home alone

You can see the soul of the world in the eyes of these children. When they look out through slits in the walls of empty homes their faces fade back into the shadows, but pools of sunshine gleam from their obsidian pupils. They are sick and scared, but still they wonder about the world. A little boy brushes my hair back from my face and giggles at its softness. A girl holds my hand as we walk along the muddy streets. I don’t know whether she steadies me or I her.

Single mothers support all the families we meet and struggle to keep their children alive. They cannot possibly care for them and look for work. As Debbie tells a focus group, “Women are expected to do so much, but there is only so much that any one woman can do.” Many times, they lock the little ones in dark rooms with no windows. One explains the precautions she takes, “You put out the fire. You hide the matchbooks.” The houses are padlocked from the outside. There are no locks on the inside.

Most of the mothers cannot afford the 35 to 45 cents a day for child care. These women are all alone. There is no one to help them. They don’t discuss their problems; they don’t support each other. “They just do what they’re going to do”-- what they have to do to survive, and hopefully it is enough.

There are several nursery schools , pre-primary programs and day care centers in women’s homes that are run by compassionate and educated people. Handmade signs cover cracks and rusty nails on the walls. These are the only educational tools: one lists numbers using rows of bottle caps, many show pictures stitched in red string, and another, hanging crooked, has letters carefully traced on cardboard scraps. There are no books, no toys, no art supplies—few colors at all in the dark, cobweb covered classrooms.

We find children playing with modeling clay at one school. Each has a piece no larger than a nickel and is forming it into shapes. I thought they were making letters, “E” perhaps. But no, one tells me, “a dog.” There simply isn’t enough clay for the head and tail.

There are no swings and no slides, only dirt, brush and a goat eating garbage nearby. The headmaster explains, “during break they go to the field. It is not very accident free. The children are confined only here.”

Many students go to school not to learn but to eat. The government sponsors a feeding program for primary schools, and the children will at least get a bit of porridge each day. Many get nothing else. But the ECD programs get nothing. Schools rely on parents to pay the 200ksh fees. The tuition-just under $3 per month is used to feed the children and pay the teachers. Many parents cannot afford this. After months without paying and many false promises, the school is forced to send their children home. No one escorts them. The schools have no records of where they live, and it is not safe for teachers to venture into the slum. The children are just sent away. If they return—when they return—having found no one at home to let them in, their older siblings are pulled from classes to join them in the streets.

only so much

The air feels different immediately; it smells of dry grass and red earth and sinks in thick and stale on my white skin. The sun is brilliant and blinding, even this early, and a pale green butterfly passes over the tarmac. My body knows I’m finally here, in Africa.

As we crawl along towards Nairobi, towards work, so does the rest of this new world. Birds flock overhead and roost in trees by the hundreds-- beautiful, pure white egrets and strange scraggled vultures. Men and women walk in mud beside the road and dart through the traffic, moving with purpose. Some stop to wash in the shallow gully that winds along beside us. Others have already begun to tear at the tall bushes with long hoes.

It is only when we pull off the main highway and onto an unmarked road that leads to Kiandutu, the people’s settlement we’ve come to help, that I fully feel I have arrived. Every shack is different, pieced together from any and all available scraps: sheets of rusted tin with crooked nails protruding from bottle cap washers, rotten boards, cut brush, broken glass, shipping crates, cardboard, and mud, scribbled with advertisements or sketches , and crowned with knots of barbed wire. A sign along one wall reads ALTHOUGH DESPERATE WE ARE KIND BUT NOT WEAK.

Children are everywhere, more than I’ve seen in any village. They too appear to be pieced together with scraps of outgrown or handed down clothing, torn blankets, plastic bags, broken shoes, dirty lace petticoats. Some creep out into doorways or peer out through holes in walls and mother’s legs to watch us pass. Others chase the car and scream and smile and wave, skirting through garbage piles and cess pools with joy. Some are crying. Some are sick. Most are hungry. They are why we’ve come.

First we must confer with the village elders, to find out what has happened since we last spoke. One escorts us to the meeting place, Gerald, and tells us they “keep pushing on.” I enter the church with uncertainty, my eyes adjusting to dim light. A circle of men and women watch solemnly, waiting in patience for someone to begin. Our fearless leader Debbie gives them an update, states our purpose and what we hope will be theirs. Asks for questions. “They have not many questions. What they would like to see is that the children are taken care of.”

The first one we visit is dying and can no longer walk; he barely moves at all. Dennis has HIV. He is 3 and a half years old, but weighs just over 15lbs. He will not eat. I give him a lollipop, and after a few moments his hand opens, and it drops out onto his mother’s sandal, sticking straight up into the air. Later, she tries to give him water and he pours it onto the ground. He whines and scratches at his shirt until she opens it, exposing his rib cage and a chain necklace that dangles around his frail body. She holds him close, but his head falls back like a newborn. He cannot support its weight. We spend a long time convincing her to let us take him to emergency care. We tell her he can stay as little or as long as she likes. That he is not going there to die. We send him away with a social worker, and we pray that we have told her the truth.

The other families we visit are poor and hungry and weak but surviving. One blind grandmother cares for 5 children, who have been abandoned by both mother and father. One has an infection that appears to be eating her ear. She also has a disease in her eye, and it makes her seem to be always crying. Her brother has jiggers, and he balances awkwardly on one foot to scratch at the other, his loose and holey shirt sliding off his shoulder like his crooked smile. They have not eaten today. The best meal they’ve ever had is rice. They depend on the help of Muslim friends. When they get no help, they do not eat. We give them two bags of food, and though she cannot see into our eyes, the old woman holds each of our hands in hers for a long time before we can leave.

All are single mothers, struggling to keep their children alive. They cannot possibly care for their children and look for work. As Debbie tells them all in a focus group, “Women are expected to do so much, but there is only so much that any one woman can do.” Many times, they lock the little ones in dark rooms with no windows. One explains the precautions she takes, “You put out the fire. You hide the matchbooks.” The houses are padlocked from the outside. There are no locks on the inside.

They cannot pay the 35 to 45 cents a day for child care. There are a few decent nursery schools and women who provide care in their homes, run by compassionate people with some education. But most single mothers cannot afford this. There is no one to help them. A few leave the young ones with their older siblings, forcing the others to miss school and watch them. They too may be locked in the house.

Food is a dire need for all of them. They don’t discuss their problems. They don’t support each other. “They just do what they’re going to do.” What they have to do to survive, and hopefully it is enough.

breathing in, breathing out

Masses of bundled bodies sprawl across every available space into a patchwork heirloom, a silent city. A designated sewer dribbles along the side wall, where men walk to spit as we search the list of passengers for our names. These people wait for days, weeks perhaps, for a train, and I wonder where it takes them. Away and back again. Some have baggage. A few have livestock, a goat dressed in a burlap jacket. I want to ask their stories, whether they‘re coming or leaving, running to or from. Children curl up on the stairway, and I slip a snack into one’s hand, hoping it doesn’t get stolen before he awakens. Bihar is the poorest state I’ve ever seen, and I fall asleep to the sounds of rats’ nails tickling cement and cockroaches gliding through patches of light. I forget where I am and take rest.

The morning reveals more poverty. Pretzeled people scuttle across the street and beggars line the roads. I buy a bushel of bananas, so big I can barely lift it. I pass them out individually to everyone who asks. A young bald monk approaches me, confused, and points to the temple. No, I say. Not for Buddha, for the people. A blind leper with knubbed hands holds them out into the darkness that surrounds him. I place a banana in his palms and he jerks away, and I’m startled and jump back. I wonder if I should peel it for him, but I’m afraid to and I walk on, ashamed. Children hide the ones I give them and come back for more. Women hold out shriveled infants asking for extras. I come to a cluster of kids outside a temple and begin to divide the bounty, but they charge at me and rip the bag from my hands and tackle each other into a pile like dogs, and I leave wagging my finger and my head, not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Born free, children run naked in the streets, snot streaking over chapped lips and scab crusted noses. Puppies and piglets burrow in the trash; baby goats bleat for their mothers in the fields. There are no leashes. Life roams. Mothers don’t brush off the dirt or clean the wounds, these are left for the flies, made to heal on their own, but the women and brothers and sisters hold the little ones in their arms, to their breasts.

Cobras don’t really dance; it’s only an illusion. They are deaf, their world is silent. They follow the movement of the flute, wiggling their bodies back and forth. But the children dance. They skip in a line behind the old man making the music, carrying the sacks of serpents on a balanced rod across his shoulders. The piglets dance; they trot after their plump uddered mother and mowhawked father. The dogs dance, spinning as they scratch mange from the places they can’t quite reach and no one else will.

I am sick-- so weak I can barely move, but I have little time left and I push on. My energy is drained, having seeped forth from every available orifice. I lie on my back and try to borrow it from the grass, the sky, to channel it from the chants that surround me. The streets team with people who all want something, and I’m tired of it. I seek refuge in the temples, where the light streams in through colored glass and cast a rainbow across the altar. Monks play drums with bent sticks and moan words I can‘t understand, but I agree anyway. Paintings cover the walls and tell stories, teach lessons. Practice they say.

And they do. Monks and nuns and men and women and children circle the main temple slowly, paying respects, penitence, offering prayers. Touts sell bouquets of fresh cut flowers to devout Buddhist who preach non violence and place the fresh cuttings across the altar. I pluck one from the trash and wipe away the sauces. Buddha teaches us that the rose and garbage are not separate; they depend on each other for nourishment, they inter are. Apparent opposites are codependent. I place my dripping lotus before the glittering statue as the caretakers clear bundles of bouquets into trash bins.

The building stands enormous and intimidating, a symbol of the incredible devotion of the Buddha, and now his followers carry that focus on. You can feel the energy of this place. My altered state intensifies it, and I feel light. Vibrations crystallize with each forced breath. I kiss the earth with my feet and hold the pain, recognize it, nurture it. All is empty and full of presence, a low hymn you can hear if you listen. Gate gate, paragate, parasumgate, bodhi svaha. The chant fills my thoughts, eliminates all others. It beats with my heart. I sit beneath The Bodhi Tree, the sapling that offered enlightenment to those before me, and I feel connected to them within its branches. I wish for a moment that I brought water from the Ganga to offer the tree, then I smile to myself as I realize that of course these sacred beings are intertwined. I am in this tree. Lord Buddha Siddhartha Gautama is in this tree. As is each creature that has come to consider its existence, or simply existed. Every part of the universe is present in each leaf. I see this, for a moment, and it makes me so happy. so complete. It is enough, as they say.

shanti shanti

I have faith in many Gods and many religions, but I believe in myself, my host VJ proclaims. I sit cross legged facing him in the flickering candle light, considering the stream of declarations and observations and stories that fall from his lips like fortunes from a cookie. I can’t distinguish truth from lies, history from fantasy. I don’t think opium does anything but change the texture of experience from solid to liquid and the pace from animal to plant. VJ confesses that sometimes we go slow, and sometimes we go fast, and I think to myself that Varanasi exists in a different continuum completely, an ancient maze of peeling pastel alleyways where bathers offer bodies to the earth and dirty laundry to be cleansed . Heather and I listen and laugh and fade into the fabric. Every so often he pulls charras from his cigarette pack and when we thank him replies, “it is my goodness.” VJ smokes constantly and drinks what we give him and takes opium each evening, a little black ball that smells of earth and subtle spice. He “make all life like this. and feel good,” but through the blur come fragments of wisdom. He teaches us his history, his purpose, his perceptions.

I bring you in the world, said God. Now you go guru. They will have experience, power, teach you. You begin life with God, but you finish with guru. and life is beautiful.

We are one. I don’t mind.

Bodies are burned every moment of every day for 5000 years. This is the oldest inhabited city and an eternal flame consumes its people. Four men carry their dead through the streets and plunge him into Mother Ganga, a kind of catharsis, a baptism. The body is then covered in ghee. Rama created cows and rams at the same time to make ghee for this ceremony. Loved ones pour water from the river into the open mouth. Sometimes it is swallowed, mostly though it spills back out over the cheeks, the neck, the chest, the earth. The flesh and organs are weighed and, if the family can afford it, the proper amount of wood is laid on top. Men sit above the ghats with green scales and pyramids of timber, waiting for the wealthy to come. The pile is covered with more ghee then powder and set ablaze. The fire is not fed, only watched. The shadows shuffle around it slowly, breathing life into death, making it dance. Silhouettes on the horizon, like the drawings on a cave made of blood and soot. It is better this way. The living make sure the dead depart properly, watch their bodies waste away and know the spirit is free. There is no possibility of escape. They are lucky for this and strong. One part doesn’t burn. No matter how much wood is consumed, how much time, it will remain in tact, an organ inside the belly. It is carried to the water and fed to the fish. If the person who died was old or young or weak there will be wood left over. It is taken by the poor to kept their families warm, and to cook their meals with, to keep them alive.

Saraswati will grant you one wish. But this you cannot choose. One thing you say during the day will come true, be carried out. You must be careful always.

So we watch for the rhinosorous, and then we will know He is listening.

As the sun falls, kites flutter overhead, watching for prey. The children taunt each other from roof tops and ask me where I bought mine and if I know how to fly it. Of course, I respond, but they know I’m lying. A cover of ants swarms the bodhi tree, producing patterns with their bodies, moving bark. Perhaps they are pilgrims called to prayer, trying to free the kites trapped in its branches, dangling. don’t jump shout the boys below. Somehow the shadows of boats rippling on water are more real than the forms themselves. as if God reflects the true nature of life. instability. the consequences of shifting light, visions.

I hold a baby goat in my hands, and its heart beats so fast it scares me. Take it home with you, VJ tells me. The mother begins to cry, to bleat. Goats-- he says-- animals are more intelligent than people, they simply cannot speak. I wonder, would they be angry or forgive us. Who is the more evolved beast?

The goat eats part of my blessing for breakfast--not the baby, another one. Heather Rose and I step into the silt sludge of the Mother Ganga and offer her our strings of blossoms, bestowed with intention. I hold the lei gently in my hand, like a string of prayer beads, contemplating the millions before me who came to show reverence. Lost in thought, I feel a tug on the line and find myself facing a goat. Like the troll of a bridge he takes his toll. I let him nibble away, wondering which of my wishes he’s consumed then toss the remaining flowers into the belly of the goddess, pressing her water into my mind and throat and heart.

to the northland

All oceans are equal, connected by currents through rivers and streams and clouds and creatures, and when I come to the sea, I am home. I feel it, as my sweat and my body and my blood, a sense of recognition. All flows towards this final destination, and when the water of my soul mingles with the waters of the world I can finally rest. But I came to India to leave my sanctuary, and I must move beyond my shore, to the unknown north the sky and earth pull me away.

I exhale the forests of palms, shimmers of salt scales, dying jellyfish clouds and breathe in pine and moss bundled burls, fingers clenching and stretching, ribs expanding to accomodates acclimate thin air so close to heaven. Rising slowly in the heavy bus berth weary euphoric vertigo washes over and pours out the window passage. Snow rock ridges and cloud rows are indistinguishable as lines colors thoughts blur into sleep unity. Passing signs give guidance, This is our land, please keep it clean. Don't even think about parking here. Silence, the trees are sleeping. Slush softy.

The peace of the stirring hilltop town is interrupted only by naughty monkeys with dirty mouths who swear incessantly, hissing down from safe perches and jabbering back and forth. They wear crimped flat tops with black and white streaks and watch us with disdain and wonder, plucking leaves with decisive movements and questioning the validity of evolution. A child swings from a cable and dangles before the drop, suspended in flight. Another pounces onto the counter of a general store, runs straight for the top ramon, bites down on the package and prances away. The shopkeeper shoes at the stray with a broom too late. Dressed donkeys show their crooked smiles and shake their heads.

The Himalayas emerge as a mirage in the distance, bright white teeth with black rolling hill gums holding them. We climb with other pilgrims to a temple above the world and see all ways at once emerge from us, surrounded by tibetan prayer flags and rows of brass bells and hindu altars, and the orange god knows what I'm thinking so I bow low and tell him to hush. Offerings are made with the crack of mallets on coconut and crows cry out in responce. Cement rooms filled with smoke seep into our skin and leave blessings in our trail as we decend into the cold world below. The trees begin again, and I buy a sappaling from a park, a Banj oak, to plant in a space of sunshine, for dad. They have no tools, and I work the hard earth with a pointed board and scoop it with my hands. Just across the stone wall a bent woman with rosy rawhide cheeks tends her goats, and I wonder if they will wander over the wall, if my tree will be safe and grow strong, but I don't mind, because what death is more nobel than enabling another to live.

A weathered man with grease creased hands hides nothing fromt the street under the flourescent lights of a green room. He twists wires into empty sockets of a grey black box, something old and outdated, born before I was. He looks up and far away through me at someone behind with a wheeled tray of peanuts piled in a pyramid and crowned by a smoke stained cast iron skillet. She shifts coals in the skillet split from wood scraps on the pavement, and her face glows solemnly, like an apparition. The coals burn amber and orange, and I want to stop and warm my hands, but I'm not hungry. I look at him watching her, and he licks his lips, and our eyes meet for a moment, understanding but not entirely, and we both turn away and back to our work, weary. The city, the night, is the man's world and everyone shifts between shadows and highlights, chewing and spitting and smoking, and discussing nothing. These men, out late, are rich, or consider themselves so, and there's no one I could bum a beedie from, and their keys jingle in their pockets. A man with keys has possessions, and the sisters warned me about that.

mindful consumption

The sky is full of stars, the ocean is full of ways. In the same way your heart is filled with love and care. and don't forget us please remembers in your time. and then we keeps you in our heart with little sweet heart we all wish you. and then this gratitude is towards. with of us your smile looks beautiful.

I open the letters on the train, one by one, hand drawn cards to accompany the dances of dedicated blessings and prayers that the children had planned and performed for my departure. I'd accompanied them on stage and tried to join their routines, ending with a finale cartwheel in which I ripped my new pants from one crotch to the other, flashing 90 children and the sisters and releasing an ovation of laughter. I led morning yoga and embarked on my journey, refusing to say goodbye any more. Two hours on a rick, running late, I tried to flag down a departing cargo train before getting on the right one and setting off on my own.

Now I sit in silence, interrupted only by the occasional refrain of chai, chai, wishing I was still surrounded by love and innocence, wondering if leaving was the right decision. I go to the bathroom to collect myself and watch the tracks fly past through the keyhole toilet, the only window to the outside world, holding back tears and vomit. Twenty hours on the train is followed by a 13 hour picnic with another set of orphans, and the littlest girl pees on my lap in a bus so full I can't move her off me until we arrive home that night. The next morning, my rickshaw stops at a temple on the way to the bus, collecting flowers and powdered dye for the steering wheel, making me two hours early or ten minutes late, and by the time I arrive in Munnar I am in tears, running from a rabid dog and sleeping in a worm infested room next to the local beer shop: cold, filthy, alone. So this is what freedom feels like.

But I am here; I am free. I don't believe in regrets, remember. Every accident, every misstep teaches me the right way to maneuver in this madness. Now, I'm surrounded by green forests and tea plantations, elephant rivers and wide blue skies that layer the mountains unto eternity. at rest. at last. I keep on trekking. I take tea. I breathe in blessings and breathe out peace.

The grassy ridge rises like the backbone of a great beast, and we scale it one vertebrae at a time. As we rise into the atmosphere the horizon grows clearer and mountains give birth to others in their wake, spreading dark waves across the sea of sky. Tea grows over rocky hills in geometric kaleodoscopic patterns that move in the minds' eye from our bird's view. Our guide identifies plants we pass, a flower my children proclaimed "not useful" once treated snake bites, a bud that pops when pressed to the forehead, the silver rock tree with deep roots that shares water with others generously. Workers wrapped in plastic and cloth cut the new growth with a whisper of slicing steel and collect it in giant bags on their heads to be weighed and paid accordingly. They do not pause as we pass. The smell of elephant mingles with earth and herbs. At the rock summit we stop to sit and watch the universe exposed around us. Within minutes the mist rises, sends spiral jetties of light into the cloud layer then swallows everything. The world disappears, and we exist only in a shroud of sky.

Kerala is God's own country, my host declares with pride as we wind our way through the maze of canals that makes up the backwater island chain of Kumyakumaron. This is a tropical paradise is such an exotic and startling contrast to the barren heat of Andhra that it doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel Indian. I try to trace the same path later and wander farther from civilization, running for hours just trying to cross a rice paddy. Women beat tattered clothes on the rocks and rinse pans with gravel; others tear down trees with machetes in a tug of war between roots and hands, and I grab the branch and pull hard, and they laugh and ask me for something to drink with strange gestures and murmurs. Men push dug out canoes under bridges with bamboo rods, a burning beedie clamped between paan rotten teeth. Egrets and herons rise from the fields and return to homes unknown . A mother holds a child--a pure child, I'm told--who clasps a hibiscus and stares at me in awe.

All ask where I'm going. Walking, I tell them. Just walking. Such strange behavior to them, who work so hard for so long and have no reason for unnecessary exertion. I'm losing my barrings, myself, drifting off in the heat daze. Startled back suddenly as a long snake springs in the grass. A frog leaps out of my path moments later, and I shriek. A local man guides me home, and the heaven breaks, and the water surrounds us in sheets. I am taken to a temple for a ceremony of light, but the rain battles the candles and beats them into crescents of smoke. Elephants shift awkwardly under their ornamental headdresses, and the lamps of sandalwood oil are drained of water, and the women lift their saris and shuffle bare feet through red puddles of earth, all waiting for the parade to begin, but still it pours on. Night envelopes the rain and the candles struggle to breathe, and you know the water is still there and taste it in the air. An orchestra of insects and exotic birds fills the blackness, and I wonder who dances in this dark. With the morning light the concert settles, changing pace and tune, and I climb into a dugout canoe to continue my journey. Snakes wriggle through the water, eyes just above the surface scanning our progress. My deaf, mute driver moans from his gut and motions with his mouth at the world awakening and stretching around us, and we make our way back to the beaten path slowly.

Kerala is a land of many rivers and rocks. Before language was born, the people listened only to nature. to water and to stone traveling together. they began to make this noise with their mouths, letting their tongue roll over their teeth like pebbles in the waves, this gurl gurl gurgle. their voices became the words of Malayalum and now we speak with the sounds that surround us. The man who'd cooked my meal stopped talking and smiled at me, a fleck of mischief passing through his expression, an acknowledgement of the beauty in his words and voice. Then it passed, and he scooped another handful of food from the leaf platter into his mouth, still showing his chipped grin.

In this land of water and earth life flourishes. Little jellyfish spiral around my body, invisibly painlessly brushing against me, no more than collections of bubbles, spit sinking and surfacing in rough current. Men cast large nets into the onslaught, drawing them out with finger claws, spiders releasing their webs. The nets comb across the shoreline, connected by thick raw rope to teams of fishermen in branded t-shirts and lungis, chanting, "u lum, ovelum, daj jay, cov e la do vey." After hours of steady movement the only progress is a coil of rope where they began and dicarded folds that snake over the sand. The net is finally brought in and a crowd of spectators gathers around. Dozens of jellyfish are discarded, and half an eel, and a porcipine fish, and the bounty is sorted . Hundreds of little bodies flail for breath and home as life flutters away. The fish are spread on tarps and plastic bags, the stench displayed for passing tourists and stray puppies. Birds circle high overhead, kestrels and hawks, bats in the fruit trees, but all unnoticed unless you're lying on your back.

At India's southernmost tip, three bodies of water converge into two holy rocks upon which temples have been erected. Palm tree forests file the horizon from sunrise to sunset, and we watch the globe move with our feet sunk in the sand. Pilgrims bathe in sacred glimmering ghats, absolved of all sins, then sneak into smokey bars tucked in alleys out of sight. Bright boats with peeling paint crowds the shores, lined for flight, and men untangle strands of net like women knitting. Broken shells and barbed hooks crunch underfoot as turbaned women wander with towels and umbrellas offering fresh fruit patters. Crows and egrets feast on the abandoned guts and pick at the bones, the beach combers.

waiting for morning

rows of swords raised to heaven,
sheer angles of translucent sun
poised crystal dew.
nets gather blades into battalions
bow softly in centered prayer,
hold silent.
a predator's web
captures light sky,
tempts prey in
to cupped palms.
namascaram.