And what is this letter? S!

I'm back and I've settled in at least a little bit.  I've got no plans for the evening, so I thought it was about time I started typing again.

Let's start  with right now.  I'm feeling a bit out of place.  It seems almost as if Seattle is not quite real.  Or, more accurately, it feels like this is my vacation.  My heart has this idea that in a week or so, I ought to be on a plane back to Kolkata, back home.  I know with my head that that's not true; that's definitely not a possibility right now.  But emotionally, that's where I am.  I feel a bit out of place, lost, confused about what is going on around me right now.  Seattle doesn't feel like home at the moment and I'm not sure when,  or if, it will again.

But enough of that.  I promised you more stories.  I had a list of things that I was going to right about and I'll do my best to remember what they all were, but no promises that this will be a comprehensive account of my time.

I'll start with something I remember well and  have been thinking a lot about.  I'm sponsoring a child (financially) who lives in one of Kolkata's outlying villages through Children International.  Her name is Rina Santra.  She is 5 years old and will be 6 on October 31st.  She lives with her father, a rice farmer, her mother, and her older sister.  She and her sister are both going to school.  Her mother is a housewife.

Since I knew already that I would be in Kolkata, I arranged with Children International to visit her while I was there.  I scheduled the visit for one of my Thursdays, knowing that I wanted to be with my Shishu kids every day I possibly could and not wanting to give up one of those days for the visit.  

We left around 11 am Thursday morning.  The ride there was pretty spectacular, I think.  Once we got outside of the main city and got on the freeway, we hit crazy traffic.  The woman who was acting as my guide and translator, Sunita, told me that she hasn't seen such bad traffic on the freeway in quite a while.  It was festival season and people had already begun preparing pandals for Durga Puja, so we assumed the backup was do to people moving materials in and out of the city.  Our driver was born and raised in Kolkata and had been driving for CI for about 20 years, so he was definitely a Kolkata driver.  And thank goodness, too.  We ended up driving along the side of the freeway for most of the trip, weaving through bicyclists and other drivers and pedestrians the whole way.  It was wonderful and got us there much quicker than had we stayed on the freeway.  Leaving the city also made for beautiful scenery.  Once you get out into the area where all of the villages are located, everything gets significantly more green.  We drove through fields of rice, potatoes, tamarind trees and a number of things I didn't recognize.  Gorgeous, really.

Our first stop was at the local CI headquarters.  I met with the director of that site.  From what I learned through Sunita, this man is pretty amazing.  When the site first started out, they had found about 25 children who qualified for the program.  Now, a few years later (I don't remember exactly how long they said it had been around), they are close to the 200 children mark.  In addition to their work with the children who are already sponsored, the social workers and director go out to the villages and interview the families in the village to see if their children qualify, then go through the process of helping the families organize the paperwork necessary to enter the program.  That's a spectacular amount of work for the 4 social workers and the director to perform, so reaching the 200 mark is extremely impressive.

After chai and biscuits, we headed out to Rina's village to meet her and her family.  We drove past the school and they pointed out to me the backpacks some of the children were carrying that had the CI logo on them.  Backpacks was one of the gifts given to the children for one of the recent holidays.  

The visit itself was, honestly, a bit awkward.  We got to their home, which was one room with a bed, a small table, and a large cabinet containing things like the girls' school books, dishes, and other things they had collected over the years.  Their room is connected to a series of other rooms from which a number of other villagers emerged, so I got the impression that there's a number of families living in the building and there is some sort of communal kitchen in one of the rooms.

Rina was still at school when I arrived, so I talked (through Sunita) to the parents a bit about her.  They told me that she is extremely well behaved and enjoys her studies.  She has a few friends at school and when she isn't studying or helping out in the house, she plays with her friends.  The basic stuff.  She's a normal kid.  When she arrived, we talked for a bit.  It was hard, though.  Rina was quite shy, probably because all of the people who lived in their building were hovering around at the window and the door to the room.  I'm also a rather shy and quiet person, in case you weren't aware, so conversation was short and awkward.  Sunita kept trying to get me to say something more or ask more questions, but I just didn't know what else to say.  Nor did Rina, really.  She did recite some Bengali poetry for me, which was beautiful, and we worked through the English alphabet for a little while.

After visiting the home, we all went back to the CI headquarters for lunch.  This, for me, was the most awkward part.  My lunch, as well as Sunita's, were served on nice plates but the family was served on the standard metal dishes found all over India.  We also got significantly more food than the family.  I just didn't feel right about all the pomp and circumstance.  I have been to a couple of friends' families' homes in Kolkata and I understand that they like to treat guests with the best of everything they have, but I just didn't feel like this was the proper place for it.  I thought the point of doing these visits was to allow the sponsor and child to connect on the same level, not to show the sponsor off as some important, wealthy Westerner.  I, personally, would have preferred to have been treated as another human being, not someone of great importance.  But this is India, after all.  What to do?

After lunch, we headed back and had a much quicker drive.  I talked to Sunita a bit about her own family and we talked about the holiday season.  I also ended up taking an unexpected nap.  I didn't even realize I was falling asleep until I woke up.  We got back to Sudder St. around 4 pm and parted ways.

Let me tell you, though, why I've been thinking about this so much.  I started out in Kolkata volunteering with Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity.  Mother Theresa spent her life as a nun doing her best to help those most in need, the poorest of the poor, the seemingly unloved of Kolkata.  I work with mentally and physically disabled children who have been abandoned by their parents because of inability to care for the child or because of superstition around the cause of the child's disability.  Some of these kids may one day get a chance at a somewhat normal life.  Many of them will spend their rest of their lives rotating through Mama T's homes. 

Rina has a mother and father and sister who all love her.  She has a roof over her head.  She was going to school before I started to sponsor her and probably would continue to with or without me.  Her family is definitely impoverished, but they still lead a relatively good life in comparison to many thousands of people in India.  I just don't feel like she really needs me all that much, at least in comparison to so many other people.  I feel like there are better things my money could be spent on.  Jenn brought up the point that there are different levels of need and that this family does still need help, but I just don't think that I'm the person to offer that help.  My heart is dedicated to people, specifically children, who are in need not of financial support, but in need of love.  So (and this is also somewhat selfish as well) I feel like saving my money to go back to Kolkata and to Shishu is a much better thing to be doing.  That said, I'm going to continue my sponsorship of Rina for now because I believe at this moment that I can save enough money for my next planned trip and still give her some of it.  However, if it comes to choosing between Rina and spending the amount of time in Kolkata that I'm hoping to be able to afford, I will choose saving money for that trip.

Wow.  That took quite a while to type out.  I'll think I'll leave this post at that for now.  More stories to come.

Beautiful Life

This is my blog promise that I will take time when I return to Seattle to finish telling the stories I have to tell. At the moment, I'm too busy saying goodbye to Kolkata and daydreaming about "missing" my flight and "losing" my passport and spending the rest of my life "working" at a bangle shop.

Sala, too much raining. It's no good for my business.

I was talking to an Indian lady friend of mine the other day about the rain. She told me that there has been less rain than usual this year and that the farmers are suffering. Well, hopefully today will help. It's my first experience of knee deep water while walking through parts of Kolkata and I'm crazy so I love it. It's absolutely beautiful. When it first started to get bad, a friend of mine and I were walking around and we stopped in a storefront to wait for it to slow up a bit. It was like watching waves wash ashore at the ocean every time a car drove by. People were walking around with brightly colored umbrellas, still getting soaking wet. Men had their pants rolled up and young girls were wearing skirts. Women were few and far between (not that that's unusual), but the ones who were out were wearing their brightly colored saris and holding them up above their knees. It was quite a scene. My only worry is that my room is flooded. I haven't yet gone to check andit's a definite possibility as I'm on the bottom floor. Ah well, what to do? So my empty water bottles and a few pieces of newspaper will be floating about on the floor. I'll survive.
I am now the mother of four chidren. You all know about Kajol, but one of the masis has officially declared me also Roneshma, Deepama, and Meetama. The other day, she asked if I was married. I told her no, and she told me that I need to find a husband and adopt Ronesh, Deepa and Meeta. That, of course, hurt me just a little because I would absolutely love to do exactly that. I would love to take my three babies home with me. I just don't think that's going to be possible for a long while. It is nice to know that the masis recognize how much I love these children, though. It's going to be hard to leave them.
It's going to be especially hard to leave Ronesh, I think. I love Deepa a lot, but she is a big girl and has been through this whole auntie coming, spending a lot of time with her and leaving a day or week or month later. Ronesh is new to Shishu Bhavan and hasn't had much experience with the way the volunteers come and go. He is also really still a baby. He needs attention. When you hold him for a long while and then put him down, he cries and cries and cries. He hasn't even quite gotten used to the volunteers coming only for a few hours two times a day, either. He doesn't llike when we leave and again cries and cries.
I often feel bad for coddling him so much. I wish I wasn't so compelled to pick him up and hold him against my shoulder when he cries. I wish I hadn't started lying him down on my stomach and patting his back when he was sick. It probably wasn't a good idea to get so attached to him and let him get attached to me. I think it's probably easier for the kids to not have only one volunteer work with them when they first arrive, so that they don't expect that volunteer to stick around.
But I just can't help myself. I fall in love so quickly.

Alright, I have a few more stories for you but it's time to head to Shishu and I think I will go despite the rain. Love you guys.

TWEEKING OUT

Guys, life is so crazy. Completely insane. I wish I could explain to you all why, but I have to get permission from someone first. I just thought I'd let you all know that I'm so incredibly excited for the next two weeks. HAHA!

"You very good man."

Weird. I have 16 days left in Kolkata. The last time I had hit this point, I had been here, or at least outside of the US, for 7 1/2 months. It's so weird to think that this time I've only been here 14 days. It bothers me. It hurts a little. One month. It's not enough. I've just barely gotten comfortable exploring the areas outside of New Market, Sudder St., and AJC Bose Rd. Now I've only got 16 days left to explore further.
I am still very thankful for the time I have and do have, though. How could I not be? I'm incredibly lucky to have this chance.
It's just that my heart aches to be able to call this my permanent home. Don't get me wrong. I love my life in the States. I've got a wonderful life. But it doesn't feel right like this does. It doesn't fill my heart and then break it to pieces and then mend it and fill it again just to break it one more time like Kolkata does.

But on to the logistics. My children are beautiful. I think perhaps I caught Deepa on a bad day when I first arrived, because she's definitely come back out of her shell again. I don't think I'd realized before how musically inclined she is. She's definitely got better rhythm than I do, probably because her ears are better developed than mine are. When the Sisters play music on the radio, she rocks back and forth on her feet to the beat. When the mentally handicapped children are in "school" and you can hear them singing with the teachers, she claps along. She loves the tambourines. She doesn't sing (because she doesn't talk) but I'm sure if she did she would be a wonderful singer. It's really good to see that she's doing better than I had thought and that she has an interest in something.
Have I ever mentioned that I have a thing for pouty bottom lips? This little boy, Amrit, is pretty much the cutest kid I've ever seen with the sweetest big, pouty lip. He's one of the newer kids, so I'm just starting to get to know him, but it's not hard as he's extremely happy and friendly. He's not physically disabled like the rest of my kids, but his development is delayed due to neglect when he was young. He's a little over a year old. We're teaching him to sit on his own by bearing his own weight on his hands and working on crawling and walking a little bit. From the way things are going, it looks like he's going to walk before he crawls, actually. He's got a masi who does most of the excercis work, so I've been trying my hand (or mouth) at a bit of speech therapy while he sits. I'm not terribly good at it, as I've never done it before, but he can say "bababa," "lalala," and "aaaaaah" which is better than nothing. I'm working on "mamama" next, sticking to labials because it's easier for him to see how I'm making the sound.
My other little lovey is Ronesh, who has had a fever most of the time I've been here, though it's finally breaking. He's brand brand new so we don't really have much information on him. He's definitely not Cerebral Palsy or Hydrocephalus, which are the two most common disabilities at Shishu. I think it might just be another case of delayed development. In any case, he's had a fever. The masis don't let the ill children be around the other kids, for good reason, so he hasn't had a whole lot of interaction since he's gotten sick. And I have a thing for sick kids, too, apparently. So I've been keeping him company when I can, massaging his arms and legs and patting his back when he coughs and things of the sort. He's a sweetie, too.
Sonali and Jyotsni, the two who had arrived shortly before I left are doing so well. Jyotsni's a little diva and is always ordering the masis and aunties around and making demands. She can say a few things and understands quite a bit of bengali (nodding her head to show understanding). Her feet are still rather swollen and angled outward, but she is able to walk with support. Sonali is still rather shy and doesn't speak, but she at least lets the volunteers play with her without crying about it. She is also able to walk with some support and is definitely getting stronger. They make me happy.

BOLLYWOOD UPDATE!
I've seen two movies so far: Love Aaj Kal and Life Partner.
I really enjoyed Love Aaj Kal. It's the story of and Indian man and woman meet in San Francisco, start dating and it's implied that they start to fall in love. After a year, the girl decides to go to an art school in India and they mutually decide that they don't want a long distance relationship so they break up. They both go off and start to date other people, though it's clear that they're both a little upset that the other is dating someone else.
While all this is going on, an older friend of the man is telling his love to story to the man. The love story kind of mirrors the love story between the main characters (same same but different, y'know).
I'll let you guess what happens in the end. It's not that hard to figure out. It's Bollywood, after all.
The song and dance numbers were pretty awesome, especially since there was a bit of traditional song and dance mixed in from the older man's story. I really liked the parallel stories, too. It was really the best of both worlds - a bit of traditional Bollywood and a bit of modern Bollywood.

The second one, Life Partner, was pretty lame and not really worth talking much about. The story line was dumb. The main characters (two couples) meet, fall in love, get married, get divorced, then get back together when they realize that they still love each other. The songs and dances were the best part, but they were still just so-so. Lame.

I'm really excited to see Wanted. Salman Khan stars. The tag line is something along the lines of, "He talks casually, he eats casually, he ... casually, he loves casually, but he dances SERIOUSLY." Salman Khan is really the man's man in India. You ask any Indian man who his favorite actors are and Salman Khan is somewhere near the top of the list. I've seen him in a minor role in one other movie, so I'm looking forward to trying to figure out what all the buzz is about. It comes out maybe Friday and I'm seriously considering going the first day. We'll see.