Bahut Ache! (2008 Year Out Volunteer)

Written by Georgia King

Namaste!
Sorry for the somewhat un-punctual update. You could say that I've already converted to India-time I guess. It's somewhat like Hawaiian-time, in that everything you do takes you just that little. Bit. Longer… I've started to talk slower (shock horror!) and yes, even walk slower (double shock horror!!). It also involves many more philosophical considerations, which further off put your original intentions for the afternoon. One of my favourite (and in this case, ironic) dwellings was about the fine line between procrastination and laziness – Nicholas and I decided that the difference is not in the physical action, but in the intention. When you're procrastinating, there is an underlying eventual intention to get up and do that something; but laziness kicks in when you decide that you're not actually going to do that something at all.

So in that sense, I've been procrastinating this past while!

This strange, new world is starting to become more real now. It's been nearly a month (!!), but everything has been feeling a little numb until this weekend. It's kind of as if my mind has been working as a giant sieve, filtering all the sensory particles that come through it. But there has been so much stuff chucked in this sieve that it can't process it all at once. Some of the chunks are really big and get caught at the sides and forgotten for awhile, while other ones just blow away like flour at the top. But finally, the sensory overload is flowing through, and consolidating. India isn't a circus ring now, full of flashing colour and piercing sound; it has become home.

Yet STIL I can't stand on the top of the highest tower in the biggest fort of the world's second largest wall and full appreciate the sights that I see. Amber wondered if it was because I minds aren't physically geared to absorb something as beautiful as that view. We can't comprehend it, and therefore we switch off, and just stare with wide eyes and even wider mouths.

Let me backtrack to where this whole train of thought has come from this week.

Firstly, the more mundane, everyday bits and pieces from the school week. There are something like 16 weddings in the Bilwhara tribal community this past week; and when some ceremonies last for 7 days, that's a lot of lack on attendance! So it means that our classes have been combined a lot. The first day we were thinking SCORE! Not many kids equals manageable classes without them being in the fields, plus we can save lesson plans by combining grades, and share the teaching load around, right? Wrong.

Yes they were generally studious, no they didn't stone me, but it was both heartbreaking and frustrating at the same time. Twice last week I turned up to school to find not one child from my class. Not. One. It's a bit of a blow when you were planning activities for up to 2 hours the night before. Or when I got 2 students, and then 1 left after we fed them, as she had only come so that she could have a meal. Or even worse, pulling up to the school in the morning, only to see two of my girls walk away from me in their raggy clothes, both carrying vats of water on their heads that were half their size. I looked at them pleadingly and pointed at the verandah where I teach them, but they could only shrug their shoulders and smile a sad little smile.

And then the children who actually DID come didn't really want to be there at all, resulting in very very noisy, unruly classes. Especially when you have children from the ages of 6 to 12 all trying to learn the same things at their different levels. If the older ones finished quickly, they would muck around and distract the others; whereas the younger ones would get frustrated that they didn't understand and do the same thing! Jane and Amber summarise it perfectly.

AMBER: you know what we should introduce tomorrow? Long Addition.
JANE: you know what we should introduce tomorrow? Capital Punishment.

Needless to say, we were welcoming on the weekend!

But before that came, we had a little mid-week interlude by the name of Café Coffee Day (affectionately known as CCD). Anna and I were lesson planning (well, actually I was drawing a giant papaya), when Neeraj and Garauv walked triumphantly into the main room and declared "we're going to CCD"! To which we replied, "Hell yeah"!

So off we went, past 10 at night, school the next day at 7, chugging along to India's solution to Starbucks. Like a clown car in reverse, 6 of us plowed into Neeraj's car. It was squishy (I sat in the front seat with the gears between my legs. Somewhat awkward for Neeraj!) but nothing compared to 19 in a tuktuk of the same size. We were just happy to be in a car! Seatbelts are unheard of, and there's no laws against talking on phones, nonetheless actually ROAD RULES, so you take your mind off your imminent death by singing. As loudly as possible. As off tune as possible. And as bad a song as you can think of as possible. Ie-

Backstreet's back, ALL RIGHT!
I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts…
The Venga Boys are coming…
But! Now! There's noooooowhere to hide!
This is the song that never ends…

In hindsight, this was probably a worse idea, as at times Neeraj was laughing so hard at us that the car was swerving! And us teaching him corners was probably not a good idea either. We blame the sudden dosage of caffeine in our systems that chai just doesn't have.

Friday afternoon was taken up by sari shopping for the wedding that we were told we would be going to on Sunday (yay!!!). Now, as much as I would like to say that sari shopping was a fantastic experience, and that I entered stores full to the roof with a plethora of colours and watched as they wove materials of every colour at me and twirled me up in them etc etc…. I just can't. It was one of the most stressful experiences I've had here! TWICE I walked out of stores in a mild rage due to the most appalling treatment I have received here. I eventually settled on a dark blue/bright light blue 5 1/2m sari that alternated between the traditional Rajisthani dottish print and thick diagonal stripes. Somewhere between Western funk and the genuine thing! And the after that you had the buy blouse material, skirt material, skirt string, bindis, bangles… It sounds like a girl's dream – being forced to get completely decked out in a proper sari for under $10 – but it was a NIGHTMARE!

But eventually the wedding came around last night and today, and it was so worth it! All of us girls dolled ourselves up (makeup!! Dear lord it felt so odd to have something other than sunscreen on my face…) and twirled and snapped and danced all the way there. We felt like it was our formal or something – all the photos are beautiful because we are smiling so largely!

But if we thought that we got stared at a lot when we were in the streets normally, then we had NO idea what was in store for us at the wedding. Here we were, not only 6 Western girls, but 6 Western girls in saris, plonked smack bang in the middle of 800 madly celebrating, chanting, dancing Indians. They weren't even subtle about staring and prodding! They would come up to us and pat us, or give us their children to hold… We were even invited to be a part of the official welcoming party!

When the groom arrived, he came on horseback behind 50 wildly dancing men wielding fire crackers, red smoke bombs, confetti guns, floral leis and foam shooters! He descended from his ornate horse (who was hennaed too! Just like my hand which I am staring at as I type) and sat with his soon to be wife on a platform in front of all. They didn't smile, they didn't talk, they didn't hold hands, they didn't even look at each other. They just sat and stared as everyone took photo after photo after photo.

Just in case someone hadn't already pointed and laughed at us, we were paraded up on stage with the (un)happy new couple. We stood and smiled til our mouths went dry and our teeth stopped glistening, before attempting to disappear back into the crowd for some of the grub that everyone was walking around with.

And good food it was! There were maybe 20 stalls, all wielding different cuisines. We put hygiene worries away for one night to gorge ourselves on all the wedding delicacies. If I started describing them all, this email would get longer than it already is! So just let your minds grow wild.

Then today, as the school realised there was no point us being there with so few students, we were luckily allowed to attend the family-only ceremony that we had been invited to as special guests the night before (Westerners are like blessings, so I guess they wanted to be an especially lucky couple to have 6 of us there!). So we got dutifully re-dressed and headed off at about noon.

Over the next 3 hours, we proceeded to watch the couple walk around a fire 7 times. That's right, it took them 3 hours. But I have to say, it WAS beautiful – the colours were better than the festival 2 weeks ago, because these were concentrated under natural light in natural surrounds! All the traditions were interesting – they all had to do with the natural form; so they lit fires, broke coconuts, smeared mud, burnt cinnamon, things like that…

But most of the attention tended to be diverted towards us! We felt somewhat guilty at first, taking away from the ceremony and all. But then we realised that it was such a great honour for her to have Caucasians there, that she will probably be saying "so, how many white girls did you have at YOUR wedding?" with a smug smile!

But I digress yet again. I actually have been traveling in Rajasthan all weekend – a fact I somehow managed to avoid mentioning until now! Anna and Jane woke up on Saturday feeling worse than the normal 'bad' that you tend to get often here, so Amber, Taz, Neha and I set off in our jeep type thing with our non-English-speaking, chain smoking driver, Abit. I'll admit that I didn't really know what I was in for, as Amber an Anna had taken the tour-guide role and had done all the research.

Talk about no expectations exceeding expectations… It was magical.

The surrounds on the way up to Ranakpur (one of the most famous Jain Temples in India) were at some points like the Aussie outback – the fingers of dead soldiers reached out for us on the winding road, arthritic and brittle. Their hair stood up in a buzz cut on their heads, creating a fine, ominous mist in the valley. It gave a strange sense of surreality to the real.

But hell, the monkeys knew we were real!! And they were HUGE! Grabbing at you, pulling you down to their level as you held a parantha above your head. Leaping, bounding, crawling, jumping everywhere! Suddenly not so cute…

The temple itself has like nothing I have experienced before. I am by no means devout to any religion, but when I entered this holy site, a spiritual something within me wanted to come bursting out. I was actually knocked motionless by the feeling that Ranakpur gave me. There is nothing in particular I can say about it to be honest; not because 'words cannot describe it' or anything stereotypical like that, but because there is nothing you can say anyway. Architecturally, it is AMAZING, but it wasn't the physical entity of the building that gave me the chills. Nor was it the idols that adorned every wall. Or the talk that the 16th generation priest gave us about its history. That man was intriguing though – he wore egg coloured robes, with a tiny yellow bindi that looked like a fleck of yolk. We gave him a lotus offering to give to the main temple God, but he threw it in the bin after Amber and I sniffed it. Apparently you may not smell the flower, as it is a gift to the heavens, and we pollute it by taking the joy from it first. We felt HORRIFIED!!! As if we had broken some sacred law…

There were many different laws that governed entry there too. You had to cover your head (natural enough now that shoulders and ankles are a sin anywhere – even in this 38 degree heat), wear no leather (I accidentally smuggled my purse in and felt guilty for it), no water (didn't really get that one), no photography of the idols (against the scriptures to make copies of the Gods), and the girls aren't allowed in on what they euphemistically call their 'mense' period. Unlucky if you've suffered that car trip all the way out here!! Our arses and heads are bruised and battered now…

We stayed over night in a quaint little room that reminded me somewhat of camp – except with monkeys. Oh! And 3 dogs that we called Pringle, Squash and Bronx (a sausage dog, a blind lab, and a tiny puppy respectfully). We made the mistake of starting to talk about animals on the way back from a traditional dinner down the road. This would normally be fine, but this was a rural road, and the restaurant was a fair walk away. At night. With 4 directionless foreigners. And when the topic moves to dingos, then Azaria, then Jaydn Leskie, then the woman in the boot, then Wolf Creek… You know you're in for a sleepless night.

And a sleepless night it was! After breakfast by the lake (with crocodiles in full view), we drove up to Kumbhalgarh Fort. It's the second longest wall in the world (behind the Great Wall of China) and apparently, according to a lovely girl who harassed me in broken English for a half hour, was built 'for the fun of it'. Hmm.

We didn't have to worry about not doing yoga for a week because our legs sure got a work out that day! The fort was HUGE and the view from the top was incomprehensible. But instead of standing, feeling as if I was on top of the world, I preferred to go snooping in the old maids' chambers. I found a couple of rooms that were patched with cow-dung roofs, and were letting in the most stunning display of dotted light, cascading down the slated walls and falling into the path of spiders. Somehow, these small victories give me satisfaction than the view that everyone can have.

But my camera had died! (everyone together now – awwwwwww). So no photos there, unfortunately. But the facebook ones will be up in a half hour!

I'm sure there's more, but I'll save you from having to proof read the next chapter of what is turning into the book!

I'm still alive and kicking too. My only health complaint? My right wisdom teeth are coming up and hurt like hell. And I am NOT going to an Indian dentist!! I'll go in to get a tooth out and come back with only one kidney.

Jaipur this weekend! And hopefully they'll be less to talk about for your sake…

Please keep me updated on news! It's so lovely to get a break from this world, as much as I love it. There's only so much cricket this girl can handle.

Ap ek bahut ache laga. (rough translation: You, I am much loving)