Sweltering Sun and Rigorous Tag

As your winter draws to a close, I begin to sizzle in Kerala’s dry season. An Indian state known for its lush landscape sits in waiting these next few months for the monsoon rains of June and July. So does that mean the sarees are ceremoniously stashed in moth balls in favor of tank tops and shorts? Not a chance. A saree is protection not only from the cool but from the sweltering hot sun too. Lands End would be smart to run a line of India’s best utilitarian digs.

My former boss began many of our weekly staff meetings by asking for our “Highs and Lows,” a great way to get all the dirt from an emotionally charged team of young “Student Life Assistants.” Now into month seven of my Indian education, I’m ready to begin to break it down. But honestly, I will never be able to truly express what this year has meant. I will begin with lows. Without a second of hesitation or chagrin at my frivolity, my coconut fiber mattress is my lowest of lows. I remember what I thought when I first hopped hopefully onto my bed in September, “OK, this is how it will be.” When I’m really tired, my mattress is just welcoming as my carebear cloud of a bed at home, but it is no cloud.

A more pervasive low is my inability to act on the injustices I witness. Something I recognize now more than ever is the value of empowerment over charity. A recent article in Frontline highlights an organization called Andolan, newly created by Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh, a northern state of India. The chairperson of Andolan said, “We seek to create an alternative voice of Muslim women with the belief that Muslim women themselves can lead the movement towards equality and social justice.” Those are pretty meaningful words and it leaves me with a deeper understanding of my “ministry of presence.”

During our recent trip to Andra Pradesh, a state in southern India, we visited villages where Dalits (members of the lowest caste) are learning their rights and gaining them. Community leaders who visit to provide educational workshops recognize that they are just a tool. Though the Lower Primary school where I teach twice a week desperately needs an expensive facelift, what it needs more is awareness and support from the community. It needs a government ready to hire one teacher per grade (as opposed to two for four grades). It needs recognition of the injustice prevalent in an education system where poor kids get a poor education. The cyclical nature of these issues is frightening.

But the “Highs” of my seventh month in India are plenty. It’s hard to think of just a few. I played a rigorous game of tag with five kids from theDalit colony close by and went to evening prayer drenched in (very unfeminine) sweat. I roasted marshmallows (Thanks Mom!) with the kitchen staff over their cooking fire after dinner when the heat of the embers was perfect. I was asked, “How do you make marshmallows?” to which I obviouslyresponded, “With a stick and a fire!” A slightly confused question followed, “But no, the marshmallow itself, do you know how to make it?” WHAT?! It was a cultural emergency. How do I explain that no one KNOWS how marshmallows are made, but I’m sure it involves the same carebears who are protecting my cloud bed right now.

I’ve started and ended every day in India with curry, I relish a refreshing glass of just boiled water, and I can easily differentiate between good and bad chapatti. My previously short bob now reaches my shoulders, I am a“regular” at the post office and bakery (well, a few bakeries), and the hostel girls know my strange habits. The kitchen staff no longer wonder whyI sit with them in the kitchen, they know I just like it. Here I am in India.