A Portrait of a Woman Having Tea

I wrote this in the spring of 2009 while I was living and working in Kolkata, India, a few months before leaving for Peace Corps. I reread it recently and wanted to share it here.

______________________________

On a muggy, still, Tuesday morning, Mangal and I walked through a Kolkata slum called Boro Ghati. We met a woman; her image is still with me.
She sat in a chai stall off the side of the road. The little hut was all woven and collected. Its structure was a tight bunch of crude tethers and brittle strips of bamboo. The dinted tin tea pot, the blackened kettle, the warped spoon and weak cheese-clothe all seemed ‘found’. There was a thick glass jar with some unappealing biscuits. There was an uneven, lacquered bench, shiny and dark grey. The woman sat there, on the high side, her cracked feet hovering over a floor of dusty earth.
She wore a white-turned-dirt-grey sari slung about her shoulders and waist in such a tumbledown way that it betrayed the decreasing mobility of her arms, the fading dexterity of her fingers. The thin fabric was wrinkled like the thick raffia my mother used to stretch and glue to her country crafts in the ’90’s, and I wanted to reach out and touch it, hear it crinkle and feel the tiny folds against the hinges of my fingers. Perhaps her whole form might have collapse in my hands; I would very well be able to roll her up into a paper ball and toss her.
She was missing her front teeth, and her speech had a slurp to it that was detectable despite our differing mother-tongues. Her hair matched her raffia sari in color and fell oily and in dreads, down over her dark brown shoulders. She was the same dark, crust-of-bread color all over. With all her freckles she looked as if she’d gone soft like a banana.
She held a shot-glass size cup of dark, milky chai lightly between her knotty fingers.
Mangal asked her how she was doing, “Ap kyese hei?”
Her slurpy speech turned quickly, shot off like thread on a kicked spinning wheel.
Mangal would later tell me that she was desperately spooling her last few days for us; her brittle words told of ejection from her home by a family that did not want to feed and house a non-working adult. As merely an eater, she was too costly to support. Forget the ties that bind. There was only one here, daily bread, and there is not enough of that to go around.
She spoke as if what she had to say was a glass of water, tipped and running across the table, gathering at the edges, dripping in the air, then sinking in dusty ground. Without skewing her rhythm, she looked directly at me. Our eyes met. Such round, brown, wet eyes welling more and more until tears were finally running from them & hiding within the wrinkles of her face.
Then, her speech stopped as abruptly as it had started; she was spent. Left to her own devices and those of a coming death, she had simply come to this chai stall. There we found her. After she stopped talking, she lifted the glass of chai to her flappy lips and slurped the tea over her gums. The gesture seemed compulsive and desperate, her instincts’ attempt at comfort. It was as if her subconscious was saying to itself, ‘It’s not so bad. See? Tea!’
I looked at her sitting there, sipping tea, her deep brown eyes staring forward.
Mangal touched her shoulder, uttered something and walked on. I reached out and touched her shoulder as well; then I remembered touching the shoulder of my dying great aunt in Lousiana a couple weeks before I came to India. I remembered, after attending a Mass in Houston, dipping my fingers in holy water.
I walked after Mangal, rubbing my thumb across my fingertips.

Read Full Post »

where would you recover?

Remember that gnarly throat picture of last post?  Even though that picture was from last year, I’m that kind of sick again.  Can’t quite kick the cough.  Kelly, who was sick for our entire Turkey trip is still battling her cough as well back in Fort Worth, and this has caused me to contemplate where I might like to be nursing my cold right now.  I’ve come up with my ideals:

1. On the green couch at my parent’s house.  Tivoed Survivor episodes and chips and dip lulling me into a couch coma.  Dad coming in the house with grocery bags, one of which holds some echinacea tea and box of aloe-treated tissues.  Home.

2. Seattle Greys.  This, of course, has everything to do with my inability to sleep the last couple of nights and therefore my ability to marathon the first season of Grey’s Anatomy.  This also has everything to do with my wanting to be in a fantasy hospital full of beautiful people and a few minor traumas.  The guy with the cheating wife and the hidden ovary would quickly make me forget about my sore throat.  And maybe Izzy would bake me something.

3. Kolkata, first building on the left after the Tamil slum by the train station in Dum Dum Cantonment, Shaji and Beena’s place.  I have been sick there twice in my life.  The first time completely smashed my notions of hospitality and care.  When I was in college I thought that someone showing up at your house with a grocery bag full of canned soup and some Kleenex was a big deal.  But when I caught some monsoon season flu in Kolkata, Shaji and Beena took me into their home.  They called up their doctor to come see me.  They made me a pallet on their livingroom floor, shared their meals with me.  And at night they covered me and pot of hot water under a sheet, letting me breath in the steam while they sat around me and talked.  They became a second family to me during those late night steam baths, and let me tell you, they know how to take care of a sick person.

4. Right here, as it turns out.  Armenia and India are similar in this way.  Being sick in America is an isolating experience.  Being sick in Armenia or India is communal.  My landmom came over and fixed up my bed with another mattress to help me sleep at night.  My friends at work came armed with medicine, herbal tea, and rasberry muraba to battle my illness.  Their constant inquiries as to my health, the constant offerings of traditional remedies like a swig of lemon tea, the application of a vodka rub all over my body, or even stuffing my nose with vodka soaked cotton, they all seem to be a great effort to try to make me feel better.  It’s like their sickness is my sickness.  A simple idea with some profound follow through.

A while back my brother sent me a desk-sized Gonzo (because he knows me), and the Clooker rearranged them this week to show me some love (because turns out she knows me, too.)

So, I’m sick, but as it turns out, I’m in one of my four ideal places to be sick.  That’s pretty good, right?

Read Full Post »

journaling

"Two gnats had sex right here!"

I am getting to the end of the book in which I’m keeping my most recent journal.  It’s a dark green hard bound book with maroon corners and spine.  I bought it over a year ago in the part of Kolkata I personally refer to as Paper Town, a name given because I’m familiar enough with the city to know you can fulfill all your paper needs there and also because I’m not familiar enough to know the actual name of the district.

I’ve been journaling since freshman year of college.  When I go back and read the entries of that first journal, I realize that few people will ever really enjoy those words because, honestly, even I get bored.  People who journal though understand that that isn’t the point.  I knew going in that the value in journaling has little to do with the (very rare) moments your pen scribbles out fascinating wordplay and well-crafted images.

I started journaling because my mother said that she we she had kept one.  She told me that she wishes she could remember what it felt like to hold her kids when they were babies.  “I remember that it was good,” she told me, “I just don’t remember the way it felt.”

That’s why I started to write things down.  Because I can conjure up tastes and sounds, wind against skin and trash burning in the ravine, if only I write it down.  Because I can look back and remember the time when Peace Corps was a germ of piece of a life I might want.  Because I can run back out to Oxford’s Port Meadow with Caryn and Todd and act out bits of Hamlet from our stage/picnic blanket.  Because I can go get ice cream with my little sister.  Because I can look back and wonder how I got here, trace the path, my imagination running over my memory like a slow fingertip on a map.

Of course, as you can see above, sometimes the memory found isn’t so spectacular.  Sometimes it’s even dark.  But here I am, a dozen or so blank books later, a thousand friendships later, 20 countries later, a billion full-of-wonder moments later.

Read Full Post »

2009makers

Tell me you forgot that I said I’d post a bunch of lists about the decade and the year and resolutions, etc.  I still may post some of them, but a bunch of lists are not really on the way.  However, what is on the way, in just a few sentences actually, is a list of what made up my 2009.  I’d say it was a significant year, on that marked a lot of change, one that solidified some same-olds, and one that will likely be a turning point for me.  So without further ado, my 2009makers:

1. Moving

my roost in kolkata

2009 began with me gearing up for the year after a couple months gearing down on the island in Panama in late 2008.  I had just moved home and was enjoying small town Texas in every way, making some cash at  Mom’s beading table, celebrating an exciting inauguration with the pint-sized sister.  But soon it was off to Kolkata where I lived for a couple of months.  There was teaching of ultimate frisbee to my brothers in the slum, copious amounts of carrom board playing and mango chop eating, and there was the most heart-wrenching cry of my entire life, right there in front of my indian Dada and Didi.  Then it was back home for an intense, take-it-all-in two months, and finally a big heaping move to Armenia.  Through the year I’ve moved from one country to another 4 times, been in six different countries (the U.S., India, England, Austria, Armenia and Georgia), and lived with four different families (including two host family stays in Armenia).
In 2010 I think I’ll be settling-in, planning on staying in the country for the whole year.  It will be the longest I’ve gone without leaving by plane to another country since I graduated high school.  And it’s not even my country.   But at least I’ll be settled for a bit.

2. New Holidays

a renegade band of colored kids on a holi parade

This year I have new favorite holidays.  The one that will stick out as not only a favorite holiday (just under Christmas with the fam, of course) but also my favorite travelling experience, is Holi.  Of course, I’ve only experienced a Kolkata version, but that version was so moving, that I will forever hope to recreate it and likely never will.
Just under that, I’d have to say, is Armenian Nor Tari.  The hospitality is wonderfully overwhelming; days and days of being an honored guest feels down-right humbling and sustaining at the same time.

This was also the first year I’ve experienced holidays dedicated to a town (re: Yerevan Day, Stepanavan Day, Vanadzor Day, all of which I celebrated).  There was also some holiday back in September, I think, through which we celebrated the Armenian church finding Jesus’s cross.  I took home some basil, but to be honest, I’m really not sure what all that was about.

flat me on a pumpkin

This was also the year in which, because I was missing my traditional versions, my family holidays were recreated in new ways.  A paper me was present during Halloween festivities while I hosting my own version with my new Armenian friends. (Flat Me also made it to Thanksgiving and Christmas, too!) Thanksgiving was a 100 person celebration at the All Volunteer conference, and the 2009 American Christmas was both an undesirable in-country event, and one that I will hold dear to my heart thanks to Skype.

3. Family Love

half the Kolkatan family sitting with new dishes in their partially constructed new home

First, I’ll say that this year I got lovin’ not only from my own family, but also from families in the UK (who housed me and fed me when I was stranded in England), India (in so many ways I can’t even count), and Armenia (through dance parties, games of UNO,  laughter and more laughter).

Still, it was a unique and amazing year to be me amongst my wonderful family.  Certainly this isn’t the first year in which I’ve received love from my family.  I’m one of the lucky one’s who’s gotten incredible love since the plus sign appeared (or however that worked in the ’80′s).  But this year was a year so full of family love that it deserves a list within a list.  So, Ways My Family Has Made Me Feel Unbelievable Lucky To Be Alive:

-In 2008, instead of having a usual gift-exchange-type Christmas, my family pooled money and sent it with me to Kolkata in January ’09.  With it, we were able to help Kolkata City Mission build a home for one family in an urban slum.   And I was blessed enough to be both in the living room when my family gave me that gift, and in the new living room with that Indian family.  There’s one 2009 moment I will never forget.
-There was also the parents help with getting ready for Armenia, the shoes, the sleeping bag, the million little things that would make my stay in Armenia so so much better.
-The Farewell Fishfry thrown by my family and my Dad’s brother and sister-in-law, and my grandmother.  The family gathered some of my favorite hometowne-ers for the fiesta.  Love.
-The first softball game in which the little sister pitched.  She didn’t walk a batter ’til the last inning.  And the big sister and I sat and cheered more than I’ve ever cheered for anything, and I forgot anyone else existed outside the three of us and the one striking-out.
-The daily emails from my brother that have kept my soul alive.
-The skype convos late at night (early in my morning) with my Texas fam.
-Packages from home stuffed with the most awesome gifts, like refried beans, socks, cribbage board, flash drives, sesame street coloring book, chips and dip, candy canes and puppy chow.
-Facebook albums of Flat Me enjoying holidays at home.
-Texts, phone calls, emails, letters, and a halloween card that had many Armenian’s giggling and had me explaining the word ‘tentacle’.
-And more.

4. Reading Reneissance

This has been a little while in the making, but I’d say this year has seen me reading more than I have in a long while.  It’s no 133 books or anything, but I’ve read more books this year than I have in any year since probably the sixth grade (I was a REAL reader from ages 5-12.  Then I just… wasn’t.)  This year I’ve found a new favorite (Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury) and found in books a revived inkling to write more and more and more (Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).
I’ve also been completely inspired by blog writers and have, in 2009, become a regular reader of a few.  Perhaps its because I’m way the heck away from my culture. But blogs have been the center of my reading reneissance this year and have made me hopeful about the future of the written word.  You’ll find my favorite reads on the right, and here are my best 2009 discoveries:
- Monkey See, NPR’s pop-culture blog.  She’s funny in my favorite, witty, we-should-really-get-over-ourselves-slash-appreciate-each-other kind of way.  And she’s ok with loving Survivor.  Check.
-/Film, read this and you will forever be at the cusp of cinema trivia.
-Circle Me Confused, in the world of Peace Corps Blogs, I really like this one.  Simple, unpretentious, charming.  More blogs should have that kind of voice.
-Hootenannie, as far as blogs-as-journals go, this one is welcoming.  Processing some gritty stuff online can be tricky, but right now she’s doing it with charm, wit, and a determination to keep sane.  And among bloggers who are my actual friends in non-virtual life, I think she’s kind a trend.  Like when a group of friends all love something unique, like fingerless gloves or Parcheesi.  We all love reading Annie’s blog.  And we all want to/are excited about meeting her.   Maybe one day I will?  Until then, reading on.

Alright, that’s enough words on 2009.  Now, onward and upward into 2010…

Read Full Post »

19 days in. 19. Almost three weeks.

I am not having a great day. I have vowed to get one of my to-do’s to done, and I am starting with a blog post. If this actually gets posted, feel free to congratulate me.

This is my second move to do something that will lift the day’s spirits. The first was to eat some Starbursts (which were apparently not the right candy to bring. It’s ‘girl candy’ here. It’s sour, and in India boys don’t like sour. I had never before assigned tastes to specific genders. But I guess if sights can be so assigned, blue-boy pink-girl, then why not tastes?). I grabbed three valentine themed 2-per packs and pulled open the first to find a strawberry and lemon, praising Him for two flavors that weren’t cherry. Then I looked closer to discover that a little ant expedition had discovered my fruit chews. I had a mini-fit of rage. Please commence envisioning me going directly to the sink, unwrapping each chew, smashing all ants found therein, washing the chew and angrily and immediately consuming it.

So, since fruit chew consumption didn’t do it for me, how about a blog post?

I have so enjoyed my Indian family. I call the parents Dada and Didi (older brother and older sister), and they’re boys are like my own little brothers. The culture of hospitality is again overwhelming and encouraging. Didi cooks every meal, is patient with me when I try to help (although now I can be trusted with chai!), is always trying to get me to rest, and argues with me everyday about bringing my clothes down so that she can wash them. Dada is always telling me how glad he is that I’m here, sharing jokes, talking about his vision for the poor in the slum, laughing and crying with me.
The brothers are very interesting. I can’t imagine what it is like to grow up in a household like this one, where God is very much your only real security, where your Dad and Mom are both the bravest people you know and the riskiest, where your family standard is so far removed from your friends’.
They are excellent cartoonists. Since I sent them a VeggieTales movie in 2007 they have been drawing those little counter-top characters everywhere, filling every book with them. Yesterday the older of the two finished a storyboard for a cartoon he was envisioning, and then I wrote the story. We’re quite a team. It was actually very funny. We had story time around the table and read it as a family.

Working here is so very very different. I don’t really feel good about dishing all of what I’m thinking about work environment here on the net. But know that it is different, challenging in ways I had never ever expected. It really is the most difficult working environment I’ve ever been in. On the one hand, it’s great experience for working in Armenia. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the heck I’m supposed to be doing.

On the upside I’ve been able to visit the slum a few times. I am so absolutely charged after going to hang out with the guys in the slum in the evening. I know there is an large element of my being American that gives me an in because I’m kind of like a little one man circus. Not for all of them, some of the guys really want to get to know me, help me with Hindi, learn something about English and the Western mentality. The other guys stumble up to me drunk or high and laugh immediately and try to get me to repeat curse words in Hindi. There’s one that always holds my hand too long and stares at me in a way that absolutely gives me the shivers. These kind of encounters are kind of hard to avoid completely. But otherwise, really, I love it. I love standing around the Carom Board, enjoying the traditionally camaraderie that goes along with recreational sports.

In conclusion, yesterday I went with an Indian friend to see Seven Pounds. Great movie. It left me feeling three things. I wish seeing a movie at home only cost US$1.50 and that US$1.50 wasn’t so very much here in India. I would like to marry Rosario Dawson. And I want to live in America after all. (If you know me at all, you know that my saying that means I’m in the middle of some emotional whirlwind.)

Read Full Post »

I Rode Through Space Town On a Motorcycle. (2-10-2009)

There are some strange things to note when you are visiting other countries. The peculiars are even more thrilling when the country speaks English. Here in India I daily encounter interesting combinations of English words which for my Texan lexicon are quite a thrill.
I loved being asked by Yahoo!India, “Is Obama redefining the cool quotient?” I was thoroughly bemused when encountered by a billboard for “Theism Braingym”. It beckoned, “Experience the nurture of Theism!,” in neon green font next to a giant baby head. And today, I had a doubly cultural and linguistic excitement: I road through the rich neighborhood of ‘Space Town’.
I believe the place to be aptly named. The apartment complex sits next to a similarly named residential edifice, ‘Space City’. I suppose that the complex together make up Space Place or something. Now, in Space Town you are not likely to receive your dinner from your robot cook or hover to your friends place on the 179th floor for a game of telepathic air hockey, you will be able to play tennis on spacious tennis courts, dive in an indoor pool, watch your kinds bounce through an indoor playscape, and sit back and soak in the cool A/C. These amenities are so far removed from anything enjoyed in the residences around them, so literally untouchable, that they might as well be in space. A five minute walk will take you to homes known more intimately by a far greater Indian population.
After leaving Space Town, I rode through a different place, a galaxy away. Kilshed is a new slum. Though my friend, the motorcycle-driving NGO director I live with, did not know much about the place, he gave me a brief run down as drove the dirt lanes. The slum grew up only 5 years ago and already stretches for miles. It runs the perimeter of North Kolkata’s garbage dump and the lake where the oldest part of the dump used to be. The residents are Bangla; poor enough to choose the lake for a cooking water source, a sewage receptacle, and a dish and clothes washeteria. The shacks are not unlike those of most North Kolkata slums. The materials are scraps of metal and plastic, some mud, and some women grass.
Here the big bad wolf would have no problem huffing and puffing and blowing the place to pieces. But you are more likely to see the slum’s preservation based on the interest of various groups. The slum is a vote bank for interested political parties looking to get their bills passed. It is a cheap labor force, in this case it seems, for stone breakers and brick makers (every street has four or five piles of stone and brick and one or two people beating them to pieces with crude hammers). The young girls are hard to find at night because they have likely taken to their ‘disreputable’ and cyclical night work. And beggar rings have likely already employed unschooled boys and girls for pitiful supplication to the city-center middle class.
There are no social services here. There is no sewage system, no school, no law enforcement and water and electricity only if you are the first to tap them.
There are certainly no tennis courts.

And that is only the disparity I’ve seen here in the city by motorbike. As the picture of this city’s destitution continues to be engraved on the walls of my heart, they mesh with paintings of grand places. I gazed at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, rode bikes through Salzburg, cuddled a Koala in Sydney and literally gorged myself on deluxe ballpark food in the owner’s box at a San Diego Padres game. I grew up with more books than I could ever read, teachers who filled me to the brim with encouragement and useful knowledge, private percussion lessons, marching band competitions, Survivor parties, a church that meets in a multi-million dollar building, and a washing machine. I have a family that loves me, a mom and a dad at home. I learned to type because there was a computer in the back room on which I could instant message my friends, who also had computers in their homes. I went to a university with cable, computers, and washing machines in every dorm as well as security systems, mentors, and locks. I studied with wonderful professors, was privileged to study any subject I wanted, and had Bible studies. I went to coffee shops for crying out loud. I graduated and worked a job that I loved and made in the tens of thousands of dollars every month. I went to Panama for two months and sat on a beach reading. I came here to the slum because I wanted to.

I could go on and on and on. But this is what I’m experiencing everyday. I don’t hate myself for having such a wonderful life. I’m so happy and absolutely grateful for my experiences, for my computer, for my good dear friends and family, for the security and joy in which I have been blessed to live. I do feel some guilt for choices I perpetuate at home, but what I’m feeling is, for me, much harder to articulate.

How can you put into words the feeling of having to worlds inside you? How do you show that somehow your mother whom you love so so dearly, who lives a truly blessed life, who gives from her finances, who teaches in a school with thousands of books, thousands of sheets of many different kinds of paper, who has an education on educating, who looks great in her different outfits, who always gives a gift and makes your friends feel special, how do you show that somehow inside you your mother sits next to a beautiful young Indian girl, who’s one room house is made of trash, who doesn’t have a toilet but walks through other people’s sewage to leave her own, who is beaten in the morning because she wants to go to school instead of work, who wears the same tattered shirt everyday, who carries the platter of chai which your hosts have ordered for your visit to their ten by ten slum school? Inside me sit these two and so many others. How do I make sense of it? How do I find answers for these gut-wrenching questions?

Read Full Post »