Photograph of the Week

I’m putting several up since I’ve been a bit lax. I recently returned from holiday in Jordan and Turkey and am a bit under the weather with a chest cold (no, it is not swine flu). 

Herstory

I’ll keep this brief…go vote.  

Ok, I should elaborate more. There’s a photography contest called Name Your Dream Assignment, which seems to be legit. And the award is more than any photographer could ask for, $50,000 to pursue your dream project. The top 20 with the most votes will go on to a final judging by professionals, where the winner will be chosen. No matter who is awarded the prize in the end, I hope the images captured and the journey trekked will be a compelling visual narrative for all communities. Below is the link to my idea, but I also suggest perusing others as you can vote for multiple people (just not more than once for the same idea). 

Herstory

Bangladesh

Many friends know I’ve been in quite the limbo these past months. Frantic like a mouse in a maze trying to find a way out of so much I’m unhappy with in life. Or perhaps unhappy is the wrong word…continuing to live a lifestyle, a career, making choices that go against my creative nature, my innate need for a sense of freedom and flexibility, and my desire to help, teach, inspire, participate in culture, community, life, in a way that enriches lives spiritually, artistically, epistemologically, and so on. 

And now I am at a crossing. I’ve been accepted into WorldTeach’s program to volunteer in Bangladesh. I would be teaching English and possibly photography or creative writing at an all women’s university in Dhaka for a year. Most of my expenses would be absolved because I’d be living in faculty apartments on campus and be permitted two free meals a day in the cafeteria. Along with this, I would receive a $350 monthly stipend (yes, in our country that seems abhorrently insufficient. I agree it isn’t much, but it’s enough). This is all fine, except for finding a way to cover my financial obligations while I’d be away.

The program requires a $2000 deposit that I’ll be reimbursed upon completion of my year of teaching. Along with this, I have loans and debt that need to be accrued for while I’m away. One student loan can be deferred since I’ll be working with a non-profit. The other is a parent plus loan; so, that can’t be deferred since it’s not in my name. I’ve estimated that I’d need approximately $5500 dollars to cover minimum payments (it’s horrible I know) for that year. So that’s $7500 needed to go to Bangladesh. An amount that seems completely unattainable with only about 4 months before leaving, and many of my friends think this a bad decision to go, for many reasons.

Reasons Why Priscilla Shouldn’t be Crazy and Go to a Third World Country (Would Bangladesh be considered 3rd world?):

1: The pay is insufficient. 2: Why would you leave us (yes, many have said this). 3: Um…didn’t you know that you’re photographing my wedding in the fall? Oh, well, now you do. 4: What about all the work you’ve done to establish yourself as a photographer in Charleston? As a potential business of your own? 5. If you can acquire that kind of money in 4 months, why not just stay and payoff a good portion of your debt? 6. What about Colorado? Or Atlanta? Or somewhere in the continental United States where I want to move in the near future and you can tag along? 7. Bangladesh is an Islamic country? Did your dad spazz when you told him that? You almost killed the man when you went to India and that was just for a month. What is he going to do for a year?!

All those reasons I’ve weighed heavily. I agree there are potential downsides. Likely the biggest one for me would be my lack of mobility, to be able to just hop in a car and go or even venture into town alone. These aren’t things a Western woman should do alone in this country, at least it’s not recommended. And for those that are news savvy, there was recently a military uprising of sorts, rogue guards or something in Dhaka resulting in over 50 people being killed and the government having to initiate emergency action. I also know that two volunteers left the program early last year, but I’m not privy as to why. 

I don’t have much time to accept or decline…basically several days. I was informed that fundraising is encouraged in order to ensure volunteers have enough money while they’re away for expenses or anything they may need. For some reason, I hate soliciting. I hate asking for money, for help in general. I’m not sure why. And I haven’t really raised money for anything since yearbook in high school. Though I was one of few to manage the sell of a full page ad, I wouldn’t say sales is my forte. But I have close friends that are very extrovert, very charismatic, and would hopefully help me in fundraising pursuits if I asked, but these are also the people that really don’t want me to go. So, I have some potential ideas to raise money…

1. Try my hardest to book 2-4 more weddings to photograph between the end of April and the end of June. If this happens, then I likely won’t need outside money, but I only have two gigs in May at undercut rates, which won’t be enough.

2. Tell my dad to sell the car when it’s paid off. It’s my gift for graduating, and once it’s paid off, it’s to be signed over to me anyway. It’s a Civic so the resell value should be pretty decent, at least enough to cover half my bills while I’m away. (Note: Many friends have voiced that they think this is stupid option. That I should keep the car because why wouldn’t I come straight back after my year is up?)

3. Sell. Sell. Sell. TV. Photo printer. Books. Thangkas. Decor. Anything that I don’t plan to take with me, that has no sentimental value, that I will not really need when I comeback. 

4. Fundraising Ideas: 50/50 raffle, setup a donation website, sell magazines (gags), perhaps see if close friends can throw a party or two with a small door fee, ask businesses to sponsor me, etc. 

5. Sell a part of my body for advertising purposes. A nice tattoo on the hand/arm with some website or company. (Yeah, I can guess the look on your face).

6. Sell advertising to put on my car. Magnet decals shouldn’t be hard to get.

7. Hook for a Cause…I’m kidding, but that is a catchy phrase for some reason. 

So, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I feel a bit rushed. I hate not having more time to prepare for expenses, for leaving. I wouldn’t want these next several months consumed by my current full time job along with the stress of raising money and the photography commitments I do have. That is precious time I’d lose being with friends and family, and taking in the nostalgic and tragic beauty I have so intimately found in the many facets of Charleston. 

My sister thinks this all an illusion. That I think happiness will be halfway across the world, and that I’m trying to escape or runaway from thoughts and feelings I associate with this town and my current life status. She fears the hope I’m putting in Bangladesh to free me, to save me, to renew me, will not come to fruition like I thought and that I’ll discover it isn’t where one is, but how they live that fosters happiness and wholeness. 

As for my decision…my instinct is silent. I hate it when it refuses to stir whether it’s in favor of or against a choice, an idea. But all that is there is silence. And all I’m left with are conflicting emotions and a mind that constantly weighs a judgement scale that refuses to teeter for one side or the other.

The Foot Path

I’ve come to appreciate dirty feet. Strange. Indeed. 

India refused to permit me pure, untainted toes and soles. Never could a bucket shower manage to cleanse the remnants of winding stone and dirt paths. Paths that had been carved from the back of Himalaya, been trekked upon by thousands of feet before mine. The history of foot paths. Stories of all before, and all to come. Dirty feet no longer defined as unclean, but proud symbols of each step taken. Though footprints runaway with wind and water, never does a foot forget the journey. 

My heels are hardened from years of flip flops. How naked and vulnerable a foot can be, but it adapts to its surroundings. No matter if I step fifty paces in a day, each will be adorned with a fresh dusting. Last night, in denial of an empty ink cartridge’s state, I shook photo black noir hoping to jostle enough ink to finish a print. Not only was it unsuccessful, but tiny droplets of black ink sprinkled the carpet. Oblivious to that fact, I walked across the carpet several times before sensing a mild damp feeling. Little black dots stained my feet for the night. I had no urge to wash away the absurdity of ink on feet. 

I think it strange that often dirty feet mean unclean. I’ve read religious texts where feet are used for metaphors for a person’s social status, the bottom of the body, how it is of the earth. Nothing else would I prefer but to be of the earth, be a part of something so real, rather than lay fat and idle on a cloud. 

Dirty can be lovely. Forever it will remind me of the paths taken, by me and strangers alike.

Photograph of the Week

A gift. Beads from around the world, acquired through a friend’s journey. The world on a string, intertwined like kin. Unearthed from a tiny box, I smiled and said it’d be like prayer beads. 

Let me pray…

In the Land of Shiva: Part XIII

We rose with the sun in search of the holiest site in Sikhism. And I relished the plush green carpet beneath my feet, the Western showers, hot water pouring down, a four star hotel for the same price as a Motel 8 room in the States. It was luxury.

Not the same can be said for the taxi driver we reserved for the weekend. I discovered his bed was the backseat of the taxi, likely a quick face and ear wash with cold water in a bathroom nearby. He packed no change of clothes, np overnight bag for our two day journey, only his thinning button up shirt, pants, and a Punjabi music cassette that we’d listen to for over 5 hours that weekend. I thought it odd to memorize excerpts of a song in a language I didn’t speak, words whose meaning I failed to grasp. 

He left us in a parking lot. Melancholy buildings loomed around, Indian men’s eyes stared at these six Western women huddled together, whispering concerns, debating direction to step. The driver just waived for us to walk away, and hesitantly, we complied. But after five minutes, the same decrepit structures and eyes with different faces remained. It felt like post war Europe invaded with immigrants, and we panicked, racing back to the lot. Taxi and driver gone. Shit. Abandoned in Amritsar. 

We decided to retrace our steps thinking perhaps we didn’t go far enough. But nothing fit, nothing made sense. We were in search of a building of gold, but we were encompassed by forgotten structures, their facades faded and subdued. It would be like finding Eden within the bounds of a wasteland. 

After a ten minute walk and rounding a corner, we came to see this was indeed the case. Red and silver streamers glimmered in the morning light, a party at the edge of disaster. An immaculate structure encircled the Golden Temple, a threshold to be crossed, separating sacred from profane. 

Beneath a tent, we slipped off our shoes and handed them over in exchange for a chip. Within the tiled ground were basins of water. Slowly walking through, washing my feet of impurities so as not to taint holy ground. As I climbed the steps, a sliver of gold began to appear. At the top, all was revealed, a temple of gold that almost seemed to be floating on water. How the rising sun warmed its walls with light, causing it to radiate. 

At the sight of it, Haylee cried. Others wanted a moment of silent meditation. And I was in a state of horrific concern. Never would I share my thoughts at that precise moment with them, even with Jaye, nor with another when I returned home in the weeks to come. Before me was a building that invoked awe. That awoke the numinous and compelled people to to their knees, to prayer, to tears. But inside me, before that great temple, was a terrifying silence, a void of emotive fervor. So scared was I of this absent emotion that I almost broke down and wept. And the source of my tears would have been misinterpreted drastically.

The hallow state I felt then haunted me for so long after that day. I thought myself soul sick. How could a student of religions, so passionate about this discourse, feel nothing before one of the greatest temples in the world? And how could others that knew nothing of Sikhism, little of this temple, of its significance to Sikhs, could be struck so powerfully just at the sight of its walls? I evaded ruminating on this for months, fearing what I may unearth about myself in the process. I blamed it on the sickness waking from dormancy in my belly, the nausea and pepto chewables I ate like candy. Yes, it was illness, dehydration, a sick state of being that ruined my encounter with the Golden Temple. I knew this to be a lie, but I willed myself to believe it until the day I realized what had happened to me that day. A revelation that came almost an entire year later.

At the doors of the temple, sound changes. No longer can the ears distinguish between sounds. All there is is a series of voices, prayers, a chorus of bodies without a conductor to guide them. Men and women stand with eyes closed, hands pressed together all the while their mouths move. No room for air between brother and sister, feel the sweat of another, their breath upon your back. And the deeper inside the abyss of bodies, the sound rises, the mind hears nothing but hundreds of voices in indecipherable tongues and all that I can see is the center, the reason for bowed heads, and prostrations, tears and prayers. Roped off is three men and the sacred text, the eternal prophet of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib. 

Standing but several feet away, I am pushed, jostled, shoved away by pilgrims earnestly reaching towards the sacred heart of their being. Rupees are being tossed in, crumpled bills, meager coin change. Dozens on their knees, arms stretched towards men who hold folded orange fabric. These are blessed, to be worn by men upon their brow, but only if the right number of rupees fall to the ground. So many palms open, waiting to be filled. 

I am entranced. Paralyzed by so much before me. My eyes attempt to take it all in, I want to remember it all. And the voices make it difficult to focus. I see the intricate craftsmanship of its underbelly, vivid paints on all its walls, blues, oranges, whites, and the reflected light from its gold walls cascades inside. I cannot move, cannot dismiss these prostrating bodies, their prayers, the smell of their skin, the reading of scripture, too much in this place lives, too much to segregate in the mind. And then I feel my sickness rising, the heat of too many bodies causing my body to concede. Now I pray a silent prayer, “Don’t throw up in their sacred space. Do not throw up in their sacred space.” 

And I’m chanting this over and over in my head. Trying to inch my way towards the closest open space, a bit of air and perhaps I’ll be okay. And then I feel a quick slap across my head, then another. I turn to find an old woman, hair white and face pruned, berating me in Hindi. She slaps the side of my head again, and I jerk away from her, think her mad. But then she smacks her own head, and I realize my grave error. In the midst of my fixation and illness, my headscarf had slipped off, exposing my dark brown hair, a naked head before something so holy. I am horrified, and quickly adjust my scarf, tuck back my hair. All the while I’m apologizing in a language no one around me knows. Long ago was I separated from the others, now alone to face my gaffe. I’m inching away, giving a half bow, the only Hindi word I can think of is Namaste, no use in this context. But I think myself forgiven, for she laughed at me, then went back to her prayer. I managed not to vomit on sacred ground, but brandishing an uncovered head just may trump illness.

The experience and exertion of the morning had drained my energy. I was so tired that all I yearned for was the small cot and window air conditioning that awaited me back at the hotel. My belly and soul were soured, and I just wanted to retreat back to seclusion.

A year later, I once again confronted the void I felt at the sight of the temple. It was an issue I kept analyzing for months, wondering the extent of the illness in my soul. But one day, I realized why it had been such. In Religious Studies, it is said that one sees religion one of two ways: from the top down or from the bottom up. Those focused on the top are usually fixated with god(s), philosophy, abstractions, manifestations of the sacred, symbols, and so on. But those that start at the bottom likely never raise their head enough to even see the sky. The bottom is the people. The focus on the ritual, the internalizing of beliefs, the manifestation of religion in thoughts, speech, action, the union of spirituality and religion with a person, a community, a people.

Since the day I devoted myself to the study of religions, I have been a practitioner of from the bottom up. It is within the lives and stories of the people that I seek religion and spirituality, abstractions do little to entice and engage me, as is the same with gods and philosophy. I felt nothing at the sight of the temple, but was greatly overwhelmed within its walls, engulfed by hundreds of devotees. I sought to etch into my mind the images of praying, prostrating, puja, the smells, all I touched, the sensuality and spirituality that saturated that space.  It took so long for me to see, to realize, what truly invoked me, but the day that I finally understood this gave me insight I had lacked even into my own being.

In the Land of Shiva: Part XII

Water is life, life in water can be death. A lesson learned too well in a Himalayan summer.

So naive was I my first time abroad. A suitcase half packed with bare necessities, lacking in resources I was unaware of needing. My first night in Delhi, I learned the importance of water. If only three hours a day was permitted for water use, for showers, flushing toilets, brushing teeth, then it was within reason of preservation, usurp power from greedy water lovers. Never is a fruit so tasteful, refreshing, as a ripe mango so juicy with water from its flesh.

We were told bottled or filtered water only. Take precautions. I heeded this request, but still failed drastically. I brushed my teeth in the tap water, swished it in my mouth without second thoughts. From the beginning I could have started the downfall.

In Dharamsala, the monsoon rains were just beginning. Rainfall that would consume morning hours, flooding foot paths, creating rivers that weaved their way through around homes and rocks, rushing to an end I never saw. But with each rain came a deluge, undoubtedly one could have kayaked down the mountains if crafty enough. Sometimes paths would have to be rebuilt, too many rocks caught in the waters, taxis would be unable to drive through, other routes on foot required. And though the rains are needed, welcomed, they spread disease, bacteria, washing away what is unclean to another abode.

With the rainy season was another dilemma, the water source or caretaker of the town water had changed. How so, I’m not sure, but soon even the people of Dharamsala filled health clinics and chemists shops. Sickness was flourishing and it was a matter of time before it struck foreign bellies.

The first day in Dharamsala, the volunteers were divided into groups to race around the town, to see if we could make our way. The two distinguishing elements of this place were the bazaar and the water pump. If you found yourself by either of these two places, you would realize your location and be able to know the route home. The walk to the water pump was about ten minutes, a pebbled path that eventually leads to uneven stone steps and down a small steep hill. There is the life source of the people, a small metal pump, and never did I see it neglected. Whether child, woman, or man, water was being fetched, pumped into buckets before being carried away. And the downhill walk from our flat was so much more vigorous on the path back because in its paradoxical existence turned uphill. I thought of the women, of my several students, each day they walked this path, pumped water and hauled it back to wash cheap tin plates, their clothes, their bodies. How quick I am to forget the easiness of my ventures at home, a several feet walk to a kitchen and faucet with filtered tap water. And even with their friends and family falling ill from the water, it was the only choice, and no one could live without. So even the sick took in the treacherous drink that had turned their insides sour.

In these thoughts, a rush of memories about water fill my mind. Meena squatting on her front step washing plates, smiling up at me. Investigating bottled water seals to see if vendors were attempting to sell us tap water. Jaye over a water filled bucket washing her underwear, crying, her salty tears more sanitary than what came out of the faucets. The murky floods that made the steep steps to our flats into waterfalls. The flushing toilets that my students weren’t fortunate enough to have in their homes like I. Vegetables for our raw salad washed in cold tap water. The lid of our filtered water cannister being rinsed in tap water by a member of the cleaning staff before placing the lid back. I almost wanted to shout at her, fool, what have you done, how it is surely tainted in this heat, you wish the sickness upon us all! But mostly, I remember the bucket showers.

This element of life for me seemed so gruesome to many of my friends. A bucket filled of water to wash with. Never did it go to waste. A scooper as an assistant, slowly pouring water over limbs, naked in a pink tiled bathroom and black painted cement floor. Closing eyes, holding breath, when pouring water over my face, slowly, no water to waste. How quick the soap would begin to dry on the skin, how the feet, the toes never seemed to get clean. Water collecting, sitting beneath the feet, arousing what had gone unseen on the floor now lifted and drowning. Yes, the feet never got clean. Dirty when cleaned. What was left went down the floor drain, how wasteful, careless estimate of the amount needed. Then a rubber bladed sweeper to drag across the floor, pool the water towards the drain, and watch it leave. My flatmate, Jaye, in attempts to make the bucket shower a more glamorous experience said one day that it could, in an odd way, be like an Herbal Essence commercial sans the orgasmic sounds. Who knew a bucket shower could be so sexy.

Between bucket showers and monsoon rains, water made itself present and known. It giveth and taketh, indeed. One afternoon, several of us returned from McLeodganj, and at the taxi stand, the deluge poured from the sky. Figuring it would pass in ten minutes, we waited in a small shop with a hodgepodge of goods from U.S. soda in small glass bottles, Western looking baby dolls, chips and sweets. But we were also stuck inside with several men. Who knew such a small place could feel all the more small and awkward. We would have been fine had the staring ceased. But Jaye and Hailey are blond and blue eyed, so exotic in this land, the men can never help but stare. And with several pairs of dark colored eyes fixated on us, the uneasiness mounted. We knew little Hindi, and with stalker eyed men speaking low in a tongue we can’t decipher, it is easy to go from mild discomfort to threatened. After fifteen minutes, the rains had yet to cease.

Finally, Hailey and another couldn’t stand it, purchased an umbrella and took off in the rain towards our flat. The waters were heavy, gaining power. It wasn’t more than ten more minutes that Jaye and I decided to follow. Monsoon rains brought more comfort than staring eyes, and with the ratio of men per women increased, we preferred the horrendous weather. I soon questioned that logic not even twenty feet from the shop door. Jaye and I under a small black umbrella, walking slow, with a massive downpour and winds.

The power of the summer rains is difficult to explain. Trees are forced almost sideways, ready to break at the hip. People stay indoors until the weather’s rage has subdued, but not us, not these stupid foreign girls. Water is rushing, quick and forceful, racing down step paths, flooding basins left out to collect this precious gift from the gods. It’s up to mid shin, and I’m beginning to think how easy with one swift torrent for Jaye or me to be swept back, falling backwards into the waters and finding it difficult not to wash away. This became a real concern at one impasse, the path forked, but the connector was eroded down, thin and weak from all the storms. If either of us slipped, we would be carried down stone steps for at least fifteen feet, likely not stopping until colliding with the wall of a house. We debated crossing. Hoping the rains would lessen. But the sky said otherwise and we knew.

We decided slow steps, firm, put weight into each step. And as we began to walk, I looked down to notice a shiny silver ring in the waters, unmoved thanks to larger rocks around it. I’m not sure why it caught my eye, but when I noticed it, I thought it strangely looked like the ring Hailey had purchased just an hour ago at the McLeodganj bazaar. I picked it up and began to walk, and as soon as I did, water rushed between my right foot and flip flop and whisked it away. My reaction was to grab it, but I stopped, realizing if I did what would happen. And I watched my black Croc flip flop float upon monsoon waters, zigzagging above the stone steps that led to lower Dharamsala homes and the local bazaar. Those damn waters.

Walking with one foot bare upon pebbles, dirt, and rocks, is not pleasant. And each little pang of pain upon my sole made me want to curse the gods, curse Dharamsala, curse each little bastard rock that attempted to impale my naked foot. Not far from the flat, an elevated home had several people sitting on the porch being voyeur to the storm. Even with all the water noise, we could hear them laughing. Of course at us, the stupid Western women taking a stroll in the monsoon. Not just a mild chuckle, but hearty belly laughter, smiles wide, never before had I seen Indians laugh so hard in my time there. Hysterical, yes, one umbrella, a shoeless Western whore, and two women soaked like alley mutts. Quite the live show.

Back at the flat, Hailey was on the porch waiting. I held up my thumb with a silver ring and asked if it belonged to her. Her face was shocked, then turned to elation. It had fallen in the water on the way home; she thought it gone forever. I suppose I exchanged my flip flop for the ring, the water gods couldn’t leave with nothing. Had only I known a replacement sacrifice would be required! But it made her smile, and Hailey smiles like a child opening twenty gifts. Just the odds of finding a lost ring in rushing monsoon rains still shocks me a bit today, what luck, whether good or bad, perhaps neutral.

And this is water in India. It too embraces paradox. Sustains life and takes life or at least brings it to its knees. Such power in an element, and how powerless we become without it or consumed, overtaken by it. Even now I thirst, but what a luxury for me to sit in a bed and just reach over to my side table for my cold bottled water. How I forget about the struggle for so many. I think of my students. If they still walk that path daily to the water pump and back. Burden their arms, hands and backs with the heavy weight of water. So careful in its use so another trip isn’t required. Trusting it without knowing if it will keep them well or give sickness. Yes, water is life, and life within water can be death, or for some, rebirth.

In the Land of Shiva: Part XI

I adore a particular Hindu narrative about Shiva. Sitting in a Himalayan cave, Shiva sits in meditation. Playfully, his lover, his bride, Uma, comes up behind him and covers his eyes. In the brief seconds of innocent blindness, the earth quakes, darkness engulfs the world, chaos, destruction. But then Shiva’s third eye awakens, lifting its dormant lid, replenishing light upon the earth, restoring order. How the closed eyes of a god can bring a world to its knees…

Religion is beyond pervasive, it is intricately woven into Indian life. There is no separation. Each day is dedicated to a deity. Dime store posters hung on walls of every home I entered. Durga and her tiger. Shiva with his many arms, performing his dance of destruction. Saraswati playing her veena, perched on a blossoming lotus, swan by her feet. Ganesha, the elephant god, with his wondrous trunk. Hanuman, the monkey god, the one who helped Rama rescue his wife, Sita. Vishnue the preserver. Brahma, the creator. Kali, blackened skin, tongue sticking out, skulls and blood around her, she is death, she is powerful, she is the end. Each contain their own sacred narratives, their intoxicating myths of life, destruction, foolishness, forgiveness. Iconic images with layers of meaning, no item held in their palm is without purpose, no mudra pointless, it all is symbolic, equal importance.

In the mornings, I would watch the mother of the upstairs flat walk down the steps to the small shrine. It could easily go unnoticed to the ignorant eye. Merely bricks white washed piled in a fashion to make perhaps a miniature outdoor oven. But inside its belly three painted tiles held Ganesha, Shiva, and Durga. At their feet were crafted lingams and an array of sacred objects. She would light incense, pray, puja.

Even religion and business collide. On the ride to Amritsar, I saw a business called ‘Shiva Tires’ and it made me laugh so much. Because I knew what an odd thing it be to drive down a street in the U.S. and find a business called ‘Jesus Tires.’ How our cultures perceive and incorporate religion into life was at times drastically different.

Materialism is another unique facet of Hinduism. Icons, whether in poster or sculpture, were sold in the bazaar no differently than a mango. Buddhist prayer beads were strung up in stores just as often as I’d witness a monk thumbing his strand. But these icons do not take on sacred importance until the deity is believed to manifest within it. Before then, it is but a trinket. But once it is placed in a home, in a shrine, in one’s heart, and the owner asks to have the privilege of the god(dess) presence in the home, does the icon awaken. The act of puja itself is an offering, but this exchange between devotee and god is an intimate relationship, it is Darshan…to see. And it is this exchange of seeing and being seen, the presence of a god, caring for its momentary bodily home like if it were a loved one, to bathe it, offer it sweets and drink, items pleasing and entertaining, it is a relationship acknowledged, present, active every day in life. The god shares and is present for even the most mundane occurrences of the day, but has never abandoned or turned away from the devotee. This relationship is written in a language similar to the deity as one’s lover or as one’s child or mother.

In the hotel, the one with the lovely carpeted floors beneath my feet, had a large icon of Ganesha right in the lobby, carved beautifully. Taxi drivers taped tiny paper images to the car visors. Devotees walked with a red dot upon the brow after having performed puja at a temple. Orange turbans were blessed cloth from the Golden Temple. And even when not in materialistic form, there were the echoes of Tibetan monks chanting, a deep baritone sound that cascaded down the Himalayas. The soft prayers of the woman from above.

And never in my time there did a person attempt to persuade me to convert. No need. Spirituality was all around, saturating the world, that there was no way I could not be effected. Impossible for me not to know moments of great serenity, clarity, thoughtfulness. Moments of peace upon my heart and spirit. There was no need to persuade me because it is assumed I am somehow pursuing, maintaining, am active with god(dess). This is a rare find, a land of all the religions of the world resting on her bosom, and no tradition seeks to dominate its motherland. Yes, there have been struggles, bombings, violence at times between Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, but in general, the acceptance of other traditions isn’t merely tolerance in India, it is a purer form of acceptance.

To say it is okay for my Muslim neighbor to pray to Allah is one thing, but to hear the daily prayers from my window and not be bothered, perhaps find a spiritual beauty in the Arabic, the words lifting up to god, that is what isn’t seen in the U.S. And it is different in that land likely for the reason many things are done the way they are. Why have privacy, why hide, when so much of life’s occurrences are shared and common to all? It is not odd that one is performing puja, praying, meditating, but what would be odd and of great concern is the one who does none of these things, believes in none of these things. It is that which would raise eyebrows and cause concern.

The religion and spirituality of India is like nothing I have witnessed in my life. In no other land do I think I could bear witness to so many traditions all active in society and daily living and find that it is of such normalcy that Indians laugh at perplexed foreigners like I wondering how it can be such. And though I tried, or hoped, I could not be exempt from being effected by the spiritual and religious elements of Indian culture.

In the Land of Shiva: Part X

India never washes out of clothes. The curry smells, monsoon rain, salted sweat, it stains deep in the thread. But I couldn’t toss them out. The oversized shirts, my kurtas, and dupattas. Sometimes, the scent of India is comforting.

How easily an aroma can stir the memories. Sweat. The stench of crowd, dripping wet like overexerted cattle herded into stone stands. The afternoon scorched like midday, and we were lost in Amritsar. Trust in a taxi driver is necessity, but not by choice. And once the Pakistan-India border was found, we were quickly abandoned, driver gone in the masses.

Where to go? We knew of special seating for foreigners, but no signs, no direction, just a moving mass of bodies. Indians love their motherland on display. Isn’t She pleasing, a rare beauty! How privileged to be in this place, wait, we will show Her to you. No one can give you India like an Indian.

Six American women at the border. We take seats high in the stands. Looking around, I soon realize there are no women nearby. Men to the left, to the right, above and below. I can only shake my head at our naiveté. This is not our place. Women and small children at ground level, their vibrantly dyed saris in seated rows. How our pallid skin must have stood out like a blaring white dot across the way to the other watchers.

Hundreds of people gathered, waiting, as the men below in their uniforms and well adorned hats prepared riffles and formation. The mock fight between Indians and Pakistanis. Replayed twice daily, morning and dusk. I think it similar to the South’s fondness of Civil War reenactments. But the body heat, the sweat, the smells, the odor of so many bodies, it becomes suffocating.

My sickness was progressing. I was eating so little. Only hot food, no sauces, anything fried because it ensures preparation at correct temperatures. Even drinking water irritates my body, the stomach twitching with sharp dagger pains. I’ve managed a full coat of sweat, dripping down the brow, the neck, into my eyes, how the salt burns. Constantly, I am wiping with my cotton tee, too heavy a fabric for July in India. The sweat bleeds through to the point my shirt can soak in no more fluid. We’re confused, we’re cranky, in need of water and air, fresh air, free of men’s pits, mouths, legs, genitals, all the places they sweat and smell. The heat between bodies pressed close together, hundreds, is nothing I’ve felt but in that place. I wanted to claw myself free, a panic rising inside me, and then the realization that I was losing consciousness. Like my mind was floating calmly away, light as air, and how strange the senses become in such a state, rare acuteness. I felt as if my body had frozen onto the stone, unmoving, and I could listen so keenly to the sounds around. Men laughing, Hindi tongue, the slight movement of limbs surrounding, then it merged so cohesively, into a jumbled chatter. And then I felt my heart, how it was pumping feverishly, loudly, and the breath gone soft, like even my lungs had grown tired of their duties. Never before had the urge to faint crept upon me.  A quiet panic emerged inside my half alert mind. I cannot faint in this place, amongst these men. Who will know what to do with me? Jaye will want to cry. Haylie will scream in English. Jocelyn undoubtedly would be a fainting partner. Patricia would yell “Babushka!” as she had called me since our arrival to Dharamsala. Elsie, would be unaware, for she had left us in search of the sacred foreigner seating we wished to have found earlier.  Looking around, all I saw were men singing, sweat rags by the dozens being pulled from pockets to wipe down soaked faces, a constant series of motions repeated by the crowd, but never simultaneously. I wanted to scream, but snapped aloud, “I can’t!” And rose up, others following. The crowd such a tight squeeze, climbing over legs, apologizing in my native tongue, so useless was I, and then stone steps to the top, dozens of illy sized steps. This was an odd form of suffocation, strangling me of air though it is all around.

The border closing had only begun, but after sitting in the heat for over an hour, we couldn’t take it anymore. Being free of bodies pressed against me, I could breathe again, the feeling of fainting slowly leaving. And I drank water, hot bottled water, but it was grand at the time. Once it was over, Elsie managed to find the taxi, wondering where we had all gone. The foreigner seating was right at the base ground, front and center of the mock fighting. She played back her pictures. It was the only time I had the urge to smack her.

I don’t recall much of the ride back to the hotel. Jaye sat with me in the very back, on the floorboard since it was like a car’s trunk. Whatever the conversation, I had her laughing, and she looked at me oddly, wondering aloud how in my state of ill I could still find humor, a reason to laugh. I didn’t have an answer. Sometimes in such extreme emotional and physical states, laughter is the pressure release, and if I wasn’t laughing, then surely, I would have been crying, but that would come later in the rural clinic hospital several days later.

Back at the four star hotel, I sat down on the roll-away cot in our room. For over five minutes, I just brushed my heels, arches, and toes across the carpet. I hadn’t felt carpet beneath my feet since leaving the townhome in Charleston. It was soft, hunter green with a small saffron diamond pattern. And the window AC forced cold air upon my back, the sweat quick drying on my skin. Eyes closed, body slouched from exhaustion, all I could do was smile. Plush carpet under my dirty toes and air that was cold, not merely warm fan blown air circulating. It was true luxury.

Small Travels

The taxi is the smell of Stale. A scent of neglect and loss, something sitting alone far too long. The driver has a smoker’s cough, wears small dark shades, and one who attempts mild conversation. I think him to be an old beatnik fallen from grace, poetic soul lost all these years. The Eagles’ ‘Take it Easy’ plays, and I notice the gas station coffee cup that goes untouched.

I start with the end, a mundane affair of returning home. At Hobby, I’m sitting five minutes before I notice a pillow and a large military green sack three chairs away, no owner. Has no one else noticed this? I sigh, and rather than report abandoned luggage, I opt for the express cafe down the concourse. I’d rather nibble on an overpriced banana nut muffin than chance sitting close to potential explosives. Though I find myself questioning my ethics in mid bite. I walked away, said nothing, not even to the woman face deep in a novel that was just to the other side of me. For a moment, I justified it horribly, saying they all were there before me, oblivious to it all, whose fault would it have been but their own? Mentally, I argue with myself, remember woman, in your heart you said the world will be my child if one is to never come from this womb. Do not forget that self made vow. Love it better than your fallen gods have for their hands were never in the midst of their creations. Such intensity before noon, and I was already tired.

But this is how I am on returns. Feels like I’m backpedaling, returning to places like reversing time. It bothers me, always forward I want to be. I talked to no one during the return to Charleston. But I became infatuated with the clouds, the curves and patterns in a blue sky. I quietly hoped the pilot would turn, dive closer, so my lens could capture the movement. It all seems suspended though it moves as I on that plane. When the wheels struck Charleston ground, I had the urge to vomit. No desire for this place.

The end with the beginning. Charleston airport shutdown, George W. coming for some BBQ and golf. Almost two hours, no planes in, no planes out, and we sit. It’s CofC fall break, college students everywhere, faces now soured by the news, and donning my alma mater hoodie, I am easily assimilated.

On the first flight, coach, she takes my aisle seat. I let her keep it if she promises to block the rest when we leave. She is young, name of Sara(h), freshman. Art management is her study. I wonder about people who major in ‘art management.’ Sounds like the role for disenchanted artists or those of crippled creativity, finding their hands, words, eyes, to be dead of innate artistic ability, but cannot divorce themselves from what they can never become. Always have to be close to what you can never hold, to the opposite you wish you could comprehend and manifest. She is dry. Dry thoughts. Dry words. Even her admittance to having been fond of sketching but lacking of abstract mind, her retelling, dry. Were you not pained by your failure to break barriers of self, to not have the hand and mind mate and father creation? Yes, dry, this is why you can never be this, and have to settle for that. I distract myself with my camera, taking images at takeoff and the horizon, low shutter, streaks of light, I smile to myself. Sarah reads the sky mag, and waits for her coffee…yes, freshman, indeed.

Half the passengers are running, soon as the door breaks free. All of us have connections, so ready to be missed. Running in flip flops down Atlanta concourse D, gotta find C, gotta run, meet the train, run up the stairs, almost falling yet saved by the man who grabbed my bag and pulled me back like a rogue pup. My lungs hurt, asthma is a buzzkill, and I find my gate right as the flight is to leave. Delay. Twenty minutes before I bid Atlanta farewell. I f*&$%#@ hate ALT.

I upgraded to business class for the long flight. Air Tran is a cheap airline that serves cherry Coke and offers a nicer chair and snacks for $50 more. It is a self treat, two hours of peace. But I am in aisle 1, no room for the camera bag. The stewardess grabs it, and I ask to take my camera out and hold it in my lap for the entire flight. Now the questions. Photographer? What do you do? Across the aisle, I chat with a Georgia Peach.

The man by the window, next to me. Greenspan wisdom in his palms. Quiet, offers me a mint without even looking up at me. I want to know to him.

Somehow, conversation is struck, my camera makes him curious. And we talk. Man of corporate life, philanthropic endeavors at night, he is everywhere and yet nowhere, suspended in sky. We talk of Rushdie, economics, religion, philosophy, culture. He has a bit more than a decade on me, but my answers and life are free of age. He sleeps little, works so much, but don’t pity him, he is happy, this is what he loves. He will retire early, then find time for a different life, perhaps one with a lover and children, or not.

The more you do something, the more you crave it – Sleep Philosophy. So, he rests little. No time for slumber when half the globe awakens at our night. He tells me he has never talked to a fellow passenger for so long, and I half jest that it is of no importance, by the time we walk away, he’ll forget half of my words. He laughs. We both know it’s true. Near the end, he asks a perplexing question of introspection, worded awkwardly, about one’s weakness and strength. ‘Is this the question you ask when you don’t want to talk anymore?’ I laugh. Not quite, but he likes to leave a person thinking. But I already have answers. Say in my case, my weakness is needed for my strength. But then I ask, can an attribute be both, a paradox to the being? No one has said this before to him. He says no, not possible, he thinks. Creativity, my final answer in this philosophical game. Nodding, yes, it is both. It can be your weakness and your strength, the two-faced trait that entails all opposites and complexities of existence.

This is how we end. His e-mail address scribbled on torn Hertz rental advertisement. Let this not be our end, but rather our beginning, even if we never see the other’s face again, let us be friends through electronic letters.

It was the best flight I’ve ever had. And I waited curbside for my brother-in-law. Talking with the security guard, explaining shrimp and grits to him, a meal that shouldn’t be missed. And in the back of my mind, I think of this man sitting by the window. How strange of strangers. No matter its brief existence, I will be a friend through written word, if for no other reason than he makes me think, prods my mind into critical processes again, and I am never satiated of the desire of human exchange and having my thoughts and perceptions challenged. That is simply grand.