Buddha in a Habit

Sister Cyril preparing to send her students out to do the work of the Buddha

Many things overwhelm me when I walk into the home where Mother Theresa took her last breathe.  I sit silently at the tomb that houses her body, the headstone bearing Christ’s greatest message. One that human beings find it sadly difficult to follow: “Love one another as I have loved you.”  I am just as silent when I walk through the exhibition celebrating her life of compassion and sacrifice.  It is in this exhibit where I learn that she not only nursed and fed the families living in Calcutta’s most uninhabitable slums, but she lived there with them.  This diminutive woman begged for food alongside the destitute, allowing them first dibs on the spoils and only eating what was left once the women and children had had their fill.

I am merely humbled by these powerful images of Mother Theresa.  What leaves me speechless, unable to comprehend this one woman’s commitment to mission is presented as a cursory biographical fact.  When Mother Theresa was 18 years old, she left her home country to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (The “Loreto Sisters”).  This teenager got on a plane headed to Ireland (and shortly thereafter, India) having no reference point for the culture in either country.  She did not speak English or Hindi or Bengali.  She had never been outside of her family’s neighborhood, much less on foreign soil. Mother Theresa was fully aware that once she began her missionary work, she would never see her own mother again.  Would never return home.  And she STILL got on the plane.

When I read this, I am unable to move on to the next panel of artifacts.  I don’t know why, but this detail is even more powerful to me than the images of her opening up the orphanage and bandaging up the diseased and dying.  She was just a girl.  Not even out of adolescence.  She would not be the first young person to devote her life to the arduous task of ending human suffering.  But, how many of those who came before her and who came after her gave up their FAMILIES? Their mothers?  Their homelands?  Their native tongues?

Days after having toured Mother’s House, I am still thinking about little 18 year old Gonxha Agnes saying goodbye to all that she knew and 60 years later never once mentioning how sad she was to leave her family behind in order to devote herself to such important work. It is against this backdrop that I find myself sobbing in the presence of Sister Cyril, a lesser known missionary than Mother Theresa, but a woman who is as equally dedicated to ending human suffering.

Like Mother Theresa, Sister Cyril left her native land of Ireland when she was little more than a girl.  Although she does visit her family back in Ireland, since joining the Loreto Sisters in Calcutta five decades ago, Sister Cyril has never gone back permanently.  For the last 30 years, Sister Cyril has been the principal of Loreto Sealdah School.  She has spent most of those years turning it into not only a school of high academic caliber, but a shelter for Calcutta’s parentless street children, an opportunity to learn for the children of the prostitutes who work in the infamous “Red Light District” and a training ground for her successors.  Sister Cyril has spearheaded numerous training programs for people who want to teach the poor.  She has inspired the “school in a trunk” movement that brings even the most basic education to children who live in remote villages and children of migrant workers whose parents put them to work making bricks in order to help support the family.

During our visit to Loreto Sealdah School, we are shown a documentary on Sister Cyril’s work.  She speaks frankly about the great need that exists in India and does not mince words about how more people should fulfill their duty to address that need.  When Sister Cyril began admitting street children into her school, her middle class parents balked.  Sister Cyril enlisted the hearts of their daughters to teach them compassion. “One of the girls told me her mother turned up her nose and called the kids dirty.  She was proud to correct her mother. ‘Sister, I told her she was the one who was dirty because she had a dirty heart.’  I was proud of her,too, for standing up to her mother for the right reason.”

And she trains her girls to stand up for justice even if it means manipulating the unjust.  When Sister Cyril discovered another “invisible” group of children in Calcutta, she called upon Loreto Sealdah students to bring them out of the shadows.  In far too many middle class homes, Sister discovered, school aged children are “hired” to work as domestic help.  They are paid little to no wages, given one paltry meal a day and are not allowed to leave the premises.  They are modern day slaves.  Sister found out about these children because her students leaked their wealthy neighbors’ secrets.  “That girl who is in that flat, she is not a little cousin visiting from the village.  She is the family’s fulltime maid.”  Sister has trained these students in their own form of rescue.  She tells them to use their middle class manners and their familiarity with the families to sweetly coax the women of the houses to allow their young maids out for a few hours a day.  “Just to play and come down to my school,” the girls tell the housewives.  And it is during these one or two hours a day, that these same girls teach their enslaved peers how to read and write.

I am already near tears before Sister Cyril begins to explain why she has worked tirelessly over the years to institute these programs into the fabric of Loreto Sealdah School.  “It is not my job to just teach my students so they can pass their Board exams,” Sister Cyril speaks plainly.  “It is not the goal of their education to go off to Europe or America and become doctors.  Their goal is to continue to change their country.  To allow others to live with the same dignity we have allowed them.”

And it is here when I feel something get stuck in my throat.  Water gathers in my pupils and my eyes begin to blur when I hear this woman continue to explain that morality can not be seperated from education.  That she and her staff have worked to develop a curriculum on Human Rights, which is compulsory for all students who attend her school.  “They must go out and propagate what they learn here,” Sister finishes. “If they don’t, then we have failed.”

By the time the film has ended and Sister Cyril strolls into the room as if she has been cued by her staff, my mind is in overdrive and so are my emotions.  I think back to 18 year old Gonxha Agnes on the road to becoming Mother Theresa.  I look at this sturdy Irish nun standing before me.  An outspoken firecracker to whom police officers bring raped and half starved children because they know Sister will take them.  Feed them. House them.  And teach them.  The woman who puts 100 of her students on a hot bus every Saturday and sends them out to villages with lesson plans so they can teach their rural counterparts.

“I hope you enjoyed the video,” Sister smiles as she sits down.  “So, do you have any questions for me?”

Questions?

Will you take statements, I want to say.

I want to say a lot.  I want to express my inability to fully understand how a Buddha has ended up walking this earth as a Catholic nun.  How I have been practicing Buddhism for just two short years and I am therefore unprepared to meet her.  This living, breathing embodiment of the most basic of Buddhist concepts: We ordinary human beings possess the Buddha nature; it is up to us to continually access and act on it.  

Yes, Sister Cyril, I have some questions for you.  I am forming these words in my head, but each time I try to say them, my throat gets tight and more tears trickle down my cheeks. 

How long did it take you to grow these fearless Buddha legs?   When will mine become as strong as yours?  Tell me what prayer to recite when I grow frustrated with my baby Buddha legs.  My wobbly walk of compassion that sometimes ends with my butt crashing to the floor, having to get up and try all over again.

The others in the group are able to ask Sister thoughtful, intelligent questions while I struggle to find the right thing to say.  And the 5 or 10 tear-free seconds needed to say it. 

It takes me two hours.  We have visited classrooms at Loreto Sealdah School.  Had lunch.  Taken countless pictures with the curious students who love to practice their conversational English with foreign visitors.

Before we leave, we are back in Sister’s office and she asks us again. “Is there anything else you would like to know about our work here?”

I can feel my throat tightening and my eyes welling up.  I take my 10 seconds while I still have them.

“Thank you for the work you do here.”  I can hear my voice cracking.  “It takes so much courage to devote your life to this work.”  The tears come back and I feel the other eyes in the room on me.  Wondering why I can not stop weeping.  I rush so quickly through the rest of my statement, I don’t even know if Sister understands me.

“I wish more of us had the courage to do it.”

Welcome (Back) to Freshman Year

The only other afro in Kolkata!

Every Fall, young Black Americans  across the states engage in a very specific “coming of age” ceremony.  A quincenera of sorts – only it is forced on us by the country in which we live, isn’t a whole lot of fun and happens when we turn 18.  It is the experience of going to a college that is not an HBCU and realizing that your mere presence is an event of sheer wonderment.  You are a novelty to many, a figure of ceaseless curiosity to most.

When I was 18 years old, I enrolled at the University of New Orleans, a state school with a good reputation and a handful of students (a child’s handful of professors) who looked like me.  What I remember most about my freshman year at UNO:

1.Whenver I was absent, everyone seemed to notice. (“Hey, why weren’t you in Freshman Comp yesterday?”) When I walked into class, random students would sometimes greet me by retracing every step I had taken on campus within the last 48 hours.   (“I saw you in the University Center right after you left the admissions office.  Did you like the meatloaf that you had for lunch in the cafeteria at 12:54 p.m. when you were sitting by that table closest to the door?”)

2. Because of #1, I often questioned why white students wanted to be my “friend.”  While I have no stories of obnoxious white guys trying to fulfill their black girl fantasies or presumptuous white girls trying to sneak and touch my hair, I do distinctly remember always being able to locate the other black person within 10 seconds of entering any room.  Walking around campus, it became second nature to spot one of us several buildings away and know with absolute certainty that the other black person had spotted me, too.  No words needed to be exchanged once we were within close enough range to verify that Yes, you are “the” event here, too, aren’t you? 

I have thought of that first year at UNO several times since I have been in Kolkata. I am no longer a self-conscious adolescent who finds any untoward look or comment worthy of passionate, vocalized emotion on my part.  I am a 36 year old woman who understands that people’s perceptions of and reactions to me are the issues of those particular people and therefore, must be addressed (or not) by them. 

It is quite interesting to be reliving my freshman year of college as an adult, though.

In Kolkata, random people greet me by retracing my every move.  A few days ago, one of the other guests in my hotel waved at me when we both happened to be at the pool.  “We saw you at the Victoria Memorial,” she beamed.  Really?  I wonder how?  There were HUNDREDS of people at the Memorial on that quiet, breezey Sunday afternoon.  I don’t bother asking this lady how she was able to spot ME out of the masses because this little lady seems to spot me all the time.  At breakfast.  In the gym.  Walking back to the hotel from the school where I am teaching…

The hotel staff does not ask for my room number when I walk in for the breakfast buffet.  They say, “Good morning, Ms. Kendrick.”  They are waiting for me by the time I reach the cafe as they have spotted me as soon as I stepped off the elevator.  At a cocktail party the management threw for its long-term guests, the sales manager casually mentioned, “When I see you in the mornings at breakfast, I want to say hello, but I understand that you are busy and need to run to school, so I just let you eat your egg and toast.”  When was this woman at breakfast?  How does she know I have an egg and toast each morning?  Should I put the lock on my door tonight?

I have not bothered to search the streets of Kolkata for another one like me.  I was here last year; my eyes already understand that they should not waste  time on such fruitless endeavors.  So, imagine my shock when I am at a cultural event and…there is another black lady.  With nappy hair. 

I hear her voice before I actually see her face and the neat rows of bantu knots covering her head.  When the dance troupe finishes its performance and asks the audience if it has questions, I am only partially paying attention when I hear it.  The voice of a black woman.  I crane my neck to get a closer look and am embarrased by the need I have to speak to this woman.  RIGHT NOW.  The need is so great that I suppress the urge to yell across the room, “Have YOU been “the” event everywhere you have gone, too?!”

Once the audience begins to disperse, I do something I did not often do during my freshman year in college. I intentionally go over to the other black person in the room with the conscious awareness that I am going over to the other black person in the room to talk about being the other black person (apparently) in Kolkata.  “Hey, how are you,” I begin.

“We should talk in the hall,” she answers.

And it is in the hall, that we do what our younger selves never thought we had the right to do when we were in college.  After all, we were the inheritants of the spoils of the Civil Rights Movement.  We could not, WOULD NOT sully Dr. King’s dream with admitted feelings of discomfort.  Questions of whether or not realizing the dream was worth these feelings of discomfort. 

“Yes, I am a constant topic of conversation when our group is out,” Iris tells me.  “We were in a temple the other day and some woman actually reached out and grabbed my hair.”

I tell Iris about the school girl who looked at me in utter horror.  She tells me about the rolled eyes and squinched up noses of nearly everyone in the airport when she first landed, her hair in braids.   On a Fulbright Fellowship with 16 other travelers, Iris, too, has had curious Indians try to guess at her country of origin.

“Camaroon?, they say.  South Africa?  Ivory Coast?” I add to the list of random African nations that have been thrown at me by street hawkers trying to get me to “just take look” at their merchandise.

“How long does it usually take them to guess America,” I ask Iris.  We both force an awkward laugh when Iris admits, “I have to tell them.  They never guess America.”  Some look taken aback when we tell them that we were born in the same country as President Barack Obama, the man several of our curious Indian brethern have told us they adore.

We talk a few minutes more about the textbook reasons why we would be so intriguing to the people here.  We joke about that scene in Good Hair when Chris Rock gets on an India-bound plane to figure out where the hell is all of this weave hair coming from and how do weave hair entrepreneurs manage to get enough of it to keep business booming back in the states?

When it is time to leave, Iris turns a bit solemn.  “You know, I have been interested in coming to India for a while now.  I read a lot of travel memoirs and skimmed blogs about this part of the world.”  I already know what she is about to say.

“No one ever writes about this particular India experience.” She looks surprised by this revelation as well as annoyed by it.

I think back to freshman year and how relieved I was when it was over.  How I have only talked about those two semesters of constant visibility a dozen or so times and only when in the company of others who had gone through this bizarre rite of passage. 

“You’re right,” I tell Iris as I head back into the room to join my friends.  “I wonder why.”

Assaults of Sincerity

With Sumeet, our "Good Samaritan"

One of the benefits of traveling abroad is the opportunity to step outside of yourself – your subconscious beliefs, your judgments about the “right” way to do things, your deeply buried prejudices and cynicism – and objectively examine the person your cultural norms have shaped you to be.  Both times I have been to India I have been truly humbled by the level of sincerity in most people’s offers to help.  There is a custom in America that we don’t even realize exists.  It is the custom of insincere offers to “help.”  Empty departing comments to “call you later,” or strained promises to “look out for your friend while she is in town.”  We say, “Sure, I will…” almost as easily as we say “Thank you” and “Good morning.”  We have come to expect the commitments we make to each other to be decoded for what they are: obligatory niceties that neither party truly counts as genuine commitments.

Last night, Sumeet, a 30 year old young professional of modest means, showed up at our hotel and fashioned himself the guardian of our group for almost six hours.  Two weeks ago, neither of us knew Sumeet.  He is a friend of a friend of one of the women here with the program.  When I asked Sumeet, “So, how do you know Mari?,” he nonchalantly replied, “Oh, we have a common friend.  She called me and said, Mari is in Kolkata; take care of her.”  And Sumeet did exactly that.  A young man with a full social life of his own, Sumeet showed up at our hotel the first week we were here just to introduce himself to Mari and take her out to see the city.  Last night, he was back again because we expressed interest in wanting to experience Kolkata night life. “We wanna dance!,” one of us had giggled into Sumeet’s cell phone.

Several hours after this giggled request to merely suggest places for us to go, Sumeet came back to our hotel.  When we told him that Mari was not with us tonight, he didn’t see how that information was relevant.  We wanted to go out and didn’t know our way around.  Therefore, he would come to show us and make sure we got back to our hotel safely.  Sumeet arranged the two cabs to haul us to the restaurant/lounge and upon receiving our bill for dinner, refused to allow any of us to pay it.  Later, when we were in the adjacent nightclub, Sumeet interrupted his own carefree dancing to basically scare off the requisite dudes who show up to clubs to get free grinding time on unsuspecting women’s butts.  “Back up, Buddy,” he said on more than one occasion when he could tell from our body language that we had no  desire to dance with the random men who found their way to our spot on the tiny dance floor.

It is important to note that Sumeet had never officially met anyone in this group.  When he had come to take out Mari a week before, they were on their way out as several of us were coming in and Mari simply waved and said: “Oh, this is my friend, Sumeet.”  This young man gave up a Saturday night to feed six strangers and make sure they were comfortable at a night club. 

Who does that?

Someone who does not simply say, “Sure, I will…” with no real intent of acutally doing it.  Someone whose culture does not quite understand false kindness and therefore, is not very good at following its rules.

Sumeet’s generousity is not the only instance where we, Americans, have found ourselves ashamed to admit, “Wow…I never would have actually done that.”  When Breanna could not find her way to one of the schools where we are teaching, a collection of complete strangers got her there.  One stranger spoke to the taxi driver who did not speak English, explaining where he needed to go.  Five minutes into the ride, the taxi driver then pulled on the side of the road to illicit the help of another. This person, who had been riding a bike to somewhere else, then rode up to a house nearby and called out a school girl.  He said something to her in Bengali and she nodded nonchalantly before going back into the house.

Since Breanna is an American, she was not comfortable with this chain of  events.  Who were these people randomly doing things for her and not feeling it necessary to explain to her what they were doing and why they were doing it?  As she tried to communicate with the taki driver and the man on the bike, they both looked confused as to why she seemed so intent on knowing exactly what was happening and if they would get her to the school like they said they would.

“It is alright, Ma’am,” the bike rider tried to reassure Breanna.

A minute later the school girl came strolling out of the house with her books in her arms. “Ma’am, you are trying to get to St. James School?”  Breanna nods her head and prepares to ask the girl if she can help her.  But, there is no need to ask for the girl’s help.

“That is my school; My mother says it is okay if I I leave a little early today so I can take you there.”  When Breanna thanks the young girl profusely, it is the school girl’s turn to be confused.  “It is not a problem, Ma’am,” she keeps reassuring Breanna, looking a little embarassed and fatigued by Breanna’s deep level of gratitude.

I have learned to be careful about what I say and the promises I make here.  There is no, “Sure, I will” that goes unfollowed.”  No “I want to help” that results in unanswered text messages or awkward avoiding of eyes the day after the help never comes.  It says a lot about the person American culture has shaped me to be when I find myself constantly surprised that “I will” means someone WILL.  When my sincere appreciation for a kindness granted to me is met with confused gazes.  Eyes that seem to inquire: Why would I not?

Because all too often, I don’t.

Solitude Re-examined

From the time I was in middle school, I knew I would be a traveler.  A wanderer. An explorer of sorts.  When I fantasized about my adult life, I never saw concrete careers.  I never visualized specific goals being acheived, hard and fast rules on the wheres, whos and whens of this grown up life.  The only aspect of my grown up life that materialized in my mind fully formed – a  healthy embryo carried out to term – was Keturah the wanderer, going from city to city.  Country to country.

When I think about those childhood fantasies I am struck by a truth that I never before saw as odd.  Maybe a bit unhealthy.  I always traveled alone in my girlhood fantasies.  I was in that city I saw in that movie where those people seemed to always be laughing and waxing poetic about this crazy world.  Unlike the people in the movie, though, my vision starred only me.  I was on that pretty tropical island I’d read about in some book, trying to drain juice from a coconut and finding myself terribly frustrated that after coconut #17, I still was thirsty and the sea water was too salty to drink so what the hell was I going to do.  The 12 year old me didn’t even consider adding the wise “guide” to direct me through this hurdle.  I never even imagined the requisite antagonist.  An enemy with whom I was forced to engage.  More telling, perhaps, the 12 year old me could not connect the fact that I was alone on that imaginary island to the reality that this minor detail was a key factor in why I had slaughtered so many coconuts, yet was still thirsty.  Bordering on dehydration.  For years, my “when I grow up” fairy tales played out in this manner.  Keturah.  Alone.

Why do I bring this up now?

Well, last summer I came to India.  Alone.  It was not the first time I had journeyed to a foreign country sans travel companions.  It was, however, the first time I FELT alone.   It was the first time I realized that, perhaps, my adventures abroad would be more meaningful, more exciting if they were experienced with co stars. 

This summer I am in India again, but not alone.  I am spending 5 weeks here with 9 other wanderers who have travelled the world both solo and with others.  It has only been two days since we have been in Kolkata, India, but already I have experienced this city on a much deeper level simply because I have experienced it with others.

Last summer, I aborted several outings because my appearance in a museum, an art gallery, a restaurant turned into THE BIGGEST EVENT SINCE THE BRITISH COLONIZED KOLKATA.  My gigantic red afro became an entity onto itself.  I found myself unsettled by this attention, confused and frustrated by my inability to decipher whether the attention was positive, negative or indifferent.  Although I found my time in Kolkata rewarding and deeply moving, I often felt isolated and found myself considering how odd it was to come half way across the world by myself.

This year, the gigantic red afro is still causing a stir.  However, there is someone else who is causing an even bigger stir than my crimson, kinky hair.  One of my collegues was born here in Kolkata, but she was adopted by her Irish parents when she was a month old and raised in Iowa as a guilt-ridden Catholic.  To hear Mari speak is to be taken back to that movie, Clueless, in which the white valley girl introduced the world to the infamous accent that would become the go to voice for imitating someone who was just not very bright.  When the 9 of us went shopping for appropriate clothes to wear in the classroom, people walked up to Mari and initiated conversation with her.  When she opened her mouth to respond to them, every single person looked confused and put off by what they heard.  “I think I have freaked this whole store out,” Mari laughed on the cab ride back to our hotel.  “As soon as I open my mouth, it’s like they don’t know how to deal with me.”  Mari is convinced that she has caused some families to shield their children from strange people like her.  Girls who LOOK soooo Indian (albeit, the American kind) but talk…well,  nothing like their uncles and cousins who moved away to the states!

When locals weren’t being bewildered by Mari’s odd way of talking, they were gawking at my ‘fro.  Same looks of wonderment as 2010.  Same whispers to friends.  Same stopping in tracks followed by prolonged “Hello, Mam…would you like to buy…”  The difference now?  I did not abort this outing. I did not feel anxiety in my belly and an intense urge to run back to my hotel and never come out.  I didn’t even notice the staring until one of my collegues pointed it out. “Wow, Keturah, they really can not stop staring at your hair.”  I laughed along with my travelling companion.  “Yeah, it’s a lot to process; it takes folks a while sometime.”

There have been no life-chaning epiphanies as of yet.  Just still, softly spoken murmurings.  Through group spottings of destinations after aimlessly roaming the streets of Kolkata in the middle of the day to never losing track of where I need to be because one of us is always standing guard, I have felt myself admit what 12 year old Keturah was unable to see.

Self-inflicted solitude is not always a sign of strength.  Quite often, it is the way of a coward.  A person who lacks the courage to connect.