Singin' Bauls

I don’t mean for my blog to turn into a women empowerment rant, but this is what India does to you. If you have any awareness, you’d be a feminist.

Aachha, so we left for Santinekitan on Sunday the 10th. I’ll start off with the night before; I called my parents. Talking to them suddenly reminded me of how much I love the world. I suddenly had this focus and drive that I never felt before, and a confidence that I could do anything. I’ve said in the past that I am happy with where my life is going, and I always think it. But, in that moment, I felt it. My heart pounded at the thought of all the wonderful things I could accomplish if I set my mind to it. I felt so aware, and my only goal in life is to continue that awareness.

I know it sounds so dorky but it was truly a beautiful moment; it really does take you to step outside yourself to understand how amazing you really are. Because we all are, in the end.
Anyway, so the next morning we were all very excited for our group trip to Tagore’s home town. We have been learning a little bit on the poet Tagore, a contemporary of Gandhi. He was an activist and poet, and pushed for better education. Up until Tagore’s time, education was aslam, where the students live in the house of the teachers. Tagore felt that this was not the right way to educate a young learner and opted for teaching outdoors in the natural world. He tried to live simply, as Gandhi but disagreed with Gandhi on India’s independence. He felt that India should not break away from England entirely but demand more rights under English rule. He did, however, preach non-violence, and actually gave Gandhi the nickname, the Father of India. Seems like he was a pretty cool guy, except contradictory at times, but I am not going to go into details on that.

Ran to the loo with Charlotte, which is always an escapade. Just wanted to share that there are two different kinds of stalls: one for free to urinate, the other costs 4 rupees (10cents) for your feces. The reason is that they are squat toilets with no sewer system to flush – so the urine collect by itself but feces must be swept away by the bathroom maid. That is why you pay 4 rupees. Oh, and toilet paper is not a normal occurrence – but a bucket of water is available to splash yourself clean. Just a little note on restroom dynamics…

I digress: I sat with Emily on the two hour train ride, discussing economics (or rather, my attempting to learn economics. Am reading “The End of Poverty” by J. Sachs, it’s pretty good.) Rolling into the countryside of West Bengal made us feel like we were entering the Jungle Book; cattle sprinkling the green and yellow hills full of crops, mainly rice. Statistics still say that India remains dominantly an agricultural society – but it’s hard for me to see that when living in polluted Kolkata. Watching the hills dance out the window was a good reminder that India is… well, freakin’ colossal, with massive cultural, economical and technological depth.

Stepping off the train we entered the warm sun to be greeted by our guide Roy, a friend of our professor Arnab. We squish into two cars and head into the town on the only main road that exists. We are the biggest cars, for most people ride bikes or rickshaws. Arriving at our hotel, we sign in with our passports because to stay in any hotel in India, you must give your father’s name, passport number and address in you native country in which the police check you out to be sure you are not a convicted felon. It’s procedure, yet intimidating. Breezie and I room together, in the tiny room with a mosquito net the size of one bed. “I guess we’re cuddling.” Later on, three cockroaches were found in our bathroom. Breezie, from living in Thailand last semester, was the man of the relationship and actually caught the roaches and let them free outside (I need to overcome this ridiculous fear of creepy crawly things.)

We then have lunch in the one of two restaurants in the area. The other one is not safe to eat in, so for four days, we ate at the same place. And I know I’ve mentioned before that Indian restaurants have really expansive menus – but here, it wasn’t the case. They had about 50 items, but about 30 of them were chicken and egg – which is banned in West Bengal due to the recent outbreak of bird flu. And a few of those dishes were meat, so my meals… were… well, let’s just say lacking in diversity, for four days. As well as drowning in greasy oil. Big Momma is going to be coming back to America a little bigger…

After lunch we headed to Joydeb, another village. I squished in the front with the driver and Brittany, both of us beaming from the quaintness of the town. We drove off chatting about previous backpacking adventures and our hopeful future ones as the sun turned orange on our cheeks. Arriving in another town, we explored to find the river, Ojoy, as the sun set. Stopping for some tea, the ten Americans became celebrities (yet again.) We were stared at by about 55 Indians. And when they stare, let me tell you, they stare so hard – holes start to form on your skin. No one approaches, for they don’t speak English. I know it sounds condescending, but trust me when I say it’s the truth: a lot of these villagers have not seen a white person before. And if they have, it’s been twice year because Arnab takes IPSL students every semester. A rare occurrence for them. And quite the uncomfortable occasion for us.

We headed to another part of the village to listen to baul singers. They are very special traditional singers of the village and surrounding area, even into Bangladesh (which is only 200 km away from Kolkata.) They perform songs specifically about Radha-Krishna love, life, spirituality and expression of body. Krishna is one of the carnations of the god Vishnu, and the story of him and his love is very special to Indians. When Arnab spoke of them, he said they sometimes dance and we are allowed to join – then shot me a smile, because he constantly scolds me for my random dance breaks with locals; which sometimes draw too much attention. FINALLY, I’m allowed to dance!

We sit under an old four post white marble temple a little walk outside the village, surrounded by monkeys jumping from branch to branch, as commonly as squirrels would on Long Island. The bauls start to tune with instruments, which consists of the one-stringed guitar and two-stringed guitar with tablas (percussion). They start to play a coarse yet enchanting melody and again, it hits me: I live a wonderful life. I lay in an old temple, listening to ancient songs of god love, among amazing friends, watching monkeys pick at each other’s fleas and waiting for the stars to poke through the darkening sky. From now on I might measure my life by how many moments I could die happy.

Soon, my feet start to feel the awkward beat of the tablas and I being to tap my toes on the stone. The main singer, catching my eye, extends his arm asking me to join him in his dance (which, simply consists of about five steps.) Never able to resist a beat, I’m up in a flash to sway through the candles on the ground, the only light visible besides the moon.

After the dance high and star gazing, we headed back to our hotel. Us Americans were all in a giddy and goofy mood in the car, laughing and singing like loons. We began to drive down the one long road through the countryside and soon through a forest. As the forest got denser, our guide became tense. So tense he told us to be quiet. Bewildered at the anxiety sat quietly as the car sped into the path of its headlights. Finally Roy said “It’s okay, you can talk.” We asked why we were silent and he said there are forest gangs and robbers in the dense part of the forest that attack cars by pushing a tree trunk into the road to stop the car. You can drive around it because the forest is too dense and they steal from you. We asked if they kill and he simply answered, “sometimes maybe, sometimes maybe not.” We discovered later on that it was not as dangerous as he let on, but dangerous enough that there were police cars posted.

The next morning we woke for breakfast and piled into the cars again, traversing to another village ******. The driver gave us a nice flash back to 90s music with Enrique Egelzeis, Shania Twain, and Kylie Minow; which we naturally rocked out to. We arrived on a rice plantation and explored the fields for a bit. There was a group of kids following us, intrigued and induced by our flashing cameras trying to catch their sweetness. We soon headed the town called and explored a few temples and had cha at our guide’s home. It’s been getting warm recently and the cool stone of Indian homes is refreshing. What might not be so refreshing is that the village also uses cow dung to cool down their homes. How? I have no clue. Brittany was the brave one to learn how to make poo patties to place on the walls of the home.

Soon, we trekked back to hotel to eat and explore. The town is so small and practically silent compared to Kolkata, so it was refreshing to clear our minds and walk without fearing our death. Heading back, Hannah and I ran into Breezie and Charlotte who seemed very startled. This set of the dynamics for the rest of the trip: they were walking down the road, looking at the stands to shop. Suddenly a man comes up from behind Breezie, reaches his arm in front of her and grabs between her legs, then walks away. Immediately she stopped, completely shocked as to what happened. By the time she realized that she was just sexually assaulted, he was gone without a look at his face. She was fine, more startled than anything but she felt uneasy.
That night consisted of dinner and all 10 of us squeezing into one bed under the mosquito net cracking up as if we inhaled laughing gas. We have a great good. Everyone brings something different for a wonderful balance. The next day we explored Tagore’s homes and University with a guide. It was really interesting but soon was disturbed. Standing outside one the houses, a man rides his bike close to our group then pulls Charlotte’s hair and rides away. She jumped and saw him leaving, and turned to our professor and told him. We are went around to the other side of the house where he rode off and found him in the hands of security. Wondering why he was captured so quickly, Arnab told security in Bangla what happened. Breezie looked at the man face and realized it was the same man from yesterday who touched her. The next moments consisted of a lot of Bangla shouted then the police slapping the man. Arnab told us to go on with our tour.

None of us focused on the tour, obviously. An hour into the tour, our hotel manager comes to get us to bring us to lunch. We are told to eat and go immediately back to the hotel. After sitting in our rooms, Arnab comes back to have a meeting, telling us that the man is medically crazy and is the grandson of the man who built one of the most important temples in the town. The police beat him up and the reporters got a hold of the story. The charge is infringing upon a woman’s modesty, but only for Charlotte’s case because hers was immediately reported; Breezie were not. Heading outside to go to our next site, there were a dozen reporters with self cameras flashing our pictures. We dive into the cars and head to our next site. Again, our minds were not with us.

There were so many things going through my mind but I will not share over the internet, for they are thoughts not only concerning myself. There are so many mixed feelings about the incident; the creeper deserved to be reprimanded, but he is chemically imbalanced and never is there a right for police to abuse anyone. I think it is pathetic that some men are sick enough to assault women. However, every human is worth something – we can all learn from and teach each other. Everyone is a part of this world, and maybe instead of trying to destroy them, learn from them. I know it seems like such an abstract and idealist notion, but it’s what I hope for.

To brighten things up and to make me feel less frustrated, I’ll tell you of our night. Nate came to our room. Him and I played card games while Breezie braided his hair into corn rows. Slowly, everyone else began to stop by. Several of us began to play Egyptian Rat Screw, a card game similar to Slap Jack aka a lot of slapping of card piles. And with hyper college students, it gets fairly rambunctious. We were all making cocky faces when we finally won a pile only to be humiliated by someone’s asinine joke. The games kept getting heated. There was one pile that kept growing and growing then finally, a double – SLAP SLAP SLAP– all our hands pound down onto the pile then BOOM – the light goes out.

The next scene is hard to describe, because we could not. see. a. thing. All we could hear was silence. Silence because we were all laughing too hard to make any noise. Our stomachs were burning from the punching giggles, causing us to rock back and forth, smacking our heads against each other’s knees. And I think at one point I accidently elbowed someone’s… umm… erm, private area.

What a group. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are not without our tiffs and disagreements. But on the whole, everyone brings something different to the group that makes us so strong and easy to stick together like glue.

The next day, I did a little (aka a lot) shopping and we took the train back to Kolkata. On the drive back home, we felt back to the familiar city of endless honking and constant near-accidents. Our home.

I’ll admit, recently I have been feeling a little bit of the cliché culture shock; the negative kind. India is so extreme and intense, and the fact that it is a developing nation doesn’t make it easy to obtain the many resources I am used to at home. The events that have happened to us as females are also difficult to cope with all day, every day. But the lack of materials and the thorny situations only stimulate my creativity and allow me to discover inner strength. And let me tell you, I find this to be true in all humans: you have much more strength than you realize. Keep searching and soon you’ll find it’s an endless pit. So jump!