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| A Hindu Temple in Chennai |
At Davidson I run from classes to meetings to Delilahs rehearsals to admissions events. 18 days of India has upended my busy Davidson schedule with its frequent power outages, ambling cows, and bustling traffic. My typical day begins with 6:15 am yoga, 7:30 breakfast, 8 am language instruction in the local Tamil, 9 am - 12 pm three classes about the politics and society of the Indian Ocean, then lunch at 12:30 pm. The rest of the day, theoretically, is free. We have spent many afternoons walking about the streets of our suburb of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, trying new sweets, shopping for vibrant shalwar camises, and walking down narrow alleys simply to breathe in the sweet perfume of the flowers which waft from stalls filled with elaborate garlands.
The moments of down time have been few and far between. As I write this, I am sitting on our balcony at the International Guest House of Madras Christian College (MCC) listening to the chirps of crickets, the howling of monkeys, and the occasional yelps of stray dogs. Oh, and the unexpected bomb blast or gunfire from the nearby naval and Air Force bases. So goes the soundtrack of my evenings on a Friday night in the south of India.
We left North Carolina on Saturday August 31st and arrived in Chennai on Monday September 2nd. As we tried to adjust to the new culture and time zone, we fit in a journey down the coast to Mahabalipuram, the site of many Hindu temples from the 6th century, and Pondicherry, the charming former French colony. I had a surreal realization while wandering the brightly lit streets of Pondicherry's French Quarter (think New Orleans) that all my friends back at Davidson were sitting down to have lunch at commons. I struggled to tune out the beeping car horns and constant whirr of autos (auto-rickshaws) and imagine sitting outside in the mid-day sun for Saturday morning brunch.
In Pondicherry (Puducherry, Pondy) we stayed in a hotel in which every surface gleamed with polished granite, glittered with crystal chandeliers, and shone with burnished elevator doors and ceilings. Take one step outside the high gates of the hotel, however, and a wave of dirt and noise smacks you clean across the face. Maneuvering around the buckling sidewalk and piles of trash, I could not help but think of the contrast between spotless opulence of our hotel and the unabashedly grimy poverty of the neighborhood in which I now found myself. Indians deal with this contrast between the rich and the poor, the new and the old, every single day.
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| Rights of admission reserved? |
America does a fantastic job of hiding its poverty. Out of sight, out of mind, no? In my hometown in Ohio I drove to school every day through a disaffected area of town, but the streets were always wide and clean with not a single homeless person in sight. Here, every time I leave the sylvan campus of MCC for the city, I pass at least ten beggars who plead for money. They sit in piles of rags with festering wounds, amputated limbs, and raggedy hair, curled up against the flow of the passing foot traffic. I want to help, but I have been told that any money I give will only attract unwanted attention. My fellow classmates have remarked in slightly embarrassed tones how easy it is to ignore beggars. The physical presence of poverty is normal even here in Tamil Nadu, one of the most affluent of India's 28 states. As I have already mentioned, with each passing day, the wide brick sidewalks in Davidson fade, confronted by new sights, smells, and tastes.
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| Market shopping in the city |
The culture shock I have heard so much about has yet to hit me. This delay is due, in part, to the fact that I left the Davidson bubble for a Chennai bubble. At Davidson we all recognize the presence of the "Davidson bubble," a phenomenon where we hear no news from outside a three-mile radius. At MCC in Chennai, the seventeen of us exist in our own insular bubble, aware of the news in India and the world only when the wireless decides to work. At all other times we go to class and live our daily lives caught up in new lives in India.
Namaste until next time!
I have been thinking about poverty so much recently. Sarah, maybe this will enlighten you, its an excerpt from a chapter titled "Is Poverty Spiritual?" by Dallas Willard.
ReplyDeleteThe delusions caused by possessions cannot be prevented by having none. We do not have to own things to love them, trust them, even serve them. The percentage of those in bondage to wealth is no greater among the rich than among the poor. It is not money or gain, but the love of it, that is said by Paul to be the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10), and none love it more desperately and unrealistically than those without it. Even if we give everything away, we must never forget that the riches of this world, whether they are to be regarded as good or evil, are realities that do not disappear if we abandon them. They will continue to exert their effects. Possessions and use of them will occur. Someone will control them, and the fact that we do not posses them does not mean that they will be better distributed . So to assume the responsibility for the right use and guidance of possessions through ownership is for more of a disciple of the spirit than poverty iteslf. Our possessions vastly extend the range over which God rules our faith. Thus they make possible activities in God's power that are that are impossible without them. We must not allow our quite justifiable revulsion at the debauchery of those who happen to be rich to blind us to this crucial fact. Freedom from possessions is not an outward thing as much as an inward one. It is something that can come from the inward vision of faith alone.