Small Worlds

     While preparing for this, our second trip, to Sikkim, I found myself often saying that this next trip can only happen because the world has gotten smaller.  It feels like the journey to Gangtok is a small price to pay -- only a day and a half of travel -- to be able to experience a wholly different part of the world, which makes the world feel smaller and closer to my daily reality. When we took our first trip up the mountain road to Sikkim, I would have said (in fact I did say!) that we were traveling to the edge of a foreign world. But I feel differently now.

Sunset in London.

      Today Grace and I arrived in Delhi and I/we encountered a different kind of small world.  There is an onslaught of new stimuli and interactions that make me/us want to retreat. We are currently at the Radisson Blu hotel, in the lap of luxury, hiding out and in effect creating the very small world of our quiet room and the Room-Service waiter. We are hiding from the unfamiliar interactions with people especially all of the porters and drivers who want money from us, from the barrier that comes from our hugely different English accents (I ask everyone to repeat everything at first), from a deep lack of familiarity -- where can we get a bottle of water? there is no such thing as a gas station with a mini-mart here.
     I know that, because we were once interactive in this milieu, our need for this current version of a small world will diminish. Still I find it interesting that the same phrase can describe what I see as opposite ends of the interactivity spectrum.  Tomorrow we will have the chance to test that the trip to Sikkim is truly a shortened smaller-world distance.

View from the Radisson Window, Del

The Big Bed in Beverly

     We arrived back to our house in Beverly, MA, earlier this week while Glenn has stayed put in New York City.  It feels soothing and comforting to be here, a place where we have lived for 13 years. Yet there was an imprint made on us from living at Chanbari House for almost 9 months and the adjustment back to Beverly has been impacted by that impression.  Here is a good example:
     All while we lived in Sikkim, Corrina and I shared a big bed.  It was as much for comfort and closeness as it was for the warmth an extra body provided.  Grace, when she was living at the house, either slept across the hall or in the other bed in my bedroom.  Here in Beverly, we each have our own bedroom separated by floors and hallways that can make the rooms seem a distance away. Corrina never even bothered to move into her room.  Her bed is covered with junk, things that we would never have even considered purchasing in Sikkim -- how would you dispose of it when you were done? Grace did set up in her own room, but last night she wasn't feeling great.  She had a bad headache and seemed to be running a low-grade fever.  When she was getting ready to go to bed she asked me first if I would come up to shut off her light; then she came simply crawled into bed lying with her head at the foot of the bed.  Ella, our youngest dog, was already in the bed with me and Corrina.  The bed felt full, but it also felt right.  Grace promptly fell asleep and we all spent the night in the one big bed.  I liked having both girls close by, the house feels too big -- we rattle around in all of the space.
    I am afraid of forgetting my memories from Sikkim.  I have the photos to remind me, but there is so much more than visual images from a trip like the one we took.  There are emotions and sensibilities, ways of being that are triggered by one's surroundings that become sublimated when one leaves that environment. Every time I have a feeling that reminds me of something in Sikkim, I hold onto it as best I can because I thoroughly enjoyed the person I was and the way I lived in Sikkim. I am ready to count the days until I go back.

Photos from our last day in Sikkim

These photos say it all -- all of these people enriched our time at Taktse.  More photos to come...

Left to Right: Mr. Topden, Maria, "Amabompo" (Pitnso's aunt),
Grace, Corrina, me, Sonam, Pintso and Anna

Mr. Topden and his mother, our cook, Ms. Neema  

Saying Goodbye...

We have landed home

      I realize that I have been avoiding writing in this blog for quite a while.  Anything I might have written about in the past six weeks could only reference the fact that we were imminently leaving Sikkim.  That was something I didn't want to think about, but now I am home and in my longing for the place I feel the need to write.
      About a month before we left Taktse, I inadvertently had an encounter with a western (Canadian) parent whose child is currently attending Taktse in Grade 3.  There was a mix-up. We were supposed to meet on a particular day to discuss his child's results to a Grade 4 Progression test.  That day Corrina was sick and I decided to stay home.  I forgot about the meeting, which was at Noon, until about 10:30AM at which point I tried to reach someone at school.  The only person I could find was an administrative assistant.  She took a message and sent it along to the Head of the Lower School.
      I didn't think any more about it until I got a call at 1PM.  The student's teacher was calling to ask when I would be arriving at school to attend the meeting. I explained to her that I had already sent word I wouldn't be coming to school that day and she was surprised to hear it. In fact, she had already been yelled at (at length) by the parent about how unprofessional the school and I both were for letting this happen.
      When I heard that from her, I cringed. I cringed partly because the mix-up had led to the parents waiting over an hour for me to arrive at school; and I cringed partly because it was clear that the father had given it to Ms. Dingtsa even though she had nothing to do with the mix-up. And at that moment I realized that I hadn't cringed like that in 8 months.  It was clear that the father had verbally throw up his negative emotion on Ms. Dingtsa and she was shaken by it. In Sikkim and at Taktse, no one feels that they have the right to anything like that.  But in America it happens all the time. I felt like I was back in America witnessing the worst that people have to offer.
      Coming home is a complicated business. I am so glad to be here amongst things familiar, but I feel sad for the things we had to leave behind. I am going to miss the enormous hospitality and kindess of the people in Sikkim and at Taktse.  When you live so close to so many people as one does in India, you will only survive if you learn to get along. Here in the US, our notions of self-reliance and independence allow us the illusion that we don't need other people and therefore can mistreat and dismiss them at our whim.  I will miss the daily confrontation of the use and misuse of the resources we have.  In the US it is so easy to overlook the impact of our usage -- of water, of packaging, of food -- because we tuck the evidence away in tidy white garbage bags (that smell nice no matter what you put in the bag!).  I am going to miss the simple way of eating that is whole food and organic by necessity. And I am going to miss the mystical sense that the earth is alive.
      I don't know how I am going to avoid the situation that happened with the Canadian parent in the future, especially if I work as an administrator at a school.  Perhaps I will have to teach people some bits of the Sikkimese way. And if you will indulge me, I will keep writing about what it is like to be back.

Our trip to Pelling

This last weekend I had the great pleasure of taking 5 Taktse girls (two of them were my own as well!) on a 3 day trip to West Sikkim.  The terrain there is similarly mountainous, but the vegetation was a bit more like home.  There was grass growing on the side of the road, many deciduous trees that were just starting to put out leaves -- it smelled like Spring there!  Pelling is about 35 miles from Gangtok as the crow flies, over 70 miles along the road and a 5 hour trip in the car -- slow driving along the a highway where almost any misjudged turn could send you over a cliff.
      The main purpose of the trip was to visit an old friend of mine, a Sikkimese man who had attending Waring School with me in the mid-eighties.  He returned to Sikkim in 1984, finished schooling and is now the Head of an elementary school for village children, many of whom have parents who cannot read. It was incredible to see someone who I hadn't seen in 30 years, I don't think that has ever happened to me before.  When we arrived at his house, he was waiting outside and we both looked at each other, scrutinizing each other's faces for some recognition of the young person we once knew.  I don't think that either of us saw much of that original face!
      Here are some photos of our trip, including a stop in Ravongla to visit a new monument the Sikkimese government just finished building -- Buddha Park. All of these photos are courtesy of Grace.

 

Tashi in Sikkim

Tashi on the Waring Southern Trip,
1983

     Why is it we are nervous about the unknown? When I made the plans to visit my old friend Tashi, who attended Waring for 2 years at the same time I was there, I was excited by the prospect of seeing him again – I had so many questions for him about what it was like to go to America at such an age, traveling from such a place as Sikkim. We spoke on the phone for a few minutes to make plans and our conversation was easy, some old familiarity/fondness communicated from both sides. Still, as we got closer to Pelling and his home, I started to get nervous about our visit; two days and nights to spend with someone you haven't spoken to in thirty years seemed long if it was going to be awkward and stilted between us. I wish I could say that my nervousness was unfounded and that all went smoothly as if we had seen each other yesterday. The fact is, although it was a lovely visit there was something missing in the connection, something that I couldn't lay my finger on, perhaps something colored by all that happened to him between the time he came back to Sikkim and now, perhaps some difficulty on my part in finding points of connection other than our past at Waring. I was able to better understand what it was like for Tashi to live in America for those two years, to see that he valued that experience greatly. I also got to see that his appreciation led to giving back to his old school in West Sikkim and now to young village children who are often the first members of their families to attend school. He hasn't lost his distinctive laugh, nor his wry sense of humor, nor his matter-of-fact way of describing the nature of himself, of people and of the world. Tashi has grown into exactly the kind of person Waring, and his sponsor family in America, would have wanted him to be: kind-hearted, thoughtful, and an educator who has dedicated himself to giving back what he received in his own education.
     I have a feeling we will see each other again, in the same way I know that our family will be back in Sikkim soon enough.  I find it remarkable that because of the action of a Sikkimese man and a hometown Gloucester woman, I could be sitting in a guest house in West Sikkim sharing photos of an old bus, tri-cornered hats and the historical landmarks of downtown Beverly.

Shannon and Tashi at
Colonial Williamsburg, circa 1983,

I think that's what the Buddhists here would call some damn good karma.

   Here are some photos taken at Tashi's guest house.  He has a beautiful home, near a bird sanctuary with a great view of the mountains.

Our room at Tashi's
Guest House

Enjoying a delicious breakfast
while the birds chirp outside

Tashi's guest house

Tashi, Chris, Pomme Pomme, Kitsho, Grace,
Corrina, Tsherangla, Dorma (Tashi's wife)

This time around feels different....

     When we were planning our return to Sikkim, I was looking forward to the fact that we knew so much more clearly exactly what we were getting into by coming here.  Things would feel comfortable, normal, after having spent the Fall adjusting to our life here.
     The reality is that I am now instead confronting a wall: my inability to get outside of the day-to-day routines we have set up.  When we were here in the Fall, it was all we could do to get through the day, do homework and then collapse into bed early as a reward for a hard day's work of coping with such a new way of life. Now we know the routine, we have made friends and have a level of comfort regarding our current existence.  The next step is to go outside the routines and try more new things, but I find myself creating all kinds of reasons for not doing just that.  There are logistical challenges for sure, but they aren't insurmountable.  Really, Corrina and I should be taking an outing every weekend to see new places and learn more about the area.  For instance, there is a temple on the way to school called Ganeshtok.  It is easy enough to get to, but we haven't been to it yet.  It requires finding a taxi that will take us up there and managing a bit of a language barrier while we are there, but the payoff could be wonderful. I bet it has a gorgeous view since it sits on a precipice overlooking Gangtok.
     When Glenn was here I had a bit more courage and drive.  One day I arranged for us to go to Rumtek, a famous monastery below Gangtok.  We met the taxi and he drove us there, which took about an hour, only for us to find out that we needed our passports and Innerline Permit, neither of which I had thought to bring. So, we turned around and headed back home!  I seemed to be the only one disappointed, the rest of the gang was happy to head home and hang out at the ranch...
     Grace, Corrina and I are leaving soon, sooner than we had originally planned. And I worry that I will leave here wishing we had take the opportunity to do more things. I guess that means we will have to come back.  I really want to visit Bhutan!