An Extra 100 for Lunch

  Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India
Thursday, November 29, 2007

Tuesday was quite the adventure for me, the local LDLM staff, and 600 children and parents from the LDLM schools in the Sundarbans. LDLM had planned an outing to the Kolkata Zoo for 400-500 from its schools in the remote villages of the Sundarbans, but children and parents was so excited to come, no one had the heart to turn anyone away. Many of these children had never seen a city before. So, at the last minute, there was a mere extra 100 people to transport the 120 kilometers to Kolkata and to serve lunch.

Anupama and Bablu Stir 25 kilos of potato curry

The Sundarbans are an isolated, rural area that sit right at the top of the Bay of Bengal, bordering coastal Bangladesh. It is a huge delta area. Looking at a map, you can literally see the many fingerlike extensions created by river sediment deposited from the Gangetic plains and poured, over geologic time through flooding, to extend the land mass farther out into the Bay of Bengal.

These are low lying, marshy areas, heavily forested, with hundreds of islands. The people are simple farmers and fishermen who boat up the many river and waterway inlets to fish and collect honey, where they are most vulnerable to attack by Sundarban tigers. The Sundarban Tiger is reputedly one of the most intelligent animals on the planet and an expert swimmer. At one village that LDLM serves, literally all of the adults are women - widows whose husbands have been eaten by tigers. Usually when I tell that to people they accuse me of exaggerating. I am not.

The Sundarbans and the neighboring areas of Bangladesh are extremely vulnerable to
cyclones and heavy monsoon flooding. Some of the highest death tolls of natural disasters occur in the Sundarbans and Bangladesh. It is an undeveloped, hand-to-mouth region of desperate poverty and intense suffering due to ecological vulnerabilities.

To prepare lunch, there was a crew of LDLM volunteers (as well as the urban and rural program directors) who stayed up late Monday night and early Tuesday morning peeling 50 kilos of potatoes. They were then back at it at 6 am to cook. When Baba and I arrived at the temple, he led me through a postage stamp sized courtyard on the other side of the tiny LDLM office and then to a storeroom of about 8 x 6. Sitting immediately inside the door were three industrial size pans that were full of beautifully cooked rice, garnished with raisins, nuts and other spices. I would estimate that there were 20-25 gallons of rice.

Rice for 600

To the right inside the door was an iron propane burner, about 2 foot x 2 foot x 2 foot, with an gargantuan pot full of halved potatoes. Bablu (one day soon I am gong to write an entire blog on Bablu, one of my personal heroes), was stirring the pot, while Anupama (the director of the urban projects) was adding handfuls of cayenne and other spices to make the soon- to-be thick golden curry sauce.

I was invited to come and stir the pot with the 4-5 foot iron utensil. I did attempt it, but let me tell you, 25 kilos of potatoes in one boiling pot is no simple, easy stir. Bablu gained yet another notch of my already high regard for his always heroic and unassuming, selfless service, given with good humor and obviously profound devotion. This time his service involved hours in sweltering heat over this fire, heaving the potatoes that I could barely budge up and down then back and forth to assure they were cooking rather than burning. As soon as the first pot finished cooking, the second was put on the fire and the process started all over again, with Bablu as faithful and dauntless as ever.

At the zoo, children and parents, many of them carrying babies and younger children, came in a very long line through the zoo gate. Many of the children looked a little shell shocked when they first arrived. They wore serious, often guarded, some seemingly mistrustful expressions. Baba had told me on the way here that many of them had taken long boat ride to get to even get to the buses. The drive to Kolkata was 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

I had been anxious for days about how I would be able to make genuine contact with each child. 75-100 was do-able last week with the street school children, but 400-500 was intimidating - and now, with 600, I was downright scared. Baba reassured me, "Your pranam is more than enough. It is all you need. That will warm any heart."

So in they came, a small, endless army of children in single file, with their black hair and gorgeous, gleaming dark skin, huge cautious black eyes, in their bright dresses and dark shirts, holding on to the shirt or shoulder of the child in front of them, following the teacher or mother or father who came to help. Short ones, tall ones, nearly all skinny ones, often young and tiny ones, in their best clothes.

Too Beautiful for Words

All ages of children. Most appeared to be between 6 and 10, but sprinkled in were groups of lovely, friendly, shyly giggling adolescent girls who called me, "Auntie", parents and even a grandmother.

All Shades of Beautiful

I stood to the side of the sidewalk, pranaming and smiling, making eye contact with each and every child and parent. Many warmed and loosened up quickly. We walked under the bat rookery, our necks craned to gawk at hundreds of bats (the size of healthy, full grown chickens) hanging upside down directly above us, occasionally stretching their 2-1/2 to 3 foot wingspan and exposing their generously round, copper-tinged bellies.

Once we hit the exhibits, the children's excitement was too much to bear. They broke ranks and began running in smaller groups back and forth across the sidewalk, from one exhibit to the other. Lions, bears, white deer, reindeer, luscious red and gold and white exotic birds. All of the animals were more out and about, today than they had been last week. They were showing themselves off.

Who is Staring at Whom?

The one-horned rhinoceros was standing on dry ground in clear view, rather than submerged and motionless in a pool of green slime. Two chimpanzees came and sat on a wall, almost talking to us before they got down to the more important business of eating. At times,they were staring at us as much as we were at them. Many of the large cats were pacing, giving us a good look. The Sunderban tiger was the exception, stretched out with his massive head resting on a log, he appeared to be twice the size of any of the others, and absolutely indifferent to us. My God, the head on him!

Every now and again, the order is given to restore the line. It all works.

Picture taking is always a sure hit, guaranteed to break open the most resistant heart and win over a new friend. Everyone wants their picture taken. They squeal with delight at being shown the digital image afterward, even if they didn't make it into the shot. Though we are holding up the line, we are having a great time doing it.

In the Reptile House

Eventually, word comes by cell phone that the truck delivering the food has arrived and for us to come to the pavilion area. Someone asks if I know where it is, since I had been here last week. I have no clue, but then look up and am relieved to be staring right at it. So everyone is instructed to circle and circle and circle the grass and sit down on the ground. I pass out the dried banana leaf plates and then stand back, staring at a lot of very patient, hungry faces.

Lunch Scene 1

Two man teams carry the tubs of rice around the circle, dishing it out. With another man's help, Bablu, man of the hour, carries the tubs of curry around. But it takes time to serve lunch to 600. Amilendu and Anupama are problem solving food distribution issues in the center of it all. The potato curry is short with an extra 100 to be served, so the curry portions must be smaller than they otherwise would have been. No one complains. Those of us helping from Kolkata simply skip lunch, relieved that everyone else is getting fed.

Logistical Problem Solving Conference

Anupama hands me boxes of sweets to pass out. No Bengali meal is complete without a sweet - and they are all delectable. I don't recognize this one, maple colored, somewhat shell shaped with a single golden raisin in the center. Though I rush, I don't let it keep me from inwardly blessing each child and adult as I make my way around the circle. I linger for at least a few micro seconds to see each face, look into every set of eyes, and exchange a smile. Who knew it was possible to experience so much beauty and heart in micro-seconds? There are no more blank stares, no more caution. I am drinking in fathomless realms of unspoken tenderness. With every fresh and playful, often shy, but just as often exuberant, smile and gesture, with each tiny hand reaching up to receive the sweet I have to give, the unspeakable mysteries of the human heart, the treasures of the human spirit wash through me. At times it is hard not to cry.

Three Boys Enjoying Lunch

If there is anything that I love about the "poor" people of West Bengal and that I am learning from them, it is their readiness to look into your eyes and to linger there, without language, until you really see each other.

Bright Eyes, Bright Smiles

Before I came here, I had lost the capacity for that kind of subtlety, tenderness, the simple wonder of truly meeting another human being. Three weeks before I left the U.S., I had been working so many hours for so long administering Run for Congo Women, that I had become unaccustomed, almost afraid of human contact. I couldn't even look my therapist in the eye for more than a passing glance. We had a whole session on the issue. I would get antsy and uncomfortable and look away the instant real contact was possible, rather than be seen or to allow another person access to my felt interior. So these people are returning something precious and vital to me, something I have sorely missed.

Ready to Leave

When the time comes to leave, it is a huddled masses scene -- classic India. Almost everyone has seen pictures of overcrowded Indian buses. If you have been in India and ridden on its buses, you have experienced the suffocating phenomenon personally. But after yesterday, I am here to tell you, you have never seen or been crowded. 600 children and adults -- crowded onto three buses and an open, flat-bed truck with raised sides made of wooden slats - is crowded.

At least 100 adults and children stand body-to-body on the bed of the truck as I approach to say goodbye. The truck gate shuts. The western mother/grandmother in me is horrified to see how low the metal gate actually is and how little protection it will afford to these precious and vulnerable human bodies if this truck has to make a sudden, lunging stop. A rope is tied and laced across the top of the sides and down to the metal gate so those next to it will have something to hang on to (and they will need it in the 1 ½ hour trip they have ahead of them).

This is India

I walk up and down from one vehicle to the next saying goodbye and thank you, waving madly, blowing kisses, pranaming one last time, to everyone.

Then chaos erupts at the front bus. We are talking compressed flesh here, not just crowded. Two frantic mothers and a father are running alongside the over-burgeoned bus, trying to get on as it begins to move forward. The women are at the front door, the father at the back. The women both grab the external bar on the door and are literally swinging off the side of the bus as it begins to pull away. They cannot even get a foothold. I am screaming "STOP!" and then at the women to let go and get on the next bus. Sudip, the temple manager, is trotting alongside the bus, pounding on the driver's door yelling for him to stop, which he finally does. I desperately try to tell Sudip and Anupama that the bus behind us has much more room on it, but no one hears me in the pandemonium.

Maybe the women have children on this particular bus that they do not want to be separated from. Maybe the buses are going to a different location. Who knows? None of them speak English anyway. They are determined to get on this bus. Someone pulls the two women into what can only be described as a nightmare of crushing bodies. The front door is closed with much difficulty. The father, at the back door, literally leaps and throws himself onto the solid mass of bodies filling the back steps. People grab him and he is somehow miraculously pulled and twisted and pressed until he begins to be absorbed into the crowd. I see one of his legs sticking out at an odd angle as the rest of his body is swallowed by the crowd in a kind of peristaltic wave that is generously working to include him. The back door finally manages to be shut. The bus immediately behind us is raring to go, honking. Sudip pounds the door for the driver, signaling that it is OK to go, and they are off. The 2d and 3d buses go past, into the street, and then the truck. I bravely wave goodbye, while making a silent anxious, pleading prayer they all make it alive (they did!) to the Sunderbans. I cannot shake the thought of how miserable I would be on that bus as a group of us hail a taxi to head home. My motherly fretting goes into high gear. I hadn't seen them drinking enough water. I never saw anyone go to the bathroom. Will they even be able breathe on that 1st bus?

It was exceptionally hard for me to grapple with this in terms of the cultural divide between the U.S. and India. I went to bed last night and woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, thinking about those children and parents on those buses, the very real risks and misery involved in their trip home. This would never have happened in the U.S. No one would have allowed it to happen. But in India, if you wait for things to be thoroughly planned and executed,and safe, nothing will ever happen. No one would have the money to hire enough buses to comfortably seat everyone. Those children and their parents would never get to the see the city, much less the zoo, or share it with one another. This was an adventure for them, and being Indian, they take the short term risks, the inconveniences, the misery, however intense, along with the gifts. In India, it is amazing how stoic you can become (even as a westerner) when you have no alternative. Whether it is the heat, the roaches, the pollution or the filth on the side of the road, you look past it to what has meaning and value. Life, however imperfect, however uncomfortable and precarious, moves valiantly and stoically on - and the spirit, the one thing that counts, the one true thing that warms and nourishes and sustains us, not only remains, it triumphs.

Waitng to Load the Buses