Well, here is the last installment for you. Battling my jetlag is not effective - it's light outside already! At least I got this diary thing done and finished.
Pullikkanam, DC School of Management and Technology in Kerala.
Monday, 28th February
I wake up after a restless night at around five-six in the morning. Whenever the birds do. Sounds of awaking rainforest are incredible. So is the sunrise above the mountains. Everything is so calm and peaceful. It would be impossible to be depressed or irritated in this corner of the world. Perfect harmony of all elements. I am not sure if I'd think the same should I come back in rainy season. Six months of pouring rain nonstop.
My own self is however not in balance. My throat is sore and I feel dizzy again. I go battle breakfast. I think I'm getting a hang of it. At least I am less sloppy if not faster just yet. Parathas are for breakfast, with a spicy potato sauce. And of course the local delicious tea with milk and a ton of sugar. At nine we start with our workshops. I have my own class, and it's going good. Kids are really participating. The second workshop is even better, even though I am really pushing it, straining my voice. Lunch makes me feel really tired - all the teaching combined with a concentrated effort to get the rice to cooperate with my fingers. Third workshop is difficult, I am at the end of my rope with energy and all disoriented. It is like plucking hair out of a fuzzy blanket. So we join the groups together for the fourth workshop. Much better. I have not much voice left anyways. In the evening I have to put together an exercise for tomorrow and get everything printed out. We have dinner with the students - upstairs in the cafeteria. It is a big commotion, professors don't come up there much. I stopped minding their giggling at my lack of skill in eating with one hand. If I have to use hands, I need as many as I can get in my plate. After dinner I play one of the futile ?'get online' games - internet is tricksy here. It lets you connect for just long enough to see that you have emails, but not long enough to read them. I am escorted to the guesthouse by our handsome caretakers and asleep soundly as soon as the sun sets, in perfect harmony with everything buzzing and crawling and chirping in my room. Hiding under a blanket? Me? Never. Who ever heard of such a thing!
Tuesday, March 1st 2005
I wake up again with the rainforest. It is still gorgeous as ever, I open my windows wide to let the fresh breeze in. It comes from the woods, full of faint fresh and exotic smells. It would be very invigorating, but my head is throbbing. I try to make a peep, no use. My voice is gone altogether. We join forces for the workshops again, they go really well. Especially an interview exercise I wrote up last night gets students going. Some, that didn't have time to take turns in all three prescribed roles are finishing it after class! I imagine my American students and wonder what sort of a miracle would I have to come up with to get them working after class voluntarily. These students amaze me constantly. Even if they're just kids who don't know much yet, they are extremely perceptive and adaptable. No matter that they don't know the concepts, as soon as they see a lead towards an idea or a situation they can relate to, they jump at it and are perfectly able to build a whole system of ideas on the spot. Not that other students would not be able to do so, but few classrooms I have been in are so willing and hungry to work with you. It is a joy to teach. Towards the end of the first session I get chills all over. I wrap myself in my beautiful light blue pajmina, freezing in a 35C weather. Sudeep and Nidhin keep bringing me ginger tea that I am by now willing to give up my life for. When you think you are going to collapse any second, this liquid brings you from the clutches of Death and props you up for at least a little while. At the end of a second workshop professor Narayana gathers everybody together and announces that there will be a session for volunteers who want to get more involved with our project. Good. Then he says we need volunteers to raise their hands. Not good! My plan was to just show up and sit down with those few that stroll in and help them think through what needs to be done to get some student-run body off the ground. I freeze in horror. There is a moment of silence that feels like forever. If I haven't had a fever already, I sure would get one now. They hate us, I think. They think we are bloody American fools (no matter that I am a Slovak) who came to talk their heads off and are glad to be rid of us. I sink into my chair and wish for the ground to open and swallow me. Then one hand comes up shyly. And another one, and a few more. Forty seven of them step forward to be the ?'student leaders'. Out of about seventy in the room. Now I have chills for another reason: What on Earth am I going to do with all of them? I know how to start an organization if I have, say, five people. But forty seven?! In any case I am so dizzy by now I resolve to just show up and play it by ear. They all know I'm sick anyway, it's quite obvious. When I speak I sound like a rusty kettle. Or I feel like one anyway. We have lunch with students again. They seem to enjoy having us up there. They take turns sitting with us. Naturally, because it still takes me about an hour to go through rice with my hands, three sets of students will finish their lunch before I finish mine. I go to the workshop. This is my show. I have no plan. Luckily Sudeep steps up as a natural leader and addresses everybody with questions about what they want to do and how. I am mightily pleased and relieved. They are doing this on their own. All I do is help them steer towards important questions of their organization's setup, division of work, etc. I propose they should perhaps have a smaller group that would meet more often and decide the day-to-day tasks and a general assembly that would meet once a month or in two months to monitor their work and decide on important things that determine the direction in which they will go as a group. They elect a Steering Committee. Originally they decide to vote for a group of ten people. But since fifteen students stand up as candidates, they approve all fifteen. I have to smile, I like how kind and appreciative they are of each other. Then they proceed to elect a chairperson. Most people urge Sudeep to run. Some other voices sound, and there are five candidates. Nidhin comes running to the front, he does not want to run even though he was nominated by his friends. He does not want to run against his best friend. I smile again. They are on a roll, all excited, fleshing out first ideas about projects. I get all nostalgic, remembering my own beginnings at the Helsinki Committee. I and my friends were nineteen and knew didley squat about how things are done or about reality as such. We wanted to solve the Roma problem in Slovakia. We set out on a field trip to the settlements, and came home depressed and disheartened, not knowing where to begin or what to even dabble at. It took years for us to put together a ?'Roma project', and that only involved one small village. I try to keep the kids in bounds of reality. They are doing good. Steering Committee will meet tomorrow for the first time to figure out the basic division of roles and the first plan of action. I am as pleased as can be. Exhausted, but eternally happy. I am glad to see Sudeep and Nidhin behind the wheel of this whole project. They are both motivated, determined, and serious about their work.
I feel like I am on a vacation. The work is behind me and I can now fully enjoy the beautiful campus, with all the beautiful people in it. They indeed are beautiful people, did I already mention that? Lovely cocoa skin, nobody is overweight. Some boys could lose their mustaches, but what do I know. Perhaps girls here like it that way. But they are also beautiful inside. Not one sign of malice in any of them. Truly remarkable.
I venture to the Activity Center to check email, and end up chatting with students before, during, and after dinner until I go to bed, appropriately escorted. I get to know some of them better. Anitha is a beautiful girl who has her hands in everything. She joined the Steering Committe, and is already involved in a community development project, writing for the school's newsletter and working, with Sudeep, on establishing a business magazine, to be launched this March. Rejna is very cute. She is the one asking me if I am a real spinster. She sits next to me: "Ma'am, tell me something." I smile, what would she like to know? Anything, really, it doesn't matter. So we chatter, I show them pictures from Boston that I have on my computer. One of the guys, Sree, grills me on the topic of my boyfriends, within the lines of the Kerala phenomenon: how many boyfriends did I have? And, most importantly, are they all married now? Geeze, I don't even know! Funny fascination. I keep telling him it's history, it's best not to ferret about in it. He calls me on the stuff we teach in our workshops: come to terms with the past, deal with it, dispute it, talk about it. Funny guy, clever as a whip. We're joined by Nidhin and Sudeep. They still keep calling me ma'am, even though I asked them million times to call me by name. It is charming, they can't help it. They were brought up that way. They were all brought up very well, too. Nobody on campus drinks, nobody would even think of it! Parents taught them it is bad and unseemly to drink. They would not do anything to contradict their parents, none of them. They also sign a contract when they start at the school, vowing to devote themselves fully to the school for the next two years - no vacation except for a few days for Christmas and for Easter. Part of the contract is that if anyone drinks alcohol, he or she cannot enter campus for twelve hours afterwards. Sudeep, Anitha, and a few others sing Malayalam songs, others join in or clap. They want me to sing. Luckily I have no voice. Though I do sound like an oversmoked, overdrunk cabaret singer, I don't think I can actually produce ear-pleasing sounds right now.
Nidhin accompanies me to the guesthouse. His English, or at least his daring to speak it has improved so much since we came. He tells me about what they do on campus when they don't study. He plays soccer and cricket and gets involved in just about anything on campus. It is a joy to see him during the day - he is so alive, always laughing, always in the center of a group of people, running from place to place. He also happens to have a body and face of a Greek god and a fast and sharp mind. The young man will not be lost in his life. He is awfully shy around me, but finally this evening he talks somewhat more at ease. He never had to speak English before he came to the school. He understood, more or less, but he really learnt only at this school. I am impressed - he just plunged in and dealt. And dealt well. I putz around on my computer for a bit and fall asleep before Hillel comes back from the computer lab.
Wednesday March 2nd, 2005
I wake up feeling a little better. Still no voice. I start coughing and hack out massive amounts of disgusting solid green element. Good grief, I wonder what the heck it is that I have. Ha, my voice is partially restored. Who really cares, I feel fine. I hum in the bathroom, enjoying my newly found vocal cords.
Hillel is leaving for Madrid this morning. We debrief and head for breakfast. Sudeep and Nidhin are waiting for us. We eat with the students, then say goodbye. Students line up to wave at Hillel. Jeep leaves and comes back multiple times - they forgot someone on campus it seems. I am to meet with the librarian Arun and with Sudeep and Nidhin about the students' project and how to write a project proposal for their fund-raising efforts. They walk with me to find Arun, only to mumble that they have a class which they are already late for. Silly boys. I send them to class, we'll meet later. I decide to walk around, now that I finally have time for myself. It's unbelievably hot, so I wear a tank top and shorts. I pass the boys' hostel, of course they're all hanging out of the window, yelling at me as I walk by. Politely though, that is the Indian way.
Tea plantation
I walk down the dirt road, headed for the mountains. I have to wedge my way through a pack of cows. Or a herd, is it? They sure know they are sacred, they look me down with their large brown eyes asking how dare I disturb their chewing. I find lovely fragrant pink and orange flowers, I stuff my bag with them. I get to the end of a dirt road, there is a gaping valley between me and the mountains. I turn right and head for the rainforest. I come by an impressive rock formation, that seems to be a river channel during the rainy season. There is only a trickle coming through at this time. There is a fence at the edge of the forest. I climb over - I do need to see the rainforest. There is a tiny narrow path leading through the thick greenery. Dozens of birds are announcing my unwelcome arrival. After a few minutes I come across about ten foot long thin bamboo poles with red flags at their ends leaning against a tree. I wonder what they are for. Perhaps to keep track of each other when people come in a group? Perhaps it's a hunting season? Or are these spears of some local nomads? I was told by the students that nomads live in the forests.
Rainforest
Needless to say I rush back. I find the riverbed again, and lay down in the sun for a minute, absorbing the incredible energy from the rays and from the rock under me. When my skin feels hot, I decide to venture back to the campus. After all it is noon, sun is baking smack in the middle of the sky, and I have no sunscreen lotion on. It would be silly for such a worldly traveler to get a bad sunburn. By the time I get back to the campus, my shoulders resemble boiled lobsters. I have my lengthy lunch with two or three batches of faculty. I am getting much better, I can make balls of rice with tips of my fingers like a pro. Still a little slow for the rest of them. I walk with Arun to the Dean's office. Sudeep and Nidhin are waiting. I tell them my comments and suggestions for the project proposal, we talk about their ideas for field trips and research. They leave and I play the ?'connect to Internet' game for awhile. Sudeep and Nidhin come back after five minutes, all shy, shuffling their feet: "We would like to know something about you, ma'am". What can one say to that. We sit down and spend the next two hours chatting away. I tell them about my family, they are particularly interested in what communism was like. They also want to know if people are different in different parts of the world and how. I try my best to compare Slovaks, Americans, Moroccans, whoever else I can think of. They hang on to every word I say. What do I think of Indians? Say, if they went to America, what do I think would be their greatest weakness? I talk to them about how individualistic and competitive Americans are and that they would probably get tricked and cheated very soon. They know they are gullible. But they maintain it is better in the long run. If someone tricks them, it's only a short-term loss. They keep their integrity, good conscience, and remain at peace with themselves. I cannot agree more. For twenty year olds, they are incredibly grounded and reflective. They both have a clear idea about who they are and what they want to do: Nidhin will be a grand events planner and manager - that is a big hot thing right now in the field of management in India. He wants to do festivals, conferences, banquets. Preferably with his friends from the school. Sudeep believes in people management. Everything, after all, comes down to people management. Politics, conflicts, business, all matters of life and society. He is very skilled artistically. He writes and sings music, paints, writes for newspaper, as well as stories and poems. He wants to manage a company that has to do with arts in some way. Ideally establish his own. They wonder why I am called Dasha if my real name is Dagmar. I tell them that we all get nicknames in Slovakia as soon as we're born. Every Dagmar is Dasha or Dada, every Alexandra is Sasha, every Maria is Maja. In India nicknames are not name-dependent, but given by the parents because of something the child does or says, or simply as an onomatopoeic term of endearment. All names have meaning. We realize ?'Sudeep' and ?'Dagmar' mean the same thing: day light or bright light. Nidhin is ?'gold' or ?'treasure'. They are very proud of their friendship and only talk in superlatives about each other.
Tea is brought and Sudeep and Nidhin run for their classes, they are late again. I have a few more visitations from students, I move with them to the Activity Center, giving up all hopes of sorting my emails or doing any work. There I am spotted by Varghese, the property manager. He wants to show me around. We walk through the tea plantation - I pick a bunch of tea leaves to bring home to make my very own tea. He finds that funny. He shows me a coffee tree, a jackfruit tree, black pepper vine, cashew nut tree, cardamom palm tree. He brings me home to visit his wife and mother. They don't speak English. Great. I make attempts at conversation with my hands and feet. Varghese lived in Nagaland for 29 years and brought his wife there from Kerala. Those are the only two places they saw. They agree I look like a Naga woman. Nagas are Mongolian. I think about this and realize that since I don't look Indian, with my fair skin and cheekbones I must look just like Nagas to them. Not Indian equals Naga. On the way home I pick a few cashews - they are yellow fruits with the cashew nuts stuck at the end of them. Fruit is quite tasty, not sweet at all, a little bitter.
Sudeep, Nidhin, and me.
Sudeep and Nidhin take me to dinner, we spend rest of the evening at the Center again. About twenty students line up with their camera phones to take pictures of me. I sit there as in a photo studio, with my hair pointing every which way after a day of trekking in a blowing wind, sporting a brand new sunburn and a matching pink and red shirt. They couldn't have picked a better day. Some of them ask for my photographs that I have on my computer. I download them to one of their laptops. They are all networked and have infrared connection - so from one laptop to another my photos travel. They are all very sweet. Gokul has a software for playing with photographs, he creates four versions of me, accompanied by a loud group cheering. He makes me into a Sherlock Holmes, with a beard and a hat, into a bride (of course!), into a creative hippie, and an intellectual. Good times. I feel ten years younger. The new program's Steering Committee comes by and Anitha asks me if I would kindly attend their first meeting. They are very into it and try to hash out the program's objectives, project ideas, time planning, publicity, all such things. I am awfully pleased with how things progress. They discuss possible names for their group. Shanthi, which means peace and harmony, seems to be it. At least I like it and I throw it around as often as possible, to make it stick. Ladies have to go to their hostel by 10pm, I stay with Sudeep, Nidhin, and Sree in the Center for a few more hours. They all want to show me something - Nidhin has a documentary on a communal riot in Marad, which is near where Sudeep's family lives. Sree is showing me his web designs, all look very professional. Sudeep tells me about his writing and singing, his grandfather Menon Narayan Vallathol was a great poet. Nidhin and Sree dig into their computers searching for websites about the great poet immediately. Again they compete in who has better things to say about the other. Sree plays some Indian music. I'd like to have some on my computer, I say. I need to say no more, they herd their laptops, point them at each other with their infrared antennas and are compiling a CD for me from all of their resources for the next hour or so. In the meantime I chat with Prince who is about to graduate about the life after school. It will be difficult, after three years of intense community experience they have on the plantation. He will work for a software company in Bangalore, then will be probably sent to Los Angeles. He sighs when I ask him how will he manage to adjust to a new lifestyle. He cannot imagine going to work in the morning, then home from work and being alone there. I agree, I have only been here for three days and I cannot imagine going back home. I want to stay. I want I want I want.
Gentlemen compiled a CD with over 15 hours of music for me. 127 songs. From traditional Malayalam and Hindi through all sorts of variations to current Indian pop music. We are online so I show them some photos from Slovakia that I have on my website. There are some paintings I did, they examine them closely and quiz me on what meanings are behind them. Sree again grills me on issues of boyfriends and marriage. At this point it is just unbearably funny to me, so I tease him for a little while. Finally I get lighthearted reactions, they do have a sense of humor! Hooray. I am still a ma'am, although now they try to correct themselves, I become a "ma'am Dasha." It is already midnight but Sree and Nidhin insist Sudeep shows me his paintings and plays his music. He runs to fetch the CDs. Both are very remarkable, he paints beautiful oils, all have a deep spiritual meanings of course. He has a soft warm voice, accompanied by music he composes on a computer. He even made scores for some TV programs and documentaries. Nidhin tells me how beautiful Sudeep's lyrics are. "Tell her what they mean!" he says. Sudeep blushes (or almost blushes, it doesn't show through that silky cocoa skin): "Oh, they are about love, that's all," and he hurries to play another song. I am naturally flattered beyond myself by all the attention and urgency of their need to share as many things with me as possible before I go. I ask Sudeep how he finds time for all the things that he does. "God sends these gifts to me, I cannot afford to be lazy." Humph. I am completely humbled. I resolve to become a better human being as soon as I come home. All three of them escort me back to the guesthouse, politely waiting outside until I get into my room and turn the light on. What a day. I spend a long time looking at the amazing night sky - you can see every littlest star on the sky above the mountains here, it is almost full moon and if feels like what it must have felt like when the Earth was just created. I am getting worried about returning to Boston.
March 3rd. 2005
I wake up later then I should have, proceed to stuff everything into my decomposing suitcase hurriedly. Hillel left a bunch of books and papers, I acquired two pairs of sandals, a heap of trinkets, some shawls and pajminas, two large bags of tea and cardamom. I close the damned thing just by sheer willpower and realize I cannot open it again before I come home. That's OK, it's hot, I will just wash everything at the hotel in Bombay tonight, it will dry by the morning. I rush down to have breakfast with the boys. I am finally blending in! It is unfair that I now have to leave. Sudeep hums some song at breakfast, Nidhin discusses an upcoming school soccer match with a friend, Asha is reading for a budget meeting they are going to. No overly polite conversations, I am a part of the team. Well, as we clever Slovaks say - you have to leave when it's at its' best. I climb into the jeep with a heavy heart, dreading the prospect of grey cold Boston and the aloneness we willingly impose upon ourselves there. I wave at the boys and watch as the campus disappears behind me in the dust. I seriously think about coming up with a way how I could manage all of our projects in India from India directly in the future. I am fiercely in love with this land and its people. Except for Bombay. That I can safely avoid for the rest of my life. Jeep propels down the steep mountains, we see kids in uniforms on their way to school, the dried up elderly folks heading for plantations. They smile at me every now and then, but it seems to me that they too got used to me, even if they see me for the first time in their life. We meet the same elephant around the same corner as on the way to school. Are they just posing with the elephant for tourists to take pictures of? When we get to Cochin, traffic is abominable as usual. We honk our way through, driver shakes fists at other drivers. I hear a yelp of a dog and a quick subsequent ?'thud', ?'thud'. I don't look back. Driver doesn't look back. Instead he looks at me worriedly, to see if I noticed. Of course I noticed, I will not forget that sound until the day I die. I pretend that nothing happened, as if I drove over dogs every other day. A rugged traveler cannot get all mushy or show emotions. It could get her killed in a decisive moment. I wave goodbye to the driver and embark on the way to hated Bombay. It quickly and forcefully reminds me why I dislike it. The smell of dust and burnt rubber hits my nose as soon as I get out of the plane. After a long while the travel bureau finds me a nasty little hotel that is cheap enough, and where I can have my own bathroom. Everybody wants a tip again. Beggars sticking their hands into the car, some even hit me or pull on my shirt. I do my best, but by now I am thoroughly bitter and I feel dark. I want back to Pullikkanam. At least I manage to bark back at all the tip solicitors. No, you don't get a tip now, I will give you something when you drive me back to the airport in the morning. And you, what have you done to get a tip? You are just standing here. They are all pushy, one of them has his nasty greasy hair dyed orange. Yech. I shut the door behind me, order in. Dinner is surprisingly delicious. Tikka Masala is hot as hell and the butter paratha is just right. I calm down. I decide to venture out to spend the last three hundred rupees I have. I don't care who looks at me or what I look like. It's working. Hardly anyone notices me. Great. I am at a whole new level of this worldly street-smart traveler game. I am It. I melt into crowds. I hassle with one of the vendors and get three bracelets and six packs of spices for me and the girls back at home. I feel wisened and toughened. I listen to my Indian music compilation before I go to sleep. In the morning the sleazy driver takes me to the airport. He has to share the tip with a porter who came along like a vulture, just to get some money out of me. He shouldn't have taken him along, his fault. I have a few hours before the plane takes off. I stroll into one of the handcraft stores and see beautiful sarees. I think of Asha, Rejna, and Anitha. They tried to talk me into wearing a saree. What the hell. I try one on, a beautiful turquoise creation with yellow flowers embroidered on it. There is no way how I can ever wear this anywhere, but I don't care. I buy it. And another peach shirt with flitters and embroidery. I stuff it into my computer bag, not daring to touch my suitcase. On the plane I sit next to two Indian graduates who just got H-1 visa to work for an American software company in Newark. Outsourcing in practice, sitting right next to me. On my right is a shriveled up man, who doesn't eat anything the whole way (over 20 hours), and has a nasty cough. It seems he will cough his lungs up. He seizes my passport to see what my name is. Attempts conversation. I put headphones on. I can't be bothered. Young men talk to me about India and America. We land in Paris for two hours, they are wondering if Paris is beautiful. Of course it is, I tell them, but Kerala is far more beautiful. They seem rather shocked to hear that. Nobody has said that about Kerala before. I shrug. Newark is cold, gray, and nasty, just like I expected. There is no food court at the train station, so I get some snacks at the magazine stand. Everything is disgustingly sweet. I try to curl into a ball against the wall. Perhaps if I just close my eyes, I can imagine I am sunning on a rock in that dry river channel outside Pullikkanam. I can't, it's too damn cold. Everybody is so pasty and self-absorbed. All of me is grumbling loudly. Kris picks me up at the South Station. I let out a heavy sigh, face the reality. Yes, there's the Pru. Still bloody standing. I get home completely exhausted. I feel ready to move away from Boston, set out on a longer trip. India, Africa, Southeast Asia. Who knows. With that thought I am able to finally fall into a deep dark coma.
