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.