A few photos from the past week

Shrine for the mummified guru

Inside the monastery

Where we're staying at

An awesome monk and myself

Palampur June 27, 2009

I had a bit of trouble keeping up with this blogging considering they keep us so busy here. A couple days ago I asked if I could tag along on an intern-only excursion to the University of Agriculture. The campus sprawls itself across the rolling hills and encompasses whole fields of rice and valleys overflowing with tea bushes. It was really awesome to bear witness to the organic movement in a place not so well-off - just proving the point that returning to organic farming is a point that is relevant not only to the wealthy Whole Foods frequenters. One of the deans led us through a tour of the school and emphasized how the use of chemicals will completely ruin the soil in a time span of a mere 25 years. We wandered through a biochemistry lab and a relieving 68 degree room stacked with various cultures, a veterinary surgical room, and the college where textiles are sewn and meals cooked in huge vats and ovens and such. 

The day before yesterday we went to an ancient temple dedicated to the Lord Shiva (who destroys all of creation so that it can start over again). We washed our feet and hands before entering the temple barefoot, and rang a huge bell before entering the temple, where a man stood before an altar and spewed out prayers at rapid-fire while flicking water from a wet flower onto the heads of a family. He then blessed some puffed rice and we took turns going up to him and receiving a handful, which I then ate with attempted reverence. I took a bunch of pictures of the intricate carvings of different gods that vertically stacked themselves along the sides of the temple. There was also an interesting display of Lord Shiva's balls entering the vagina of another god (forgot her name). It didn't look too erotically evocative to me, sort of just like a modern sculpture - took a few pictures next to that. 

Then we went to a Buddhist monastery which was AMAZING. Okay, so I know I haven't dedicated myself to being a Buddhist practitioner, but I just get chills in these places. First we took a bunch of group pictures with all the little monks-in-training - the cutest chinese boys adorned in their red monk robes hopping about the stairs in their croqs (spelled right? I don't know). I felt a more natural sense of reverence in this monastery than I had in the temple. I placed an oil lamp as an act of prayer, and then noticed a tree growing out of a shrine. I was immediately drawn towards it and while I was standing in front of it I felt a huge whoosh of existence cementing me into the fact of my very being. I found out a bit later from a monk that one of their masters' hearts had been preserved and placed in that shrine, and the tree's roots grew into the heart and around the little statue of Lord Buddha. The most fantasmical part was climbing up a steep hill towards the shrine where their most recent guru had been mummified using salt and not chemicals. His body was set in full lotus meditation posture, and he's been that way for three years without any signs of degradation - which is frankly incredible. Apparently his spiritual prowess has kept his body quite intact. I felt an immediate love for this person as I looked at his picture and felt the dense energy of all the devotion of his followers who had come here before me and placed their offerings upon his shrine. It was a powerful experience and I very much wanted to meditate in that room with him. I'm considering going back to do so. 

Last night we went out to a hotel to celebrate a birthday. We all got super rowdy and I felt like quite the American spectacle. When we got back we had a birthday-cake-gone-cake-fight with the staff, watched some Bollywood music videos, and laid out on the grass under the stars and did some random yoga poses. Yoga under the stars - how did I never think of this before? 

I'm starting to figure out my niche in my volunteering and getting super motivated. I spent all morning re-reading all my placement books, researching activity ideas, and brainstorming. I'm going to try to instigate a garden project so that the kids can plant their own food and flowers. This daycare center is actually an abandoned post office that looks pretty decrepit and bland. There's nothing on the walls except for a phrase in Hindi that's apparently a warning against becoming an alcoholic. We decided the place needs color - badly. So we painted a blackboard and started on a mural today, along with the alphabet and numbers. The kids are getting a lot more comfortable with me and will come and sit on my lap or hold my hand or imitate what I'm doing or let me tickle them. They were quite shy the first couple days. There was a period today when I had them super engaged, after playing a few rounds of ring-around--the-rosy (which they LOVE, we "all fall down" a good fifteen times), and I suddenly became the focal point of their rapt attention. So we did head shoulders knees and toes and they repeated a bunch of body parts after me. The teacher taught me a song in Hindi and the kids were so incredibly cute while dancing to it. We're going to bring a CD player for more music and dancing, and I'm going to make pill bottle shakers with rice inside for them to shake while they dance. I also started creating a schedule - like Monday is alphabet, Tuesday is fruits (I'm going to bring in the actual fruits to eat), Wednesday is numbers etc. There's basically no structure, so I thought that could help things move along a bit more. I love this work sooo much, I feel like this is all I want to do with my life - just go around to different cultures and connect with the kids and teach them. 

Palampur June 25, 2009

I keep on having to remind myself that I am awake and that this is my current experience of this reality. I woke up at six this morning to go on a hike. "Go on a hike" would have to be an understatement here, seeing as this trek up the mountain was one of the most mystical experiences of my life. Four of us headed out without any real idea of where the trail was - just heading straight towards the mountains. We walked through the rice fields which host a sense of calm that could only come from the still water nesting amongst the bright green rice shoots. We walked through thin dirt trails past children bathing in the irrigation, then into a huge field where we dodged cakes of poop from the grazing goats and cattle. We walked across a suspension bridge over the parched river (still waiting on those monsoons) and then alongside a rushing creek looking for a place to cross. Finally we found a narrow enough point to leap over and onwards into the hike itself. There's a myriad of thin, barely tredded trails scratching across the entire face of the mountain from the workers who collect pine sap from the trees. About half the trees are scratched with rusty metal cones nailed into them for collecting the sap. I felt completely invincible on that hillside, even with the pine needles slipping around underneath my soles. My own soul was melding with the mountain and the trees as I moved my energy through the thick scent of pine and closer towards the Himalayans themselves. 

Lauren and I were commenting on all the trash that they leave on their beautiful landscape here, and how frustrating it is to see it all. We're going to try and organize a pick up trash day to promote the awareness of keeping this land clean and pure. We also mused on starting our own non-profit organization and then having a legitimate excuse to come back here as much as humanly possible. 

I'm so eager to connect with these kids on a deeper level. I also want to cultivate a friendship with the teacher, Swadesh, who's a very kind woman and puts in her best effort to communicate with me. I'm so intent on teaching them something, but what with the language barriers it's sooo hard to get through! I'm trying to keep my frustration at bay and just accept this situation and work with it from there. My Hindi is definitely improving so that's promising. 

We wandered back towards the field later on in the day and came across a huge statue of Krishna - the blue skinned god. Amazing. There were three girls standing on a huge rock a bit off in the distance waving to us and one yelled out a few times that something was coming. We decided to just go for it and walked towards the rock to say hello and find out what was coming. When we asked what she meant by it, the girl offered her hand to help us climb up the rock. When we got to the top and inquired yet again, she said nothing was coming and laughed. She had a beautiful singing voice, and for only eleven years of age was very outspoken. Yet, when I asked her about the krishna statue, she tried to say something about how we are human and dying, but when she couldn't fully explain it in English, she would giggle into her hands. I want more of these sorts of interactions with the people here. 

Palampur June 24, 2009

I am completely enlivened and invigorated by my volunteer work - it's exactly where I'm meant to be and what I'm meant to be doing with my time. The only doubts that surface have to do with "Am I completely fulfilling my potential service here?" I feel like I can't simply do what is expected of me - even though I know this is still having an impact - but that there is something beyond this, even, that is my true duty. And I'm trying to figure out what it is. I can give these kids my loving, but I could also facilitate a project or a program which will put them at a greater advantage despite their socio-economic situation. I also want to avoid "Americanizing" them and strictly seeing their situation from my American perspective. Of course money doesn't buy happiness, but if they could be put in a situation by which they could excel at whatever they want to do in their life, then I think that would be of greatest value. Does that mean they need to learn their ABC's and 1 2 3's more quickly and proficiently? Or could their modes of learning be more expansive and creative than that, more inspiring perhaps? Sometimes I feel as though there's so little I can do for this age, but then I also think how this age means EVERYTHING. The personality's entirely formed by age five, so I'm right at the crux of this transformative process by which every little moment contributes wholly to the development of this child's character. Pretty powerful stuff. I also want to impart as much knowledge as I can upon the teacher so that this has a lasting effect when I'm gone. I'm soaking up Hindi like a sponge - I absolutely love learning it and communicating with the women and children. I actually feel like I pick it up easier than I did French, perhaps because I'm more immersed in it and more driven to communicate by its means. It has a rich simplicity that I savor, and knowing how akin it is to Sanskrit, I can feel the sacred vibrations in the everyday conversation. I want to do my part in nurturing these children into a beautiful realm of possibility and empowered potential. Mmm I'm also craving to write more of my novel now. As I am feeling so compelled by this dream-like state, this unequivocal reality. 

Palampur June 23, 2009

As much as this all feels like a dream, I could not be making it up - my faculty of imagination is not capable of such a thing. The Himalayans taunting their snow peaks to my right, the verdant rice paddies rimmed in stone like steps for giants, the women hosting all shades of vibrancy in loose folds across their graceful bodies. There's certainly a level of sensory overload here as I'm whisked in a tightly-packed car along the pebbly dirt road up into the foothills of Palampur. Everything feels shockingly new, yet nostalgic at the exact same time, and it is this precise paradox that most perfectly surmises all of India itself. "The nation of paradoxes", proclaimed by both the professor who gave us a history of India in New Delhi and in the many books and essays I've been reading on India - the ones that stuff me with information but haven't prepared me for any of this. I'm constantly having to put myself into context within my ongoing reality here. The dialogue in my head goes like this: "I am in India right now. Here, I - Erin Dellinger - am in India right now. Right now I am here in India." And despite the redundancy I still feel submerged in a dream-like state, as if all the seemingly concrete mountains and lizards and piles of bricks and the warm stiff air in my nostrils will suddenly wisp into nothings with a wave of my hand.  

I am constantly ringing with ecstasy at the elusive bliss of this place. I try to grip what it could be that makes everything feel so natural and absolutely perfect - is it the ease of the people sitting along the sides of the streets in smiling conversation? Or the children playing in the rice paddies amongst the goats and cows? Is it the blanket of pine trees sitting in repose from atop the mountains who cast some absolute acceptance over all? Each time that I think I've crystallized the feeling in a single-pointed theory, it flashes into the background behind me as another relic of the past. To put it simply, you can only live this from each passing moment to the next, and must abstain from explaining it to yourself or attempting to recount any stories. This is perhaps the best of times to adopt the Taoist belief and simply say: This is. 

But despite that resolution, I have to get this experience down in words somehow, and just be at peace with the fact that I can only peek around at the nervous system, or the skeletal structure, or the epidermis - one at a time - never the whole body of my experience at once. The words pick around at the enormity of this reality, shading bits in here and there while erasing other parts away. It's this simultaneous erosion and creation that constitutes all  of living, so that in my respite from structure, I feel most rooted in my living this life. I don't even want to be poetic here, I just can't figure out another way to go about capturing all this.