people walk that thin line between life and death—ought to be grander. Shouldn’t there be a little more ceremony to the place from which many people walk out with entirely changed lives and some people walk out of life itself? The drab white and blue walls didn’t do it.

I thought the same yesterday as I stood by Nanu's bed in the ICU. The room was a mess, gowns scattered here and there. Noises, all kinds of noises, noises i don't often hear and didn't want to know more about. His sheets were clean white, but other than that, nothing in the room made it seem like the kind of place where so many people's lives are saved, so many lives are altered, and some lives are lost, probably every day. Is it only in movies and books that the scene is supposed to match, somewhat, with everything going on in it? 'Cos these rooms sure don't.

It was weird, seeing nanu there. I know it was weird for him too. He coudn't understand being the one taken care of, me being the person taking care. You see, I'm still his little girl (he still never calls me Aditi but prefers "TM," which is short for "Teenie Meenie" or "Toofan Mail," depending on his mood! And, even through my teenage years, even at 23, I've never minded that particular nickname... I think that's a pretty good summary of our relationship!). He kept apologizing for the "trouble" he was causing, but how could I explain that he, of all people, could never be troublesome?

We are talking of the man who gladly woke up at 2 or 3 AM to peel pomegrantes for his troublesome little grandchildren (my brother and me!) when we were a few years old. This is the one man who I always knew was on my side; if my brother bullied me, he was the first to scold him; if my grandmother turned down a treat I wanted, he was the first to grant me it anyway; when my grandmother's desperation to marry me off starts getting on my nerves, he's the first to change the subject.When I was little, he would often sit me on his knee and tell guests that i was his favorite granddaughter, and i would reply, "how many granddaughters do you have?". "Just one," he'd admit, "but you're still my favorite." One day, he said "grandchild" instead of "granddaughter," but I automatically responded "How many do you have?". "Three" he said, looking at me with an earnestness that I haven't forgotten, some 13 or 14 years after the fact. And yesterday, this man was apologizing for the fact that i spent an afternoon reading at his bedside? How could I even respond to that?

And yet, when he said those words, I knew suddenly that yes, I am his granddaughter. Those would be, often are, my exact thoughts (and, sometimes, words) when the situation is reversed, when I am the one lying helpless in bed. Not to him in particular, but to my caregivers in general. I don't think it's a good or even a healthy frame of mind at that time, but it is mine, and his too apparently. I don't know why, but that sameness was comforting... that sense that despite everything, in some ways we are exactly the same.

The talk of caregivers brings me back again to the operation theater i started writing about earlier. When I awoke from the anesthesia a few hours later, I was shivering and I kept asking for more blankets. I asked the nurse why I felt so cold, and she replied, “Well its not like you have several layers of clothing on in the operation theater, you know.” Not a very comforting answer, but oh well, it would have to do. I slipped back into sleep.

The nurse came back: “Who is accompanying you?”

“A friend.”

“Is she a good friend?”

I thought for a while but was still too fuzzy to analyse the merits of this friend. But she did drive me to the hospital, so I figured she must be good. I said, “Yes, I think so.”

“You think so? Is she or is she not a really close friend?”

This was getting exhausting. I mumbled that she was, although I wasn’t sure yet.

“Okay!” the nurse sounded relieved. Next thing I knew, she asked my friend to come into the room and dress me. Oh, close enough, I supposed.

Interesting the way relationships and definitions change when someone is sick, huh?

November

I just gave someone my blog address claiming that i blog here "fairly regularly" and then that felt like a lie in recent weeks, so I was forced to come here and write something!

No, don't ask me for an update. I have been avoiding blogging and emailing (and even writing my diary, strangely enough) because too much has happened in the last 2 months, and writing about it is like being asked to process it. Don't want to go there, don't want to reflect on CLAP, don't want to process the madness of the few weeks that preceded it, so we'll sum it up as "It went well, much better than I had expected." Unfortunately, I was too stressed out making it happen to actually be able to enjoy it fully... still, i know that the experience was enjoyable and powerful for the participants (I still get SMSes and emails and calls about how much they miss those 4 days together!), so that's satisfying. I think I will write more about the Writing workshop at another time, though... that was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life... so you will hear more soon, jsut not yet.

Today, I went to the Daryaganj book bazaar with Dad. This is a Sunday used-books and used-stationery market that takes place on the pavement outside closed shops in one of the busiest areas of Old Delhi. It's a delight. I picked up lots of books at Rs. 20 or 3o each... but mostly it's jsut a pleasure to watch this place. The variety of stuff you'll see there is simly mindblowing-- I saw everything from Shakespeare and Ovid, to Jane Austen and Dickens, to Da Vinci Code and Sweet Valley. Even more interesting, I saw a book called "How to start a business in Georgia" (exactly what a random Delhi book browser would need, no?), one called "Robotic Science for traders" (still trying to figure out why a trader would need to know robotic science), and another called "How to really love your child" (anyone who buys that one must be beyond help!). It's a relaxed but exciting way to spend you Sunday morning, picking out your favorite books, then just thinking about all the books there and who must buy them...

Still thinking about other things like friendship and trust, although in different ways than what I wrote about a couple of entries ago. my close friends have long accused me of naivete, but i like to think i'm just innocently trustful. They are right, and I am too... I'm just not sure where the line should be drawn.

Another completely random jump: J, a close friend from SUA, visited me for a couple of weeks recently (she just went home on the 6th). It was the first time I introduced a non-Indian friend to my home, my life, the madness that is India. I had fun, and I think she did too. But also, I really got to see India through the eyes of a foreigner. If you read my entries in Feb- April of this year, you know that I was already feeling like I am looking at home from an outsider's perspective, but this time round was different. When I look through the phtographs she took, I am amazed at how I woudl never have taken half the same photos! So much that was new and strange to her was too normal to me for me to even consider photos. But when I look at it now, it's new (on that note, J, if you are reading this, one of the bulls that hung around in the lane behind my house died today, not sure how :(... just saw it as i was leaving for pottery today).

It was cool though, exploring Delhi like this. For the first time in years, I went inside the Lotus temple. For the first time ever, I went inside the Jama Masjid. And to all my Delhi friends who havent been to either, GO! I was amazed by the complete sense of peace inside both those places, especially Jama Masjid, given that it is surrounded by some of the most crowded and noisy streets you can imagine. There's something about buildings that are 5 or 6 centuries old, I tell you... the temperature drops by a few degrees, the noise gets shut out, and suddenly you really feel transported to a different place altogether. Beautiful.

OK, this is perhaps the most incoherent entry I have written in a while. At least I am back to blogging. Hope to write something more meaningful in a few days, now that CLAP is over and I have a life again :)

Goodbyes

CLAP-- the program at work that has ruled my life for the last few weeks-- is finally over. I saw the last group off on Friday night, and since then, have been sleeping or reading, too exhausted to do much else. I think it went well (the workshop, at least), but don't ask me more about it just now because i am yet to absorb it all and still too fatigued to reflect!

Yesterday i said goodbye to one more friend who has just moved to South India because of some family and work issues. Now just one close friend remains in Delhi, everyone else has moved out. It's weird, realizing that. The last 18 months or so have been full of SO many goodbyes-- saying goodbye to my class at SUA, saying goodbye to all the amazing people and places i fell in love with in Mexico, saying goodbye to SUA and everyone there in December, saying goodbye to Mongolia after just those brief weeks, and then moving back home thinking that all those goodbyes were behind me only to find that, one by one, my close friends are all leaving Delhi for different reasons! It's weird, unsettling. Even though I am used to not seeing some of these people for lengths of time (thanks to my years away), it's strange to be in Delhi without them... Delhi feels incomplete. With each goodbye, I am more aware that the Delhi I left 5 years ago will never be here again. Not sure if that is good or bad, but it is.

That also makes me think about the last day of CLAP-- the goodbye day. These kdis had only been together for 3-4 days, but you would never have guessed that by the emotional outbursts at farewell time. One little girl, all of 11 years old, cried every time someone left to catch their train... given that she was in the last group to leave, that meant the poor thing broke down about 8 times that day! Watching her, watching them all, I wondered what these 4 days together would mean years from now... how would they look back? Given the way they are all from different parts of the country and may of them will possibly-- even probably-- never see one another again, what will this brief intersection of their life paths, or our life paths, mean? For many of the outstation particiapnts, this was their first time leaving their villages/ towns; for all the Delhi kids, this was the first time interacting with children from rural India. They started off polarized, but somewhere down the line they did become friends... they all hugged and kissed each other at goodbye time... what will these brief friendships mean years from now? Many of these kids have no internet access, won't be able to stay in touch as easily as I am used to with my friends... will the brevity of this encounter make it more important or less important? It's hard to say... only time can tell, and perhaps it won't tell either. But I can't help think now of all the people I met briefly, for a few moments or days or weeks, and wonder what those encounters did for me... even I am not sure, how could I expect anyone else to be?

writing about friendship

More than two years ago, when I was doing my "advanced writing" independent study with Jim, he offered me rather simple but hilarious advice: Don't write about God, love, or loss. And if you must, keep it in your journal for a few years, come back and look at it then and decide whether there's anything fresh there.

Haha, Jim, you were right as far as craft goes, too much has already been written about all that, and too much of it is cliched. But the fact is that, for me, writing about love and loss (God, not so much!) is the only way I know how to deal with either. So although the writing may be cheesy and cliched, the emotion is real; the piece may not be publication-worthy, but it might still be the most important thing I could write (like when I wrote about Nana's death and could share that poetry with Mom and masi... could anything have been more important than celebrating his life, together with the family, through my own life?).

On the same note, here I go about love. Or, more specifically, friendship (which is, after all, a kind of love). For many years now, and increasingly so each day, friendship has become one of the most important things in my life. I'm right now recovering from a hard few weeks, which i will not detail here, but which have really made me once again appreciate just how lucky i am to have the kinds of friends i have. I have also often been annoyed by how little is written about friendship as compared to how much is written about love.

So here is a first draft of a piece about friendship, dedicated of course to all of you, but written specifically to my closest friend of 8 years, who has seen me through madness i cannot recount and somehow (I don't think either of us knows how!) pulled me through... especially in this last week, that friendship has worked magic in my life. To my writerly friends, please don't bother with critique, because this is a draft and needs loads and loads of work before it is a poem. But the emotion i want to convey is in the now and can't wait for the editing process!

And you, I know you will be embarrassed to death by this, but what the heck, you're learning to deal with me, aren't you? ;)

The journey from "I know"
to "I admit to not knowing,"
from silent understanding
to the silence that says
I do not, cannot, understand,
but I am there for you anyway.

The journey from that first conversation,
you begging me to put down the phone
because 5 minutes was more than you could talk.
The journey to the most recent one,
3 hours and counting, and you didn't tire
(I never tire of talking anyway).

The journeys across time and space
and worlds that weren't big enough
to accommodate us both. And
the journey to stretch the universe,
despite the detours and the landslides
and the milestones that lied.

Simone Weil wrote "friendship is not
to be sought, not to be dreamed, not
to be desired; it is to be exercised (it
is a virtue)." And Marie Howe insists
"Love is action."

Simone also wrote that friendship
is "a miracle... And the miracle
consists simply in the fact
that it exists ."

I do not know enough
to contest, so i will believe
my poet friends, and let
this action, this friendship,
hang over me like a miracle
that
simply
exists.

Teaching Peace?

I’ve been wondering lately about that one, about whether it is possible (it better be possible, or what would I have studied for and be working for and be dreaming for? Yeah, it better be, but is it?). Don’t get me wrong—I do believe that children can be encouraged to look at conflicts positively, encouraged to empathize more and judge less, given the tools to resolve the conflicts they face non-violently, and above all, helped to grow into happy, healthy adults who feel no need for violence. Yes, I do believe all of that.

But it’s a blind, hopeful kind of belief. Do I believe it because I have seen its results, or do I believe it simply because I want to? A little of both, I think. I have seen its results on a personal level, so I believe it. But at the societal level? There, I think it’s more that I really want to believe or else I would lose all hope, so I believe it. I guess we haven’t had enough, conscious peace education for there to be empirical evidence of its success. Or if there is some, I just haven’t come across it yet.

Ironically, the book that most convinces me that education for peace is possible is one called “Education for death.” A book about the Nazi system of education, going all the way through school and college, beginning right from the maternity homes where single, pregnant women who could certify that their child was “Pure Aryan” lived under the government’s care (what we now call “illegitimate” children were then known as “children of the State” and treated accordingly). This book is a scary read, yet very hard to put down. I read it cover-to-cover in one day, and I had nightmares that night.

But they were strange nightmares. While I was asleep, I didn’t even realize that it was a nightmare; that realization came only when I awoke. The dream, in brief was this: I am standing by the roadside, watching people around me getting killed, and I feel nothing. No fear, no sympathy, no emotion. Nothing. That’s what I mean when I say it wasn’t a nightmare while asleep, only when I woke up did I realize just what a horrible nightmare it was, this feeling nothing.

The book was published in 1942, at the height of Hitler’s power. The author was an American educator who had somehow managed access to Nazi schools before the war began. Throughout the book, and especially in the epilogue, the author’s panic is obvious. One sentence from that book has stayed with me: “They say that nationalism can’t be taught; well, Hitler is teaching it. He is creating fanatics, can we at least create believers?” Of course, this book itself talks in the context of the 2nd world war era, and the author is looking for ways to teach “democracy and freedom,” apart from nationalism, to American students. But it isn’t the specific value that interests me in the light of my work; it is the belief in the sheer power of education.

Hitler successfully used education (amongst other forms of propaganda) to teach war and hatred. Super-systematically, too; I remember examples of Math questions like “If there are currently X number of Germans and Y number of Jews in Germany, and if the Jews are multiplying at the rate of Z, how many years before the Jews take over Germany?”. It doesn’t matter what those figures are like or whether they are accurate—the point is that it’s an utterly twisted but pretty brilliant form of persuasion. Again, Hitler could teach war so effectively; we should be able to teach peace at least as effectively. He does, at least, attest to the power of a well thought out educational system… I can’t believe I think there’s anything to be learned from Nazi education, but it does reassure me that education is very powerful. What we do with that power, then, is where the battle lies.

So, Hitler created fanatics for his cause; can we at least create believers for ours?

PS:

Just in case the last few posts make it seem like I have no life beyond work, I want to tell you that
a) It's true. I don't, really. Even though I work part-time. Kind of sad, huh?
b) It's not entirely true. I started going for a pottery workshop near my house this weekend. Felt rather spoiled, being used to an electric wheel at SUA and all... came home sore from all the kicking at the manual wheel. But still, it was good to get my hands (and clothes and sneakers and everything else) dirty again. And to realize that once you learn to work with clay, you don't forget (I was afraid I had). I mean, sure, you can forget specific techniques, but your hands develop a certain memory-- centering clay, for instance, isn't something I think about now. It just happened. Kind of like riding a bicycle, I guess. Or the way you can't forget how to float/ swim once you learn (OK, I know one person who did, but she's just weird! ;)). Interesting, isn't it, this way that the body has of developing a certain memory? I'm fascinated by the human body!

That's all! Just adding a little disclaimer so I seem like a real person not just a worker! :)

Since I told you all (or is it just Wendy? :P) about that workshop-y dilemma, I feel I should fill you in on what happened during the workshop... so here's parts of an update i send everyone at work about possibly the msot powerful workshop I have facilitated!

As many of you know, I am currently doing a pilot of a “Creative Writing for Personal and Social Change” module with a group of 11^th std. students. It’s basically a workshop where we use the lens of creative writing to explore some of the same issues that we tackle in FMTW (Self-exploration, identities and stereotypes, verbal and non verbal communication, etc.). There are also some specific sessions on “Point of view” (examining how stories change depending on whose point of view they are told from) as well as a short one on politics of language (using a short memo from Nazi Germany to look at how language can be used to dehumanize).

This Monday, we were supposed to do characters and identities… but after Saturday’s blasts, I felt unable to just go on as normal, pretending that nothing had changed in the interval between the two workshops. So I pushed identities back by a day and did “Point of view” and “Building empathy” on Monday. Over the weekend, I was able to find several powerful write-ups: an HT Sunday editorial called “Please, let me be moved” (talking about how the author cannot fully comprehend a tragedy like the Bihar floods unless it is scaled down to individual experiences), an Indian Express story about the blasts that was starting to tell the stories of some of the individuals who were affected, some really powerful poetry written after September 11, and a letter that the parents of one Sept 11 victim sent to the media about how they didn’t want the USA to respond with more violence and inhumanity.

We started the session by writing “letters to the universe,” drawing upon a personal experience of loss, and helping the universe to heal. The sharing was very intense—some cried, some were silent, and some spoke powerfully about the death of a sibling, a pet’s death, losing a friend, parents getting divorced. We then used all this material to talk about loss in the context of the Delhi blasts, the Bihar floods, and the violence in Orissa… making the connection that, if this (their writing) is what one loss feels like, what do the tragedies mean now?

Before the workshop began, I was a little nervous about the design… it was put together just on Sunday, and I wasn’t sure how the kids would respond to a sudden change in syllabus (they had all brought stories from the previous day and we were supposed to work on those). But I needn’t have worried. Clearly, they wanted to talk about what had happened… many expressed fear or insecurity, one girl talked about her experience of the chaos in CP (she was there when the blasts happened), and many others talked about friends/ family who were supposed to be there at the time but cancelled for some reason. Quickly, that conversation led to a questioning of what the experience must have been like for those who were there… and for the people who knew them (the Sept. 11 poems—especially one called “first writing since” helped make the emotional experience more immediate). One boy talked about how he also wanted to know what the experience must be like for the bombers; he wanted to know their stories and their reasons for doing something like this. We had an incredible conversation about how “it’s hard to hate someone when you know their story,” and the kids are now going to write about human stories behind violence and loss (and that boy is writing from the perspective of the bombers!). They are basically going to respond to the editorial “Please, let me be moved” with a series of essays/ stories/ poems called “Please, sir, be moved.” At the end of Monday’s workshop, the children thanked me in a way that they never had before… I realized, then, how important that particular workshop had been for them as well as for me.

I guess the main reason I came away so moved was that I realized adolescent need to talk about these issues; in general, they seemed to want to talk about them… but they didn’t have the space to do so in school. I realized just how powerful the simple question “What is the human story behind the statistics?” was for them, and how it was already something at the back of their mind somewhere… they just needed someone to ask it and give them a few examples to start thinking about it collectively. I guess it made the work we do so much more meaningful for me personally.

So, all in all, the experiment worked!

Teaching peace in the wake of the blasts

Now that I have had time to begin getting my mind around what happened in New Delhi yesterday, and has been happening all over the country and world for a long time, I have started thinking about tomorrow's workshop. I'm smack in the middle of my "Writing for Change" workshop series, and tomorrow we were supposed to talk about storybook characters, identities, and stereotypes, apart from workshopping stories of learning moments. We just finished brainstorming about it all on Friday, and lots of students were excited about the stories they would bring to the table (well, the floor; we don't have tables in our workshop space!).

Then, the bomb blasts happened.

I cannot go back tomorrow and act if nothing changed. I cannot resume workshop as normal. I cannot even just do the symbolic moment of silence and then move on with the preset design.

At the end of James' "Cultures of learning" class in my last semester at SUA, I wrote a short essay about including children's lives in the classroom, about letting the world in. I wrote it from the points of view of many different themes we touched, and I do not remember very much about the essay except that it convinced me that any successful, meaningful classroom has to let the world in. I have to let the world in.

Of course, i try to do that anyway. The workshops are structured so as to include students' lives as much as possible, to use a discussion abotu characters to talk about stereotypes, to use a discussion abotu point of view to talk about opression and marginalization. Stuff like that. The world is definitely a part of this writing workshop.

But, right now, I'm talking about a more urgent sense of letting the world in. I'm talking about processing and dealing with what happened this weekend.

After hearin the news yesterday, I messaged several of my colleagues and friends, asking after their families, and sending them love. With only one exception, everyone who replied said, "Everything's fine!" and asking me about mine. My family is OK too but I couldn't say "Everything's fine!". Because, of course, it isn't.

I am guessing that will be the overwhelming mood in the workshop tomorrow as well... unless someone there lost someone they know in the blasts, many will respond that everything's fine, that they were not affected by these blasts. But if I leave it at that, I will defeat the whole purpose of the intervention-- showing them that we are all affected, that these common spaces are our spaces too, and that we cannot isolate ourselves from one another's pain (incidentally, the only person who replied to yesterday's message saying "I can't talk right now, it's all too depressing" was the woman who founded the organization I work for).

So I'm now struggling to redesign tomorrow's workshop. I think of writing and drama as uniquely placed to build empathy... I need to draw upon that power now. I think of writing as uniquely placed to process emotions and regain a sense of control... I need to draw upon that as well. I've spent all morning reading about how different educators in the USA responded to September 11 in their classrooms. I can't find any Indian resources on responding to such incidents (ironic, given that we have experienced terrorism for decades befroe the average American heard of it... why have we not worked enough on building capacities for peace?). I don't know how, exactly, to design an adequate workshop session for tomorrow, but I will do something towards that end, even if it keeps me up all of tonight.

It is a little scary though. What if there emerge emotions and ideas that I am not equipped to deal with? What if I am unable to come up with something that works, and thereby end up cuasing more harm than good... getting them all upset about the blasts but not in any way empowering them to speak out for peace? What if they simply get irritated that I am not sticking to the syllabus I had promised them and I lose the ability to carry the group along?

I don't know.

But here's what I do know: I can live with having worked really hard on this fresh workshop design structure and failing to deliver it well enough. I cannot live with not even having tried.

So, kids, tomorrow we'll still talk about "point of view" in our writing, but I'm afraid you are in for a surprise in terms of what we actually talk about!

Serial blasts in Delhi

I had a lot to write about this afternoon-- stuff I thought was important. Then, just as I was sitting down at my desk to write, my grandmother called. She knew I had been out most of the day and was panicking. Bomb blasts in 3 major markets in New Delhi this afternoon-- 2 that I frequent. Everyone is still n... different news channels have completely different reports of number of blasts and number of casualties. But there seem to have been at least 5 blasts, killing at least 18 people. Now, just keeping one's fingers crossed and praying that neither of those numbers goes up.

Each time one of these things happen, the world turns upside down for a while. Sent out about 30 phone messages... asking after people and their families, telling people who didn't yet know about the blasts to stay home and take care. But other than that, felt helpless. What can you do? What can I do? Except wait and watch?

Nothing I wanted to write about before this news feels important anymore. Or... it does. But I don't want to write about it. Not today, not now. Maybe later. Writing about other things, as if nothing happened today, feels like a sacrilege. Is this why we honor such mishaps moments of silence... by stopping for a moment, by letting this be the most important thing that happened even if just for that moment?

I finally got too depressed watching the news over and over so swtiched to some music thingy Mom wants to watch. What's the point of following this minute-by-minute? And yet, i feel guilty for not doing so. I feel guilty continuing with work or doing anything else right now... I'm more ok sitting around in a daze because that, in some weird way, feels like a moment of mourning. I need to mourn.

Maybe tomorrow I'll go back to telling you the stories I hoped to tell today. Maybe tomorrow I'll pretend life is back to normal. But I hope I don't forget the moments during which it isn't normal... and the fact that it will never again be normal for at least 18 families. My heart goes out to you all, and although I don't know you, I am sending you lots of love, prayers, and positive energy. Let's hold together...

Learning to blink

A visit to my eye doc today revealed something that both annoys and fascinates me immensely, so thought I'd share.

Over the last few weeks (especially but perhaps not only) after my recent surgery, I'm finding that my mornings are ok but my vision tends to blur and the eye starts hurting by the evening. Right after doing anything invasive to a graft, all those kinds of things become concern areas (on a constant lookout for early telltale signs of graft rejection), so brought this up at the doctor's today. He checked for rejection, lack of healing, wounds reopening blah blah blah and everything was normal. But my complaints persisted.

After being flummoxed for a while, he started asking questions about what helps the vision get back to normal when this happens and which time of the day it happens... until he finally hit upon the problem: I'm not blinking.

Here's how it goes: during transplants, the nerve endings always get cut, and while other healing is relatively quick, nerves take a long time to reconnect, if they ever do (3 1/2 years after my skin graft on the arm, I still can't feel heat or cold in that area... somehow I hadn't made the connection that the same thing could happen to the eye). So, my eye doesn't register the slight burning sensation that occurs when you haven't blinked in a while.It isnt something you think about in a normal eye: the eye registers dryness and you blink as a reflex... about every 5 seconds, apparently. My eye doesn't register the dryness and so I don't blink until the eye gets really dry and hurts a lot and messes up my vision.

Why do I find that fascinating? Well, think about it. No medication can help this particular problem, and none is needed either. All I need to do is blink. Blink every 5 seconds, and this part of my problem should be fine. Sounds so astonishingly simple to fix. But is so incredibly difficult. How on earth can anyone remind themselves to blink every five seconds of every day? It's one of those moments when I simply marvel at the human body. But also find myself stuck in what I can only describe as a cruel riddle: how do you learn to do something that you do unconsciously, when your unconscious mind doesn't register the need to do it but your conscious mind knows it to be vitally important?

I'll give out a prize for the most creative solution!

I have nothing to write about, really. Am just bored and fidgety and decided to do this instead of annoying my mother or keeping my dog awake against her will. Ain't I nice?

So, in some totally random reading i was doing just now, i found the following sentence by a certain Julian Barnes: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." I don't know why, exactly, but I'm thinking about this sentence, trying to wrap my mind around it because I understand what he's saying. Not about God, though. I don't miss God. But I do miss other things that I don't believe in either. Like perfect people. I miss the people I once (long ago!) looked up to as absolutely perfect, too good to be true. Most of them were teachers, but some were friends or other random people I met. I'd think they were so perfect, and so I'd try getting to know them further and deeper... only to find, of course, that they aren't perfect. And yet I miss thinking that they were. I also miss being completely at home somewhere. Again, I dont know if I ever have been that... maybe in my early childhood in the mountains, but at least since I was seven, home was always "here but there too"... the particular heres and theres have changed several times and gotten more convoluted over the years, but both have always existed. And still, I miss being completely at home somewhere.These are two of many examples that come to mind, but there are many more... and they form a certain sense of loss... of having lost something that doesn't exist. It isn't a bad feeling, just a sort-of emptiness... actually, that guy put it well... it's like missing something. Makes you feel a little empty at its absence but also makes you smile at its memory. Bittersweet.

I also miss a part of myself that may never have existed... or perhaps she has for a few moments or days here and there, not much more. Should I describe her to you? She's the part of myself that I like thinking of as writerly, although she may not actually be writing. She's someone very closely in touch with the natural world... someone who remembers the joys of my childhood by the river and trekking through mountains, someone who hasn't lost touch with all that. She is humble and gentle because how can one not be if one is so closely in touch with nature, especially with nature on a scale as majestic as the Himalayas? (Sarah Wider pointed out teh the root of the word "humble" derives from the Latin hummus-- earth. She also pointed out that this may be the root of the phrase "being down to earth"). She's also closely, deeply in touch with other people and their stories. She knows the power of imagination. She wakes up every morning believing in the beauty of the people and the world and the work that she does. don't know if that me has ever existed; I know she hasn't existed for more than a few hours or, at most, a couple of days at a time. But I miss her. I feel that same bittersweet emptiness mixed with nostalgia without her.

Haha, I'm not making any sense, am I? Oh well, as I warned you right in the beginning of this post, I had nothing in particular to say, was just shaking of fboredom and fidgetiness. I'm ready to go do something a little more useful with my evening now!

What a two weeks since I last blogged!

First, went to Shimla for the long weekend. For my non-Indian readers, Shimla is a hill town about 8 hours from Delhi. I spent my babyhood in Shimla, and my mom has spent many years of her life there, having gone to school there as well as lived there for many years later. We both needed to get away from Delhi for a few days, and we both absolutely love the HImalayas, so a trip that side was decided upon.

I did have my doubts, though. One keeps reading about how Shimla has gotten so touristy and dirty and everything. Which it has-- parts of it. But, I found to my great delight, many of the roads in Shimla are still non-motorized and construction is prohibited there. So, if you know where to go (and fortunately not that many tourists do know!), you can come across many beautiful walks through pine forests and old, colonial buildings. Like going back in time. It was such a lovely break from work and the city and everything.

I got back to Delhi on the 18th, all charged up for work again... but only ended up being in office for two days. On Wednesday, another stitch broke in my eye, the area around got septic, and I went into surgery on Thursday. More weird stuff happened during the operation; i'll skip the gory details, but I basically landed up in bed and lots of pain for the next 5-6 days. Lots of sleep, lots of painkillers (the doctor even prescribed me wine! I don't like wine, but i must admit that i felt like i were in one of those old English novels where they do things like that and it felt rather cool... i have never been prescribed wine before!), lots of pampering. But no, not much fun. I was glad to open the eyes again a week later. Am still dealing with some discomfort, but believe the worst is over.

Illness makes me think. And dependence makes me humble. When was the last time you exclaimed with joy at eating a whole meal by yourself? When was the last time you boasted to your mother (or anyone!) that you got out of bed and brushed your teeth all by yourself? And if you even remember a time when you did, do you remember the last time someone took you seriously when you said that? Well, try a few days without opening your eyes or doing anything, really, because of the pain. Suddenly, little everyday acts become achievements, milestones on the road to recovery. Kind of cool, actually. Don't get me wrong, I'm not romanticizing dependence-- it's one of my worst nightmares!-- but it does have its upside.

Being ill is also such a wonderful excuse to catch up with friends you haven't seen in a while. I was really glad of the chance to have visitors and touch base on where our lives have gone since we all started working and got too busy for our too-long phone calls and regular coffee dates. One friend in particular, whom I have known since I was seven, suddenly became so much closer and more comfortable to talk to because of the way he was there when i most needed him to be. I guess that's the other upside-- after each such episode, I come out with a clearer and deeper sense of gratitude and love for all the amazing people I call my friends.

Oh well, despite those upsides, i'm glad the last two weeks are over now. Back at work from today, and thinking how I can NOT afford to fall sick again, at least till November. There's just too much to be done, and i don't have time to waste in bed anymore. Universe, are you listening?

Who are you?

BTW, since I have added a counter to my blog, I have realized that people are reading this thing... about 25 hits in the last couple of days! I'm impressed!

Will you now come out and tell me who you are? Especially since I discovered how many people at Pravah have my blog address, I'm super curious to know who actually reads this thing!

PS: Wendy, you don't count! ;)

musings at traffic lights

At New Delhi’s traffic signals, you can buy anything: pirated books, discounted magazines, clumsy Chinese toys, blessings of various gods and goddesses, sunshades for your car, an acrobatic performance by young children, copies of the Bhagavad Gita, boxes of tissue, bright yellow dusters, flowers picked up from graveyards, slices of coconut, booklights—you name it. Someone I hear about is even planning to teach street children enough poetry so that they can sell poems at traffic lights! I’m always amazed at the variety of things, and at the way any new hot sale item finds its way to almost all South Delhi traffic lights simultaneously. I marvel at the ingenuity and the excellent business sense behind the steering wheel covers in the hot summer months and behind the little children who try to shove The Cosmopolitan down my throat because, apparently, I look like a woman who reads and, apparently, women who read must read that magazine. Who thinks of these things, I sometimes wonder; how do they pick these things up? I hardly ever buy anything at traffic lights, but I do sometimes enjoy the sheer variety of this “street market” in the most literal sense possible.

Today, though, I saw a new one that made me very sad.

An old, hunched over gentleman was selling little Indian flags. Independence Day is around the corner, and my first thought when I saw those was of our Independence Day celebrations in school, for which we were all expected to paint little flags to bring to the auditorium and wave on command. Some of us painted them, others made life simpler by using colored paper strips, and still others bought ready-made flags very like the ones the old man was selling at the traffic light today.

After that initial moment of nostalgia, though, I was struck by the profound irony of the situation. This old gentleman, too old even to walk comfortably, was dodging traffic and jumping onto the road every time the light turned red in an effort to sell a few flags… to this man, what do 61 years of independence mean? To him, and millions of others like him, whom India had failed in so many ways, what does holding that flag mean? I don’t understand flags in general, but if it’s true that waving your flag high is an expression of pride in your country, what reason does this old man have to be proud of India?

Maybe I am being patronizing; maybe he has a lot of reasons to be proud of this country, maybe I should stop wondering about the thoughts of someone whose life I do not understand. But then again, if I stopped wondering about other people’s thoughts, I would no longer have a reason to write!

Diary readings

It's a rainy day, and I'm curled up in my chair reading old diary entries. Specifically, I'm reading diary entries from my months in Argentina. A long lunchtime chat with a French intern at office today made me nostalgic, so I decided to go back.

Reading those long-ago entries is weird. I'm struck by how much I wrote about people and feelings, how little I wrote about places. Given that I was in my first experience of a truly foreign land, you'd think that I would spend a large part of my diary time documenting the place I was in and the new experiences I was having. But I hardly see any of that; my entires record the mundane; they talk about friends there just as I now talk about friends here, they talk about many of the same feelings as I talk about now... really, it would be easy not to even notice I was in a different world.

In some ways, I regret that because I feel I haven't recorded Buenos Aires enough. I want to go back and revisit those places in my head but i can't. Kind of like how, in my last weeks there, I woke up to the fact that I had almost no photos of the place and was then clicking like crazy. I still regret not having a photo of the Bus No. 152, which carried me everywhere. That bus is actually a huge part of my memories of Argentina.

In other ways, I feel it's ok because I recorded my experience of Buenos Aires. I may never have done all the requisite sightseeing, and if I did, I may not have written about it; I wrote mostly about things that could have happened anywhere else. I recorded my arguments with people and my frustration at being in the doctor's clinic and needing to communicate my medical history in Spanish. I recorded the ways friendships were formed, the ways they grew and changed. I recorded my struggles at university and the joy of turning in complete research papers in Spanish. And occasionally, I recorded a super-cute cafe, the world cup madness around me, or the time my host mother prepared me a killingly spicy meal because she felt so terrible watching me munch green chillies with bland food!

Well, then, I think. So what if all this (well, minus the world cup madness!) could have happened anywhere else in the world? It happened to me in Argentina. And it is the most important part of my Argentine experience, the part that shaped me and changed me, the part I carry in my heart.

I'm hoping to start working on a series of essays about "home" and about my many homes. I'm hoping to draw more on photographs and document more of the wonderful places I was lucky enough to live in. But even as I do so, I will now always know that somewhere in my diary, there is a very private definition of home for each of those places... a definition I couldn't possibly share or expect anyone else to understand, but it's what makes that place home.

Friendship Day

What is that anyway? Who decided we'd celebrate friendship on the first Sunday of every August? I always thought it was a Hallmark thing, but I jsut discovered (yay for Wikipedia!) that the US Congress declared it a holiday in 1935. Hmm, very interesting. I would love to read the bill/ listen to the speech that preceded the Congressional acceptance of friendship day as a national holiday. Was August just an arbitrary month, or was there a debate that led to its choosing? "We think friendship is somewhere between independence (1st week July) and hard work (1st weekend September)" or "Hmm, well January is New Years' Day, Feb is Valentine's, March is too soon after Valentines, May is Mother's Day, June if father's day, July is independence day, oh whatever, just throw it in August... no other big day coming up then, is there?" Hmm, I can feel a little story forming in my head about how the nation adopted Friendship day.

Anyway, sitting here in India, friendship day has never meant more than a few friendship bands in school, and mostly a Hallmark/ Archies phenomenon since. I don't think I ever appreciated Friendship Day before I went to Buenos Aires.

Argentines celebrate Friendship Day on July 20th, which happened to be just a few days before I was leaving the country at the end of my Study Abroad. Totally unaware that the day was Friendship Day, my friend Chris and I set out to have a last dinner together in that beautiful city. We had identified a restaurant we had been meaning to go to for many weeks, so we showed up there. All full. Oh well, we thought, we are in Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires that has at least one restaurant (and often more!) on every block. We'll find something. Nope. We walked for about-- what was it, Chris? 2 hours?. We went from restaurant to restaurant and cafe to cafe, but everyone looked at us incredulously: Today is friendship day, you should havemade your reservation weeks in advance! We finally lucked out at an all-you-can-eat Sushi place, where they only had a little table for two because most of the people waiting were in larger groups.

Later, Chris treated me to dessert at Persico's (oh, dear old Persico's! I miss that place!), and again we had some waiting to do. But we got to observe a most interesting phenomenon: every table, really, every single table, was same-sex. On an average day, if my gay best friend and I went out anywhere, we fit right in but were always mistaken for a couple (and he enjoyed that game enough to go around buying me red roses to get my host mom all worked up! Oh Chris, do you remember that kid who sold you a poem for me? :D). But that day, on friendship day, we stood out. Boys and girls aren't friends in Buenos Aires, which perhaps explained why, whenever I mentioned my "mejor amigo" in India, people would correct me by saying "'amiga', for a girl you would say 'amiga' not 'amigo'". Umm, thanks for the Spanish help, but I know what I'm saying.

Still, overall I liked the Argentina Friendship Day. It felt like an actual celebration, as important to them as Valentine's Day. Friendship seemed as important as love.

Ooh, but Argentina's rationale for Friendship Day is even more interesting. Check out this quote from Wikipedia: "The idea for Friend's Day goes back to Argentine teacher, musician, and dentist Enrique Febbraro, who lobbied to turn the anniversary of the first moon landing into an international day of friendship, along his Rotary Club de Once, in Buenos Aires. He argued that on this particular day, the whole world had been friends of the three astronauts. The first official recognition of the day came with decree No. 235/79 by the government of the province of Buenos Aires, which authorized the celebration and gave it official nature." Hahahaha, dear Argentina! Nowhere else could that rationale have emerged!

Anyway, since today is "Friendship Day," I'm going to take the opportunity for a shout out to all the friends reading this blog. To my dear friends in Delhi, in different parts of India, in Argentina, in Mexico, and to all the wonderful friends from the hill (some still there, most now scattered through the world), thank you so much for your friendship. The last few weeks have been rough, and I couldn't have made it through without all your love from different parts of the world. So thank you all for being a part of my life.

Thin lines

At Pravah, we talk a lot about "walking the thin line." In the last few days, I'm thinking about a lot of thin lines, especially ones that I talked about at length with Sarah Wider. If you are reading this, Sarah, those conversations from last year are informing these thoughts, and I would love to know how you respond.

The first is the thin line between the objective and the subjective. The line between being passionate about an issue and distancing yourself enough from it to be able to see it clearly. I've been thinking about this with respect to myself as well as many people around me, but on this blog, I'll keep the comments about myself.

I'm beginning to realize that it's hardest for me to work on issues really important to me. I have had all these big plans about working on the issue of disability, but I'm not sure I can do it effectively; it is simply too close to my heart. Little instances of insensitivity on the part of basically well-intentioned people (there have been a lot of these lately), little slip-ups and mess-ups, little thoughtless remarks or actions, are becoming painful... I don't know how to step back from them enough to understand or explain them rationally.

I've tried clarifying calmly a couple of times, but i've stopped since i didn't see much difference and since I didn't end up able to do it calmly. I've tried asking for things I need different from what other people need and explaining where I'm coming from, but I've more-or-less stopped doing that too because it hasn't made enough of a difference and because it's become too emotionally exhausting to always be making requests, always be asking people to go out of their way, and always be giving explanations.

That isn't "active citizenship." That is making my peace with the denial of what should be rights. That isn't what I would encourage the students in my workshop to do. I know all that.

But it's still my reality right now. It's relatively easy for me to speak up on behalf of others and their issues; it's hard for me to speak up for my own issues. And it's not just about work; it was at least as hard and possibly harder to fight the battle for disability rights at college. I'm trying to do it anyway, but it's making personal relationships a lot more complex; the more I sense someone's (unconscious but complete) insensitivity to chronic illness/ disability, the harder it is for me to get along with this person. Yes, it's important for me to separate the viewpoint from the person, but when the viewpoint seems to attack you personally even if the person doesn't know it, that's hard to do. So even as my head rationalizes and recognizes that the person in front of my doesn't necessarily know anything about the debilitating chronic illnesses I live with, my heart closes itself to her/ him for hurting me repeatedly, although unconsciously. I wish it weren't like that, but it is.

Why does this remind me of Sarah, though? Well, she and I had a fascinating conversation about the place of emotions (specifically anger, but others too) in intellectual discourse. We disagreed with the idea that emotions are somehow separate from our intellectual work (or any other work) and agreed that anything we did was only complete if every emotion of ours was in it. In my heart, I believe that. But that doesn't mean I'm ok with bursting into tears as I speak during a meeting because that's the kind of emotion that topic is bringing out. Is it then that i don't fully believe what Sarah and I talked about, or is it simply that I believe everything I have been taught about decorum and appropriate public behavior more than I believe that? I need to walk the thin line between bringing in and articulating my emotions, which I believe are integral to the issue, and not losing sight of the rational, objective understanding of where the other is coming from. I need to walk the thin line between listening to my head too much and listening to my heart too much.

Which, I guess is kind of linked to the next thin line-- the line between the private and the public. In some ways, this whole entry is intensely private and a part of me says it belongs in my journal, not on my blog. In other ways, this entry is intensely public, and the other part of me says this entry belongs on a public space because I truly wish someone else in this kind of situation had written about this (and i THANK the author of "the damaged self" for having the courage to write that book). When i started this blog, I knew I didn't want it to be a public account of private moments-- and if anyone were to compare my blog to my journal, they wouldn't find more than maybe 10% overlap. And yet, I'm finding that the divide isn't so clear.

But then again, how could the journey from self to society ever happen if some of the private didn't, sooner or later, become the public?