Log Chapter Two

     Monday, November thirtieth. Morning is here, I’m ready for school, and some character in government garb has decided to call it all off. It rained last night, no doubt, and puddles are scattered about, and hundreds of thousands of students and their teachers in this city, will be staying home today. Even right now, the rain does not fall, and one wonders why the official is making this call. Like it or not, the stage has been set and all of the actors wait in the wings for what will come next.

     As many days have been lost already, as there have been sessions actually held. I’m prepared for my role, yea, overly so, and have time on my hands to chase wandering thoughts as they travel from one choice to another. Yesterday, Sunday, I stepped through the gate of the Annexe, and walked up the street, past shops, and stalls, and stores of many a type and demeanor. I found new colored pencils, and blank paper for notes, and sandalwood incense to lighten the air in my room. Herbal tea bags for flavor, paper towels for cleaning up messes, and a cloth to wear round my waist when I am at leisure. Dodging puddles and cars, and cycles and buses, while yesterday’s sun was bright on my forehead.

     Another day is here now for musing on what is to come. I get the idea that my host and hostess have more plans for my role. This week, assuming classes are held a sufficient number of days, will be spent in concert with my teachers of the English department. So far, I’ll be getting a sense for students in every standard from the sixth through the twelfth. Somewhere along the line, I’ll be given my own class or classes. I read a few paragraphs from this morning’s English language newspaper for Shantha, and she is enthralled with the idea that I will be performing the role of American English pronunciation maestro. All of these classes with the English department teachers are leading me towards this objective, which I am completely fine with, and I truly appreciate this breaking-in period for getting used to the system and the students. Meanwhile, I wait in the wings to be called on stage, and so far I am little more than an extra with a brief speaking part. The plans are evolving and I’ll be finding out what I need to know when I need to know it.

     As for longer term views, Shantha makes it clear that Mi Casa Su Casa applies here at the Annexe for the rest of my life. My only question for myself is where do I take it from here. This academic quarter goes till the end of March. Of course, I will want to visit my original neighborhoods of Pondicherry and Cuddalore, south of here a hundred miles. I will want to visit some of my favorite places from my visit and tour four years ago: the beaches of Goa, the Ganges at Varanasi, Rishikesh in Utterakand, and Dharamshala in Himachel Pradesh. The Kathmandu valley draws me to Nepal. All of those, just in themselves, are a lot of places to be visiting, without even thinking about how long I might spend in any of them. Any number of serendipitous encounters might magically appear along the way, and the journey itself will be the destination.

     On the horizon of my wishful thinking gem is the town of Leh in the district of Ladakh in the northernmost state of Kashmir. Any visit I might make there would have to occur between June and September, for it is snowbound in winter and colder than any place that I have ever known. There are those of my friends and family who would ask why I would want to go to such a place, and there are others who would understand perfectly well. I can find Tibetan culture in Dharamshala and Nepal and other Himalayan regions. Leh in Ladakh is further away from everything I have ever known in a way that rings a chord that has no explanation.

     When I lived in Madison, Wisconsin in the mid-seventies, there came a moment in 1978 when I had a two week vacation from my ongoing life there. I unfolded a map of the USA, and followed the lines that led to Taos and through northern New Mexico to the Canyon de Chelley, and that is where my partner at that time and I drove. There was a music in the direction and a music in the places we visited that rang a tune true to my heart. I knew I would someday go there for a longer time, and I settled in that area in 2000 for what came to be fifteen years, and now that time is behind me in many ways.

     There is another voice that whispers in my ear and calls to this other place

I have never known. Hard to say how long it will take to get there, or via which path I will take, or whom I might travel with along the way. All of those mysteries are here, and what or who I hope to find there is impossible to say. There is simply a sense that says that’s where I’m going.

     Meanwhile, in this huge coastal city in South India, I have a role to play, persons to speak with and know, hearts to understand, voices to listen to, things to learn. All of which begs the question, where does the USA fit into this plan?

     Start off with four full months at the school, December through March.

Last day of class is Saturday, April second. I then have about six weeks for traveling or whatever I want till I must leave the country by May 18. I’ll go first to Pondicherry and Cuddalore, then Goa and Varanasi, and then cross the border into Nepal. Stay there a couple or a few weeks. Take the bus to Pokhara, and continue west across southern Nepal to the border crossing at Mahendranagar. Re-enter India, take the hiway to Haldwani, to Hardiwar, and the short road north from there to Rishikesh. Rest stop. Then Rishikesh through Dehra Dun to Shimla, through Mandi to Dharamshala. Rest stop. Then to Pathankot to Srinigar. Rest stop. Long road from Srinigar to Leh. Looks like Kargil would be a good halfway point for a rest. High point between Kargil and Leh is Fotu La at 4147 meters, 13,602 feet. Leh is at 3520 meters, 11,545 feet. No need to rush, as I will wish to ascend slowly and avoid Altitude Sickness.         I think this old body is in pretty good shape, I’ve got a good pair of lungs, and am at least used to New Mexico altitudes. Nevertheless, this is not New Mexico, and I’d like to return and visit my friends.

     Will likely leave Leh mid-September, returning to Srinigar, and from there likely return through Dharamshala. Might also go through the Kullu Valley to Manali, where I visited for a few days in 1971 during my travels after my Peace Corps assignment was finished.   

      Head down to Delhi, and catch a plane to the USA. Go through my medical procedure for my inguinal hernia and have my skin doctor look me over for cancer. Cop a hole-in-the-wall apartment in Albuquerque for as long as it takes to reconnect with friends, and do whatever all seems appropriate and necessary. Hopefully will have enough cash to get some kind of car. Check in with my contacts who might be interested in my paintings. Visit Missouri family and friends, and San Diego family. Perhaps Christmas in San Diego.           

    Once all of those things are settled, perhaps by the spring of 2017, I can pack up and come back over here for wherever I want to be. I really don’t think I’m going to want to teach school here again. This four month stint here will be plenty enough of that for me. It’s fine, well and good for what it is right now, and will be the final chapter of my professional teaching career.

     Those six months from the beginning of April through the end of September should give me enough perspective on options for redefining my life here on the subcontinent. I am now rather locked down between the school and the Annexe, and will be doing my level best to keep myself creatively engaged.  Yo!           

Sounds like a plan.

     Tuesday morning, December first. The rain is falling, the rain is falling, the rain is falling again. What do you do when the rain is falling? You sit, and pick up your pen. One hand’s breadth wide, one hand’s length long, this ancient booklet, brown-leaved manuscript, holds within a treasury of classical English verse from ages long gone by. Fables and stories oft forgotten and rarely told, wait silently for inquiring eye, to give voice to the words within, give music to the listening ear, and fill the sails of imagination with winds that have traveled from faraway places. From lands across the seven seas these stories are told, conceived and written from those long ago times before the world we know became electrified. When the wind and the wave were the sources of sound, and the pattering of raindrops told us what the weather would be today. When how far you could see was the breadth of the world, when messages were carried on slips of paper from one mind to another. Faster and faster our world accelerates, our treadmill spins at the speed of light. The reason of Rhyme is lost in the maelstrom, and dizziness takes the helm. All are awhirl in trying to catch up, and the anchors are lost at sea. Our ship is now driven to the crags under the waves, and the splinters we grasp will be held most dear, until we are cast upon the soft shore to find our footing again, where the sound of the wind and the patter of rain will keep us company once more.

     Heavily and steadily, the rain has been falling all day. Now eight in the evening, and there is no sign for abatement. From my doorway, I’ve watched the puddle grow from ankle deep, to calf deep, and now knee deep, whenever one of the grounds crew or servants or drivers wades by. My floor is raised from ground level by a few shallow steps, and I’ve watched them disappear beneath the waves, one by one. I wonder where the cars are at. I wonder what is going on at Ambi’s house, since his floor level is closer to ground level than my apartment. I wonder what the streets of the neighborhood look like. I wonder what the school grounds look like, since this entire section of the city between the Annexe and the city are pretty much level. Om Prakash has moved his bed and belongings into the anteroom of my apartment and will be sleeping here tonight. Electricity for this apartment went out a couple of times today, an hour or so at a time. Night has fallen and the rain just keeps raining. Little black frogs the size of my thumbnail are hopping around on my kitchen floor, half a dozen or so of them so far. For now, the floor of this apartment is an island in a deepening lake of water fallen from the sky. This morning when Selvan was walking by in the ankle deep water, his comment to me as he lifted his arm to the sky was “three days.” If that is an accurate forecast, at this rate, the floor in this apartment will become ankle deep, easily. Jason the gateman is also moving into one of the rooms in this network of rooms my apartment is a part of. Om Prakash tells me that Ambi and Shantha have moved up to the second floor of their house. From the air, this section of the city, and the entire city for all I know, must look like Atlantis sinking into the sea. Whatever passes for a drainage system in this city no longer passes. Will there be a morning newspaper tomorrow to tell us what is going on and what to expect?

     Wednesday morning, the rains have slowed to a drizzle, and the surrounding lake holds level at knee deep in the driveway. Electricity is out in my room - no fans, no overhead lights, no re-charging for my laptop. All I have is the light from the cloud-covered sky through my window. The internet stick I was given by Kesavan has expired, so I will be sending no messages out. Om Prakash tells me the cars are over at the school where the flooding is not so deep. The electricity in the anteroom where Om Prakash slept works, but not the bathroom and the room where Jason slept, so the problem is somewhere in this building, and an electrician will need to be brought in.

     Find out last night that Jason the gatemen is from a village in the same district in western Nepal as Om Prakash’s village. So now I’ve got two western Nepali’s keeping me company in this flooded city in the south. Have got the entire day ahead of me now in this island of a room in the middle of the monsoon lake to plan, revise plans, and then plan some more. Like beads of a necklace, Luna and Jupiter in Leo, and Mars and Venus in Virgo align. Sun-Surya with Saturn holds close in Scorpio, and Mercury is close behind.

     Here I now sit in the waiting room. Waiting for the skies to clear. Waiting for the Lake to subside. Waiting for the school to reopen and classes to resume. Waiting to walk down the stairs from my doorway. Waiting for my electrical outlets to power up and the lights to come on. Waiting for lunch. Waiting for my next cup of tea. Waiting for the Light to shine through the dark corners of my mind. Waiting for colors to brighten the shadows in my thought. Waiting to decide which decision to make. Waiting to know what my options are. Waiting to find the key to the lock. Waiting to open the door to tomorrow. Waiting to know when to speak. Waiting to find my Voice. Waiting to know whom to speak with. Waiting to know what to say. Waiting to walk through the mountain pass. Waiting to swim through the ocean’s breaking waves on the beach. Waiting to listen to the voice within tell me what I am waiting for. Waiting to return to where I came from, so I can begin again. Waiting to find the depths of emptiness, so I can begin to fill it again. Waiting to remember what today is all about, what yesterday was about, and the day before, and all the way back to my first word for the world. Waiting to understand meaning, Waiting to understand you. Waiting for you to speak of who you are, so that I may know more than before. Waiting to watch you smile and hear you laugh. Waiting for you to brighten my day. Waiting to follow the stars through the night and wonder where they are going.  Waiting for the light to shine forth from every person alive on this planet. Waiting for the hardness of heart, where it is, to soften. Waiting for empathy, compassion and wisdom to shine forth from every person’s heart. Waiting for swords to be melted and recast into ploughshares. Waiting for the flags of mistrust and division between peoples to fly no more, and for all border crossings to open. Waiting for the gods of anger and fear to fall by the wayside. Waiting for the voice of humanity to awaken to its higher calling. Waiting for ignorance to subside. Waiting for hypocrisy to disappear. Waiting for the Arts to flourish. Waiting for release from the bondage of selfishness, greed, and war after war after war. Waiting for all of the armies and navies to be disbanded. Waiting for cooperation to replace competition. Waiting to work together for the common purpose of well-being for all. Waiting for the stewardship of the Earth to replace exploitation. Waiting for men and women everywhere to stand side by side in mutual respect and admiration, and through the balancing of insights and strengths, to mutually enhance one another. Waiting to play my role for whatever needs to be done. In the wings, I am waiting.

     I have arrived at the South Indian version of monsoon madness. There were occasional light showers yesterday and last night, nothing like Tuesday’s continuous downpour that created this lake in which I’m marooned. And the waters do not recede. If there is a municipal drainage system for this part of the city, which I am beginning to doubt, it is obviously dysfunctional, and I must begin to wonder how long this vast puddle will be keeping me company. Till it evaporates? And if another continuous downpour comes around, how much deeper will this lake become? The waters are now just below Om Prakash’s knees, so have receded perhaps three or four inches. I am not about to roll up my pants legs and wade through those murky waters, which are not exactly of swimming pool quality. And I shudder to imagine the quality of the waters in the streets and neighborhoods on the other side of the front gate. And of course the effluvium of that soup cannot help but seep through and find its way into the waters on this side of the gate. Moisture and dampness pervades in the air and the prospect of creeping mold does not brighten my frame of mind. Om Prakash and Jason slept in the anteroom last night, refugees from the flood. In fact, all three of us are refugees from the flood on this block of concrete above the waters. Rumor has it from Om Prakash that an electrician will come by today to restore electricity to these rooms. Strange how of all the rooms in the interconnected set of rooms of this building, only the anteroom has a currently working electrical connection, with a working overhead light and ceiling fan, and a workable re-charging outlet. It certainly would be nice if this as-yet-to-materialize electrical technician could restore my overhead light and ceiling fan into functionality.

     All of which leads me to another set of questions. Perhaps it is time to revise my plan and abandon this notion for teaching at Ambi and Shantha’s school for the next four months. These very kind and generous friends have settled into a way of life that centers around their school and their home at the Annexe. I’ve expected some level of regularity in the program, but now that I have become embedded in it, I’m beginning to find it uncomfortably confining. For one thing, there is my feeding schedule. One cup of morning coffee brought over by Om Prakash at seven. Breakfast at eight, either here or at the school. There is no menu or choice and I get what is set before me. Lunch at twelve-thirty or one, always the same, rice and sambar and rasam and curd, seven days a week, whether here at the Annexe or at the school. One cup of hot chai with milk at four. Dinner at seven is set before me, chapattis and the dish de jour, whatever it happens to be, chosen by whom I don’t know. I am not exactly enthralled by the clockwork regularity of the virtually predictable menu. It is all well prepared and tasteful, but my choices are zero, both for timing and for what it will be.

     Then there is this room I am given to call home, and the way of life I see evolving around it. I don’t mind the simplicity. One large and one smaller table, two chairs, one cot, a floor fan to supplement the ceiling fan, and some shelves for books and folded clothes. It’s the scheduling of my way of life and inaccessibility to the outside world that shall prove to be my undoing if I try to continue this for the next four months. So far, I’ve had two days of classes with my English department teachers, and I pretty much feel like I’ve got the idea for how a day at school works. I get in the car with Ambi and Shantha at eight and the driver takes us to school in five minutes. At the end of the day at four or five or whenever Ambi and Shantha decide, we pile back into the car for the drive home. They go to their home and I go to my room to wait for my meal to be delivered. What then? Preparing lesson plans for next day’s classes and reviewing my day in this personal notebook. I can amble around the courtyard and residential grounds, or, as I did Sunday, venture forth into the street of shops, which I can see will soon become of very limited value as entertainment.

Parts of Chennai are no doubt culturally and artistically vibrant, but none of us are in our twenties or thirties anymore, and getting to and cultivating those sectors would be an exhausting task. Ambi and Shantha are not there anymore, and I can’t do it alone. The only way for me to sustain my equanimity in my home would be to don my monk-ish garb, and I’m really not sure I’m up for that for the next four months. I savor long and vigorous walks and exercise, and so far I feel like I’ve been little more than a conduit for rice and sambar and chapattis. Visions of bird cages and jail cells dance through my brain, and I turn the pages of my Lonely Planet guidebook looking for places to go where I can cop a room, and take long walks and sit in a restaurant whenever I choose, and sip as many cups of coffee or chai as I wish whenever the fancy suits me.

     At the moment, I’m looking towards Pondicherry, a hundred miles to the south, a town by the sea I know well. Of course, I’m sure they’re getting slammed by the monsoon just as hard as we are here, and no telling what conditions on the ground are like there right now. Meanwhile, the waters of the lake surrounding my room are calm, and I’ve seen a ray of sunlight peek through the cloud cover to reflect for a fleeting moment on the gently rippling waves. Will not be going anywhere or making any announcements until after the waters recede. Where’s my canoe when I need it?

     Saturday morning, December fifth. There comes a point when more than enough becomes too much, and the body sends the message. Start off with a round of diarrhea at eleven Thursday night, followed soon by some heaving and vomiting. A mild headache visits the frontal cortex accompanied by a gentle fever. All of this continues through the night while I’m reading up on symptoms for ailments in my Lonely Planet guidebook. Are these the symptoms for on setting Typhoid? Huge Bummer! Or simply some other parasites that have decided to visit my gut and chomp around on my brain? Still a nasty idea!

I really did not come over here to die, and know that a lot of my friends and family would be very disappointed if I did. All in all, things are going well in my life and I think I have a lot of good to look forward to. There’s a whole bunch of people over there I want to keep talking to, and to have that all cut off for some very stupid reason is not a part of my plan. As dawn rolls around, I write out a message for Ambi for Om Prakash to deliver. I would like to go to a hospital for diagnosis and treatment, and would he please find some vehicle, perhaps one of the school buses, that could drive through the lake and pick up and rescue me. Ambi responds via Om Prakash with a packet of rehydration salts and the promise to get Kesevan right on the task of getting a vehicle. Within an hour, there is a vehicle waiting in the street at the front gate. Om Prakash lends me his flip-flops and leads me through the almost knee deep lake of the courtyard to the gate. There is a graded dip in the ground level  between the street and the driveway into the courtyard, which is why the courtyard water is so much deeper than the ankle deep street water. Driver takes me over to the school. There are rises and dips in the street level along the way with alternating stretches of pavement and puddles. Pavement is clear at the entrance to the school, but I can see that further inside the grounds is what looks like an ankle deep lake. I’m transferred to a car with driver Selvam, who takes me over to Kesevan’s house not far away. We drive around through various streets of this part of town, some waterlogged and some not, to the homes of some doctors Kesevan knows but nobody’s home. We finally settle for a visit to Rakshith hospital where the consulting physician listens to me describe my symptoms and assures me this is not Typhoid. That’s a relief. I hope he’s right! Looks like some nasty bacteria have found their way into my gut, and he prescribes three sets of pills to annihilate those critters and replace them with some more friendly types. Some mineralized rehydration drinks are also in order. On our way back to the Annexe, we stop at a pharmacy and Kesevan fills the order. As we’re driving towards the Annexe, I make it clear that I want to be returned to the YWCA guest house. By now, it’s about ten a.m. and even the concept of returning to the room I’ve lived in for the last thirteen days feels like a death sentence. Kesevan visits with Ambi to deliver my wish, and Ambi and Shantha come out to their water-logged porch to wish me bon voyage for where I need to go. Selvam takes Kesevan  back to his home near the school, then drives to the school to pick up another of the company drivers, so these two between them can figure out how to get to where I want to go, for the guest house is really an incredible distance from the school and road conditions between here and there are anybody’s guess. To me, the streets of this city are a Gordian knot of twists and turns and I get the tourist’s view of waterlogged and half-submerged neighborhoods. Neither my stomach nor my brain are in their happy places while Selvam and his partner are making decisions about which ways to turn along the way. We arrive at the guest house. Oh, happy day! At the desk, all that is available are the more expensive AC rooms, and I take one sight unseen. Bid a thankful adieu to my road warrior drivers, then go to my room and fall on the lifeboat of this fresh bed. It is noon but I’m passing up lunch, and sign up for the seven-thirty dinner. A fresh wave of fever washes through my body, but I feel confident that it will subside as the afternoon passes. Fresh hot shower in the sparkling clean bathroom helps this body feel like it is heading in a good direction, along with most of a liter of mineral water. Go down to the dining room at four for a cup of hot chai with milk and an egg sandwich to accompany my first pill. The fever has begun to subside. Stick with the milder dishes at the seven-thirty dinner, and sleep through the night like I’ve come back home.

     Meanwhile, the city around me is an ongoing disaster. For the most part I cannot make out what the Tamil television in the lobby is saying, but the images are quite clear. It’s like I’ve arrived in New Orleans in the middle of Katrina. Occasionally, captions are in English. One million persons evacuated. A hundred thousand rescued. Umm. I wonder, where are these people evacuated to? Rescued and put where? Chennai hospital oxygen fails and fourteen people die in ICU. There are no newspapers in the lobby. Fishermen’s boats are being brought in to aid the evacuations, and fifty-six thousand food packets have been delivered. The Chennai airport is closed due to flooding, and there are images of passenger trains standing idle at the station. Chennai and neighboring Kancheepuram district have been the hardest hit in this monsoon. The idea of trying to go anywhere from here seems ridiculously insane. I’ve told the front desk people that I’d like to sign up for the first available non-AC room, and that I really don’t know how long I might be staying.

     The idea of teaching at La Chatelaine has now evaporated into the realm of impossibility. I am searching for a way of life and it will not be found in that environment.  My teaching days are behind me, and I will not be returning to the Annexe except to wish Ambi and Shantha my very best. I will want to bid Adieu to Kesevan and Mani and Vasala and the English department ladies. I will want to give my hearty best wishes to Om Prakash and his robust, good natured companionship through my thirteen days in the guest house. Everyone there has been over-the-top kind with their attentions, but the facilities and the situation are simply not a match for the way I want to live. I’ve now got my eye on Pondicherry, but the monsoon season could last well through December and into January. At the moment, I’m simply waiting for a non-AC room to open up for an extended stay at the guest house and will explore whatever shops and entertainment I can find within walking distance. Breakfast this morning of cornflakes with milk, fried eggs and toast and some rice cakes with two cups of coffee and one tea, and the stomach says ok.

     Sunday morning. Not every dream merits recording, but here is one. I am sitting near the driver of a very large tourist bus who is performing the delicate maneuver of guiding a corner of the front bumper of this monstrous machine into gently nudging a corner of the rear bumper of a rather small parked car. I don’t see how he can see, from his elevated driver’s perch, where those street level bumpers are, but he manages to do exactly what he intended. Then switch to outside the bus and entering a large box of a room with white walls with splotches of artist’s paint scattered about on those surfaces. An abandoned artist’s studio. This is one of those “naked in public” situations. The other people in the room are mostly minding their own business, although we are all part of the same group. There are a few piles of old clothes lying about, and I search through them for something to wear.  After I find some underwear, I come upon an old khaki vest decorated with boy scout pins and badges and decide to wear it. I cannot help but be fascinated with the idea that this old artist’s studio space could be resurrected. The others in this room, my erstwhile companions, feel a need to be moving on to somewhere else, and I know I should be going with them, to where exactly I do not know, but they’ve already left and I must hurry down a hallway to catch up. I take a quick turn around a corner, and find myself going down a child’s sliding board. I hold onto the side rims before going very far down, and see that this slide has a very long and steep and curving descent into depths I cannot see. I cannot turn around and go back up the slide to where I got on, and the only way off would be to leap over the side into a depth where, at this point, I can at least see a bottom. This is still a precarious height and I harbor a measure of trepidation about making this leap. Then, on the edge of a nearby cliff, a white stallion appears. He looks to me and then leaps into the emptiness and descends into the depths of a canyon far deeper than that which I had been facing. I watch him fall with my heart in my throat and lo and behold he lands on all four feet as if he had been taking a stroll in the park. And the drizzling rain falls through the leaves of the trees at the guest house while the traffic picks up on the street outside.

     Through the lobby and dining room area of the guest house everyday walks a well-dressed, heavy set though not overly so, man with a gentle look to his face. Sharp trousers and collared shirt and necktie with YWCA pin. He speaks quietly with front desk attendants and kitchen staff and is clearly a man in charge at some level. Yesterday evening at five as I was visiting the lobby before going for tea, he addressed me by name. Mr. John, will you be taking dinner tonight? I reply No, I’ve had lunch today and that will carry me through, and I will wait for breakfast tomorrow. He’s sitting in a lobby chair somewhat apart from the TV area. I sit in a chair next to him, and we begin our conversation. How long I’ve been here, how many times I’ve been to India, and what are my plans. He tells me I could go to Pondicherry if I wanted, that the roads are not so bad in that direction. I could even rent a car if I wanted, and that the drive is scenic, often in view of the ocean. He tells me what he knows about Pondy and Auroville, and a certain group of foreigners who are building a cooperative sustainable community which even generates its own electricity by having members take shifts pedaling a bicycle mechanism. I tell him I’m looking for a place to call home in India and that Pondy is one possibility. An alternative would be Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh in the far northern part of the country. He was born in Chennai and lived here all of his life, has done some traveling through Tamil Nadu, and north through Bangalore to Mumbai. He is, in fact, the manager of the guest house, and has of course spoken with visitors from many countries, listening to their stories of where they have come from, why they have come to India, what they plan to do here. India is the Mother, he says. She is Mother India to many who come from abroad seeking for something that is missing from their lives in their own countries. He tells the story of a woman who told him that when her plane landed in Delhi, she began to weep uncontrollably for some sense of inner joy that she had returned home once again. Mother India is the spiritual home for so many of the Earth’s people, he says, and some, for whatever reasons, chose to be born in one of their reincarnations in one of those foreign countries, and they are called back, and when they return, they know they have come home. All I can say is, I know the feeling well. His name is Kiran, and he says I can call him Ray. Kiran is a Ray of the Sun’s light and can be used as either as a man’s or a woman’s name. This Kiran is a Ray of Light to those whom he meets in this world, and if he can be that Ray of Light to at least one person every day, he is fulfilling his role and the meaning of his life. He tells me to write of my travels and experiences in India, and show the Light of this culture that I see to those of where I come from in those far away places. He assures me that he is very happy to know me, and that I must always think of the YWCA guest house as my home, my hacienda.

     Sunday morning newspaper is here, with continuing stories of flooding and population displacements in many parts of the metro area. A map on the front page identifies all the areas of the north, the west and the south of the city and surrounding areas that are most sorely affected. This guest house is located near the central part of the city which is least affected, perhaps because the ground in this area can soak up the water more easily. Perhaps for other reasons, but not because it’s not raining here. The army and other relief organizations are sorely pressed, individuals drown trying to help others in need, the airport might soon resume limited operations, but certainly no international flights for the next three days. Television images of people wading through waist deep and chest deep water follow one after another, agricultural crops in the outlying areas are ruined, and Cuddalore, my home town to the south, looks like they’ve got it as bad as anyone around here. Relief supplies can’t seem to be coming in fast enough to keep up with the needs of those who have been displaced. The train station stands idle, and outside my window, a little black kitty gingerly hops between puddles looking for somewhere to go.

     Have now established a reasonable and workable beachhead for this visit to the Tamil country as I am transferred to a non-AC room. Down from $26 to $15 per day. Who needs AC in this kind of weather? Open my windows and turn on the ceiling fan, and, thank you Shiva, for the quieter side of the building. I can stay here forever for $450 per month and get all my meals and three cups of tea per day from the marvelous kitchen and dining room here for another $150 per month. I can watch the rain fall and revise my plans every day until the stars come out and tell me which way to go next, here at my Chennai hacienda.

     

     

Log for my visit to Chennai, India.

     With one click of the button, I will go from Wednesday,

November 18, 2:13 p.m., Albuquerque time,

to Thursday, November 19 at 2:43 a.m., Chennai time.

     Here in Chennai, sun rises at six-ten this morning. Jupiter is on the rear paw of Leo; Mars and Venus are with Virgo; all three planets in line. Mercury is spot on behind Sun-Surya in Libra, and Saturn is close behind at the head of Scorpio. All five principal planets are right there clustered around Sun-Surya from Leo, through Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio. Waxing Luna is at 51% in Aquarius.

     Here it is at three in the morning in a bare room in Chennai, India. There are no pictures on the white walls. Why am I here? Who or what brought me here? The planes? My Hindu friends? Something else? No pot, no booze, just bottled water and a slowly turning three-winged ceiling fan.

     Exactly three months since Ambi and Shantha’s email came through, calling me over here. My response has been immediate and enthusiastic, and the taxi ride from the airport to this room, through the always busy streets of this large city was as refreshing as jumping into the ocean’s waves at the beach on a hot sunny day.

     Arrival by night alerts the watchful gate man, the sleeping receptionist, and the bag carrier to my room. Who am I, come out of the blue, at this early morning hour? What lies in store, for this wandering soul?  Starting all over again? At age seventy-one? Or picking up where I left off? Or just continuing what I have always been doing? What is the name of this game?

     Here is my dream. Come fly with me. This is a true and good thing that happens, here in the YWCA International Guest House on Poonamalee High Road in Chennai. Here is what is going on. After a person has gone through the complete dismantling of one’s way of life in America, spent two weeks visiting with one’s roots in Missouri, Illinois, and San Diego, and after having spent fourteen hours in one plane crossing the Pacific, and another five hours flying to Chennai, arriving in the earliest hours of the morning on the other side of the globe, one would think that some sort of meaningful dream would be in order. And so it came to pass. And so the dream came forth. All I have to do is be here, and keep my brain in good order. All unaligned tables in the room shall be re-aligned; all of the rows shall be made straight, and I shall have a home with what is true for me. Listen closely, and all shall be made true. Here is the only idea that makes sense in my world. The air is fresh with rains that have already fallen.

     8:06 p.m. Wednesday, November 18^th in Albuquerque

     8:36 a.m. Thursday, November 19^th in Chennai.

     Yesterday’s evening is today’s morning.

     Then today’s morning in Albuquerque, will be today’s evening in Chennai.

Sky is completely overcast this morning, and from my third floor window, I have no idea for which direction the sunlight is falling on this city. Idlees and Sambar and chutney this morning awakens a flood of memories. My only task this morning is to sift and winnow through my thoughts and choose my favorites for recording. I have found again my long lost writing desk. Everything I need is right here in this room. Tamil language books for study. Pencils and drawing books for sketching. Ink pens and notebooks for writing down . . . thoughts and dreams. The bus lines are right outside the Guest House gates. I suppose I can ride one all the way around to where I got on in the first place, in front of the gate to my room with no pictures on the walls.

     It will be up to me to keep the spirit of my dream in focus. What other truly meaningful purpose could I have, could be behind, this partnership in spirit I envision? Is this dream nothing but one huge internal metaphor I have created for myself out of my experiences with my friends? If so, I shall cherish and nurture it in everything I say and do through the days and nights I shall be walking through. Every thought and action is a shadow to the becoming of this dream into the world around me. Everything I think, touch, say and do is a reflection of my intention.

     The human mind, we know, is capable of marvelous hallucinations.

I have just spent over twenty-four hours between the Los Angeles and Chennai airports, sealed up in one tube, flown across the ocean, given a two hour breather in the Hong Kong airport, then sealed up in another tube for time travel transport to this other side of the globe. Think I can handle a full day on the grounds of the YWCA International Guest House on Poonamalee High Road? While the three-winged ceiling fan slowly turns overhead, while Sun-Surya and the clouds above play hide and seek with one another?

     Walk around the block – ten-thirty to eleven-thirty – Very busy streets. East on Poonamallee to North past the Periyar compound to west on Vepary high road to south on Ritherdon road, back to Poonamallee. Endless streams of traffic – motorcycles, cars, busses, rickshaws, motor-riks and pedestrians – weave their ways around each other in an endless cacophony of intentions. My pockets are empty. No money and no I.D., so if I get crushed by a bus, no one will know who I was. Follow the pedestrians who walk like they know where they are going as all rights of way are arbitrary. Sweat pores open as humidity becomes part of the equation, and T-shirt and jungle pants soon become well dampened. Back to the room for a shower before lunch.

     Simplicity, Cleanliness, and Excellence describe the YWCA Guest House, and my one-thirty lunch with Sambar and Rasam reconnects my heart and soul with Tamil culture. Then a crash nap from two to five-thirty reminds me of the time zone realignment I am passing through. Two cups of tea – chai with milk – at ten to six, helps realign my stomach to its new environment, as that hour long walk through the humid city streets has jostled my innards. All is well. Evening dusk sets in, the High Road traffic runs by relentlessly outside the gate of the quiet courtyard. The grounds are freshly wet from some rain that fell during my nap, and the evening goes by in restful light sleeping.

     My mind strays not for a moment from my thoughts for my dream. I look at this seventy-one year old face in the mirror on the wall at my desk, and can’t help but wonder where my thoughts come from. Lift my eyebrows. The line structures in my forehead are evenly layered. When some idea I like comes into my brain, I really don’t like to let go of it.

     Meanwhile, no internet, no email, no facebook, no pot and no booze. Only the slowly turning three-winged ceiling fan, and now, in the middle of this evening’s night, the rains fall heavily into our courtyard, raindrops incessantly dancing through the leaves of our grove of trees, while sending a cool, wet breeze through my open window. I haven’t felt this much in tune with my life, my circumstances, my friendships, and all of my relationships in a very long time. I know I’ve got a whole bunch of people over in the USA whose thoughts are with me. I want to tell them everything, and there is too much to say in so many words or less. And the only way to say any of it is with this pen to the paper. In the middle of the night, to the music of unceasing rainfall.

     Friday the twentieth, early morning light emerges from night as the downpour subsides. Café latte on the guest house porch overlooking the vast puddles of water amongst the courtyard trees. Skies have emptied themselves last night, at least for a while. Blue skies open and sunlight shines through the shimmering wet leaves. Half a dozen or so types of small birds flutter, and chirp and sing through the branches, as morning traffic begins to pick up along the street. Plenty of time to think of nothing in particular, all day, and there is no need to enter the bustle of the city. There will be plenty of time to explore in the days ahead, and for now, a solitary day of quiet suits me entirely. Puri and potato masala for breakfast hearkens back to the Peace Corps mornings when I had this dish many times at the co-op canteen where my days began back then. My acquaintance from yesterday afternoon, Amri, enters the dining room and we share a table. As I was inquiring at the front desk yesterday about the suitability of my adapter plugs for recharging my laptop and camera, Amri intervened and clarified what I needed to know. Amri is around fifty years old, lives in Bombay, and has spent considerable time in the USA, particularly in the East. He’s an electrical engineer who also spent some time at MIT, so I trust his advice. He’s of the very small sect of Ismaili Muslims and explains what that means in considerable detail. He is on his way to Bombay to attend to some family business. He has much admiration for the well known J. Krishnamurti, and has known one of Krishnamurti’s biographers. I tell Amri something of my background and my book of poetry and we exchange email addresses. I’ve managed to eat a considerable portion of puri and potato masala and coffee with a final cup of tea, and must lie down for awhile while my stomach begins its work. I will skip lunch for today and likely sign up for the dinner at seven-thirty.

     I learn from today’s newspapers that the monsoon began on October 28, and there has been considerable flooding in various neighborhoods throughout the city. This area has thankfully been spared from the worst. Whatever dreaming went on last night, none of it stands out in memory. It is of course entirely possible that my hallucinogenic imagination will conjure up new scenarios as my life evolves through the days ahead. I’ll be entering the world of Ambi and Shantha tomorrow, and their school with all of their students and teachers, so I am going to be having plenty of people of all ages to be conversing with as this new chapter in my life unfolds. I stepped through the open front gate at quarter to six this morning to watch the early traffic go by, and had no desire to begin a walking exploration. Yesterday’s hour out there was plenty enough and I have no destination in mind that beckons me forth. Shantha and Ambi will be showing me everything I need to see and there will be plenty to do. All that I think about what is to come is speculation. For now, it looks like blue skies and sunlight with billowing white clouds on the horizon and light breezes rustling the leaves at the tops of the trees outside my third floor window, thankfully on the side of the building away from the endlessly flowing traffic. Right now, I am rather thankful that there is no place I feel I need to go. Time to curl up like a cat on a sleepy afternoon.

     Saturday the twenty-first. Breakfast with Amri. We talk of J. Krishnamurti.

Amri recommends Commentaries on Living, little stories that begin with what is here and now, and proceed through a path to a universal truth. My here and now is waiting in this room for two or three more hours until Ambi returns my call and tells me what time to be ready for pick-up. My here and now is the ceiling fan slowly turning, while rains fall from time to time to time, letting up from time to time, then falling again. I have no messages for facebook, I have no emails to send. Rather, I have messages to send, but no way to send them, so they become longer, and perhaps become little stories that begin with the here and now.

     Last night, I finished reading Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, which I picked up at my sister Rosemary’s house two weeks ago. Her story lasted two years, from June, 1942, to August, 1944, and ended unexpectedly and abruptly when her hiding place was discovered and she was carried away to her death. Perhaps what I write now are the final pages of my story. Perhaps the end shall come unexpectedly. Today, I am one day further down the road away from fifteen years in the Albuquerque area, away from my eight and a half years on Corrales Road, away from about four years in the poetry circles I moved through, and the question lingers for how much of all of that I can return to, and how much of all of that I can carry with me. Today, I become a part of Ambi and Shantha’s world, the world of their school, their students, and their faculty in this City by the Sea. I suppose this is a good time to meditate on the emptiness of it all.

     Sunday morning dream. Driving my car, full of my earthly belongings, along Jenifer Street in Madison, Wisconsin, where the city bus lines I once drove ran near one of my once-upon-a-time residential neighborhoods. The streets are filled with pedestrians, mostly teenagers who give no mind to my efforts to weave my way along on my way to where I think I’m going. I’m one of those homeless people living out of my car. My cell phone has a slew of voice messages that I cannot listen to. All that comes through is random noise and music clips as if the senders had only sent me the background noise and music that informs their everyday lives. I am shut out from the doors of the homes I once lived in. I am trying to drive to my most recent home, with only the vaguest hope that I might enter there, knowing full well that that is very unlikely. I manage to get through the pedestrian crowds in the street, and take some winding turns until I come to a place where I can no longer go forward. My destination Is this car with all of my belongings, just as my arrival at Ambi and Shantha’s guest quarters with my backpack and carry-on bags is a destination, a stopover place to somewhere else, I don’t know where, a place I might call home. I am essentially homeless on the road.

     My quarters are Spartan, the morning rains are falling, and I must keep my windows closed to keep the mosquitoes out. I am signed up, I think, for four months of teaching ninth standard students, high school freshmen, lessons in English through poetry and fables. Starting Monday, tomorrow, with the vaguest of vaguest of notions for how to proceed. The entire set of circumstances is most bizarrely appropriate. A set of two small rooms with a bathroom and a micro kitchen consisting of cold water sink with tile counter. Bedroom with two windows is furnished with a single cot, small table and a chair, and a rickety old ceiling fan. I feel like a refugee from everything that has gone before in my life. And it is all strangely delightful. Down to my elements in my own little corner of a sea of urban cacophony.  The guest room building is to the rear of Ambi and Shantha’s residential courtyard and morning birds sing to the Dawn.

     Kesavan ( K-7), Ambi’s lifelong friend and assistant in charge of the school’s fleet of ten busses, arrives at the YWCA Guest House around eleven-thirty Saturday morning, and the driver weaves us through Chennai traffic to the school where  I am given a rice and sambar and rasam lunch. Visit with Ambi and Shantha and get an overview of what I will be teaching at the school. Forty-five years ago, the school started with three students. Today, there are 3,400 students from pre-kindergarten to twelfth standard. Mani, another of Ambi’s friends and helpers at the school who remembers me from four years ago, is in charge of food, i.e. providing lunch for the students and faculty. Vasala, Shantha’s helper and school librarian, remembers my visit from four years ago, and might become my Tamil tutor. So far this morning, sky is blue and no rain. Ambi says rains are expected to continue for the next two weeks.

     The residential compound of about an acre, is referred to as the La Chatelaine Annexe. Ambi and Shantha have a very large home here. Lots of trees and other greenery, and to the rear of the property is the building with the rooms I will be calling home. All I have to do, really, is sit around here and wait for whatever comes next. Listen to the parrots and crows and whatever else is chirping away up above amongst the branches and the leaves of this sumptuously green compound.  Really am anxious to begin my Tamil lessons so I can start talking with Om Prakash, my attendant who is from a village in western Nepal. So far, all we’ve been able to do is motion with our hands and arms about what we are trying to say. Still have no clear idea about how or when I will be reconnected with the internet. Meanwhile, paper and pen are my company, along with a little schoolbook full of classical and traditional English poetry from Shakespeare through the nineteenth century. It is almost unbelievable that I have traveled to the other side of the globe to teach poetry appreciation to high school freshmen. Talk about falling into the right slot in the pegboard! Can’t help but be thinking about all my friends and family on the other side of the globe whose thoughts I know are with me. How much of all of this can I share? Some would be more interested in some things, others more interested in other things, and as curious as I am about what is on the other side of the compound gate, just as I was curious about what was on the other side of the YWCA Guest House gate, I’m hanging close to home today. Until whenever Ambi and Shantha decide that it’s time for me to go somewhere for some reason.

     Stories in Verse: for High Schools and Higher Secondary Schools.

     Ed.  by Henry Martin, M.A.

     The Orient Publishing Company

     Madras . . . copyright year (?)

The pages of this softcover book are weathered, brown and fragile, with 170 fables in English verse. Longfellow, Dryden, Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti, Wordsworth, Emerson, Pope, Sir W. Scott, Cowper, Byron, Thackeray, Goldsmith, and a host of others with more than just a few masterful pieces by Unknown and Anon. A golden treasury from more than a century ago, on leaves that are quivering on the threshold of dissolution and disintegration. Two hundred ninety-nine pages with xxxvi pages of Introduction. Note to Remember: the three essential elements of poetry are: Imagination (including imagery), Emotion, and Music. For one of the examples described in the Introduction: “The pictures are clear and vivid. How simply they are painted. The poet-painter has drawn each with a very few strokes of his brush. . . the work of a masterly imagination.”

     Such is my company this evening. Until I am called upon by the outside world, what reason have I to step from this room? This whole business of being cut completely off from telephone and internet connection is truly nurturing my sense of what is and what is not the nature of Reality in our modern world. Why does Ambi think I might want a TV? To watch Tamil programming? Or the Indian version of CNN? The longer I stay in this room, the more exciting will be my experience when I step outside. Is there a story I wish to tell? Either a short story or a longer one?

     Five o’clock. Tea time.

     Brought to my room by Om Prakash.

     Given the Gift of Solitude,

     With whom do I need to speak?

     Might I learn to speak Poetic?

     Might I learn to Think in Verse?

     This room is my company.

     Lilac Lavender walls and pale sky blue ceiling.

    Three winged angel of a ceiling fan.

     Spinning a breeze to stir my thought.

     Everything I need is in this room.

     All of my memes from a life long led.

     Cluster and dance in my thoughtful head.

     For which of my friends shall I open the door?

     What do you bring to share for some time?

     Have you an ear for my story?

     What tale do you have for my company?

     For every question, answers are here.

     Think of Anne Frank in her prison of War.

     Think, where is the place away from it all.

     Where is everyone trying to go?

     Except to the place where Love is near.

     Five a.m. Monday. One of the most dreadful nightmares I’ve had in a very long time. What have I done? Everything in my backpack and two carry-on bags is lost! I am being assaulted and held in a chokehold and my assailant demands all of my money. My phone is in shambles and irreparable. I have no place to go to call home. The party is over, and all that I have is being stolen right before my eyes. I’ve sold my car and left behind all that I had, in exchange for this skeleton of a room on the other side of the planet in the middle of one large chaotic city. Mosquitoes are biting in droves, and the bathroom water is cut off. Classes begin in three hours. What in the hell am I going to do with all of these students?

Why am I having this kind of dream? Ohm! Give me the wisdom to learn from my nightmares, as from all of my finer dreams. Just when you think you have killed every mosquito in the room and shuttered all avenues of access, another one of these little buggers sneaks up on you. Some day, I will look back on all of this that is now going on as the beginning of a most extraordinary journey. It was such an amazing, delightful, marvelous experience saying goodbye to all of my Albuquerque friends, my Missouri family and friends, and my San Diego family, and I know my return will evoke a similar extravagant range of feelings. I will have stories to tell for my listeners. Sun-Surya, Mercury, and Saturn are closing ranks, while Jupiter, Mars and Venus hold their alignment.

     Monday evening. The torrents of rain are falling, while Om Prakash is helping a workman install a water heater for my shower. School has been called off for today due to the effects of the continuing rain, although this morning is clear enough for Ambi and Shantha to take me to the school for a meeting with the nine English teachers, nine women around thirty to forty years old, give or take a few years. Such lovely faces and all dressed in their colorful saris, sitting in classroom chairs, and I am introduced as their advisor, given a chair in front, and told to tell them of my qualifications. Shantha and Ambi leave me alone with these nine women to inquire of and inform as I wish. What do I know and how can I help them? Each one of them teaches eight classes a day, forty students per class, forty-five minutes per period, with virtually no time between classes. Four classes from eight-thirty to eleven-thirty, lunch for an hour, then four classes from twelve-thirty to three-thirty. ( Tell me again, my American teacher friends, about what kinds of pressures you face! ) Syllabus guidelines must be strictly followed, and I think that none of these women really have time for me to be entertaining their pupils. We all agree that I will serve as observer, and will make whatever recommendations I come up with, with absolutely no obligation that any of them must follow my suggestions. I ask each in her turn to tell me her name, background and experience, and issues they have with their students’ learning process. First, Usha Nandhi, then Sampa Banarji, followed  by Vimala, then R. Kavathi. We go next to K. Lavanya, then Alli, followed by Ravathi, then Bharati, and V. Kavathi completes the group. They all seem eager and interested to have me observe their classes and give my advice, and Vasala is here, librarian and Shantha’s right hand woman for keeping things running smoothly amongst these teachers. I assure them that I am here as friend of Ambi and Shantha, volunteer, and am not here to criticize or in any way impose my opinions. I get the impression that they are under enough pressure already from Shantha to perform what seems to be a formidable task, and all I really want to do is be their friend. Vasala will be my primary go-between, and we all look forward to what is to come.

     I am taken over to the outdoor lunch table by Kesavan, and one of the serving girls, ladling out sambar for my rice, has an astonishing resemblance to one of my favorite behind-the-counter girls at the co-op supermarket I worked at forty-five years ago, such that I feel shuttled back and forth between the time zones of my youth and today. Same cute nose, and demure, infectious smile. I secretly want to ask her if her mother’s name is Saraswati, whose enthusiasm enchanted me those forty-five years ago. ( Like asking a girl in America if her mother’s name is Mary, or Jane.) And it is to be noted that many of the sales persons at my Peace Corps supermarket were young women whom I loved talking with on the premises, just as I will be interacting with the nine lovely young teachers here. Who is writing this script?

     Drizzling rain begins after lunch, and we drive on home for a brief afternoon rest before returning to the school at four-thirty for a puja performed by a Brahmin priest at the shrine for Rama, Sita, Laksman, Hanuman, and Krishna, as well as for Shiva, Parvati and Nandhi, on the school premises. Sanskrit chanting, offerings of flowers, burning camphor, three marks for our foreheads – white, red and yellow – and pepper-rice Prasad.  All in celebration of Shiva’s holy-day. As torrential rains intensify, we keep our umbrellas open. Mani, Kesavan, Ambi and Shantha and I and a few other persons attend and participate. Overall, an auspicious and very rainy day as I enter the life of the school. And for getting the water heater for my shower. The pieces are coming together and falling into place, one by one, as one discovery and realization leads to another.

     Record breaking torrents of rain inundate the city and the entire East coast of Tamil Nadu. Newspapers tell stories of people crushed in collapsing buildings, children drowning, and streets being flooded, and fortunately, the neighborhoods of the school and the Annexe where I live are just getting very wet, and the sounds of falling rain keep me company through the night.

     Tuesday the twenty-fourth. Morning notes. The Imam, or whoever he is, calls Muslims to prayer around five, a bit of a distance from here, so the call is faint but clear. As six o’clock approaches, and morning’s first gray light begins to dispel the night, there is one bird, high in the trees nearby, whose shrill, staccato voice rings out, six to eight chirps to a set, with ten or fifteen seconds between sets, and he alone goes on like this for about fifteen minutes, and then he sings no more. His is the only voice for that time, then there are others with different voices who begin their songs to the earliest light of Dawn. For another fifteen minutes or so, then all fall silent, and occasional automobile and bus horn sounds filter from the street through the trees of the courtyard to find their way to my room, faint reminders of the awakening city around. Om Prakash brings my coffee at seven. A well-built man of thirty five or so, with bright brown eyes and a strong deep voice, from a village in western Nepal. I am hungry with curiosity to know the story of how he came to this place in the South. What we can share are the very few English words he knows. His is the first “good morning” I hear.

     It has become clear that what I think I will be doing at the school, and what I will actually be doing, are continually evolving concepts. It looks like I will be spared the task of actually teaching the students, and will serve more as an observer and advisor to the teachers. We’re starting with the English department, and as I get to know the school and its personnel and how everything works here, I’ll be given the liberty of encountering any department I find interesting. It is really a vast enterprise of buildings and classrooms, with cricket field, now soaked, an outdoor basketball court, a health office with three nurses and full time doctor, and an auditorium with stage and seating for six hundred. That is only what I’ve seen so far on this five or six acre enclave surrounded by the bustling city.

     Last night’s dreaming is impossible to recall and recount in detail, but I know it was certainly quite entertaining. Pure science fiction meets steam punk and zombie apocalypse, along with Alice’s labyrinthine wonderland and the Wizard of Oz on steroids, with some of the Journey to the Center of the Earth thrown in for a continuous narrative of antics I must creatively travel through to escape some pursuing force that poses some kind of threat I must avoid, and successfully do so without undue anxiety.

     Morning sky is completely overcast, and the driveway puddles alongside the main house have all merged into an ankle deep lake. Looks like it rained some last night, though nothing is falling right now. Morning puri and masala at eight-thirty, via Om Prakash.

     Tuesday’s classes are cancelled by the government for all schools, public and private, in the city and environs. Nonetheless, Ambi and Shantha and I go to the school at eleven. Ambi and Shantha go to the school every day, regardless. They always have things to attend to there. Their offices are side by side, and my role is with Shantha, whose concerns are with the teachers, students, classes, exams, textbooks and everything to do with the educational process. My plans for visiting teachers’ classes are postponed until Thursday, the visiting schedule has been drawn up, and Shankar, one of the masters in the educational department, will guide me around from one class to another. Sounds like a straightforward plan, but then again . . .

     The teachers I visited yesterday drew up a report, the minutes of our meeting,

and Shantha is not pleased.  She feels the report woefully incomplete. To me, the report is abundantly sufficient, but it’s her show, and she goes on with her criticisms. I met and spoke with these women for barely an hour, and they all seem like entirely responsible teachers whom I look forward to getting to know, but Shantha insists on reminding me of their shortcomings, and it is becoming clear that she will be wanting me to follow her lead and be critical in my observations, evaluations, and suggestions. Shantha is not being mean-spirited, but wants only to promote and encourage the best of all possible performance from her faculty. She never fires anyone, she tells me, but feels she must keep pushing them to do better. So here I am placed in a system I barely understand, in fact it is safe to say I am totally unfamiliar with it, with some lovely women whom I have barely met, and I am called upon to play the role of critic-at-large. By the time this meeting with Shantha is complete, she has revised my plan for visiting classes. I will visit four morning classes, all taught by Sampa, in the eleventh and twelfth standards, and then write a report on that one targeted teacher. Why this one, I have no idea. And now that I understand Shantha’s penchant for extravagant reports and critical observation, I wonder what I’ll be coming up with when my observations are complete. Looks like my diplomatic skills will soon be given a challenging opportunity to reconcile what Shantha is looking for and how I view my role with what Sampa deserves. Good Luck on this one!

     Lunch at the school with Kesavan, then back to the Annexe home for mid-afternoon rest. Ambi, Shantha, Kesavan and I get in the car around four for a drive into the heart of the city for errands and some visiting that Ambi and Shantha must do. Selvan is our driver. I’m riding shotgun for an upfront view of Selvan’s expertise at weaving our way through the indescribable madness of Chennai’s urban traffic. Some of the streets we drive through are ankle deep or even axel deep in water, and the sheer numbers of people and vehicles going in every direction is awesomely awesome. There really is no such thing as road rage for cutting someone off, for everyone is always cutting off everyone else.

It is the norm, it is expected, and to do otherwise is not to be participating in how things work here.

     Wednesday evening. One step closer to what is actually going to happen.

Sit from ten to twelve this morning with Usha and Sampa to make our plan for tomorrow. Librarian Vasala and master Shankar are with us. I will be assisting Usha and Sampa with their classes tomorrow. Our textbooks are issued by the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education, CBSE. Education is standardized throughout the country. Public and private schools all use these textbooks, and national standardized tests for all students are conducted. Eleventh and twelfth standard students are in either a Science curriculum or a Commerce curriculum for determining their subjects for study, and the English language training programs are the same for both curriculums. Students’ books are in a textbook-workbook format, and there are two, a Language Skills book and a Literature Reader book. I’ll be working with Usha and Sampa with their higher standard literature classes. First, from eight-thirty to nine-fifteen, I’ll be with Sampa in her eleventh standard Science group. Sampa will present a reading by Isaac Asimov about robots for about ten minutes. Then I will stand before the class of about thirty-five students and present my ideas about the pros and cons of robots in the modern world. Then Sampa will guide a class discussion on students’ opinions of the pros and cons of robots for as long as she wishes until she arrives at her summary and recapitulation for the class.

     My presence and contribution will be a complete surprise. Then I will go to Usha’s twelfth standard Science class for her literature lesson that will last for two periods from nine-fifteen to ten-forty-five. Usha will begin by reading a long twenty stanza poem, four lines per stanza, titled A Walk by Moonlight, written by the Bengali poet Henry Derozio, a member of the Anglo-Indian community from the early nineteenth century. I will then stand before her class of about thirty-five students and provide a twenty or twenty-five minute interpretation. Usha will conduct a Q & A  session with the students, there will be a break, then Usha will continue with her interpretation and another Q & A session. All in all, a very long class, a very long poem. And I am an unexpected visitor.

     Next, I will go with Usha to her twelfth standard Commerce students for a forty-five minute session on the same poem, and my interpretation presentation will necessarily be somewhat shorter. Then the entire school of three thousand four hundred students will break for one hour for lunch provided by the school. I can hardly imagine what that will look like. After lunch, I will be with Sampa as an observer only for a tenth standard group. She will present some story about a writer who writes ghost stories and communicates with ghosts in his writing process. That is all I’m signed up for. I’m off for the next three periods,  and Usha and Sampa and I will meet again at three-thirty to prepare lesson plans for Friday’s classes.

     As Usha, Sampa and I are sitting at the table making all of our plans, Vasala sits with her ledger full of the school’s class schedules, serving in a role of logistical advisor, while master Shankar contributes continuously to our discussion about how these classes will be conducted.

     D-day and Zero hour draws near for my first foray into the classroom life of the school. Usha is naturally more talkative than Sampa, and both seem right on top of their game. After our preparation, Usha writes out the minutes of our meeting for Sahntha. I can see where Shantha will likely consider these minutes as too brief, but that is not for me to comment on, and I sign off as a member of the discussion.

     The sky is clear and blue all day, until evening clouds begin to gather. The monsoon is not nearly over. Today has been a reprieve, and more is sure to come.

     Saturday evening, November twenty-eighth, Day ten. Fires are kindled in the courtyard of the Annexe by Om Prakash and the gateman as evening settles into darkness. Making smoke to drive the mosquitoes away. Stand outside the gate with Om Prakash and the gateman and watch the endless stream of traffic go by on the two lane street as a huge flock of crows scurries about over the neighboring rooftops, under the overcast sky. Last couple of days have been rain-free and the city catches its breath and counts the fatalities, forty-six so far, in monsoon related, heart-breaking disasters. Politicians point fingers to assign responsibilities for the collapse of infrastructures at various parts of the city. Pavements and drainage systems collapse or are clogged, motorists drive into submerged potholes, and exposed fallen power lines electrocute innocent bystanders. The Annexe here and the school are about a mile apart in an area of relative stability. Three days we have had now free from the downpour, everyone waits without comment for another crescendo. Meanwhile, billowing smoky courtyard fires of dried palm leaves and coconut husks hopefully drive the mosquitoes in another direction.

     I arrive at the school at eight Thursday morning as students are streaming through the gates, brought by their parents by car or motorcycle, or by the school shuttle busses that pick them up from the surrounding neighborhoods. Students  assemble in either of two courtyards, one for the smaller students of the lower grades, another for the upper grades students, all in uniform, tan skirts for girls, tan trousers for boys, orange blouses and shirts, and the girls have a tan vest over their blouses. Girls with long hair have two braids, and the classes are arranged in order in the courtyard, with smaller grades in the front, all facing a platform where the faculty spokesperson of the day leads the proceedings. There is a song sung by all that goes on for several minutes. Imagine a chorus of fifteen hundred or so young voices! In the square courtyard of a three story tall classroom building. A few large leafy trees grow out of the ground of the otherwise tiled pavement.  The voices and their echoes between the classroom building’s walls easily fill the heart with a sense of community and purpose.

     After the singing, the spokesperson for the day speaks to the theme of the day, and November twenty-sixth is Constitution day for India. Sampa takes me to her class on the first floor. Doors to the classrooms open to the courtyard. Girls sit together on one side, boys on the other, and all rise to greet the instructor and her guest when we enter. Sampa gives a brief introduction for who I am, and I speak a bit more about where I came from and how I got here, before giving my spiel on the pros and cons of robots in the modern world. I then sit and listen while Sampa presents the reading and discussion for the day. Students sit together at long narrow desks with benches, with the sense of amiable elbow-to-elbow crowding that prevails throughout this country. The concept of personal space is rather different in this world. When the class is over, all students rise and bid me goodbye with “Thank you, Sir” and I tell them I look forward to seeing them again. Sampa takes me to Usha’s classroom, where she and I cover the poem for the day. Usha reads the poem, I say what I think, and Usha carries through to the end. Usha and I then go to her next class for a repeat performance. Throughout the school, students stay with their class in their classroom, and the instructors do the walking from one class to another. In case you are wondering how lunch is provided to thirty-four hundred students in one hour, . . . in an orderly and congenial fashion.

     One more class with Sampa after lunch. Then I get two hours off before meeting with Usha, Sampa, and V. Kavitha to design our strategies for Friday’s classes. There will be two sections about the ghost story writer with V. Kavitha, another session on Isaac Asimov and robotics with Sampa, and The Seven Ages of Man by Shakespeare with Usha. Also a class with V. Kavitha for a story about home remedies. I am asked to provide my perspective with home remedies from America.  

     Mysteriously meet with Maria Hernandez, an instructor from Goa, during my break on Friday. She takes me to a music class where I listen to twenty-five students of middle school age, mostly girls, singing some classical Carnatic compositions. This music I’ve loved since I began to know it so very long ago, now through the voices of these children, waters my eyes, and I make a date to attend the full singing class on Monday afternoon.

     At the three-thirty planning meeting with Usha and Sampa on Friday, we are joined by Lavanya and R. Kavitha, and the lessons and schedule for Monday are I.D.ed. I get the impression that Usha and Sampa are the leading ladies of the English department, which is why I visited their classes first and that I will be attending and participating in all nine English teachers’ classes before next week is over.

     After each of our planning meetings, Usha composes the log and everyone signs it, and I am carrying it around, and Shantha has yet to see it. So hopefully, the issue of long-winded log book reports will fade. While what matters to me is how well I can integrate myself into the English department collective consciousness.

     Not so many mosquitoes tonight, I think the smoking fires helped.