VARANASI by Mary Oliver

VARANASI

Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,

where fires were still smoldering,

and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.

A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;

she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it

over her body, slowly and many times,

as if until there came some moment

of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river’s.

Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her

and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,

no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,

for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker

of the world, and this is his river.

I can’t say much more, except that it all happened

in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt

like that bliss of a certainty and a life lived

in accordance with that certainty.

I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back

to America.

Pray God I remember this.

_______________________

Mary Oliver
A Thousand Mornings
(Penguin, 2012)

The India Group Blog by Paul Ramsey

Fourth Entry         

Monday, June 19^th, 2013

Baba, Krishna, and I were at the hospital by 7:30 AM.  The first call for surgery was 8:00 and we didn’t want to miss wishing Milli luck if she were with the first group to be operated on, but she wasn’t.   Milli’s group wasn’t called to the surgical floor until around 10:30 where there was more waiting, but on both the pre-op ward and on the surgical floor the patients were keep busy: lessons on hygiene, talking with counselors about the impending surgery, and games, I guess, to keep the mind from fretting.  Milli certainly heard the words before she left home that she was “going to have surgery to fix her lip,” but I don’t think she had any idea what surgery was or why her lip needed fixing.  

Milli looks in the mirror a lot.  I wonder what she sees.  She is a cute but not pretty girl.  Her nose is always running, we found out through specialists provided by Operation Smile, because she has a crooked bone in her nose on the cleft side and allergies.  This runny nose bothers her teachers at school (and me).  There is something unkempt about Milli--hair askew, blouse untucked, uniform wrinkled.  Her father certainly doesn’t obsess about his looks, and her mother doesn’t seem to have the neatness touch.  (I notice that Milli always looks a little better after a visit with Bablu’s wife.)  Several times Milli and her parents were asked if children made fun of her because of her mouth.  I don’t think Milli or her parents had any idea what this question was getting at.  Whatever Milli sees when she looks in that mirror doesn’t seem to worry her, and for this let us give thanks and hope this self-possession or obliviousness or whatever it is carries her through adolescence into adulthood.

Milli’s name is finally called, she looks up when she hears her name and follows the nurse through the open door of the operating suite without the slightest hesitation.  I thought waiting during the surgery would be tense, but there was so much going on, no one had much time to think about Milli’s predicament:  Operation Smile provided for Ramakuiyan to see a dentist.  She has a tooth that has been bothering her off and on for months.  The dentist says it definitely has to come out and puts her on antibiotics to prepare her for an extraction in 2 days.  Krishna and Haman are seen by the pediatrician. 

Much to my surprise, if the answers that Baba gave are accurate, they are up to date on their shots, though I would like for them to be vaccinated against typhoid since at least once a year someone, usually Krishna, seems to come down with the disease.  I worry that one of the children will get too dehydrated and die.  The pediatrician suggests we go to the state hospital to get the shot and prescribes some vitamins and decongestants for the boys.  I’m hoping that Baba and Ramakuiyan can see a doctor.  Ramakuiyan has some periodic condition where her hands and feet darken; this has started happening again.  It seems that she can pass this temporary darkening on to the children when she is breastfeeding (and it is not uncommon for breastfeeding to go on until the child is 5 or 6.  When we had dinner with Bablu he mentioned that his 4 year old son, Deepak, wants his mother’s milk before he leaves for kindergarten each morning).  Baba drinks too much.  A harsher rendering would simply call him an alcoholic.  He can go without a drink for about a month and then he falls off the wagon.  

His blood work suggests that he is a step away from alcoholic hepatitis.  A doctor in Delhi told him that if he didn’t stop drinking he would be dead before he was 50.  He said he didn’t want to die (few of us do), but he bemoaned the reality that the doctor didn’t want him to drink, smoke, or chew betties, a nut that many Indian men chew that has them spitting red.  (There are plenty of graphic public health campaigns on the TV showing the effects of bettie chewing:  rotting teeth at its best, mouth cancer at its worst.)  What Baba wondered was what he was to do for enjoyment and satisfaction.  If I had his life, I’d drink too much too, and when I think about it, would it be so tragic if Baba were to die in 20 years?  Milli will almost surely be married by then--very important for a girl and her family--as will the boys (but the marriage of a boy is of minor significance culturally).  Ramakuiyan might mourn him though she will hardly miss all the headaches his drinking brings, and by then she will have grandchildren and her sons‘ wives to boss around.  Baba is so poor, is it realistic to expect him to give up one of the few things he has, “minor” vices.  Really how much of a life does he have to lose anyway?

In a previous post, I explained that Bablu literally had to flee his home village because of gambling debts he owed.  He moved, eventually with his family, to Delhi because he had relatives there.  At the end of our last TIG “pilgrimage” in February, a few of us visited Bablu’s new home, the wretchedness of which I described previously.  The relative he was living with had a paralyzed brother. 

He crawled around on the ground, using his hands and arms as most of us would use our feet and legs.  All I really remember about the young man, probably 20, was that his eyes were like black discs and very sad.  I asked Bablu about him.  He said that his mother had died 6 months before and no one really took care of him anymore.  He had a terrible cough; I suspect he had TB.  One of the TIG members, Bobbi, who was also visiting, noticed the daughter in the family, Chahat, who is 3.  Bobbi saw something in this little girl and said she would pay her tuition ($350) for a year, so she could start pre-school.  We’d already identified a school for Bablu’s children, so we asked Chahat’s parents if they wanted her to attend school.  They said of course they did, so we enrolled her.  Had Bobbi not been there, I never would have noticed this child (one of the things I’ve learned by making these trips to India with a small group is how much I miss on the interpersonal side.  I think I’m so into getting from place to place that I forget to see the people we’ve come to work with), but once Bobbi had pointed her out, I did see that Chahat had incredible charisma.  

Chahat and Family

When we leaving, I told her father that we were helping his daughter out and I’d like for him to do something for us:  take better care of his paralyzed brother.  He said understandably defensively that they did take care of him.  That’s not what Bablu said and not what I saw.  I said to the young man on the ground that when I returned, I was going to see if we had enough money to take him to a doctor to find out what was up with that cough.  I thought fleetingly that maybe we would even find a place for him at one of Mother Teresa’s homes as TIG members volunteer at a home for disabled boys and men outside Kolkata.  If we couldn’t find a place for him near Delhi, maybe we could find the funds to move him to Nabo Jibon near Kolkata.  All this I said and thought quickly without really looking at the man, though I did see him there on the ground.  Two days after I got home Bablu called to say the young man had died.  The family noticed too late one day that something was wrong with him--so wrong that they couldn’t ignore it anymore--so they found a cab to take him to the nearest hospital.  On the way there, he died, in the cab.  I suppose not wanting to waste money they didn’t have, they told the cab driver to turn around and take them home.  No need to waste money or time on the dead in a hospital.  When I talked with Bablu about the young man’s death, he said, “I’m glad he died.”  It’s sort of what I’ve been thinking about Baba and his life and possible death.  How tragic would it really be?  The tragedy is the life he leads.    

An Operation Smile staffer walked us over to the Mahendra Mohan Chandhury Hospital “complex” (Operation Smile is an independent hospital within Mahendra).  I believe it is a privately run hospital, but the chaos we encountered seemed like that I’ve seen in state-run Indian hospitals.  The bottom line is that they had no time or staff to waste on Ramakuiyan’s and Baba’s minor health problems.  Ramakuiyan tried to explain to a nurse about her darkened hands.  The nurse looked at her and said, “There’s nothing wrong with them.”  When we returned to Delhi, we were able to get an appointment with a doctor who said that the darkening was caused by some kind of calcium deficiency and has prescribed a medication but Baba says it’s expensive.  Baba also saw the doctor in Delhi.  Baba reports that the doctor says his liver is better but he didn’t give Baba a blood test.  When I asked Baba how the doctor knew he was better without testing his blood, he said the doctor looked at him.

By the time everyone had seen or tried to see a doctor, it was time for Milli to be out of surgery.  They had just brought Milli into the post-op ward when we arrived.  Her eyes were open but she was clearly out of it.  Her lip had definitely been cut.  She wasn’t crying, just staring off into space.  She didn’t respond when we asked how she felt, but Baba noted that often Milli doesn’t respond to questions.  He says she just looks into space.  She was definitely looking into space after her encounter with surgery.

Baba, Krishna, and I went back to the mineral waterless restaurant and got “a pack” of food to take to the hospital.  I suggested to Baba and Ramakuiyan that they take the other children and go back to the apartment so Ramakuiyan could shower and rest.  I said I’d stay with Milli.  Somewhat to my surprise they agreed to leave their recovering child with me.  About half an hour into the book I was reading, a nurse came by and said that Milli should eat.  She was still looking dazed, so I ignored the nurse.  The family had taken most of the food we’d bought back to the apartment, but they had left some dal and rice.  The nurse came back and again told me to feed Milli and get her changed as she had urinated on herself.  I panicked.  I didn’t know exactly what to do with the dal and rice and had no idea how to get Milli changed.  I opted for doing the food, explained to the nurse I was alone and asked if she could wash Milli up while I prepared dinner (I poured the dal over the rice). Since Milli had urinated, they could take her IV out and led her away to clean her up. 

She came back in a new gown, scooped that dal and rice into her mouth as if she hadn’t had surgery, and she and I began to play a card game of War.  When her family returned, they were beaming to see her so recovered.    

The India Group: The Third Blog Entry

Milli Enjoys a Dental Lesson before Surgery

Friday, June 14 and Saturday, June 15th—Sightseeing:

Since there was nothing we could do for 2 days but wait to see if Milli—note the new and preferred spelling of “Milli.”  I was showing her the different ways her name could be spelled and she made it quite clear that I had been misspelling her name:  Her name, she insists, ends with an “i” and so it shall be—would be surgery-ready, we decided to see some of Assam.  I would say that they we were going to do “the tourist thing,” but there are no tourists in Assam to “thing.”  If you look at Assam on the map, you will see that geographically it shouldn’t be a part of India, and one senses that politically its hold to India and India’s hold to it is tenuous. The slightest mass of land, separating Tibet and Bhutan from Bangladesh, joins Assam to the rest of India.  The capital, Guwahati, Wikipedia tells me, has a population of 1.5 million.  I would have guessed between 200 and 300 thousand.  As Baba said, “It doesn’t be like a city,” and it doesn’t.  It reminds me of one of those Atlantic coast towns in South America that are inhabited by the descendants of slaves rather than of the Spanish.  Once when I told a Costa Rican acquaintance that I was going to visit one of these towns in her country, Limon, she said “feo,” ugly.  Ugly and conveniently forgotten they are without the infrastructure their sister cities have as is Guwahati.  The sidewalks of the town look like they are waiting for repair after an earthquake.  You can literally look under the sidewalk where the slabs of concrete are to meet but don’t because one is elevated above the other, producing a gaping aperture that holds an underworld of trash that mirrors the debris above.  The lights go out several times a day and there are no amenities that tourism brings, e.g., something to do.  I have yet to see anyone, other than those of us in the Milli entourage, that I thought might be a tourist.  One of the doctors said to me something that I’d already noticed, “The only White people in town are with the hospital.”

 Operation Smile Staff Celebrates 9000 Surgeries

I’ve asked why the Operation Smile facility ended up in such an isolated location.  The services this organization provides are so needed, why hide them, as it were, under a basket in remote Assam.  I’ve gotten 2 explanations for “Why Assam?”  One doctor told me that the hospital was placed in Assam because the incidence of cleft palates was higher in this region than anywhere outside mainland China. Another person questioned this static and said that there were political reasons for placing the hospital in Assam:  The government wanted to give “them” something, and what a gift it is.  Operation Smile apparently has 2 other permanent facilities. I believe that one is in China and the other in South America (I wasn’t taking notes during the conversation that produced this information, so I can’t swear that I’ve remembered what I was told correctly, and as I write I have no access to the Internet).  Since all the Operation Smile services are free, including the medicine, I would have thought that people in need would be coming from all over India, but apparently this is not the case. Indeed, one of the strangest things about our little group is that we had come from so far—for Milli and her family almost a 50-hour train ride.  We were told that we had come farther than anyone had ever come for surgery.

Milli's Family

Now back to the sightseeing.  There is a scraggily zoo—the Bronx it is not—the main attraction being the Indian one-horned rhino.  We were told that across the road was an African rhino.  I wanted to see it for the sake of comparison, but the across-the-road enclosure seemed empty.  When I asked a guard where the African rhino was, he said, “Somewhere in there but we’re not sure where.”  How do you lose a rhino?

Ramakuiyan and Haman in the Cage Line

The other sightseeing opportunity was Hindu temples.  One, Hayagriva Madhave, had some historical interest in that my Eyewitness guidebook says “that the Buddha died here.”  The priest/guide said nothing about this as he led us around intoning  chants we were to repeat.  When I asked him about the Buddha, he said something like “Oh yeah, he did his last meditation here.”  The most mythologically interesting temple is the main one in Assam, Kamakhya Temple. The Hindu Trinity is composed of Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver/Redeemer; and Shiva, the Destroyer.  As I understand it from Baba and a little reading, Shiva and Sati fell in love and were about to be married, but Sati’s father, as is the case with most fathers, thought that no man (and in this case, god) was good enough for his daughter.  (The father didn’t know Shiva was Shiva.)  A family argument ensued (What wedding would be complete without one?), and Sati ended up killing herself by jumping into fire.  Shiva was so upset that he went around the world with Sati’s corpse and where parts of it fell there are now major temples.  Supposedly Kamakhya Temple in Assam marks the spot her vagina fell. 

Entrance to Temple of the Nine Planets

It is, therefore, a very sacred temple and the devotees are so fervent that they have to be controlled by cage-like structures to keep people from trampling each other to get into the temple.  Oh course, to the non-believer all this seems crazy, but then I remember that I am a member of a tradition that believes in the Virgin Birth; I belong to an intellectual milieu that would be loath to disavow that we came from apes; and almost everyone I know thinks it makes sense to pay $300 or more an hour to talk to someone about problems s/he may or may not have.  I guess faith is not reasonable, it’s faith.

Milli’s Family at the hospital

Sunday, June 16th, 2013

Sunday was a day of waiting and anxiety:  Was Milli cold-free enough to pass the surgery hurdle?  We waited at the hospital and finally were called up to see the pediatrician who listened intently to her heart and chest, asked Baba a few questions in Hindi, and then gave his OK.  Next we had to see the anesthesiologist, but he was in surgery.  After waiting for 30 minutes, we were told to go to lunch and return at 2:30.  He would be out of surgery by then.  We went to lunch at a near-by restaurant and I found it to be typical of the Assam culinary scene:  The menu was extensive, but they were pretty much out of everything you ordered except chicken and vegetables. We asked for mineral water, but the waiter opened the bottle before he brought it to the table, so I sent it back (like an inferior wine).  In India there is a distinction made between bottled and mineral water.  The former is local water poured into plastic bottles so it can be refrigerated.  Mineral water is purified water that comes from a factory in a bottle.  Getting the right type of water is close to a life and death matter, so I insist on having the water opened in front of me.  What was unique about this situation was that the restaurant had only one bottle of what was being passed off as mineral water—The the bottle I had refused.  I’d never been in a restaurant that didn’t have mineral water, but the Assam restaurants always seem to be out of something: Soft drinks, other menu items, and, in this case, mineral water.

Milli before her surgery

When we returned to the hospital, the anesthesiologist was indeed out of surgery and found Milli to be surgery-ready.  Her weight and temperature were taken; she passed a hearing test, gave a blood sample, and we were told at 3 PM that Milli would be operated on the next day and would be admitted at 5 PM.  We returned to our apartment complex.  What were we going to do at the hospital for 2 hours? 

Pre-op Ward

We were to leave for the hospital at 4:45, and Baba said that everyone was ready to go, but Baba always says the family is ready to go, but they never are.  Just as I thought we were leaving, Haman had to have his diaper changed.  We got back to the hospital around 5:20, just as the 30 or so people to be admitted for surgery the next day were walking down the steps on their way to the pre-op ward.  Milli joined her colleagues; Baba, Krishna, and I went back to the same restaurant, that still had no mineral water, for “take away” that we brought back to the hospital where the family ate dinner.  

Settling in the hospital

Ramkuiyan, as did the other mothers/women, stayed the night, while Baba, Krishna, and I, as did most of the other men, went home or somewhere else.  When Ramkuiyan had expressed earlier in the day that she was afraid to stay alone at the hospital, I suggested to Baba that we could stay with her and Milli.  He said, “Don’t they put you to sleep when they do surgery?”  I responded in the affirmative.  He reasoned then that Milli wouldn’t know whether we were there or not, so if Ramkuiyan didn’t want to stay at the hospital, she could come back with us, but he was not spending the night at the hospital.  I guess it’s the difference between mothers and fathers.  And, indeed, when Ramkuiyan saw that she was in a ward with other mothers and children, she seemed quite comfortable.  I think she thought that she would be in a room by herself with Milli, and this would indeed be a unique and unnerving experience for her.

Waiting

It’d been very interesting to see Ramkuiyan on this trip.  She’s never been anywhere before except her village, where she lived before she was married at 16, and Baba’s village, Khajuraho, where she’s spent the last 11 years.  She seldom leaves the house except to go into the forest to gather firewood or to their caste’s well for water.  I had a long talk with Baba about this trip, explaining that Ramakuiyan could not cover her face with the veil of her saree as she does in Khajuraho.  He told me he explained this to her and she’s seems quite comfortable being “uncovered” because the men she sees she doesn’t know.  When we were at Bablu’s house for dinner in Delhi, she covered because Bablu is 6 months older than Baba, so the wife of the younger man, in this case, Baba, is expected to show respect by covering when in the presence of the older male relative.  It’s literally another world.

At the Playground

Not surprisingly, Ramkuiyan is child-like in many ways (what chance did she have for a childhood of her own?). She’s very interested in the games I play with the children and she very much enjoys the cartoons I brought.  We’ve been to a couple of parks and she loves the swings and see-saws.  It’s been nice to see her literally and figuratively come out of the shadows of that dark room Milli’s family calls home. What makes no sense to her is how much we pay for food at the restaurants (5 of us eat for between $15 and $20).  She explains that for what we pay she could buy tons of vegetables and make a lot of chapatis.  True, but they don’t do cleft palate surgery in Khajuraho.