poison it is

November 8, 2007 by susaninindia

well i’ve reached a new low after a shocking breach in my mosquito prevention strategy … namely, the net.  i woke up last night to the sickening hum of mosquitos in the ”no fly zone” … by my face.  at first i tried to just hunker down under my blanket and deal, but after steaming myself out from below with my own not-so-savory 3am breath, i lost it.  i turned on my lamp and started frantically swatting at the intruders.  though they made me work for it, i successfully killed TEN mosquitos INSIDE my mosquito net.  unacceptable.  i also successfully startled christa awake with my grunting, slapping, and swearing.  so today i fumigated the place.  it smells like chemicals and there are dead mosquitos all over the floor, but i am sure gonna sleep well tonight.  let’s just hope i wake up again in the morning.  don’t hate me for making bad choices … i have mosquito bites on my face!

on a more serious note, i was an emotional wreck today.  this was likely due to lack of sleep (you’ll remember the mosquito invasion) and to the accumulation of realities and impressions that i’m experiencing here in a new way.  as i believe i’ve mentioned before, the ashram is being forced to downsize for 2 reasons: the government is threatening to kick them off of this land, and the neighboring Gurudwara has bought one of their rented properties for an upcoming religious festival.  this means that everyone’s doing the shuffle to try to make things work and find places for everyone who will no longer have space here.  so today they relocated the most adorable old man who i loved from day one when he snapped christa and i out of our “here’s a sea of sick people” stupor on our first day tour.  he stopped us to gesture that his friend (a patient with only one remaining seriously damaged lung) had been coughing more than usual the night before.  he was so concerned that he began to cry, and he and his friend were no longer among the sea of the sick.  they were individuals with friends and feelings who need tender care and support.

I hated to see him leave today, and i was feeling a little emotionally fragile, and i just fell apart about everything.  i had to slink off to the jungle (which is what we call our one room home … yes, ton, your home — thank you!) to cry it out.  it just happened to be one of those moments when the weight of hard truth, injustice, and pain comes crashing down, disorienting and paralyzing.  poor christa had to talk me down from feeling like this wretched, cruel world is just too much to do anything about.  i actually asked her, teary and snotty, “how should we live our lives?!?!”  drama queen, maybe a little, but its a real and difficult question.  and its one that’s so easy to ignore in the interim between emotional breakdowns.  i cry, then go back to normal.  christa reminded me that yes, its too much to try to change all of the world’s wrongs, but it’s quite possible to change the entire world for one person by loving them, caring for them, and helping them to do the same for others.  and sometimes we won’t change anyone else’s world.  sometimes they will hate us for trying to help, or we’ll blow the whole thing by being clumsy or awkward, but the important truth is that the effort, the choice to care and act and love changes us, large scale results aside.

 
not for those faint of heart or pressed for time

November 12, 2007 by susaninindia

I’m feeling daunted by the task of blogging today and conflicted about the vulnerability of this venue and my desire to share what I’m seeing and learning.  On one hand it seems cheap to “blog” about human life and death and desperation, and on the other hand its perhaps one of the few things truly worth writing about.  I’m also still learning the important lesson of occupying my space in the world, of being comfortable sharing who I am and what I believe and inviting others to share in return.  So I invite you, if you have thoughts, agreements, disagreements, or insights to send an email or make a note to yourself for a conversation when I come home.

I wish that I could include pictures with this post, but we are having camera problems and can’t currently upload our photos.  I would like to give you a visual of what I’ve seen here.  Why not let you decide if you will look it in the face or minimize the screen?  We must consider that each time we minimize the page or change the station or walk on the other side of the street some part of who we are made to be is buried alive beneath all that we think we understand, all that is comfortable and easy.  I know that I have nothing new to say, but its new for me because for the first time I know these things in my body, not just my mind.  I know them with my eyes and my sense of smell.  I know them with my tears and my wrenching stomach.  I know my every inclination to run away and forget. We went to Delhi with Nino on Friday to see the government TB hospital and Yamuna Bazaar, where we find many of our patients.  We went to the TB hospital first where we followed Suresh, a Sewa Ashram staff member who spends every day at the hospital cleaning, feeding, and caring for patients who have no attendant, and therefore little to no care.  I knew that the hospital would be difficult since I’d heard stories of emaciated patients lying their own waste, rats scratching in the corner, and feces and urine all over the bathroom floor.  Ton, the founder of Sewa Ashram, has described it as Auschwitz hospital.  And did I mention that this is the “best TB facility in all of India”?  I was horrified, and apparently it’s much better than it was even 5 years ago.  The bathroom door was hanging off it’s hinges, there were syringes in the urinals, and the stench was revolting. There was trash and spit in every corner, and those patients without a friend or family member to care for them were helpless to meet their own basic needs.  Diarrhea is one of the symptoms of TB, and is aggravated by the TB medication, so many patients stop taking the pills.  This is easy because the nurses toss the pills on their cots and never watch to see if they take the it.  The number of patients who don’t complete their TB treatment is largely responsible for the rampant multi drug resistant strands of TB.  This inevitable diarrhea is one of the most jarring evidences of total lack of human dignity in the hospital.  One of the first patients we saw was covered in his own waste, crying, emaciated.  When Suresh removed his soiled pants I could hardly recognize the human body with so little flesh … just pelvic bone, no butt, no muscle or fat.  I feared his body would break as Suresh lifted him to change the filthy, soiled sheets.  Of course this man can’t walk for weakness, so I guess he will soil himself again and wait for Suresh to come and clean him.  If he does manage to crawl to the toilet he will drag his body over piss and shit and blood and phlegm to get there.  The water in the bathroom doesn’t run, so he couldn’t clean himself even if he were physically able. Without Suresh, he would have no one.  Again, this is the government hospital … an enormous compound lined with metal cots and wasting bodies.Next we went under the bridges and fly overs to Yamuna Bazaar.  Even with the bright sun shining and the busy tourist traffic driving overhead, its hell.  Its actually hell.  As we drove along, nino pointed out an old man who was likely abandoned on the street by his family who can’t care for him now that he can no longer do his share of the work.  They break their backs working in the fields, so what other option do they have?  They aren’t cruel, they are hopelessly poor.  No money to put him in a care facility, no time to provide care themselves.  So they dump him.  They leave him bewildered on the street.  nino said he looked new to the street, maybe three day sitting on the curb, startled and confused by his new reality.  He just sat, watching the chaos around him, feeling it begin to eat him alive.  And we couldn’t help him.  We are already hard pressed to find placements for the old men the Ashram has picked up.  We are running out of space and running out of time.As we walked under the bridges and through the streets strewn with people we saw drugs and drunkenness and totally forgotten life.  we saw a man with only one leg, illyas, who ran away from the ashram a few weeks ago, and when nino approached him he cried and pointed to the sky saying he wished he would die because God would never forgive him for all that he’s done.  How can we penetrate such systemic trauma and self hate to make space for love and healing?  Perhaps we never will, but for the livelihood of our own hearts and souls we must try.
Life on the streets is mental, physical, and spiritual torture.  These people are trapped.  They’ve come from impoverished rural family’s in search of work or fled abuse in search of a new life in the city, and the city exploits them even more.  Low caste, cheap labor, no rights, no voice, no hope.  Then the darkness creeps closer with drugs and alcohol and sex workers.  Then they get HIV and TB and grow weaker until they’re no longer able to do the hard and thankless work of peddling a rickshaw, washing dishes, cleaning floors.  Still no voice to ask for help, no understanding of how to help themselves.  Sick and lonely and helpless, they die on the street.  First their spirits, then their minds, finally their bodies.
We picked up one man who’d likely had a stroke and was paralyzed on one side of his body.  He was curled up on the concrete alone under a dark and dirty bridge, naked except for a bloody jacket covering his side and a rag over his thighs.  Nino saw him and stopped the ambulance.  I could smell him as we walked closer, and when Nino kneeled down to touch him I cringed.  The man whispered a plea for water.  Nino started to pull away the jacket and I thought …  Oh, please, don’t move the jacket.  I don’t want to know.  Let’s just leave.  Let’s just not see it and smell it and have to respond.  But he did, and I shuddered at the sight of the rotten wound.  His entire left side was gaping, green, and crawling with hundreds of thousands of maggots.  His body was literally being decomposed, death seeping slowly deeper and deeper into his flesh.  He was watching as the world excused him for dead, as maggots did their work, as people covered their noses and averted their eyes, as the city buzzed around him.  I couldn’t imagine how Nino could move him.  How could he actually press this rotten body against his own and carry him like a baby?  But then how also could he not?  He draped the man in a ragged blanket and lifted him into the ambulance.  When we got back to the Ashram, Muktar, a former patient now on staff, helped to carry the man to the faucet outside the clinic.  They bathed him and began to wash and pluck out the stubborn maggots.  They poured a solution on the wound that causes the maggots deep in the flesh to escape to the surface where they can be removed.  They cleaned him as much as they could … at least an hour of waiting, washing, plucking.  Then they drenched the wound in the solution, dressed it, and waited to remove newly surfaced maggots the next day.  It takes days for all of the maggots to be driven out.  Days of dressing and redressing the wound.  The poor man has been sleeping since he arrived.  Finally clean.  Finally clothed.  Finally fed.
It’s no wonder Jesus spent so much time talking about feeding the hungry and caring for the poor.  We have such a hideous knack for ignoring the dying and stepping over the weak.  This black and angry world offers us so many opportunities to dig into our hearts and find there the love that is God’s tool for redemption.  We have the chance to be a part of bringing life where there is death, of being gentle in the face of cruelty, and of helping to heal where there are wounds.
And through the therapy of caring for others, we ourselves are healed. We understand more deeply the radical nature of God’s love, of Jesus’ example of living boldy for peace, justice, compassion, and love.  It’s possible to pray and attend to our hearts, souls, and lives in such a way that we create space for God.  God in us, God loving through us.
Is there any greater life?  It’s also possible to implode with self justification and fear.  That fear becomes indifference, and indifference is the worst kind of hate.
 
the good part

November 15, 2007 by susaninindia

a friend used the phrase “hope against hope” in her comment on my last post.  how appropriate, and how good.  the gift of living with an open heart is that you start to see the slivers of light peek through.  the beauty of gentle love and care in the face of death and destitution is that people come back to life.  its painful, i think, to heal.  many people right off the streets are so desensitized and gone that they hardly know their own pain.  when they come here and begin to heal, to wake up, they feel pain again.  this is of course a kind of life kindling where there was only darkness, but it’s difficult to face.  it’s difficult to want.  this awakening to pain and sensation is what i saw growing in mahender, the vacant man’s eyes (you remember, the one who i wished would die.  the one for whom i couldn’t muster up hope for life.)  i saw that living was a torture to him.  i saw that he had given up on himself long ago as he chose again and again to sink a dirty needle into his ragged and raging groin, and i wanted to leave him to it.  even after he survived the night and i felt the shame of my own lack of hope, i assumed he would die soon enough.  but now he’s walking, slowly but surely, clinging to a walker and dragging his wounded leg.  he comes outside in the afternoon, perhaps sensing the sun on his skin for the first time in years.  he smiles when nino passes and lifts his hands to his brow when nino massages his feet (nino: “see this touch, its a kind of heaven for him”)  i still haven’t rubbed mahender’s feet.  i still feel guilty about my lack of hope.  but that’s just me turning in on myself, and i’ve got to stop that.  i have to remind myself, “open your heart.” (jmc, you taught me the power of repeating).

another patient, shankar, arrived soon before we got here.  they found him literally in the trash, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually gone.  human waste.  no dignity.  no hope.  his eyes looked evil, darkness and hate pouring out.  now he laughs and smiles.  he mops the floors and brings food to the patients who are confined to their beds.  he’s joined our morning walking club (have i told you that i’ve been dubbed the fitness teacher?  dr. ashish, who tends to our TB patients, has me taking some of the stronger patients on walks in the mornings to increase their stamina and lung capacity.  i hate getting out of bed every morning at 5:30, but once i’m there, walking club is my favorite thing.  the guys are precious, and they think i’m ridiculous cheering them on to the finish and leading them in a warm up and stretches.)  shankar has wounds on both knees, one arm, and his tailbone, and yet he’s the first in line for walking club (he’s not even a TB patient and has never been told to come).  the first time he joined us he was determined to jog the length of the road, no matter how slowly, and even picked up two bricks from the roadside to show off his strength.  this, the same young man who sat alone in darkness only 3 weeks ago.

a friend recently wrote about jesus’ teaching that whatever we do unto the least of these we do unto him, be that help or hurt, respond or ignore.  as i said to my friend, what’s most poignant to me about that image is that so often our subconsious justification for bypassing those in need is that we fail to see them as fully human … born whole into the world and torn down by injustice and fear.  when we don’t see them as human, we excuse ourselves from defending their human dignity.  so when jesus, so fully and perfectly human, the example of what it means to live right and well and good, tells us that HE is the least of these, he boldly reminds us of their humanity and jolts us into awareness and response.

shankar and mahender give me hope.

 
their stories

November 17, 2007 by susaninindia

we started interviewing patients today.  christa has spent the last several weeks getting to know the community and the patients, filming life around the ashram, and deciding which patients she will focus on in the documentary.  don’t worry, not only did i conduct the interviews (the next barbara walters for sure), i’m also learning words like “b-roll” and “jump cut” and “sound bites” … i’m totally in the biz.  it was a great day, though, because we got to start hearing stories from their owners mouths.

we interviewed one staff member, vinod, who was among the first boys ton picked up nearly a decade ago.  he explained that he watched his parents die of some undiagnosed illness when he was 10 years old.  after that, his older brother forced him to get a job in a tea and sweets shop some distance from their home.  he worked from 6am to 11pm or midnight and slept on the floor of the shop.  he was paid 50 rupees a month (40 rupees is one dollar).  he was allowed to go and visit his brothers about one day per month.  he said that, though he was happy to eat sweets for his meals, his situation was difficult: ”i sometimes wanted to play, and my brother would be angry with me and tell me no, i had to go back to work … i just wanted some time to play or eat or rest, but my brother began to hinder me and made me always work … so i decided to run far away where i would not meet him again.”  so 11 year old vinod hid on a train from a small town in Bihar to Delhi with less than 100 rupees in his pocket.  when he reached the delhi train station, he was overwhelmed by its size and chaos.  he couldn’t find any work and was quickly out of money.  he began to feel sick and had cuts and scrapes on his hands that were infected from the filth on the streets where he slept.  sick and alone, ton found him by the hunaman temple where he was waiting for food.  ton brought him to the ashram where he found a new life, a family, and an education.  when asked what would have happened to him if ton had not taken him in, vinod said, “most probably, i would die.”  an 11 year old boy dying on the streets of that crazy city all alone.  now vinod is working on his BA, does accounting for the ashram, and has just returned from visiting his family for the first time since he ran away as a child.  we asked him how he feels about this ashram and his work here, and he replied,”not everyone has the opportunity to do this kind of work, and we do, so it’s good to do it.”  he said that his friends here make him feel “like i have someone to stand beside me, and if i ever need something, they will help.”

i know that things don’t always work out so nicely and even vinod’s happy ending is surely not as tidy as i would like to imagine.  i know that if we work and love only for results we ruin ourselves before we start, but i still can’t resist the hope i see in people like vinod.  he was given a chance to live, and he is taking on that responsibility and doing it well.

 
really?

November 17, 2007 by susaninindia

yesterday we went into delhi with nino again to get a look a few more hospitals.  nino explained the infuriating fiasco that is hospital admission — 1. wait in a really long line for a slip of paper that says which department you should go to. 2. good luck finding that department in this massive complex chalk full of people. 3. wait in a really long line in the department you’ve been sent to where a student doctor who’s really just interested in a title and a salary will tell you to get a whole slew of tests done before diagnosis. 4. again, good luck finding the places for each test … oh, and did i mention good luck getting yourself there even if you’re immobile?  so extra extra good luck if you don’t have a family member or attendant.  so if you happen to be illiterate, destitute, seriously ill, and alone … you’re absolutely screwed.  we actually picked up a man as we were leaving the hospital who was sitting IN FRONT of the hospital staff parking RIGHT NEXT to the hospital entrance with a TOTALLY broken, rotten, maggot eaten foot … exposed bone, swollen leg … just sitting there looking beaten and done.  probably some rickshaw driver who had foot torn in half by a passing car.  he needed a whole hell of a lot of good luck to get himself admitted and all over that concrete creation for tests and whatnot cause nobody was stopping to help. and certainly no one was staying to help, so if he did get in, who would bring him food and change his clothes?  maybe he’d be bandaged up and sent right back out to the street.  really?  i mean really??

 
my fear, my loss

November 21, 2007 by susaninindia

I’m sitting here on my porch in the perfect Indian autumn … luke warm and dry as a bone.  I can just see Anil through the shifting leaves as he waters the gardens.  He’s so quiet, so diligent, so frugal.  When he’s not watering the plants, he walks among them, pants rolled up, dirty hands clasped behind his back or crouches on his haunches, hands digging deep into the soil.  I’m sipping raspberry lemon tea, still warding off a chest cold that’s been taking it’s toll the last few days.  There goes Shankar waddling by with his bandaged body and his happy baby smile … “hello sister!”  I haven’t been up for walking club with this cough and cold (hardly anything compared to what these friends endure).  There’s something nice about being sick among the sick.  They’re all worried … “sister, protect your chest.” “sister, you look not good.”  They also laugh when I say, froggy and hoarse, “Oh it will pass.  I’ve been sleeping all day!”  I’m already feeling much better and have enjoyed an excuse to be supremely lazy, sitting and watching, talking with Christa and Nino, taking naps, letting go a bit more the idea that life is only good when it’s productive.

Christa and I have been talking lately about the holy spirit.  We’ve both felt confused about this idea of God’s presence in the world, the third of the trinity, God’s ambassador both within us and without.  Christa found holy spirit translated as spirit of truth, which makes it so much more clear.  Truth exists within us and without.  We have the opportunity to find the spirit of truth in our hearts and live accordingly, live by the truth of love, compassion, forgiveness, grace.  And as is the case with all things good, we have equal opportunity to ignore it.  Jesus said that he had to leave us in this world so that he could send the holy spirit, the spirit of truth to be with us.  At first glance, it seemed curious and even frustrating that Jesus lived such a short life and physically touched so few people.  He could have healed the masses, ridden a fast horse from town to town teaching about love and forgiveness.  But I guess he knew that we are so shortsighted that if he taught us only by example and convinced us only through his material presence and work, we would never understand that what he really wants for us is to know life beyond the material.  Thus he sent us his spirit, a small, still voice that we can listen to or ignore.  Listening, of course, takes practice.

Several days ago a new patient arrived:  a woman, age 50, whose had been forced for one reason or another to drink acid.  Her esophagus was wrecked and she couldn’t keep down any food.  Her face was a sunken skull with eyes peering out and paper skin hung carelessly over the bone.  Her voice was raspy with pain, exhaustion, and hunger.  Two nights ago I went to the toilet just before bed.  As I walked through the clinic to get the bathroom key I saw Muktar massaging her shoulders as she vomited the milk and bread she’d tried to eat … her body rejecting her efforts to keep it alive.  I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, touched her back and maybe her leg (hard to find frail limbs under the folds of three blankets).  As Muktar tucked her in for sleeping, my heart said simply, “Lay with her. Crawl up next to her broken body and hold her in your arms.“  But I didn’t.  I was afraid I would cough and she would vomit and maybe she didn’t want me there.  I couldn’t take that spirit of truth at its word - unhindered love, gentle touch and kindness without regard for myself.  I felt awkward and uncomfortable, so I touched her forehead and went to bed.  She died that night alone in her bed, me alone in mine.  That kind spirit of truth gave me the opportunity to cradle life as it passes to death, and my fear was my loss.

 
Ritual

November 25, 2007 by susaninindia

A former patient, Raju, recently arrived back at the ashram.  He has been HIV positive for some time, and is now in rather critical condition.  Christa passed Nino standing over Raju who was laying wild eyed and shivering under 5 blankets in the clinic.  Nino placed his hand on Raju’s forehead and immediately his eyes closed and he was snoring with sleep.  Nino said something to Christa about the virus touching Raju’s mind and making him feel confused and afraid.  Sometimes, he said, another person’s touch and attention to his head, the home of his mind, can bring him peace and help him rest.  He gestured that Christa replace his hand with hers on Raju’s head, and there she spent the next hour, sometimes pulling back as he slept, then orienting him again towards rest when he woke.  It reminds me so much of labor with its peeks and lulls.  There are often many moments at a birth when we all just ride the time waiting for that next laying on of hands, giving of support, channeling of energy.

Nino came by later when I was standing with Christa by Raju’s bed.  He asked if she had felt Raju when she put her hand on him, if her heart had been open to feel him touch her in return.  He talked about trusting this touch, trusting the spirit of kindness, compassion, and gentleness to be communicated both ways through the channel of that touch.  This, too, reminds me of births.  Just before I left Chicago to come here, I attended a birth along with another doula because I wanted to see and learn from how someone else cares for women in labor.  It was a psychologically complicated birth to begin with, and the combination of not feeling connected to the mother and not feeling fully “there” with her made for rather clumsy contributions on my part.  I didn’t trust my touch at all, and my heart was not open to this mother, and she could feel it.  This affected everything from the overall energy in the room to the sensation of my hands on her body.  I actually hurt her with my touch.  Of course every birth is full of trial and error to find what brings some relief at that moment.  There’s a constant dance of positions and laying on of hands, but this was different.  We weren’t working together, we were working against eachother.  We become so stiff when we don’t trust our own touch, and we spread that stiffness like a disease.

I originally titled this entry “ritual” because when I sat down I was thinking about the rituals we establish in birth and death.  Many women in labor will latch on to a particular ritual which becomes her own way of riding the rhythm of her birth.  Raju and Christa established a ritual of touch that lasted into the afternoon, even after Christa had gone and I was working at the computer in the clinic.  He would wake every little while, and I would put my hand on his head, like Christa had done, and he would fall back asleep.  We come by it so naturally, this ritual and rhythm.  It’s somehow a part of what we are and what we look for in our lives, and it’s nice to think that we can choose what sorts of rituals we will foster and what sort we will lay aside.

 
Mukhtar

November 27, 2007 by susaninindia

A few days ago we interviewed Mukhtar, a former patient who has been in and out of the ashram community for years.  He told us about his parents’ death when he was young, his wild and rebellious ways, drinking and using heroine when he was still a child.  He was a pick pocket and a drug addict, the stereotypical punk who we definitively dismiss as less than, annoying, and unnecessary.  He was one of those kids we glare at and hug our purses tighter then quickly look away because we don’t want to see adult rage and pain in a child’s eyes.  A person shouldn’t have lived enough to have that look by the age of 10.

Ton picked him up, gave him food and shelter, and thus Mukhtar began the dance of back and forth, feeling drawn to community and security at the ashram and also being sucked back into depression, anger, and addiction.  In one of those trips back to hell, he contracted HIV.  He understands the significance.  He cares for HIV patients dying of weakness and infection that their bodies can no longer fight.  He touches them with the tenderness of a lifelong friend.  “They are my brothers,” he says.  “I cry for them and for their pain.”  And he did cry, even as he spoke, his hardened, scarred face trembled with emotion.  He cries for his brothers fate and his own.  He cries that he cannot find a wife, a woman with HIV to marry him.  He cries because he still uses heroine and alcohol to numb the pain of life in this world.  He cries because he loves the ashram, his patients, and his work (he spends hours and days cleaning maggoty wounds as if touching such filth were the only natural reaction), but he is also trapped here without hope for the future he dreamed of.

It’s intense to watch him any given day, one moment so gentle, the next so angry.  I asked him in the interview if he understood that the same depth of spirit that gives him such real compassion and love for the patients is what causes him to feel so keenly the injustice and sadness in this world, that what he sees as his weakness is really a deformed and tragic manifestation of his incredible strength.  I think the question was lost in translation.

I found myself wishing that he had the mental power for introspection and self analysis that might help him to understand himself and this vicious cycle of the good and the bad, the life giving and the life sucking.  Perhaps that’s condescending, and perhaps it misses the point, but I wished it.  And as it turns out, even the scrappy kids on the street who we shoo back into the gutter have hearts and thoughts and feelings.  They feel injustice in their bodies, in their bellies, and in their nimble, thieving hands.  And they wish that things were different.  They wish that they were different.  We should wish that, too.

 
Not quite top shelf.

December 5, 2007 by susaninindia

Well folks, you may have been wondering where I’ve been the past week.  Sus, the dedicated blogger, committed to offering family and friends an occasional peek into life in India, has gone missing.  Actually where I went was to Haridwar, Rishikesh, and the toilet.  Christa and I decided that we should take one little weekend trip before I left just to get a taste of India outside of Delhi and our beloved Ashram.  We wanted to see the Ganges River and were of course super committed to following in the Beatles’ footsteps, so we decided on Haridwar and Rishikesh.  Our time there was lovely and filled with fresh air, foothills, bright colors, and flame offerings floating down the Ganges.

And then I got sick.  Blow out sick.  I was sitting on the toilet with a bucket in my lap moaning, “no, no, no, no, no.  It has to end.  Its time for it to end.”  Christa had to all but carry me in addition to our bags all over town, across busy streets, to random squatty potties as we made out way from the train station (where, after I nearly fainted in the ticket line, we had decided this was not the best day for travel) to the nearest hotel where I could alternately sleep, shit, vomit, and moan, at my leisure.  Christa, however, was not at her leisure.  She felt my flaming forehead, saw the bloody water I was passing by what felt like the gallon, and decided to call a doctor.  The doctor gave me antibiotics and some medicine for the pain, and then left Christa to keep vigil over me through the night, offering me sips of water, fetching a cool rag for my head.  The next day we decided to try and make it to Delhi since they could give me an IV at the Ashram if necessary.  Christa went and bought our tickets, brought me toast, packed our bags, got me dressed, and even made me a DIAPER out of a plastic bag.  What a moment.  I was exhausted having eaten only bit of toast in 48 hours, and could barely slur, “this will be a funny story some day.”  Christa, carrying all of our bags and guiding me by the hand, replied, “ya, not yet though.”  We made it back without a hitch (I was over the hump and did not have to make use of the just-in-case diaper), and as we rode in our taxi from the Delhi train station to the Ashram, I looked out the window at all of the poor and sick and lonely people sleeping on the streets.  It made cry to think that many of them felt worse than I did, and had no Christa to care for them.  They had no hotel back up plan or Doctor at the ready.  I’ve been talking this whole time about the destitute – imagine! you’re sick and hungry and dirty and ALONE with no one to help you – but actually being so sick, actually needing someone so much, I could see the reality of that lack in a new way.  No one should be so alone.
 
Time machine

December 5, 2007 by susaninindia

My flight home was like a time machine in a few different ways.  It apparently took me only 4 hours to get from Delhi to Chicago since I got on the plane in India at 1am, chased the sun for 16 hours, and got off in the US at 5am the same day, tapping our toes for sunrise.  Beatcha!  Weird.

Along the same lines, but far more eerie, the flight was a time machine because Chicago is exactly the same (plus snow and a chill in the bone).  This big old city has been sitting here doing its thing this whole time!  Can you believe it?  And now that big old city Delhi will keep doing its thing.  And the world will keep doing its thing on and on and on.  Some people will live in luxury and some in squalor and we all say, “so it goes.”  I hope not.  I hope we don’t say that.  Let’s say something different.  I can’t even type what cause my brain is fuzzy from travel and madness and my body feels tired, but everybody think about it.  Have a little heart to heart with yourself, and then don’t let go.  Hold onto that heart like it’s all you’ve got, cause frankly, it is.

And on that preachy, jet lagged note, I throw in the towel for the blog.  Whew!  I did it.  I made it till the end, and have discovered that I am NOT a blogger.  Thanks for caring to read.

Love,
Sus

I am, by the way, home.