Going to the Country, Gonna Eat a Lot of Chipatis

On each of the past two Sundays I’ve taken a day off to cruise the Maharashtran countryside. The town of Panchgani sits about a mile above the earth on the top end of the Western Ghats. The Tabletops of the Deccan Plateau more suitably describe the area here. In the dead heat of summer it is beautiful and amidst the monsoon, the scenery drips with unimaginable green.

There are five stunning plateaus in the immediate vicinity – to which I’ve only climbed on two. Two weeks ago my friend Alex and I spent the morning hiking to the farthest of the five, a tiny island in the sky about three miles from Panchgani.

India isn’t really one of those places where you have a proper hiking trail to a plateau. You just walk along the road until you get close and then you walk overland to it. Typically the road carves its way through the major passages, which means they tend to butt up on the side of the buttes. Alex and I packed up our gear and took to the road, trusting our eyes and our instincts to guide the way.

We weaved through village after village, garnering the stares of many, the attention of a number of English-ready schoolboys and the occasional farm animal that blocked our way.

I’ve never experienced anything like an Indian country road. The pot-holed dirt pathway, puddles and all, works like an artery, bringing the life of the area here and there. An old man walks with two cows, a donkey and two goats in tow. A young boy labors on a rusty, full-size bicycle. A teenager screams by on his moped, his mate on the back chattering on his Sony Ericsson. Behind them a bumblebee jeep, half truck half-taxi, rattles along stuffed beyond capacity with people and product galore. A dalit woman, clad in a magenta sari, brushes the litter off the road. Three middle-aged men sit at the local storefront and chat endlessly over chai and pan. Mother washes the clothes as the children run after chickens in the yard.

A village comes into view. We pass through. Again and again.

Finally we reach the plateau. We climb overland to find the top. Pictures will do it greater justice than my words.


A week later, my friend Suresh organized an afternoon jall out to a waterfall, flowing mightily with the rainwater of the monsoon. I’d seen it from distance a week before and persisted with my Indian uncle that we take a closer look.

We set out at midday in the white Tata Sumo, a massive sport utility vehicle able to hold nine comfortably and about 20 in a jam (I myself have never been in one that surpassed 12, but I saw one today that held about 17). We packed in along with a massive picnic spread and set off towards Mahabaleshwar.

I’ve been on a few Indian picnics and they are worth some description. In the States, we tend to picnic with food that serves the function of the event rather than the other way around. In India you don’t pack a picnic per se. It’s more like you make lunch and then carry it to wherever you are going. But lunch in India isn’t cold cuts, chips and a coke. It’s a pot of dal, several hot curries, a steaming stack of chipatis, a massive thermos of rice and non-disposable bowls, silverware and plates for the lunch itself.

Surprisingly, this works really well when you drive directly to a picnic spot, but in order to enjoy the waterfall, we needed to walk a mile in with our supplies. I myself championed the chipatis, a stack of 50 tortilla like pieces of flat-bread that Maharashtrans use to scoop up curry. They were held in an insulated plastic container, light brown with a dark brown trim. Alongside my khakis, brown shirt and rainbows I was thrilled to declare it the fashion accessory of the year (plus, everyone loves the keeper-o-chipatis). My friends made strong bids as well, one lining his pockets with silverware and sounding like a trail-blazing grunge 7th grader with a massive chain wallet. One walked patiently with stacked metal containers filled one-top-of-the-other, carefully balancing the main course. Another simply carried 15 metal plates.

In general, I just had to laugh. In almost every sense, we couldn’t have packed more inappropriately for this picnic. No bags, a lot of metal and most everything resembled a soup except for the fried fish (another questionable picnic item) and a massive load of bananas. In the same moment, everyone had something to carry and no one was overburdened. We walked to a gorgeous spot, had a glorious picnic and walked out with big waterfall-curry smiles on our faces.

In some ways I figure this provides a pretty good glimpse of how India works sometimes. At first glance the process seems ill-thought out and ill-prepared. Yet in the doing, everyone plays his part. Even though it may never really make sense the whole time it’s happening, sensibility often has nothing to do with the eventual outcome. We share a nice meal, a good view and a nice memory for the rest of our days.

Vajra Guru

When I returned from the Far East in 2005, I immediately stepped into a role as coordinator for a program much like AfL. Following the massive cross-country expedition, I returned to Washington, DC, pretty spent and unclear where my next step would take me. It was the moment I had put off for about 5 months and it finally crashed on me hard. I began a slow crawl to the job search market, exploring the development field with a heart to continue some kind of service to humanity.

One day, I walked through the old Initiatives of Change office in Washington (where I worked for two years after college) and bumped into an old colleague. She asked about my plans, where I was headed and what I wanted to do. I had no response other than to say that I had been chasing up some leads at development agencies in town. Without any further prompting, she looked at me and said, “Chris, you are a natural teacher. You love learning, you love people and you can communicate ideas effectively, creatively and with passion. You should look into teaching.”

It hit me like Dearest Sree’s breakfast cart on my flight to Mumbai. Stung awake from a vocational slumber, it took a breath for me to grasp it. Teaching. She planted a thought I’ve been unable to leave since that day. The next morning I plotted a new course.

In retrospect, I’ve never been able to place that moment – when it happened, who said it, why she said it. But I knew why it happened. And from that point on I’ve always been interested in the people who seem to come in and out of one’s life so gently, but say the small things that seem drafted more from the universe than from the human conscience.

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My pursuit of education brought me full circle to join in the coordination and training of my current program. The bulk of the training will start in October, but recently I got a very welcome invitation to begin my tenure as a guru a few days early.

I met Prabakhar the first day I arrived at Asia Plateau. I felt his generous smile fall easily on my face and I returned it with my own. There are few things better than a good smile, the kind that comes more from the chest, or even the stomach, than the brain. His steel-rimmed frames brought focus to his gentle eyes and his graying goatee matched his hair, in a slow fade into old age. With his name, he shared his beautiful baritone voice, one well-practiced on the radio stations and theatre stages of Kohlapur. It saturated my ears with riches as I soaked it in like a small boy drinks in the call of his doting grandfather.

His name popped like a poster. I’d just finished reading Shantaram this spring (a recommended epic tome by Gregory David Roberts about life on the lam in 80’s Bombay), in which the protagonist makes his first friendship with a warm-eyed Mumbaikar. The endearing man went by Prabhakar. My favorite character from the book, I couldn’t help but be taken with my new friend.

A couple nights later, my friend Suresh asked me to play a few songs for a small group here in Panchgani. Prabhakar attended and followed me up after I finished. He suggested that I teach him to play the guitar. Clearly, I am like putty in Prabhakar’s hands by now, so I agreed, planning a time. He asked if we could start a day later.

“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” he responded, “If we start the next day, it will be Vajra Guru. The day in India when we honor our teachers. It’s a most sacred day and fortuitous for my pursuit.”
Perfect.

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When we sat down for the lesson, we both did our best to fill our roles. He took off his shoes and touched my feet in a sign of respect. I blushed and almost shooed him away before recognizing his sincerity. In turn, I sipped chai and lent him my guitar for the lesson, which he cherished with careful hands. We worked the basics and made slow but steady progress. His patience struck me. It’s unusual for a grown man to take slow growth with such grace and unwavering persistence.

We concluded the lesson. He was concerned my chai had run cold. I assured him there would be more chai to drink later. He apologized that my focus on the lesson drew me from enjoying my tea. I laughed. Recognizing my sincerity, he laughed too.

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The next day he asked me into his office, a small room with painted cement walls and one medium size window made just a little too high to be enjoyed while sitting. We had just finished a lunch of roti, dal and aloo gobi.

“I want to share with you my favorite music,” he said. “This is Ustad Bismillah Khan. He’s a famous Shehnai (like an Indian oboe) player from Bihar. He spent his study in Varanasi, playing in the Hindu temples along the Ganges.”

We listened for several minutes, the tables providing the steady background for the instrument as it floated from the long strides of introduction into the furious ornamentation and flash of the finish.

“Prabhakar, what does Ustad mean?” I asked.

“It means maestro. But unlike for Hindus, who use the term Pandit, Muslims typically use Ustad do denote a true master.”

“So if he was a Muslim, it was still okay for him to play in the sacred Hindu temples in Varanasi?”

“Ha. Yes. You see Chris, music can transcend even religion in India. It is common for students to take gurus of different religions. In their study, they will learn the songs the master knows. Often, this religious music will have been passed down from his guru. Hindu students will learn songs in praise of Allah while the Muslim students will learn devotions to Shiva. The music operates both inside and outside of religion in that way.

The power of music can even reshape the sturdiest walls of identity. Ustad Bismillah Khan learned his craft and preformed at the foot of the Ganga, the most sacred river in Hinduism. At the time of partition, he was encouraged by his fellow Muslims to move to West Pakistan. He refused, saying, “If I were to leave India for Pakistan, I may gain you as my neighbor, but who could replace my Varanasi? Who would be my sacred Ganga?”

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In my pursuit of education, it’s always wonderful to learn the old lesson that I am always in the learning, even when I teach.

Wild Dogs Redeemed: The World Conspires

There is breaking news with regards to my last entry.

You remember the story of the wild dogs stealing my sneaker. In this tale, I revealed that I had reached the peak of my own ridiculous behavior/decision-making by putting a mothball in my shoe as means of deodorization. Well, I didn’t actually tell the whole story. In fact, I left out an important chunk. But because of the eventual outcome, now I can and will tell it with some degree of pride intact.

The reason the moth ball made sense to me as a potential solution to my problem was because when I arrived to the Jungalow, I opened my closet and crashed backwards with the hectic and unmistakable stink of mothball. The odor, so pungent its still on the tip of my nose, seemed the only smell big enough to crush the wild dog smell. Say what you will, but that was my reasoning.

Now, since the mothball smell was that strong, you can understand why I tossed them out immediately, knowing that otherwise they would stink my whole wardrobe. I tossed them into the small garbage can in our room without a second thought. Well, here comes the more revealing part of my idea to eat the shoe odor with mothballs. As you can now see, in order to actually follow through with my idea, yes, I had to dig through the bin in my room. It actually had a fair amount of trash in it (my roommate had just unloaded his paperwork from previous travel) so I crouched down and began to sift it.

Quickly, I identified the mothball at the bottom. As I yanked it out, I actually took some papers with it and they flopped out onto the ground. Nigel, my Australian roommate, curiously observing my American problem solving in action, exclaimed, “Hold on a minute mate!” In a singular act of redemption, a small hologram had flown out along with the papers and came to rest with them on the floor. He reached down and picked it up, lifting it into the range of the Jungalow’s bare light bulb. “It’s the code! It’s the code for Windows!”

You see, for the past two weeks, Nigel had been laboring over his computer. In a last ditch effort to save it, he reformatted. Unfortunately, the codes he had for the Windows program didn’t match up with the disc he was trying to use for installation. It had been slowing our work and frustrating him beyond belief. Without any knowledge of where it was, he was staring down a bill to buy a new license and a trip down to Pune, 3 hours away and the nearest city for that kind of software. Now it seemed to drop right out of the sky. Later that night, he came back to me and said that the codes worked flawlessly and his computer was back in action.

It was an extraordinary and absurd turn of events – the kind of completely unlikely chain reaction that actually happens in life and helps me to believe in the unbelievable.

Morning Jewels and The Prodigal 992

Every morning I wake up at about 6:00. The morning light still distant, I can see the sky through the jungle leaves, painted grey-blue like the storm clouds over the sea. Birds fly and sing. The first ones. The birds that remind the other birds that the time has come to sing and talk and be awake. I am not a bird. So I turn over and go back to sleep.

At 6:55 I get out of bed. My feet hit the stone floor of the bungalow. I’ve grown accustomed to the fact that it’s not cold on the ground but rather warm and cozy. Not like the rock lining a fireplace, but more perfect for an early morning. (Wow. I just remembered a project I completed for Miss Blackstone’s 4th grade science class. We had to invent something [in theory] and advertise it to the class. Oddly enough, I invented a floor heater so you never had to have cold feet in the morning. Man, that’s still a good idea, and here I am just writing on a blog ☺). Now I can join the birds by giving a shout at my roommate Nigel and telling him to get a move on. He must think I am like the first bird, so he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

I take a look outside. The bungalow, a simple three-bedroom house with a small kitchen and two bathrooms sits in a patch of jungle (should start calling it the jungalow) and far removed from the majority of the center grounds. You have to traverse the thicket to get through from the back or down a gravel path from the main road. It’s secluded and getting there at night can be quite a challenge and dodging the odd snake makes for a good adventure. For now, I’m mostly surveying the area to make sure that the wild dogs and monkeys haven’t snatched anything else from our stocks. Already we are down a bath towel and one of my New Balance 992s. (as a side: I did find the shoe eventually, but it went for a pretty good ride and I’ve had to seriously consider what risk I might run by wearing it again. In a brutally honest demonstration of my denial in dealing with this problem, I will say that when I found it, I brought it inside and couldn’t figure what to do with it. In a move of desperate procrastination, I put a moth ball in it to see if it would eat the smell of wet leather. Writing that now and quite apart from the moment, I can truly see just how ridiculous that choice seems, though reasonable at the time. Wow, I just made myself laugh. And I haven’t checked back yet…Oh boy…on we go – and this was supposed to be a more thoughtful blog and here I am writing about shoes, foot warmers and mothballs. I am praying that this entry can be redeemed from here.)

When I return inside, I take a seat just inside the window that lets in the light. I take my morning quiet. Reading a passage from the Bible usually and then spending most of the time to write and think about life the day and questions I usually don’t take the time to consider during the course of the day.

It’s not something I often do with my crew at home, but my mates here do the same (in their own way) and we get it together after 30 minutes or so to share with each other whatever’s been going through the heart and mind. My teammates here think and live thoughtfully and creatively and I’m grateful to hear their insights on life. Sometimes mundane, sometimes funny, sometimes profound and powerful, they all bring a special kind of light to the beginning of the day. When we share, they inspire me and I get down what I can. Here is a collection from our first weeks together.

• Emotions are our teacher. But they are one of many teachers. They are important, but they are not my sole guide.

• When the lips of heaven address you by name, pause and listen closely.

• The greatest enemy of humanity is half-truth.

• When I say to someone – “I am too busy” – it places the doubt in his mind: “Do I matter?”

• Being a good potter is not just knowing how to work the clay. One must also work the clay with the right spirit

• If you have clarity, share it. But share it in love. Love should be a pre-requisite for opening one’s mouth.

I write this and ask for your jewels. What’s been the thought or phrase or reminder that’s been coming to you lately. One little gem that you can share with the small community that visits here from time to time. Share with me and I’ll pass on the good word back to my crew here.