soaking in saris

Delhi continues to be soul-searingly hot. I wonder how much hotter it can really get. Surely, this must be the upper limit. Surely, this humidity means that the heat relieving monsoon will arrive soon? The city waits, somewhat impatiently, for the late rains to cool things down. I have mixed feelings, knowing that rain is cooler, but also more humid. And to imagine all the garbage and fluids on the streets pooling around my ankles is a bit terrifying. Fortunately, I have been out of the city for the past few days in a smaller city called Lalitpur. Unfortunately I am back and must stay a couple more days. But this chaos and oppressiveness is Delhi, and I have faith that better places await.

We went to Lalitpur to visit some community development projects with an organization called Emmanuel Hospital Association. We had planned out when we would be in Lalitpur, but all efforts to sort out lodging, activities or details went unrewarded. We had no idea what we were headed towards when we boarded our train for an 8 hour journey south. Now that is a long story in itself, which involves some less than G-rated commentary on my part, but I will try to recount it quickly and with taste.

We arrived at the station in over 100 degree heat, hotter on the concrete sidewalks. The station is packed with bodies laying everywhere and people rushing lines for tickets. We decide to escape the stench and wait on our platform where maybe there would be a breeze? It was chaos there too, and since then have discovered that all of India is in constant chaos. There were people everywhere!! I have never seen such an amount of burlap bags, naked children, wasted old men and tattered looking fathers, all waiting for the arrival of the Gondwana Express.

As the train pulled in and slowed, we realized that the space we had plopped down to sit on our bags was also the space that everyone in 3rd class wanted to run in to try and jump the not-yet-stopped train. Melissa was almost taken out as the more spry 3rd class passengers ran and pushed each other, in desperation for a seat on their most likely 24 hour journey. We grabbed our stuff and tried to escape by walking the other direction, sure that our 2nd class seats were in a coach, probably at the other end. We walked and walked, asked 4 different people and in the stress of being left behind, ended up getting on the wrong coach anyway. The train was a mile long and the platform a half, and the labeling was less than clear. Our coach was full of men, staring at us, but we tried to act naturally, settle in to our dingy blue vinyl seats/beds and just hoped that we wouldn't be sent to 3rd class because we were in the wrong place.

We arrived by the grace of God, unharmed and reassigned to different seats on the same coach. We were 2 hours late and got off to a dark, long platform, cluttered with the usual unfortunate souls laying here and there, waiting for trains. We didn't know whether to walk left or right, and didn't know if the people would still be there waiting for us. Lalitpur is unknown to tourist guidebooks, and we weren't sure if there were any hotels, or if anyone at the station would even speak english. Sweat pouring, we wandered at an accelerated pace and finally after 5 minutes, someone spoke to us from the shadows and we discovered it was our man. Praise God! I am not going to sleep on the ground in a scary, scary train station and be robbed and killed! We are saved! I then realized that we were not driving to a cool, clean hotel with a giant bathtub, but right to the hospital. Am I sleeping in the post-op wing or the emergency room?

Everything turned out fine in the end. We were in the care of lovely, Indian hosts that put us up in a guest cottage and drove us around for three days to see rural India. Our leader was a jovial blind man named Ranjan who was full of personality and charm. Our room was a bit shabby, without AC, infested with grasshoppers, mice, frogs and ants, and didn't have a shower, but its amazing how you adapt, isn't it? We didn't have to eat hospital meals either, as I feared, but ate with the doctors in a little dining hall.

We saw some incredible things on our visits to the villages of central India. We visited villages of different caste levels, met people working to educate about AIDS at truck stops and doctors working at the small, simple hospital where we were staying. The places I saw and people that I encountered were a part of India that I didn't expect to ever see. The work that the association was doing was very good. Water wells, farming education, composting, AIDS education, animal keeping, crop fences and more. The most memorable person that I met was a girl, 12 or 13 years old who didn't remember when she was married and held a 5 month old baby in her arms. She was so young, but nothing about her face resembled a child. She wore the clothing of a married woman and kept a house of her own. Her body was small and young and she looked tired. I just couldn't believe that anyone would marry their 9 year old daughter to an older man. I will always wonder what the circumstances were and what her future holds. Ranjan said that they were trying to assist these lower caste communities and build relationships that would be able to discourage such things from happening in the future.

The poverty here is seemingly, endless. I didn't expect it to be so obvious. At the train station, walking down the street, in front of the hotel - you see horrible things. Malnourished infants crawling through puddles, people with deformed limbs begging for food or people sleeping in the heat at the side of the road. Its a lot to deal with and I have to somehow make sense of my wanting to spend extra for air conditioning in my hotel room while people starve outside. Its uncomfortable and I don't know how to deal with it. I think that my birthright in this world as a rich, white person came with certain stipulations that I didn't realize fully until now. I will spend the rest of my life in this uncomfortable tension and will hopefully, prayerfully, figure out what I should do and what I should give. Bear with me as I work out these ideas while continuing to travel through the chaos and madness of India.