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.