The Third Month

For those of you who have already read this on the Princeton website I apologize for not yet having something new to post, for those of you who haven't, here is a summary of our third month in India.

As we entered the second month in our new hometown, we began to perfect the ability to absorb and adapt to the constantly hectic pace of life in Varanasi, just as our mouths have perfected the ability to recover from chai burns. While at first one premature sip of hot chai would rob our mouths of the capacity to taste for days, our tongues now heal quickly or do not even register the initial burn at all. The same goes for our adjustments to the realities of our new everyday life. Now, activities, such as navigating the maze-like alleyways, buying the foods for breakfast (each from a different street vendor), arguing with rickshaw wallas, or biking on the massively congested streets, that at first seemed daunting and impossible, are completed without thought or hesitation.
As we have grown accustomed to our new town, our new town has slowly begun to recognize us in return and each of us has become friends with a variety of people in our Assi Ghat community. On any given day, you could find Andrew conversing with his wrestler friends at the Akhara, Shaina or Chhaya hanging out with one of the dhobi (clothes washer) families, Lizzie talking to her friends from work or the fruit seller, who gives her and only her good prices, and me talking to my students and their friends on the ghats. At night, when we reconvene after our days of work, we visit the many different friends of the Dragons program in our area. Andrew and I often visit our anday (egg) walla, who cooks us heaping, spicy plates of egg chow mein, while his other regular customers overwhelm us with endless questions in Hindi, which we mostly understand, and Bhojpuri, which we definitely do not.
Our new friendships, however, have not been limited to the human members of our community. During our time in Varanasi we have begun to recognize and name many of the variety of wild animals who roam around our alleys. Multiple times every day we will encounter one of our new animal friends, whether it be one of the stray dogs that Andrew has befriended, the cow who visits our Hindi teacher’s house for snacks, or a young goat we named Tolstoy, who is suffering from some unknown disease resulting in tremendous hair loss.
Though our time spent with new friends, both human and non-human, has been fun, it has not been nearly as rewarding as our time spent at work. Following the completion of our intensive Hindi course, and our switch to a reduced level of classes, all of us have begun to work full time at our service sites. Shaina has spent the month writing up a proposal for Guria, an organization working in the red light district to combat sex trafficking. Guria, aside from prosecuting sex traffickers, empowers women to live and work in exploitation-free environments, and provides a safe space for the women’s children in a non-formal education center. The proposal outlines a year-long project combating human slavery and trafficking in India, specifically focusing on Eastern Uttar Pradesh. She is submitting a statement of interest to the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, in order to get a grant to fund the project.

Chhaya’s students are working on plays (Danny and the Dinosaur and Alice in Wonderland). In addition to her teaching work, Chhaya has started work as an advisor to one of the four houses for boarding students at Nirman, an innovative school with a holistic approach to education, and is helping all the houses come up with ideas for environmental projects. She looks forward to organizing and creating activities and experiments for the school’s science lab and resource center.
Lizzie has continued to find her work at the Kiran Center, an organization in a village about an hour from Varanasi that works for the education, rehabilitation, and empowerment of differently-abled children and young adults through schools, physiotherapy, and vocational training, incredibly rewarding. She is still working on the new crochet unit with a group of Art and Design trainees who never fail to make her laugh, but she has traded her work with food preservation for teaching English. Her classes are composed of teachers, faculty, and vocational trainees, and she is perpetually inspired by the enthusiasm and dedication of her students.
Andrew is still getting dirty at Bal Ashram, both a site of spiritual worship and an orphanage for small children. He has been working on the Ashram’s new Eco-Project, a sustainable, organic farm, using primitive tools that he has never seen before, even in Hollywood. Additionally, after finishing an assignment to edit a series of stories that had previously been translated into English from Italian, he is now taking a highly valued teacher’s reference book and inputting its information to their computer system. This is necessary due to the fact that this book is the only one of its kind and the single copy available at the ashram was produced using a typewriter.
I have continued my normal schedule of office work, including writing sections of World Literacy’s (WLC) yearly report to the Canadian government and business planning in the morning and teaching at one of WLC’s local schools in the afternoon. WLC is an NGO dedicated to providing literacy classes to illiterate adults and children who are unable to afford school, and empowering the women in villages both in the Varanasi District and in other impoverished areas of the state of Uttar Pradesh. The most fun and rewarding aspect of my work has been the time spent with my students, arguing about which of the 4 Hindi “t’s” is equivalent to the English “t,” talking about their exploits selling candles to gullible tourists on the ghats, and playing games of Carom (a game like pool, but with checkers pieces) during our breaks from homework.

Soon after we began our new work schedule, however, we promptly departed Varanasi and set out on a brief trip to an ashram in the important religious center of Ujjain. While the trip itself was relatively short, the distance traveled and time spent traveling, a 19 hour train ride both ways still seemed very long. Luckily for us, the train rides were anything but boring, as they provided us with excellent opportunities to read, catch up on sleep, and observe the villages and countryside (through both the windows and the open door of the train).
At the ashram we were graciously and lovingly welcomed by the swamis and their families who soon befriended us over meals and through ridiculous yoga positions, arm wrestling, and time spent listening to Michael Jackson. Our days in the ashram were filled with yoga, attempts at meditation, informative lectures with Swami-ji, delicious meals, and some well-earned relaxation. When we were tired of the peace and quiet of the ashram we explored the equally peaceful and beautiful town of Ujjain, ate delicious pistachio ice cream in the main square, explored the countryside in a horse-drawn cart and visited an ancient Indian observatory located precisely on the Tropic of Cancer. On our last day in Ujjain we woke up at three in the morning and walked into town to attend the morning aarti (prayers) at the city’s main temple. Witnessing the intricate procedures of the aarti, during which the priests bathe a linga, an object used to worship Shiva, in water, milk, ghee and ashes, was a dramatic and somewhat unusual experience that left us bewildered and with many questions for the Swami.
When we returned to Varanasi we quickly resumed our normal routine of service, dodging cows in tight gulleys, and Hindi class during the week and relaxing and exploring on the weekend. This routine, like all routines in India, however, was interrupted by the arrival of wedding season. Though we had been warned of its arrival, wedding season actually snuck up on us; when I came home from work one day, I was brought to a pre-wedding party upstairs in my building and was coerced into dancing by a group of 30 women holding the pre-wedding party. Forced dancing aside, all of us have greatly enjoyed the variety of weddings we have attended so far, due to the fact that food is always delicious (and sometimes non-veg), the music is great, and there is always a large number of guests eager to talk to us and show us around. We are enthusiastically looking forward to the big weddings (in Shaina and Andrew’s respective families) coming up during the next few weeks.
Aside from weddings, November, like October, has been a month full of festivals both new and old. The month began with the Hindu holiday of Dev Deepavali, a celebration unique to the city of Banaras, during which all of the city’s ghats are illuminated by both candles and dramatic Christmas-like lights. To enjoy the full splendor of the night, we spent two hours on a boat, gliding past the fiery ghats, while enjoying the fireworks above and sampling paan (a mixture of tobacco, Betel nuts, sugar, coconut, and gooey stuff) the quintessential Banaras indulgence. We also enjoyed a relatively simple celebration of Thanksgiving, consisting of tandoori chicken for the mansahaaris (meat eaters) among us, ravioli for the shakahaaris (vegetarians), and apple pie with ice cream for everybody. Finally, just as the month was ending, we were shocked by the end products of Bakrid, a Muslim holiday, which revolves mostly around the slaughter of goats.

As the month of December begins, our group is confident that we will continue to fare better than the unfortunate Tolstoy and are looking forward to new challenges at work and more time to explore the mysteries of our new town. We are especially looking forward to a week-long trip to the state of Rajasthan in mid-December and to celebrating the upcoming holidays with our host families.“Agle Baar Tak!”Until next time!

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