The Child I Let Go

Deepa six years ago

One of my personal motivation to revisit Kolkata is around twelve years old.  Her name is Deepa.  She is the feature of much of this blog, named after her and her ability to open my eyes to more of the world.  Eyes which she was born without.  Over the years that I worked with Deepa, I was convinced that any signs of autism she showed were a result of her living conditions.  Deepa has spent the majority of her life in one room, filled with children with various states of physical and mental challenges.  Years ago I taught her how to walk on her own, how to feed herself and then how to speak.  This later skill was one that appeared to be deeply hidden, yet it was potentially her main ally in the world – her ability to connect when she was unable to see and at that point unable to be heard.  I had such an admiration for Deepa and connection that went beyond that of care-giver and child that I even looked into the viability of adopting her.  At that point I was told it would take minimum of three years but most likely five.   My hope had been to adopt her in order to find her a specialist school that would be able to cater to her needs and provide the conditions necessary to prevent her from moving further along the autism spectrum.  Yet three to five years was too long to wait.  She needed expert help immediately.  And with a heavy heart I whispered good bye not sure when or if I would see her again.

Today I made that return journey to Sisha Bhavan orphanage.  I walked down the familiar street, filled with butchers shops that spill out onto the invisible pavements, fruit wallahs, shoe wallahs, mosques and rickshaws.  Walking down these roads is a little like surfing.  You need to be continuously aware of what is going on all around you, predicting the trajectory and timing of people, rickshaws, bicycles, motorbikes and cars and find a way to flow between them. The impact on the senses is extreme.  The continuous noise battery my nervous system and I wonder if the whole of Kolkata does actually smell like a urinal.

 I arrived at the huge metal gate of the orphanage and banged at the door.  One of the massi’s (Indian worker)  opened it and grinned.  She has been there for years.  She motioned me to come in and said “Deepa - up” and pointed to the staircase.  Just like I do with Kolkata, I have always had a love/hate relationship with the massi’s.  Their harsh ways and words to the kids bordered on physical and verbal abuse.  And many times I couldn’t sit back and watch, and it was my persistent intervention which threatened to terminate my work at the orphanage.  

Yet in order to understand the dominant attitude of violence, its always necessary to look beneath the surface.  Just like the CEO bully’s his staff, who go home and bully their wives, who then shout at the children, who then kick the dog.  The women here who are employed to take care of the children are all from the lower castes.  They have become toughened by life and after some time of observing their own interactions, occasions of kindness were rare.  Many times I wondered to what extent kindness is something which is innate or which is learned.  Or indeed in which cases kindness can be perceived as a weakness, threatening one’s own survival.  Or perhaps what I perceived as cruelty was just an efficient way to get a very poorly paid job done.  Regardless of my relationship or view of the Indian staff, ultimately they work with the kids for life.  Foreign volunteers, like myself, come in for a few weeks or months, maybe a year and then we leave.  We can.  Therefore we do.  In the interim we either turn a blind eye to what we find uncomfortable or speak out but are unprepared to step up and do the work of these warrior women.  Women who are battling caste, gender, poverty and Kali only knows what else.

I took the stairs up to the room on the second floor.  It’s filled with small cots where the children spend a majority of their time.  Sometimes tied to the rails with cloths, other times they are laid on mats on the floor, where the massis and volunteers give massages to limber their crooked limbs.  I scanned the room.  The same kids were there.  Six years later and some hardly looked any different – almost as if they are in some kind of perverted Never Ever land.  A place where time pauses.  Deepa was in the corner.  Same pudding bowl hair cut.  She had grown taller. Clearly still not potty trained as her pants were dripping wet.  I went over and crouched next to where she stood.  She had her hands over her ears.  For such a sensitive blind child the noise of the room must at times be overwhelming.  I spoke to her and half hoped for a response.  Had she found her voice yet? But she continued as she was.  Without registering my presence.  Totally inside her own world – whatever that must look like.  I couldn’t even bring myself to reach out and touch her, or to change her clothes.  The love I have for her is so strong.  The pain at seeing her spiral deeper into autism as equally as strong.  I told her I love her.  That she is amazing.  And then moved away.

I feel on some level I was Deepa’s only chance of learning vital life skills.  On another, it is impossible to predict the extent to which her life circumstances have accentuated her condition, or what is simply playing out through her genes.  I saw other children who were babies when I last left, also born without eyes and also displaying strong signs of autism. Either way, Deepa is a light in a very dark place.  And with a heavy heart I will always be grateful for the chance to have shared the time that I did with her.  She has been an amazing teacher in how she sees and feels the world.  After going to greet the other kids, reading a story book with the girl with the most amazing smile and pulling two little boys who had rolled onto the concrete floor back onto the mat, I knew my time here has passed.  This is not my path any more. Part of me is amazed at what I did do. And I admire those who are able to be here now.  A place where there appears to be so little hope and so few rewards.  I picked up my bag, waved an invisible goodbye to Deepa, who was still standing in the corner, hands over her ears, and oblivious to all.

Later that night I messaged my sister who was eager to hear the news of Deepa. “I feel like I’ve failed” I told her.  She replied: “There is nothing you can do anymore.  Just let it go.”

Red Light New Light

These words rang true today.  I rolled my yoga mat out.  Smiling at paying 650 rupees ($9) for a room just to have space to practice, when in the past I would have paid about 200 rupees ($2.50) and woke up before dawn to practice on the roof before the neighbors would become my uninvited audience.  Inside space would have seemed luxury years before - extravagant even. Yet here I listen to volunteers argue over 2 rupees “out of principle” and yet I watch as they also throw money at the beggars and the cheats – not being able to distinguish between the two.  It is almost like I walk around seeing more than what first appears.  I observe a parallel narrative to everything, and at times I wish I could switch it off, or at least turn the volume down.   I blame it on my rigorous training in Development Studies paired with my Mayan sign of the Blue Spectral Night.  Ha!

I took the metro to Kalighat, ignored the persistent shouts by many men that I was walking in the wrong direction to the Kali temple as I side stepped the pilgrims and slid down an ally way.  A familiar street, lined with tiny rooms, women squatting on the corners and others taking care of business behind drawn curtains. There’s no red lights here, no women in scanty clothes, they just tend to wear brighter saris, perhaps have more tattoos.  For the uninitiated it could appear to be just another street.  After all husbands are around, kids play in the open doorways, it’s the middle of the day.   I walk into a house, up the stairs and into New Light.  The organization I volunteered for on and off between 2008-2010.  I received hugs and smiles from young women I had once taught yoga to and who had now graduated from student to staff.  The ngo was perhaps the only one which ever gave me any hope.  It provides a play school for the kids to go while their mothers are working, after school tuition to both educate and occupy kids during busier evening “working hours”.  They have a safe house for teenage girls, which is in a respectable part of town, where mothers wouldn’t be tempted to sell their daughters, and customers wouldn’t be tempted to try to buy them.  They also have a centre for young women who have finished school and are now at college.  The intention is that they have a start in life, providing them with experiences, education, support and motivation to find a different profession from the one they were born into.  And its appears to be working. 

The whole reason why I am back in Kolkata is because of New Light.  Urmi Basu (the founder and force behind the ngo) said she had some ideas about work we can do together.  No details were shared, although I imagine it will be working with the daughters of the sex workers.  Of course I already see the challenges – that they need to study, they have a full schedule, my lack of Bengali, the irony that I am in India and potentially teaching yoga.  This later point is one which I spent the night debating about with a local friend, who like me sees more than what first meets the eye.  After all he has a restaurant which is a hub for the volunteers on Sudder Street.  He sees people from all over the world come to help, come to take, come to talk.  Some with huge hearts, some with huge egos.  He wonders why they come.  Why they really come…

So later he asks me to teach him yoga.  He says perhaps because his skin is brown and he is from India he can become a Guru and become very rich. And then laughs at his pious integrity that in his view limits him to making a decent living a decent way.  Even so, he corrects my Sanskrit, complains about “white people yoga”(which of course “is all about stretching and nothing about liberation”) and meanwhile, his father (oblivious to our conversation) is sitting on top of one of the dining tables (which double as beds after the customers have gone home) practicing nadi shodana (alternate nostril breath).  With increasing frequencies I am the one feeling like a fraud.  And I don’t mean because I am teaching yoga and not Indian, but because there is indeed so much to yoga, and the more I learn the less I know.  There is no one religion, culture, language, narrative in India, and the same thing goes for yoga.  I often want to just string together a chronological time line of yoga History, read the main themes of yoga philosophy.  And yet of course there is no one history, no one philosophy. Perhaps this is modern yoga has become so simplified?  Yet the more I continue to study, the more dissatisfied I become with what the yoga industry is selling. And this ties back in to why I am here right now…the origin of yoga as being one of connection to truth, to liberation, to an inner journey of radical self transformation.  And how potent a tool that can be for all of us, especially for those living in conditions that demand a super human amount of resilience.  I even think of it on a personal level – and I don’t just mean the importance which I put on my morning practice, but on actually being here now.  On putting myself in different positions (places which don’t fill me with joy or inspiration) and just observe how I respond to them.  Not resisting, not trying to escape, but tapering my reaction until I arrive at an appropriate response.  The journey into different cultures and comfortable situations happens on both the physical and spiritual plane.  Yet it is often the journey within which is rich in unexpected treasures, which could be found only as a result of the challenges on the physical plane.  Moreover these treasures might only reveal themselves days, months or years later but are a direct result of the challenging experiences embodied.  Adaptability; it is after all a seed of evolution.

Age of Kali

Kali dancing ontop of her husband Lord Shiva

 So here I am back in Kolkata after six years.  I’ve just arrived.  I’m not entirely sure why I am here.  I have an idea, but sitting by the street, with flashing Christmas lights and honking horns, and no available room in sight as the night is getting later, I think I might be slightly madder than I thought.  I first arrived in Kolkata in 2008 and I must have spent nearly a year in total working in the toughest, gritty conditions, which are no exception to life in a city where one third of its massive population are officially invisible.  The “official” population of Kolkata is just shy of 5 million, however many census have estimated it to be closer to 15 million, with one third of that living in slums or who have made their home the streets.  With a remaining million “homeless”… and yes there is a difference between those who are  destitute with  those who may well have a job, a patch of concrete they return to every night,  a spot under a bridge, or even the shelter of their rickshaw.  (Kolkata is the only city left in the world which still has man pulled rickshaws).  Either way, Kolkata is a city of extremes – of the filthy rich and the filthy poor, of majestic colonial buildings, fantastic classical dance and music concerts, steeped in cultural history and the city Mother Teresa decided to set up shop, along with a plethora of other organizations and charities, some with great intentions, others not so great.  Some with great initiatives, others finding ways to feed off the darkness.  Kolkata after all is the city of Kali – the great Goddess of death and destruction.  Rumor has it that a young boy was sacrificed to the Kali Temple every day before the arrival of the British.  Thus said, sitting on the plane from Goa (which for many foreigners is all they see of India) there were only three other white faces. Two more from the time I went to Bangladesh.  And similarly, I keep wondering what it is which pushes me to the edge of what is comfortable – to where not many single white women even want to venture. Indeed, it has been a while since I have stood out so much.  

We three found each other and shared a cab through the mayhem.  Driving in Kolkata means slamming on the horn until the traffic suffocates itself, at which point the driver automatically turns the ignition off and an eerie silence momentarily ensues.  Everything looks so familiar and yet at the same time so in complete contrast to my life in Bali.  Already beggars and hawkers reach through the window and I catch myself remembering – the familiarity of being a breathing cash machine.

I finally feel like I’ve arrived in India.  The conversation in the cab quickly went to volunteer work – they both were.  One was a pharmacist working for Calcutta Rescue.  I always felt that the word “rescue” was a rather unfortunate name.  And in many ways sums up the old school response to the dire poverty.  That of the knight in shining armor riding in to save the needy. Ha! Yet the pharmacist was smart in that she admitted she might not be able to do much, yet encouraging the doctors to check the drug side affects before administering them, and even creating a medical database was in her opinion time well spent.  Our words reminded me of why it has taken me so long for me to come back – and of course the massive journey through life that I have been on since I was last here. 

I had stopped working in Kolkata because I had felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems.  I’d never seen so many people of all ages with so little – and by so little I don’t mean “things” I mean so little of the basic human rights: safe drinking water, enough food to live, shelter and access to medical care.  At the time I had decided that if I could do just one thing that day to make someone’s life easier, then it was a victory.  But the longer I stayed, the more questions I asked, and the more I started seeing even problems in apparent solutions.  I’m back because I’m different now, I’m not so naïve.  I have no grand intentions, and no real plan, just some ideas.  

The cab dropped me sort of near where I had asked him to, which was Sudder street  - the hub for the volunteers.  Yet it is shady.  If you can you don’t stay here. Volunteers only congregate here because it’s close to the Mother House (Mother Teresa’s headquarters) and there is some kind of unspoken rule that comes after a while of working in this city – if you can save money you do, and then you give it to those projects or people you believe in.  I rock up at “Modern Lodge” which is anything but “modern” but it’s my home in this place.  

There’s no friendly faces.  Instead, security shouts to me that they are full and slams the huge metal shut in my face.  A rush of lungi clad men congregate around me shoving business cards advertising “very cheap VIP room with wifi”.  I turn down their demands and continue my search.  Half of the guest houses have been knocked down and replaced with concrete air con squares.  The other half are full.  Yet something in me is not concerned, the smell (of kerosene, exhausts, incense, cooking oil and open urinals) is completely unique to these streets.  The same women holding new born babies and asking for powdered milk are still standing at the same corners, and sure enough with different new born (borrowed) babies.  They don’t even approach me and it reassures me that I have already done my initiation here.   I know how to hold myself and how this places rolls, who to look at and who not to.  I walk up and down the street.  Stop for a chai.  Start writing this as I attempt to come up with a plan of action of where I might possibly sleep tonight, and then I remember…I walk back to “Modern Lodge” knock on the gate.  Tell them I know they have rooms, can I please have one. Its late, I’m tired, and of course…I can pay them now.  Sure enough I’m waved it.  They have three empty rooms.  I find my place.  Everything is the same, apart from there are now electric outlets inside the room rather than paying baksheesh to one of the guys to rig one up.  

So here I am, back where I started wondering why on earth I listened to that irrational pull that has magnetized me back here.    There’s no doubt about it, I have culture/poverty/ noise shock.  It seems impossible that Goa even exists in the same world, let alone Ubud.  I laugh thinking of what certain close friends would say if they could see me now.  I laugh at myself… I could have chosen to be diving, surfing, training capoeria right now, and yet I have chosen to be here.