Chillin in Kochi blog entry has disappeared

I'm kinda bummin that my blog entry re Kochi (Chocin) is missing. Don't know what I said, except that it was beautiful- lots of spices, churches (Portugeese, Dutch, English, mosques and one Jewish temple- the oldest in India supposedly. It's a big fishing town and they use these huge Chinese fishing nets. We met a group of lovely young women and their teachers who were from the Windsor school in Boston. RANDOM! Lots of amazing antiques and a fabulous hotel. See why it is good to blog immediately? So much is gone from my head. I do remember that Tres and I stuck our feet in the Arabian Sea! Here are the pictures though.

Oh yes, i remember Kochi is the most cosmopolitian city in Kerala. George Cloney is there (at least on a billboard)! Lots of islands that make up Kochi and the big one is full of traffic, expensive car dealerships, apartment buildings and high rises (and people). We spent our time in Fort Kochi, the older, more chilled out part of town.

Parting Was Such Sweet Sorrow -State Side

<(Written before coming home and now that i have been here for a few days)

[Well it is time to go home. I have written four entries on the plane and on my layover in Amsterdam because I know when I get home, the onslaught is on.]

Well, what can I say?
What i love:

I LOVE INDIA - (I want to come back; there is so much more to see; i barely scratched the surface, besides i can cross the street now, what was the big deal anyway?)
I LOVE THE COLOR
I LOVE THE COWS


I LOVE THE FOOD- (i ate indian food everyday of the trip and i miss it now- but honestly i am not too keen on the dessert- too sweet)
I LOVE MY SON (he is full of kindness, humility and curiosity)




GOD IS GOOD -ALL THE TIME!

Things I will miss:

THE FOOD
THE REALLY NICE PEOPLE (already on the plane back to the US, I can see the difference, we in the US have a sharpness to us, and edge- we are faster yes, but sharper; Indians aren't sharp)
THE TEMPLES, PALACES, MOSQUES, FORTS, CHURCHES





THE BEACHES
THE STREETS-SO MUCH GOING ON--ORGANIZED CHAOS (I flew into Logan airport and looked down and thought-“wow, everything is so symmetrical down there- look at those grids!”; what taxes the brain in India, is the perfectly aligned, centered and sculpted buildings are standing majestically among dilapidated buildings, dark ramshackle huts, trash, meandering traffic, animals, a blanket of fruits and vegetables,etc)






THE KIDS- THEY ARE SO GORGEOUS (Is it those big round dark eyes on that gorgeous brown skin and shiny black hair?)
PEOPLE LIVING THEIR RELIGION- BOWING, KISSING, MARKING, MAKING JASMINE GARLANDS, WASHING
THAT SMELL OF INCENSE - (i bought some for my room, so at least i can remember the smell)

ALL THE SPICES
THE HISTORY- THE SENSE OF ANCIENT, THE FEELING OF THE WISDOM OF TIME
THE VERDANT COUNTRY SIDE- (so many crops- i had never seen salt harvested)
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WITH THE ABILITY TO RIDE MOTORCYCLES, CARRY BRICKS, AND DO FIELD WORK IN GORGEOUS, COLORFUL, SPARKLING SARIS!!!! YOU GO GIRLS!
THE CLOTHES- (i have so many nice pieces, i hope i get to wear them- i love the flow, but who knows within months i might be back wearing all BLACK and jeans and a t-shirt)


BEAUTIFUL FABRIC, JEWELRY, HANDICRAFTS FOR LESS MONEY (next time i will have a separate shopping budget and really go at)
THE ARCHITECTURE- (so perfect it instills a sense of peace and calm)
THE REALLY CURIOUS OLD WAYS OF GETTING WORK DONE- (if we tried to do work this way, we could put more people to work, but i don't think you can go backwards, people would feel it was demeaning;i hope and think that India is being thoughtful about how progress is made)

MY NEWLY MADE FRIENDS (I've been in touch with some, but our driver has no email; i do wish him and his family the best)






What I won’t miss:
THE TOILETS- (thank you western world that i am sometimes critical of for the toilet stool!)
NOT EATING LETTUCE, UNCOOKED VEGETABLES, GRAPES, etc. (the first night home, i went to a neighborhood restaurant and ordered lettuce!)
NOT KNOWING THE LANGUAGE
FEELING STUPID FOR NOT KNOWING THE LANGUAGE
SO MANY PEOPLE LIVING WITH SO LITTLE


SO MUCH LITTER (hate to use that word, sounds like a judgment cause “littering” is now a verb punishable by fine here -- I was born in that “don’t be a little bug” generation- but there are so few public trash cans in India and who could pick them all up anyway? it's still hard to see all the trash and smell all the trash being burned)
NOT KNOWING HOW MUCH SH-T REALLY COSTS- (did I get a deal? did I pay more than I should have? Haggling gets old! Being pursued by vendors was tiring for me and for them i imagine- but god, you must admire the persistence)
BEING CALLED “MAM”- (It’s sweet, but I am so not a “mam”)
NOT BEING ABLE TO BRUSH MY TEETH USING TAP WATER (hopefully I don’t go back to running gallons of water just to brush my teeth though cause I am now more conscious of reducing my footprint)
TIPPING! (everybody must be tipped in a full employment economy and there are a lot of folks doing one job, so do you tip everyone?, how much? most of the time I was thinking, "did I tip him too much, too little, do I tip her/him?"- how much could too much be when folks are making so little?)

What i have noticed since i have been back:

I AM AT PEACE-ANXIETY HAD LOST ITS PLACE- (I hope it is permanent- i will try to nourish the serenity)

I AM DRIVING LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL- (i called michael and asked him if he had noticed anything different about his driving since he had been back. he said, "mom it is crazy, yesterday i just made a lane that was not there and drove through;" we have lost our sense of space- nothing seems too close- as Mike said, "we've seen close and that isn't close." It is like we are fearless (and we never even drove in India, we just white knuckled our way through Tamil Nadu and Kerala as passengers.) But we both agreed that need to calm down, cause the other cars are not in on the new spatial orientation that we have gained)

What i am thankful for:

FOR THOSE WHO WENT WITH ME THROUGH THIS JOURNEY/BLOG, I APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS, EMAILS, ETC. I BLOGGED AS MUCH FOR MYSELF AS I DID FOR MY FRIENDS. THERE WAS SO MUCH TO PROCESS, RECORDING HELPED; PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS, AND ANY OFFENSIVE COMMENTS.

I AM FOREVER BLESSED AND GRATEFUL. TO PARAPHRASE MY FRIEND, LESLIE, WHO TAUGHT US A MANTRA YESTERDAY IN YOGA CLASS- LIGHT, LOVE AND PEACE IN ME, IN FRONT OF ME, BEHIND ME, TO THE RIGHT OF ME, TO THE LEFT OF ME, TO MY FAMILY, TO MY FRIENDS, TO MY COMMUNITY, TO MY WORLD- Love y'all.

The “P” Word- “In every place in every country.”

It is probably impossible to see India and not feel the need to talk about poverty. I wanted to wait as long as I could to observe and ask questions before I blogged about what it was like for me to witness poverty I saw from town to town. I hesitate even now of course because I know I don’t have enough information and experience to make an assessment, but i am writing about it because it was part of my awareness, part of my trip.

I am from Baltimore City and I know poverty is a complex story. When I drive down Pennsylvania Ave in my hometown and I witness the abandoned buildings and what I think of as the "living dead"-- black men barely standing on the corner in a stupor, I know the whole story- the part that is about past sins and recent events, the part that is about the government, about parenting, about personal responsibility, about personality, about the drug trade, about the “conspiracy” against black men, etc. So be forwarned, I don’t know those things about India, so any theory I put together is fraught with ignorance and probably racism.

So mostly what I have is a bunch of questions:

How different is poverty in India from poverty in the U.S.? I think about a song on India Irie’s latest album called, “Ghetto,” where she says:

"...there are places in Havanah that remind me of Savannah, parts of West Virginia that might as well be Kenya… parts of Tennessee that look like another world to me… to be hungry in LA is just like starving in Bombay… the ghetto might as well be another country… if you look around you live in another country too…it is in every place in every country… if you look around do you see your brother when you look around, it’s a small world after all…"

So why does it seem different to me? Is it the scale- just so many people? Is it the level of poverty- people living under a poverty level that I can’t conceive of – some reports say 250 million making only 20 rupees a day, that’s less than 50 cents. The average income per capita in 2008 was $977.

Is it that the basic standard of living in the U.S. is so much higher and our general infrastructure, government programs and assistance are better because our government has more money and we have fewer people to take care of? Is it that our middle class is much larger than those who are really poor here? Truthfully i don't know our numbers and in this recent economic downturn, who knows? i do know the gap between the really wealthy and everyone else has been growing.

Until I got to the Mumbai slums, I thought it might be that the poverty isn’t clumped in India, it’s everywhere, sitting among the temples, the buildings, the train stations, the farms, the small stores, whereas in the U.S. we try to keep our poor people all in the same place, which means that if you don’t go to that neighborhood, you don’t really know those people exist. I remember when I was in law school, there was this amazing photo exhibit going around where a guy had gone to the south and taken pictures of poverty in the rural areas in the southern U.S. It was arresting and i realized that i had forgotten these people existed. I was hermetically sealed in the leafy town of Cambridge. Like at some point, when i wasn't paying attention, someone fixed that whole "poor thing"; after all, look at the TV and the commercials. Everyone is working hard to make sure they have the right mop for their beautiful kitchen floors, the best food for their cute pets and the perfect shampoo for their troublesome hair. It was a reminder to me that what we advertise as America is not the only America. By the way, Indian TV is looking a lot like US TV with one exception; there is a cricket game on at all times on Indian TV.

One thing that I noted and I was not alone, some Indians that I spoke to voiced the same observation-- I don’t see the anger and frustration in India that I would expect, i guess based on what i see in the U.S. I don’t want to go as far as to say, the poor are happy. That sounds like, “the slaves were really happy; they were always dancing and singing.” I hate that. But I do think there is a level of acceptance. Some say it probably has to do with religion and the belief that if you live a good life now, you get a better one later. Fate is something they believe in.

The people i saw are moving, they are living, they are going to temple/mosque/church with their families, they want to work; if they have work to do, no matter how difficult or menial. In the US, I think there is resentment and anger if you don't have- is it because of those commercials? everyone wants, thinks they should have a shiny new car and a big house with a fabulous kitchen? Is that about the American Dream? Is there an Indian dream? What does it entail?

Also, I know some people point to small and large scale corruption in the Indian government as a reason for slower progres in the betterment of Indian lives, but that doesn’t seem that different from the US right?

I don’t know, but I see on the streets, towns, cities and countryside a great deal of pride, surety, vibrancy and fertility of all kinds.

The professor we spoke to said that some days she thinks India is never going to get it together and other days she meets some woman who is from a lower social economic class who travels 5 hours everyday to take a course to improve herself as a teacher and who has managed to raise two kids who are doing well in the best schools in India and abroad. She also said that while people are open and tolerant of course there have been recent trouble between radical Hindus and others and they are still recovering from those troubles in Mumbai. The Lonely Planet says there are major HIV/AIDS, prostitution, child labor issues, etc.

So India is not perfect, but it is perfecting and it was my great fortune to be able to experience all of its richness even amidst its struggle.
I feel blessed to have had the chance to be there and India is now in my prayers (that's a lot of folks to pray for) :))
I think i have one more blog entry in me- stay tuned. Also if you have answers/thoughts to any of the above questions, I'm interested.

A funny thing happened on our way to Puducherry- Auroville

I said many blog entries back that I was going to tell you about our time in Puducherry. Well a funny and wonderful thing happened when we were driving from Fisherman’s cove to Puducherry (Pondicherry)… we saw white people. I mean we had seen a few white people here and there at the temples, but these white folks were different, they were riding motorcycles, and walking around, they were residents. What we discovered was a place called Auroville, a utopian community that we had never heard of before and these white folks were part of that community.

Mike and I were astonished by it and it is the place where I believe Michael will say he “woke up.” Aurobindo Ghose (a Bengali poet and philosopher who came to Puducherry to escape the British who didn’t like his views about India freeing itself from the British rule) and Mirra Alfassa (called “Mother”) a French mystic, painter and musician are responsible for creating this community. Mother as a younger woman was so inspired by Aurobindo that she came to live in Puducherry and together they studied yoga, started and ashram and created this world, the “City of Dawn.” They set out to create a futuristic society for people from all nations, religions, genders, etc to coexist in peace and harmony together. There are thousands of people who live there; they farm, make great clothes, crafts and textiles and work on science and engineering projects. The founders had the grounds(62 acres) planned with gardens and homes.

The wildest thing about it is that there is this huge gold spherical ball that they designed. You can only go in and meditate in if you are really serious about concentrating and reaching a higher consciousness.
We walked around, ate in the center where there is a restaurants and stores.
When we went to Puducherry, we saw the ashram that Aurobindo founded in 1926 (he became very interested in yoga after he arrived there). There is a beautiful memorial (both bodies are buried there Mother on top of Aurobindo) under this beautiful frangipani tree. People gather there and meditate. It is so beautiful and peaceful as was the grounds of Auroville.
The community has also created a school, and other services that support the larger city. The school teaches all sorts of languages and skills so that kids can be well rounded- really poor kids can attend for free and the kids do really well there.

Again our guide was amazing and she told us so many interesting facts. Tres was spellbound by all of it. He bought books at the bookstore of the Ashram, and he read one most of the trip that prompted many fruitful discussions. Both he and I were like, “Wow, so in this crazy, cynical world you can decide that something as lofty as “peace and harmony” is worth trying to create on a large scale and put your imagination, work and energy into creating it, not just talking about it?” I imagine some people think of it as a cult, but there is no God or leader per se, there is no real book of rules, you come and you go as you want, you just have to be dedicated to creating a community of harmony and working to make it a reality. Alright then.

Tres commented at the end of the day that he was feeling like maybe it's okay to bring a kid into this world and that he had been worried about that. And I was like, "Wow, honey that's great; but wait, no time soon, right?" Ha!Ha!

Gandhi on Cows

At the museum i bought a book on Ghandi's writings- if you have been reading my blog you know that i have been fascinated by the cows in India. Here are some lines from two essays Ghandi wrote on the sacredness of the Hindu cow:



"The cow to me means the entire subhuman world. Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives....Hindus will be judged not by their tilaks, not by the correct chanting of mantras, not by their pilgrimages, not by their most punctilious observances of caste rules, but their ability to protect the cow."
and
"...The cow is the purest type of sub-human life. She pleads before us on behalf of the whole of the subhuman species for justice to it at the hands of man, the first among all that lives. She seems to speak to us through her eyes:'You are not appointed over us to kill us and eat our flesh or otherwise ill-treat us, but to be our friend and guardian."




Also here is a picture of Gandhi's room in Bombay that i wanted to include with my last blog.

Mumbai – Culmination Part Two: Gandhi Museum -Mani Bhavan

After the caves, we didn’t have much time before the day ended, so we had to make a decision about what to see. I really wanted to visit the Prince of Wales museum, but we would have had to rush through it, so we decided to go to the place where Gandhi stayed when he was in Bombay from 1917-1934. It was the right decision and a true highlight of the day. We had visited a Gandhi museum in Madurai, but it was closing shortly after we arrived and we didn’t get to spend much time there.

There was just something about being in this quaint little home turned museum that was the perfect way to end our trip. The museum has so many pictures and quotes clearly displayed and easily read. There was also the room that he lived in, so spare, so clean and so purposeful – it really impacted us. I remember being so in love with Gandhi when I was a kid. I had come upon him when I learned that he had influenced MLK, my childhood hero. I was fascinated with his principle of Satyagraha (passive resistance)and his strength.

So Mike and I spent a while just reading and looking at his image, from a really young boy to the iconic picture of him, fraille, bald, round spectacles, donning a white dhoti and a walking stick. We were filled with his spirit. For days we had been talking about what it takes to make personal change and change in the world --the need to believe, to work extremely hard, to be humble, to lead by example, to be tolerant and compassionate and to look inside oneself before pointing outward to the trouble with others. [We had also been wrestling with the negatives and positives of Western v. Eastern cultures, examining capitalism and how its success relies on people never being quite satisfied, always striving for more, thinking they need more to be happy, to be secure, always agitating and breeding unnecessary competition and a lack of peace. From our point of view, capitalism without compassion is the real problem, but also, that maybe within capitalism are the seeds of selfish behavior and an ultimately a turning away from God and community.]

it was so also great to be in the India that Gandhi had worked so hard to free, to see all the progress that had been made and to see all that is still left to be done. I had talked to several folks about how such a spiritual country with a real belief in equality (of all and also of men and women) could create and maintain a caste system that separated people from their humanity and suppressed women? There were lots of explanations, basically that the system was corrupted so that people started wrongly assigning different human value to the differences in the type of work people performed. I was happy to be in a place where Gandhi wrote and fought passionately for the untouchables and spoke up for the rights of women.

And also here we are in 2010, when the Indian government has just passed a woman’s reservation law, requiring there to be 30 percent (I think that is the right number) of women in government positions. There have been reservations (their word for affirmative action) for folks from the lower castes too, but more than one person told us that there have been issues of these individuals being given positions for which they were not qualified and that this was making progress slower. I was sad to hear this, for this is the same issue of affirmative action (concerns about the merit of the beneficiaries)that I have to deal with in my work every day. I guess I would have to know more about how it was done in India to know the nature and extent of the concerns. One person did say that other folks believe that without these reservations, nothing would have changed and that there are issues but it will get better.

Being in the Gandhi museum at the end of my wonderful trip, was a reminder about what I want my life to be about -- justice and an end to oppression wherever it is found. For Tres, I see him asking himself how does one follow one’s call to be used on the behalf of others? What does a life of discipline and commitment looks like? How does one stay true to a calling? How does one have faith to conquer the obstacles and doubts?

At the end of our day, we ate at Leipolds where all the foreigners and some young Indians hang out. We were feeling so solid that we decided to walk back to the hotel instead of taking a taxi. The night air was beautiful; we sat outside on the beach wall opposite our hotel. There were lots of folks out. A family (a woman and two girls) asked us for food. Mike left, went to our room, grabbed the two apples given to us (compliments of the hotel, but that we dare not eat) and brought them to the family. I don't know what they thought about his offering, but i thought, wow at least he found a way to give something. It's hard to say no i have nothing to give when you know you have so much.

Mumbia- Elephanta Caves- The Culmination: Part One

I feel like we had a tie for the best part of the day on our first day in Mumbai:
the Elephanta Caves on an island near Mumbia and our visit to the Ghandi museum. We almost didn't go to the caves because it's about a 5-hour trip and we had so little time in Mumbai. I am so glad we didn't skip it.

First of all we had the best guide in the world- it was like he took all we had been learning during our days in India and summarized them as he led us through the caves, describing the amazing carvings and the Hindu stories behind them. I wanted to record everything he said.

I wish i could capture all his comments and they we presented them. When he spoke, he reminded us of the ideas and concepts that we discussed each night as we shared what we learned about humanity as a result of our day's experience. The dicotomies of humility and confidence; unlearning to learn; belief and skeptism, fate and work, logic and mythology; progress and tradition; individuality and community; aggression and compassion; hope and despair... Actually the dicotomeies seem to exist within a framework of the trinity: the head, the heart and the hands; or the mind, the spirit and the will; or the creator (Brahma), the preserver (the Vishnu), and the destructor (Shiva); or the father, the son and the holy ghost.

Only at the end of the trip did we have a guide who explained to us what Namaste or Namaskaram or Namaskara means- "not me, but you." God, what a gorgeous sentiment to greet a guest or a stranger with. He talked about what it means to invite someone into your home and life without judgment. (i thought a lot about Jesus, saying that what you do for the least of these, you do to/for me). He talked about the prayer hands that are part of the namaste greeting- the hands are purposely placed between head and heart-to meditate between the two- the peace is in the middle. And the two hands meeting together in the middle as a way to bridge the right and left, reason and creativity, belief and skeptism, the ideas of balance and acceptance. He talked about how in the Western world we worship our intellect and neglect creativity and compassion. Amen! i thought; this is what i am always trying to explain to my folks in the law firm world. Our ability to conceive is so thwarted by this lack of balance, lack of cultivation of the right hemisphere, and of course the failure to invite love into our reasoning.

When you think about the creativity and imagination and faith it took for people in the 6th centurry to hewn these magnificent images and stories out of a big piece of rock, to insist their Gods loom large in their community, it is so inspiring and it sort of creates a resolve in you. By the way, the guide also spoke to us about the resource management, ecology of these storiesa and ways of living. What i also liked about the stories and manifestations of Shiva in this temple is that they speak honestly of the many manifestations of the human spirt, the good, the bad, and the ugly; the feminine and the masculine energies, righteousness and evil. They are all in us, but so is the divinity. These caves remind me that there are no limits, except the ones we imagine. Better to imagine the possibilities. yes?