The Brightest Lights of Kolkata's Streets

  Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India
Sunday, November 25, 2007

On a much more inspiring and encouraging note than my last 2 entries on West Bengal politics, my dear friend Rae's 11 year old granddaughter, Carleen, and her friend Jamie, have been so taken by my photos of Kolkata's street children, that they have asked for more photos of the children and for more information about LDLM's street schools. They are going to ask their school principal for permission to raise money for one of the schools, to write to the children, exchange art projects, photos, etc. It will be a sort of adopt-a-street-school program, making heart-to-heart, child-to-child connections that bridge distant continents, across cultures, across spiritual traditions, awakening each to the lives and talents of other children in the wider world in which they live.

It is a beautiful idea, one of which I am thrilled to be a part. So here are some photos and basic information for Carleen and Jamie (and for you all) on Baba's LDLM (Lokenath Divine Life Mission) street schools.

The schools are actually held on the streets. The children who attend them live on the streets. Currently, there are about 200 children attending 6 schools held in various slums around the city of Kolkata. (There are over a hundred schools in rural villages educating thousands of children. Many of those schools are held in donated spaces.) Three of the Kolkata street schools teach in Bengali and three teach in Hindi.

Street School Class with Teacher

Parents are counseled about the long-term benefits of sending their children to school rather than into the streets to beg, so they will support school attendance. Rather than using paper and pens, the children practice their letters and do math in the dirt with sticks. The children are given a set of new clothes when they first come to school and at Diwali, the biggest festival of the year. They are asked to come to school each day clean and washed. (When sent out to the streets to beg, children are trained to look as tattered, dirty and pathetic as possible, which is demeaning.) The primary goals of LDLM schools is to foster each child's sense of dignity, personal worth, and the discovery of their talents and gifts through joyful learning.

Girl Reciting a Poem

The children are provided a meal. They learn poems and songs. They do artwork. They learn yoga and meditation, sports, traditional dance

Learning A Traditional Hindu Dance

and breathing exercises to help them creatively channel their energy. They participate in sports and dance competitions to foster their sense of accomplishment and are taken on excursions and picnics to expand their horizons.

Too Much Fun at the Zoo

When they are ready for primary school, LDLM helps to mainstream them into local schools.

Baba's primary criteria for selecting a teacher is her capacity for love, to be a real mother figure to the children. "More important to me than what or how much they learn is how much they enjoy learning and leave school knowing they are loved, knowing they are seen and that they have personal gifts that are worth celebrating. That will give them the base from which to learn and succeed in life," Baba recently told me.

Presenting Artwork to Baba

Baba recently told a story of visiting Kalighat's famous Kali Temple some months back to pay his respects to Mother Kali. (For Hindus, the various gods and goddesses represent the different aspects of God, the forms which God has taken throughout time to reinspire and uplift humanity, to remind us that we are children of the Divine. To Hindus, God is both our Mother and our Father. Mother Kali is one of the many forms of the Mother Goddess. She leads human beings, through all our trials and sufferings, back to the pure life of our soul.)

As is so often true, the Kali Temple was very crowded. Baba was looking inside the doorway and was quickly giving up hope of getting in, when the young man guarding the temple door recognized him and asked eagerly, "Baba, do you remember me?" Though the young man had looked familiar, Baba had had his attention on the crowd and hadn't recognized him. "I see now that I know you, but I didn't remember your name," Baba responded.

"I am your Sanju," the young man said.

"It all came back so clearly. I had taken this child from the street when he was hardly 5 or 6 years old, held him on my lap, and taught him how to write his first letters on a chalk board during our very first day of the Kalighat street school class. And here he was a grown man!

"Sanju instantly ushered me to the front of the crowd so I could pay my respects to Mother Kali. Later, as I went to leave after we had a brief visit (he had to continue working), I reached into my pocket to give him a 100 Rupee note. It was like the gesture of an uncle toward his nephew, thinking he would need it. "No! No, Baba. I cannot that this from you. I cannot take money from you. You gave me so much more. Do you know what you gave me? You gave me my life. You taught me how to live!"

Reflections

Carleen's and Jamie's generosity and initiative in reaching out to children literally half a world away reminded me of a book I read during the 70s, though I cannot for the life of me recall the title or author. It examined, in spiritual, metaphorical and analogous terms, the process of atomic fission as well as the threat that atomic warfare poses today to human existence.

While the author was postulating that nuclear conflagration is the ultimate pathological expression of our collective, deepening human alienation, his analysis and the conclusions he came to apply to all of today's overarching global crises: global warming, the destruction of species, rampant violence and political instability; pollution; etc., etc. Our alienation not only makes us personally miserable by severing our emotional bonds to others and the world, he reflected. It undermines and destroys the layer-upon-layer of connection that holds human society together. As both science and the mystics tell us, the author reminded his readers, our universe is inherently self balancing. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction that is capable of restoring the balance. Seeing where we are potentially headed at the macro, global level calls for a personal, spiritual, relational response at the micro level to restore balance. Every act of love, every act of compassion and generosity, every human connection that we nourish, every positive expression of our spirit, constitutes an equal and opposite positive force at work in the world to counteract our potential self-annihilation.

It all made perfectly undeniable, elegantly aesthetic, singularly hopeful sense. (Not that I can articulate it well or clearly 30+ years later while I am recovering from bronchitis in Kolkata.) In the mysterious dance of the whole of life of which we are part, our deeply expressed love and regard for one another are literally world restoring, prayerful acts. Even the smallest, most random act of kindness or senseless beauty, might ultimately serve, as it moves out into the world to replicate and amplify its essence, tip the ecological, societal, spiritual balance of the planet. It's the butterfly effect of fractal mathematics, which describe organic processes: the energy created by a single butterfly flapping its wings in a forest in China can cause a storm over South America.

I wonder what a different world we could have if we all practiced seeing just how much love we could pour into every small thing we do?