The Village Stay: A Gulp of Perspective Before the Plunge

In the interests of the success of the pilot project—my pilot project—I must come to know Dhala. If one of the first truths of development is that one size does not fit all, a related, and similarly hoary and hallowed bit of wisdom is the injunction to know the (local) context in which one is working—this is one way of avoiding the temptation to fit one size to all. Thus, my visit to Dhala had, at its heart, the goal of acquaintance with the community. It was, and continues to be necessary to both develop an understanding of the village context as it directly relates to the form and composition of the project (i.e. location, nature, safety, and reliability of water sources; sanitation and water handling, treatment, and storage practices; attitudes toward user fees for access to safe water), as well as, on an interpersonal level, to become familiar with the people of the community as individuals within the target group with whom and for whom I will be working (and on whom much of the success of the pilot will ultimately hinge!). And thus, my focus for the time being is needle’s eye narrow: Dhala village, population 1,800 (?), of Bishiwara Zone, Jhadol Block, Udaipur District, Rajasthan State, India, Asia, the World, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Known Universe.

My first night in Dhala, as I reclined on my bed on the porch of the village balwadi (nursery school--the pink building in the foreground of the photo above) and watched the hills draw darkness close, my mind returned to a question that has often crept into my private moments in India: How is it that I’ve arrived at this waypoint in life? The question is heavy, freighted with ramifications, off-shoots, and follow-ons; it is a full interrogation of a life, its passions and decisions—and not suitably addressed here. But how does a sports-mad kid from rural Indiana come to find himself in a remote village in rural India? Of all possible career paths, how does he land in international development? And of all the myriad landing points in a discipline as broad as development, how and why a single clean water pilot project? It is this last question, or one particular aspect of it, that seizes my attention for the moment.

Three summers ago, while part of a team evaluating a small dams project in Kitui District, Kenya, I kept a journal of sorts, at the suggestion of my internship supervisor, in order to facilitate the composition of a final report of my experience—the report was required to receive credit toward my Master’s degree (I finished neither). On June 27, 2005, I had my first meeting with the rest of the team: Henry Rempel, team leader and professor emeritus of Economics at the University of Manitoba; Charity Nyaga, a Kenyan gender and community development specialist; and Hilda Manzi, a Kitui native, recent college graduate, and agricultural specialist. That evening I wrote:

Already, after one short day of meetings, I am impressed by Charity and Hilda’s insight and knowledge, especially Hilda, who must be younger than me, but must know more of the political economy of Kenya, and of Kitui district particularly, than I know of, well, anything. She said: “My one goal in life is to one day help the people from where I come. That is what I want to do.” Let there be 10 million, 50 million Hildas in Africa, and all over the developing world! She is educated and erudite (rare enough coming from “underdeveloped” Kitui), but she also wishes to work for the wellbeing of her own people. No brain drain. Not only must more be educated, but they must want to remain in their own countries and not be lured by the riches and temptations of the West. That is how poverty and misery and sickness will be defeated. Not by the World Bank and its 3,000 development economists. Right here with the little girl growing up in Kitui District. Maybe I should take that to heart. What place do I have in development work? I don’t think I could ever be a Hilda or a Charity, or know what they know, intuit what they intuit. It would take years, and few of us mzungu will commit our lives to one foreign piece of land, one foreign population of people, one foreign culture. As selfish as it may sound, I know I won’t. I want to help everyone, to lift all 2.4 billion out of poverty this instant! I don’t have the patience or fortitude to commit my life to lifting 500 or 1,000 out. And that’s how it will happen: 500 or 1,000 at a time, over many years, with excruciating diligence. Hilda can do that, and I don’t think I can….Maybe I should direct my energies toward easing the way for more Hildas, rather than pretending that I can do and know what she does and knows.

But on some level, I am now attempting to achieve precisely that intimacy of knowledge and precision of focus that I said I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, or shouldn’t. In just one or two months, I hope to have learned a single strand in the shaggy mane of existence of a single small village in India, that I might then be able to, if not lift that village out of poverty, at the least improve its health, and thereby its quality of life, to some tangible, appreciable degree. Given the foregoing passage, it may be that you expect me to puzzle at the presumption inherent in such an undertaking; in fact, I feel the expectation is perfectly reasonable, if even a bit conservative in its timeframe (but perhaps my superiors are factoring in their own plodding, and after all, as has been made maddeningly clear time and again, I am almost wholly dependent on them for my progress).

It is the narrowness, the 1,800, that invites pause. Although success of the pilot will spur expansion, it is still a drastically attenuated focus for one who once claimed, only in half-jest, the desire to end poverty in the world—a desire that, quixotic as it may be, must demand a macro rather than micro perspective. In other words, a commitment to global poverty eradication first demands a focus—to return to an earlier formulation—on the policy and management side of development, specifically that residing at the very tip of the international development superstructure, a height from which the vast majority of funds descend (leaving aside developing country governments for now)—the major bilateral and multilateral donors. This in opposition to a focus on the implementation side of development, where the nitty gritty details of improving the lives of individuals—ten, fifty, 500, 1,000, 1,800 at a time—are toiled and fretted over.

Yet for the time being, I am content to prostrate myself in the nitty gritty, at the globe-spanning base of that superstructure. I am content to learn Dhala, and only Dhala—its local context, its geography, and its inhabitants. There was, after all, good reason to be lying in a bed on a nursery school porch, half a world from home, pondering the logistical challenges inherent in visiting every water source in a sprawling and formless settlement splayed over the austere charm of India’s Aravalli Hills. The thought perhaps wasn’t comfort enough to sustain goodwill throughout my time in Dhala, but it was necessary comfort—and yet it seemed likely I would also need a good host, guide, and mediator if my stay were to be both productive and pleasant.

The Village Stay: Excitement and Trepidation En Route

It was with a mingling of excitement and trepidation that I departed last Thursday for the village of Dhala, the designated site of Seva Mandir’s clean drinking water pilot project, an initiative for which I have assumed the primary responsibility. My stay was to be of six or seven days duration, I wasn’t sure which, as, along with many of its other details, the length of my visit had not been given much definition (or seemingly, concern) by my superiors prior to departure. The date of my departure, in fact, had changed twice before Thursday, and I wasn’t entirely certain, as the Seva Mandir jeep juddered its way to the Jhadol Block office, that my arrival in the village would not be greeted with surprise and confusion—that was certainly how news of my plan was received by workmates at Seva Mandir. Would I be staying at the Block office? At the Zone office? Why did they want me to stay in the village? Was it safe (this coming from a woman who had served as Volunteer Coordinator for four years)? Was someone coming with me? Had I confirmed my plans with the Block Office? I could handle life in the village, I thought, so long as I had something to eat and a place to sleep—and yet neither seemed assured. Hence the trepidation.

Trepidation, also, because perhaps I couldn’t handle life in Dhala, even with provision of necessities. I thought back to my first and only other experience of a “traditional” village, three days and two nights passed in misery in some blighted settlement in central Côte d’Ivoire more than five years past. My first night in this village, whose name I have forgotten, ranks among the worst in my life—in fact, purely on the basis of comfort and restfulness, I am prepared to say that it was the worst. Although I somehow managed a few fitful minutes of sleep on that godforsaken occasion, my sleepless nights before and since have, without exception, been more pleasant. My “room,” (I should say our room, since I shared it with another student from my program) was squalid, murky even in the light of mid-afternoon, and of indeterminate provenance. That it was designated for storage seemed the best guess, but it might have been quarters for the mentally defective relative who had been harried into the bush for our visit, or perhaps it was the guest room that had never been finished?

We slept on neat piles of enormous sacks (the fabulist in me wants badly to tell you they were sacks of grain) tightly sealed and filled with a tough, unyielding substance that recommended them as punching bags. We had brought no bedclothes and were each handed a large mosquito net and bid goodnight. I balled a t-shirt under my head to serve as a pillow, and as there was no means of hanging the mosquito net, draped it over myself as a cover; nonetheless, I was hounded, worried, and ultimately devoured by mosquitoes throughout the night. Though the village as a whole was without electricity, its school was on the grid and happened, that Friday, to be hosting a party whose music throbbed without cease deep into the night, stabbing indiscriminately into every corner of the village. Finally, at some ungodly hour, a precarious quiet descended as the party dispersed and the revelers all filed home (with no small amount of clatter and clamor)—but that quiet, so longed for, would be regularly broken for the remainder of the night by the wailing of the baby in the next room (and in truth, the baby sounded as if it were there with us in the chamber of horrors, as the wall separating our two rooms didn’t fully extend to the ceiling).

Dawn came as a gift, since it meant that I would never longer be forced to attempt sleep, to grasp vainly at that state of peaceful surrender that invites slumber. No matter that my allergies, already piqued in the night, would reduce me to a sneezing, sniveling mess for the rest of the weekend, or that the first order of the new day, following a hike of some distance in the soft light of dawn, was to swill chapalo—corn wine—from enormous calabashes in a circle of old men: my village experience had already been irrevocably ruined by that first, abysmal night. I entered the weekend hoping that in a few weeks I would receive an agricultural service assignment in a similar setting; I left believing that I’d never be able to hack it for six weeks in such a place.

Trepidation, also, because I felt the ever ponderous weight of responsibility descending upon me, a weight, I confess, that staggers me more than most. The substance of this visit was to compose a major part of the needs assessment portion of the project—the research and information-gathering phase that would inform the design and implementation of the pilot. I was to visit every water source in the village—every well, every handpump, every watering hole—dutifully recording its location with a GPS device (which itself was a minor source of anxiety—though not a technophobe, I often bungle electronics’ basic functions, and what’s more, the device was borrowed, and I was liable for its condition), performing spot tests for dissolved salts (the water in the village, it turns out, would be uniformly softer than that of Udaipur city), taking samples from major drinking sources for further testing, while also observing the water handling, storage, and treatment practices (if any) of the villagers. After nearly seven weeks at Seva Mandir, I was finally being asked to take a significant step toward beginning the pilot; I could blame past sputtering and inertia on others, but if my village stay proved nugatory, it would be difficult to point fingers elsewhere.

To be sure, progress, or the promise of progress, brought excitement as well; only I couldn’t say whether that excitement prevailed over my anxiety. I had a tangible desire to escape the city (where I had been confined for the previous three weeks), and an implacable need, bordering on desperation, to do something—anything—concrete toward beginning the pilot project. My stay in Dhala would relieve the restlessness mounting on both accounts. But what if it were a failure? The odds favoring such an outcome seemed outsized, at least in proportion to the relative simplicity of my mission—the most basic of tasks here has often proven inordinately difficult to carry off, and the number of variables involved in this endeavor—logistical and operational—seemed therefore particularly inauspicious. Perhaps most portentous was the fact that once in the village my lines of communication would be severed absolutely—no one in the village spoke English, and its only phone was incapable of making outgoing calls. I would be at the mercy of Dhala’s inhabitants, who, it seemed, might very well be ignorant of my visit and my mandate while there. I felt, no doubt in a moment of weakness and dramatic excess, that some manner of reckoning could very well be at hand.

Fortunately, two days before my departure, in a quest to marshal enough empty water bottles for sample collection, I mentioned my plans to the In-Charge of Seva Mandir’s Natural Resource Development Unit (one of two In-Charges to whom I answer, but not the one who had assumed responsibility for arranging my village stay—I’ve come to realize that the floundering of my project is partially due to the lack of communication and coordination between these two); within an hour he had requisitioned both Arun and Ronak, another NRD Unit staff member, to accompany me to Dhala, where they would lead a discussion regarding the community’s seed bank and introduce me to the village. This partially assuaged my anxiety—even if Dhala wasn’t prepared for my arrival, at least I would have someone to explain my presence and to hurriedly cobble together a plan of action for my stay. But I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

The Many Paths, Part 4 of 4: A Certain Quality

In my brief time in India, I’ve already come to a sincere appreciation for the value that this culture attaches to celebration. Celebration inhabits body, mind, and soul here; it is the animating spirit of the people. Indians are blithely serious about the enjoyment (as opposed strictly to the observance) of their holidays and festivals. Holidays here are legion (perhaps owing to the antiquity of the culture) and lengthy, diverse in their celebration, and this diversity exists both between holidays (Dussehra vs. Dewali) and within their observance (burning effigies of Ravana vs. submerging idols of Durga on Dussehra), according to place and custom. In comparison to this surfeit of celebratory riches, Americans are destitute. The disparity leads me to ponder the possibility of an Indian foreign aid program for merrymaking—-when it comes to celebration, we are the developing world (perhaps the UN’s next World Development Report will feature an Index of Merriment to reflect this overlooked variable in the calculation of quality of life). Technical assistance would come pretty cheaply—-any man on the street here has internalized the relevant lessons from childhood.

Let’s quickly examine the American problem. To wit: our holidays, religious and secular alike, are, taken as a whole, largely deficient in spirit and vitality. They are usually but a day in duration, and, I think, not really celebrated, except perhaps for New Year’s, which, it is worth noting, is a universal occasion, even if its observance varies depending on the calendar. Christmas is a single day (although we have the Christmas “season,” or the “holidays,” which is probably the closest we come to an extended observance), likewise Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Easter. The case of Easter, I think, is particularly instructive. Here we have the culmination of the Lenten season (An entire season! And how is it celebrated? Mass abstention from pleasurable activities!), a day that commemorates the single most important event, the upshot of all of Christianity: Christ rose from the dead! Eternal life is the true and tangible reward of the faithful! Our sins can be forgiven! If there is any day that should cause Christians to become utterly deranged with rejoicing, it is Easter. And yet, if not for the Easter bunny and Easter baskets and Easter egg hunts, it would be nothing but donning one’s best clothes and bustling off to church for ponderous reflection on the meaning of resurrection (or so I’m told—-I’ve never actually been to church on Easter. My family knows how to celebrate: massive chocolate intake). In other words, we had to invent a giant candy-dispensing leporid to make bearable the most momentous of Christian holidays.

Christmas is much the same. Christ is born! But where’s the outpouring of exaltation? Oh, there’s rejoicing on Christmas to be sure, but it’s too much “Silent Night” and not enough “Joy to the World.” We rely upon Santa Claus, flying reindeer, eggnog, external illumination, and the bejeweled Christmas tree (I love the whimsy of this tradition, the strangeness—-Indians would heartily approve, I think) to instill the occasion with a sense of wonder, mystery, and awe. This isn’t some “Remember the reason for the season” rant; the reason isn’t as important to me as the spirit, for it’s the spirit of the season that has been lost. It seems today Christians of the Western world value solemnity and contemplation above joy and merriment and look to the secular world to recapture that spirit of celebration that once accompanied the observance of their holidays—-without first attempting to reignite the smoldering fires of enthusiasm within the faith. I can’t help feeling that this is unfortunate, if only for the fact that, at its essence, few things in the world are better at inspiring feelings of ecstasy and zeal and exuberance than religion (ignoring, for the moment, other things it may inspire, or to what ends these feelings may be put), and these feelings make for stupendous celebrations--just ask the Indians. And one need not be Christian, or Hindu, or Jew, or Muslim to benefit from the spirit of celebration—-it’s an infectious disease that everyone is welcome to catch.

The point is not that Christians are a joyless lot, or that American holidays are dreary, lifeless events--truth be told, I genuinely enjoy them. Perhaps my favorite thing in the world is to celebrate Christmas with my family, and despite its curious, church-driven tendency towards solemnity and temperance in observance, Christmas is sacrosanct to me--I wouldn't see it changed in any fundamental way. But the celebration of most of our holidays lacks a certain quality, a rapture, or zeal, or passion--however it is named--that resides at the very center of Indian celebrations. It is this quality that inspires singing and dancing into the small hours, that demands fireworks be ignited for every occasion, that sustains a festive spirit for nights on end. Americans go shopping the day after Thanksgiving and back to work the day after Easter. We'd rather experience the tumult of New Year's Eve in Time's Square on our couches than create or join mass festivities in our own communities. We understand sacrifice as the point of Lent, and believe Advent to be for candles and calendars. We have forgotten Annunciation, Ascension, Pentecost, and any number of other minor Christian holidays. We haven't embraced the traditions of our minority communities, like Cinco de Mayo, Eid al-Fitr, or Chinese New Year. In short, we rarely celebrate deeply, passionately, or purely, and we simply don't celebrate enough. How truly unfortunate...

The Many Paths, Part 3 of 4: The Spectacle of Dandiya Raas

In Gujarat, the celebration of Navratri is famous for two unique forms of folk dance—-nightly garbas and dandiya raas in Amdavad, Gujarat's largest city, may include hundreds, if not thousands of participants and spectators. The dances are circular and repetitive and try endurance—-they wheel on for hours, often into the early morning hours. Garbas feature only women, are devotional in nature, and are performed before Aarti, a nightly worshipping ritual. Dandiyas follow Aarti, are celebratory, and feature both men and women and sticks (dandiyas)--the essence of the dance is an endlessly repeated reenactment of the battle between the goddess Durga and the demon Mahishasura, with the sticks standing in for swords. Udaipur, less than 100 kilometers north of Gujarat, has also adopted these folk forms in celebration of Navratri, and on each of the last two nights of the festival, I return to the base of Nirach Mata to watch dandiya performed in its modern, Udaipurian incarnation. It isn’t difficult to find: the music blares at such a volume that it can be heard plainly from my guest house a quarter-mile away. I only have to follow my ears.

In a schoolyard, an iron-framed canopy has been strung with tinseled silver and gold garlands and fringed with translucent pink bunting. Youth (broadly speaking—-I would say that participants range in age from 4 to 35 years, although most seem to fall between the ages of 12 and 17) form two circles around its perimeter—-girls inner, boys outer—-and while (in the case of this dandiya) dated Indian pop music thunders, the circles slowly grind in opposing directions, like the gears of a clock. Each of the youth clutch two dandiyas; they’re about the length of drumsticks, although perhaps twice as thick. Face to face, male and female counterparts strike their dandiyas together in unison, keeping the beat in a uniform pattern which, once traced, is repeated endlessly as partnerships shift with the turning of the circle. The tempo of the song drives that of the dance, which itself is simple and obeys an unwavering structure—-hit, hit, off-beat, hit, off-beat, and a final off-beat in which all dancers step to their right and the next partner. However, within its rigid structure, the dance admits individuality and improvisation: during off-beats, dancers move as they like, and each develops his or her own style, partially contingent, as well, on the character of the song being played. Within this circumscribed freedom lies much of the charm of the dandiya raas.

Variation in skill among dancers is pronounced, though this is hardly of consequence. Some are stiff and unsure in their movements, but many dance well, fluidly and joyfully; the girls are masters of a controlled suggestiveness and the boys are loose-limbed and confident. Although some do little more than step in place during off-beats, the most accomplished twirl their dandiyas in an elaborate, almost figurative style (my roommate Arun was particularly captivated by a girl who twirled herself, along with the dandiyas, between hits). Faces are also telling in their differences: many of the youngest dancers bear timid, nervous expressions, seemingly mortified by their inexperience, while other faces plainly reveal the delight, concentration, or boredom of their bearers.

The striking of the dandiyas, too, allows for variation. Within some pairings, the hits are integrated nearly seamlessly into the off-beat movement of the dancers; they become, if not incidental to the dance, a mere complement. For most, however, the striking is the dandiya's distinguishing feature, and part of the intrigue to the observer is the inevitable pairing of dancers of different styles, ages, and abilities. It is through this multiplicity of pairings that diversity is revealed to be at the heart of dandiya raas, despite the dance's formal limitations. Because the two circles move in contradiction, every boy must dance with every girl, and each partnership gives different expression to the dance. This is likely what allows dandiyas to press on for hour after hour, to midnight and beyond, for nine consecutive nights. For the dancers, the anticipation and satisfaction of pairing with a favored partner (or partners) is motivation and sustenance enough to continue spinning; for spectators, enjoyment derives from appreciation of the myriad varieties of expression born from the intersection of the dancers’ individual styles and the dance’s egalitarian structure, all realized within the constraints of a simple folk tradition. It’s just a bunch of kids dancing, and yet so much more: religious observance, cultural celebration, social adhesive, romantic catalyst (according to Arun, condom manufacturers do big business in Gujarat during Navratri), and entrancing spectacle.

The Many Paths, Part 2 of 4: The Dreadful Thrill of Nirach Mata

A week ago Sunday, I ventured forth from the guest house to the base of a large hill that looms impressively over my neighborhood--it's but a five minute walk from home and has beckoned irresistibly since the day I arrived. A Hindu temple crowns the hill, and both hill and temple are locally famous. The temple is called Nirach Mata. Last Sunday was the third night of Navratri, a nine-night Hindu festival (Navratri literally means "nine nights" in Sanskrit) in celebration of the goddess Durga and eight of her avatars (incarnations), each with her own designated night of worship. The day after Navratri is called Dussehra, and it is especially festive--it commemorates Durga's slaying of the demon Mahishasura. In West Bengal Dussehra is called Durga Puja, and Bengalis submerge idols of Durga in celebration; in Udaipur, as in many other places in India, Dussehra revelers burn effigies of Ravana, the demon king. Dussehra, like Navratri and most other Hindu holidays it seems, is celebrated differently depending on place (and in the case of Navratri, the avatar most venerated), but ultimately the universal thème du fête is the conquest of good over evil. Nirach Mata is home to a Durga idol, ten arms and all, and thus the faithful scale its hill to receive darshan (sight of the goddess/idol) and prasad (food consecrated by the goddess and subsequently consumed) in greatest numbers during Navratri. It is pure coincidence that, on this day, I should join the throngs.

At the base of the hill, I am immediately besieged by shills bearing prasad-ready bundles of incense and a single coconut. Here, in a plastic bag, is a prepackaged bit of obeisance. Pocket calendar salvation it isn't, and for pure entertainment value, the idea of commingling worship, fragrant smoke, and eating seems promising. Furthermore, incense sticks and coconuts whip the censers and Eucharist of the Catholics any day of the week. (Marge Simpson makes a good point: "I went to a Catholic wedding once, and the incense ruined my new pantsuit!") Nevertheless, I blow off the shills.

The way to Nirach Mata is steep. A carved archway announces the entrance to the temple path, and already many devout remove their sandals and shoes, intending to make the entire climb barefoot. Some whisper a quick prayer, stopping momentarily to touch the ground and mutter. In reality, there are two paths to the temple, although they intersect and overlap with regularity. One is a steep stairway, direct and strenuous, the other a switchbacking cement walkway with railings and benches, less steep but still taxing. Along with my companions, Arun and Anuj, I take both paths at varying points of the ascent. I am in a hurry--I want to reach the top before the sun sets. The view promises to be spectacular, and I am not disappointed: the entire city of Udaipur lies stretched out before me, encircled by hills that have turned a hazy brownish-gray in the evening's dying light. The white buildings of the city--stained with dust, flaking paint, shabby and decaying in ground-level daylight--seem a network of immaculately calciferous nodules from this height, like barnacles on the back of a surfacing gray whale. The waters of Fateh Sagar and Lake Pichola are a limpid looking glass, reflecting the failing light of a darkening sky.


We're forced to halt at the bottom of the temple's ultimate stairway--it is overrun with patient supplicants (see photo at right). We remove our sandals and tread through shallow puddles of filthy water to join the queue. For now the day lives on, but by the time we reach the temple, full night has fallen. Indians are notorious queue-jumpers, but with few exceptions, everyone is patient. Some cheers ring out to puncture the monotony. The temple's exterior is lit with small white lights, not unlike those strewn across town and country at Christmas. A man is splayed across the temple's surface, checking connections with a hand-held device and replacing burnt-out bulbs. Two policemen run the show at the top, operating like bouncers at a popular club. Finally we're admitted.

The air at the temple's edge is thick and sweet with the smoke of burning incense; a solitary drum is beaten slowly, methodically. The faithful ring bells that dangle in a row before a mass of burning incense, their sound more clang than ring, more discord than harmony. I pass and strike their clappers in turn, as I have seen others before me do. It is sensuous ritual: a fiery yellow light throws shadows amid the clanging of the bells and the slow, stentorian whump of the drum, the incense, the smoke. I have the unshakeable sensation of being in the midst of something pagan, something elemental and atavistic. I admit I am utterly ashamed by the idea, ashamed that I might equate strangeness in some inchoate and unarticulated way with primitivism, and yet I can't deny the feeling. I was brought up in one of the more staid and uncharismatic traditions of a largely staid and uncharismatic religion. The Mennonites, "the plain people," cousins to the Amish, kissing cousins to the silent Quakers--this is what I know of worship. Worship is silent, solemn, unadorned, like the people of God. Can I be blamed for the momentary ignorance and ugliness of my gut?

My mind keeps returning to the end of Apocalypse Now, when Martin Sheen slowly rises from the primordial river, his face luridly smeared with black, eyes wild and steely, while lightning snakes and flashes in the sky all about him. Coppola overlays Sheen's creeping to and murder of Kurtz (Marlon Brando), with an image of the ritualistic slaughter of a water buffalo by Kurtz's worshippers, a primitive tribe of the remote Cambodian jungle. Earlier, Brando reads parts of Eliot's "The Hollow Men" in voice-over: "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper." The murder scene is cryptic, eerie, powerful, unsettling, and however incongruous it might be with what I encounter at Nirach Mata, it is nonetheless lodges in my mind, unbidden.

Existing within this feeling of uneasiness and, yes, even dread, perhaps even at the core of it, is thrill. Thrill, too, because of the strangeness, the sensuality, the sense of trespass--both into this world to which I don't belong, and more fundamentally, trespass as an admittedly non-spiritual person into a spiritual realm. I feel I'm getting away with something, bearing witness to something secret and sacred, and it excites me. In reality, no one cares that I am here--as Anuj points out, "We can go to church, can't we?" And yet, as I sidle up to the idol (ha!, but I really did sidle) to receive darshan, I am anxious, self-conscious: I don't know how to act. I watch those worshippers ahead of me, but no two behave alike. Most surrender their coconuts for prasad, bow, and mouth some words, but some touch their foreheads to the table before Durga, and some bring their fingers to their lips and pray, and some touch their lips and chests and bow in rapid succession. It is all done so quickly, I hardly have time to formulate a plan of attack; no one tarries before the idol. (Because I've endured many a church service bloated to ninety minute with sop, filler, and grandiloquence, on some level I can appreciate the radical condensation of this practice. One only has time for the essence of the prayer. And practically speaking, if everyone is to get personal facetime with Durga, it needs be brief, or else Hindus would lament the one-third of their life they spent sleeping, and the two-thirds they spent waiting to receive darshan. And yet, what is gained by that four second prayer? I suppose Woody Allen was right: 95% of life is showing up.)

Now I am front and center, and so I press my palms together, hold my hands to my chest, make several small, quick bows and hurry off. I am not conscious of having looked at the idol; I remember only a fierce yellow light and the face of one of the men (priests?) handling prasad. He is smiling indulgently. I catch up to Arun and Anuj. The rear wall of the temple is inlaid with swastikas (an auspicious Hindu symbol), and some worshippers reach out to it and pause for a split-second prayer. I touch it. We take some time to appreciate the temple's western exposure, munch coconut that has been consecrated by the goddess (Durgalicious!), and enjoy the relative cool and quiet of this side of Nirach Mata.

Within ten minutes, we depart. The stairway down from the temple (seen at the right in the photograph) had been relatively clear during our wait--the descent of worshippers was no more than a trickle then, and could be no more, as the temple can hold only a fraction of those waiting to be admitted. But now, as we descend, impatience and fervor have surmounted propriety, and a wave of the zealous has swept nearly to the top to meet us. There is jostling and shouting. "This can't end well," I think. The crowd seethes and churns; it is an independent organism, obeying its own logic. There is a terrible strength in this mass, and that strength is heaving about, trying to find articulation in its dumb gesturing (More of "The Hollow Men": "Between the motion/And the act/Falls the Shadow"). Caught in the middle are an elderly couple, gray and shriveled and stooped, buffeted by the crowd. I fear for their safety. I fear for my safety. I can think only of the headline that I've glimpsed online that very afternoon: "15 Killed in Gujarat Temple Stampede". "This is how it happens!" I think. Someone lifts the rope separating the two stairways, and the old couple, harried to the last, manages to duck under. Arun and Anuj and I push downward and to the left, where a second staircase branches from the first. We slip away.

After we retrieve our sandals and continue our descent, I exclaim, "Indians are crazy!"

"What?" Anuj asks.

"All those people pushing," I say. "It was crazy."

"Oh, that happens all over India," he says matter-of-factly. He and Arun are unperturbed by what has taken place. The subject dies there.

The Many Paths, Part 1 of 4: Pocket Calendar Salvation

On the flight from Newark to Delhi, I sat on the aisle in a partial row of three seats near the back of the aircraft. The middle would remain mercifully empty throughout the trip, but when I sat down the window seat had already been occupied by a middle-aged man. His hair was graying, if not gray, and he wore glasses and a mild, benignly blank expression. He was a large man, and although not fat, his full cheeks and jowls bespoke a comfortable life. As I am not of the temperament to begin conversation with strangers, even those whose company I will share for the next thirteen hours, he addressed me first; he had the sort of smooth, drawling southern accent that I associate with televangelists and football coaches. He was going to India to visit his wife, he told me. She was finishing her second and final ("she told them she's not coming back") three-month stint conducting training for Indian employees of United Health Care in Delhi. The visit, his first to the country, would last a week, and then he would fly home, his wife following the next day. They wouldn't fly together, he told me, in the event some tragedy should befall the flight: "We couldn't do that to our kids." The kids, as it turned out, were in their thirties with lives of their own; he and his wife had recently celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary. I congratulated him and commented, out of politeness and possibly for the lack of anything better to say, that it was rare in this day and age for a marriage to last so long. "We got married real young," he said. "In South Carolina. She was sixteen, and I was eighteen, so we kind of grew up together."

There are two things I can't tolerate in strange travel mates: incessant talk (or general noisiness) and overly familiar talk. Fortunately, this man, whose name I've forgotten, indulged in neither. When he spoke it was to comment generally about his life and interests or to inquire after mine, or, less frequently, to make a passing observation regarding Indian culture (usually prefaced with the caveat or commendation--I wasn't sure which--"my wife says"). However, at one point he managed to steer the conversation to religion, and I immediately felt that this transition had a hint of the non sequitur in it--I suspected that he had intended to steer there all along. "We're Baptist," he told me strangely, almost sheepishly. He plunged on: he had accepted Christ a few years before. I braced myself, certain the conversation could go only one of two places from here: a personal recounting of his journey to faith in God, or else the dread question, Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?

But my panic proved unfounded. He took a third tack, asking merely whether I had any background in "the church." My attempt to describe the unique character of the Mennonites, I think, thoroughly flummoxed him. "So they're Christians?" he asked at the end of my spiel, which, despite its regular and longstanding employment, has never achieved coherency, even to my own ears. Later in the flight he wrestled an impressive Bible from the overhead compartment and took to studying intently by the overhead light. Every other page of the Bible was blank, permitting the reader space for liberal note-taking and reflection, a feature he was evidently proud of: "I really like it," he drawled, in typically understated fashion. Meanwhile he scribbled away in pencil.

On our descent into Delhi, we wished each other good luck, and he hurriedly reached into his breast pocket and pressed a small white rectangle, inscribed with red script, into my hand. It was a pocket calendar from the Monnett Road Baptist Church of Julian, North Carolina. "We started handing these out a few years ago," he said, by way of explanation. He cited a figure, which I've forgotten--the number of pocket calendars his church had distributed, some several thousands. I wondered if he equated this figure with a lesser, but still quantifieable number of souls saved as direct consequence. Perhaps his church had some formula for pocket calendar salvation (for every 100 calendars distributed, seven souls come to God), as fundraising organizations do for calculating the success of direct mail campaigns or phone banks.

The reverse of the calendar featured red letters, bold and underlined, in all caps: GOD'S SIMPLE PLAN OF SALVATION. Five steps to salvation followed: 1. Realize that you are a sinner; 2. Realize that sin brings forth death; 3. Realize that God still loves you; 4. Realize that salvation is a free gift. Finally, unnumbered, but having the additional emphasis of italics: Call upon God and receive His free gift! Which sounded to me as if salvation were the sweatshirt one receives along with his Sports Illustrated subscription. (Calleth our operators and they will sayeth unto you: Behold, I send to you my only sweatshirt, and it shall be called Warmer of Arms, Concealer of Guts, Absorber of Beer Spills, Cradler of Remote Controls, Proclaimer of Everlasting Love for Thee, Sports Illustrated.) And at the bottom in eye-straining script: (Please let us know of your decision for Christ). In order to refine the formula no doubt.

The Cutting Board Napoleon and Other Tales from the Scary Guest House

My Indian abode (pictured at left) has been variously identified as a guest house, a hostel, or, employing the definite article, the “Scary Guest House” (this epithet courtesy of another volunteer). Scary because dirty, and, I suspect, because of the absence, from a Western perspective, of some basic comforts and conveniences. The guest house, owned by Seva Mandir, is located on the campus of a teacher’s college and training center operated by Vidya Bhawan, another prominent local NGO; it is an eight minute walk from Seva Mandir. The campus comprises five main structures: two academic buildings, a boys' dorm, a girls' dorm, and a hostel for visiting training participants (currently sixty-seven teachers from seventeen states in India have gathered for three-and-a-half weeks of instruction in classical Indian culture and art—they’ve taken a bit of interest in me). The Scary Guest House abuts the rear of the girl’s dorm and was once a part of it. In fact, we share a padlocked interior door; I can hear the chattering of college girls just about any time of day.

I have but one roommate for the present, Arun, a south Indian from the state of Karnataka who works with Seva Mandir’s Natural Resource Development Unit. He’s young (twenty-five) and recently completed a Master’s degree in Development Management. He’s a tiny man, perpetually smiling, and he has a pleasant, wheezing, hiccupping laugh, although I never inspire it, even with my liberal bungling. We each have our own room with a single bed, but there are two other bedrooms with two beds apiece, and no doubt they will be occupied, at least partially, at some point.

My room is moderately sized and modest in every sense. There are two pieces of furniture: the bed (at right) and a large and flimsy metal cabinet of four shelves where I store my clothing (I also stack my books and other sundry personal belongings on top). The room is painted a washed out yellow, almost ochre, but judging from the spots where the paint has chipped away, it was once green. Four large windows have also been painted over, to cave-like effect. Two things adorn the otherwise bare space: a page torn from an Indian entertainment rag featuring a couple of suggestively posed actors, which has been hastily taped over a rear window, and hanging beside the door, a lithographed image of three freedom fighters from the Indian Uprising of 1857.

As perhaps befits a scary guest house, cobwebs are epidemic: the guest house is large, the ceilings high, and they inhabit every corner, crease, nook, and cranny. No matter how thorough the eradication effort, the cobwebs return, as though they are sustained by the very walls. I hesitate to kill the webmakers for several reasons. First, their sheer number would render any piecemeal extermination futile; secondly, I think that they’re good luck and perform a vital service: pest control. The Scary Guest House harbors ants great and small, a symphony of crickets, and when Arun inexplicably leaves the door open some nights, a swarm of mosquitoes too—plus the odd beetles, cockroaches, and flies. The occasional trespassing of a lizard is suffered for the same reason the spiders are spared their existence.

From time to time we host larger visitors too. Much of the front wall of the guest house, including the front door, is screened mesh (the swath of blue in the first photograph), and one of the innumerable stray dogs that loll about everywhere in this country has pushed in the mesh at the bottom of the door and can be found sleeping peacefully on the stone floor of our entryway some mornings.

The Scary Guest House contains not a single chair, let alone a table. When we eat, we sit on the floor of Arun’s bedroom. Arun has more space than me, including a real closet, a small anteroom of sorts (it has a door that leads outside) that houses a low dresser mounted with the guest house’s only mirror, and access to the only interior bathroom. I use this bathroom. The other bathroom is beyond the screen door and adjoins the patio (you can see its brown door at the far left in the first photo). Its door doesn’t latch properly, and the less said about its condition the better. I saw a (different) stray dog depart its confines one morning, and Lord knows what else has taken up residence there.

The interior bathroom isn’t exactly a paragon of cleanliness either. The sink is caked with the residue of thousands of hand-washings and the backwash of thousands of teethbrushings. The toilet is Indian-style, meaning it is set in the floor with raised footpads. It no longer flushes, so waste is banished by a pitcher of water refilled as many times as necessary. It’s likely not the most sanitary method of removal, but it seems effective. Although the toilet isn’t up to snuff, in a literal sense, by Western standards, in the reckoning of India, the smell is modest: a blind man can locate a public restroom here just as well, if not better than the fully sighted.

Which brings us finally to the kitchen, in many ways the most modernly outfitted of the Scary Guest House's rooms. Since I’ve arrived, Seva Mandir has acquired, on our behalf, a countertop gas range with two burners (no more single burner glorified camp stove for us!) and, most splendid of all, a refrigerator. Arun cooks. I do not, except when he is away in the field, usually one or two nights a week. I offer my assistance with vegetable chopping or other preparatory tasks, and I wash the dishes. Arun is particular about food preparation and cooking matters. Well, to be honest, this is an understatement. The proper method for achieving some culinary aim—let’s say chopping a tomato—exists, and this is Arun’s method. Then there is everything else. Frequently—by which I mean every time—when he asks me to lend a hand in some way with the cooking, my strivings are interrupted with a lecture and a demonstration that culminates in him finishing the task for me. He hasn't any faith in me. He is a kitchen dictator, a cutting board Napoleon.

In Arun's estimation, I peel the potatoes wrong (I want to tell him: “In the U.S. we have an implement called a vegetable peeler, and if I had one right now I would peel this potato three times faster than your sorry butt.”). I cut the potatoes wrong. I chop the onions wrong. I add too much tea and not enough sugar to the chai (Arun’s version of this quintessential Indian beverage is essentially heavily sweetened milk, which is perfectly fine with me). I’m not attentive enough to the chapati (a circular, unleavened bread also called roti). I wash the rice wrong. This last quibble inspired me to tell him, “You know, there’s more than one way to do something, Arun.” It's the most I could muster. On the one night that he asks me to cook, when he has returned late from a day trip to Kotra (nine hours of miserable bus travel), he predictably hijacks the process mid-way. After we sit down to eat, he notes that I haven’t fried the mustard seed properly. “I am thinking you added the onions immediately after the mustard seed,” he says. He’s right about that.

Imagine my delight one night when, in the interest of saving time, he attempts to cook the rice in a pot instead of the pressure cooker, where dhal (a watery lentil-based mixture that is a staple of Indian cuisine) is being prepared instead. He does everything wrong: he boils an indiscriminate amount of water, leaves the pot half-covered, then uncovers it and stirs several times, then pours off some of the water and returns it to the burner. “What are you doing?” I ask him at one point, but don’t belabor it. The result of his efforts, by his own admission, is “paste.” The schadenfreude, however, is delicious.


You may imagine, given the foregoing, that I am anxious to relocate. Quite to the contrary, I am perfectly content to remain in the Scary Guest House at Vidya Bhawan. I am comfortable here, and at heart a creature who appreciates consistency and familiarity. Also, despite his authoritarian leanings, his lax mosquito admission policy, and other minor annoyances magnified by our proximity, I am fond of Arun. Plus, he’s a good cook, and he’s got range in the kitchen—it’s not just curry and dhal and rice. He’s the rare South Indian who can make chapati, and he’s prepared omelets, the occasional upma for breakfast or a snack, and is a savant with vermicelli. I’ve already been offered the opportunity to move into another Seva Mandir “guest house,” which is really a modern two bedroom flat in the middle of the city. It has furniture, flush toilets, and is implausibly clean (it’s small enough that hiring a cleaning woman is economically feasible). In almost every way, it is more appealing than my former apartment in Washington D.C. But I decided against the move, and not for any misguided notion of living a more authentically Indian existence (in any event, I think most Indians keep their living spaces far neater than ours). The Scary Guest House, for all its defects, has become my Indian home. It’s like that first high school girlfriend, who, though you may have dated smarter, prettier girls later on, you remember with an outsized fondness and think, “Maybe I should have stuck with her after all. She was solid, and things were simple, and she never gave me too much grief.” I guess what I’m trying to say without laughing is: A man can get used to the Scary Guest House.