Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006

Today is one of the most fulfilling days of my life.

I am awoken by the familiar chiming of bells at 7:30am and the solemn chanting at the temple next to my room.

I am taken to Sandipani Muni School before classes start, and again the children greet me. As I am standing at the school entrance, I hear a rumbling behind me and turn around to see a giant wagon bringing children to SMS. It is pulled by bulls. Dust swirls around as the wagon pulls up. The kids peer at me through the wagon’s wooden slats.

After the morning ceremony, I follow the wagon to the secondary school campus, where I spend the morning photographing kindergartners. They are little bundles of energy. They whirl around on their plastic bikes, yelling at me to take their pictures and nearly crashing into me while I crouch in a corner.

One little girl clings to me and begs me to take a photo of her alone. Unfortunately, whenever my camera is out of the bag, about a dozen children appear, and the girl is hard to photograph alone. But at one point out of the corner of my eye I see her standing against one of the painted green walls, just looking at me. This is my chance. Click. Perfect.

It is time for their kitchri at roughly 11am. I crouch and photograph them while they eat the dish of rice, vegetables and lentils. They smear it all over their faces and the ground. Overseers occasionally chide them for making a mess.

I am hoping for a break. The children have worn me out, and it is only noon. But Nirguna approaches me and asks if I would like to ride with her on her scooter. Where, I don’t know. But I say yes.

The day is just beginning.

****

Nirguna is taking me to see Nepalese widows.

We speed through dust and mud and narrowly avoid pedestrians and trucks. We pass beggars and sewage and trash. But the place we reach is a haven, a virtual oasis in Vrindavan.

The Nepalese women counter every stereotype I had about widows in India. They are relatively well-off and content. Their homes, arranged cozily in this sheltered area, have lighting and plumbing. Some are basking in the sunlight as we arrive. Others are indoors but happy to come out and have their photos taken.

There are two younger men with the widows this afternoon. Nirguna explains that these women are thought to be very special, and that these men have come from Nepal to study them.

One of the men takes me around to the homes of all the women in the little community. Many of them are smiling, all of them gesture and speak in thanks after I have taken their photographs.

There is one woman there who has lost all of her teeth and whose skin is golden and incredibly wrinkled, almost like a crumpled grocery bag. You can see all of her years in her face. She sits on her cot and gazes intently at me. Another woman sits against a golden wall for her photo. The wall and her skin match perfectly, and there is this incredible sense of warmth.

Nirguna and I leave to go back to the school for lunch. She is glad she has had the chance to show me that not all widows are miserable.

*****

We eat kitchri back at the school; this time I use a spoon, upon Nirguna’s insistence.

I rest inside of the general manager’s office for a while, and soon my next guide arrives to take me to see more widows.

These women are not like the Nepalese women. They are the widows I have heard about and seen portrayed so many times. They are struggling to survive, and they pray for comfort.

Our first stop is a family home. The widows here are not badly off, but the atmosphere is not as warm as that in the Nepalese widow community. A young Indian woman who lives here cares for the widows in a nearby ashram. She provides them food and a place to live. The widows here have a hard time moving and pass the days talking amongst themselves. They are a community here, a family. Because their own families have died, this is their new family.

Many of them shy away from the camera and walk briskly away when I approach. But others gladly have their photos taken. One lady smiles and gestures for a photo, her snow white sari glistening in the sun.

I spot another widow sweeping dirt in a corner of the ashram. She is permanently hunched over, probably from a combination of arthritis and work.

Another woman has a nervous twitch in her eye and mouth, and I have difficulty photographing her.

One of the last women I meet is a widow who chants the entire night. It brings her comfort, my guide and the young Indian woman say. I have a thought. I pull out an audio recorder, which I have almost forgotten about. My guide asks the lady to chant for a recording. I play it back, and her voice is crisp and clear. Wild parrots chirp in the background. It is beautiful.

****

Next we venture off into one of the most depressing areas I have ever seen.

There are no paved roads here. The narrow sewage drains that I have seen around town all seem to culminate here in one large sewage canal. Politicians keep promising to clean it out, my guide says, but no one ever does.

Mosquitoes are thick and land readily, so we have to keep moving. There are piles of burning cow dung and trash. Rocks and puddles of water make it difficult to walk.

We approach the home of a very special widow. My guide knocks on and opens her door, and we soon figure out she is on the roof of her home, kneading cow dung. We ascend.

This elderly widow has leprosy. It has eaten away at her hands and feet. Her fingers and toes are disfigured and stubby, but it doesn’t stop her from doing chores.

Her story is a heart-wrenching one. Both her husband and son have died. Her daughter-in-law left her with the couple’s two children and ran away with another man. The widow has had to raise her two grandchildren on her own. To support them, she begs in the streets. She deals with the leprosy and works because she has to, for their sake. Both of the children attend SMS.

I record her story on my audio recorder. But then she starts to cry, and I turn it off. Her granddaughter has developed a medical problem, and she can’t afford the treatment. My guide, grasping her shoulder, tells her the school will pay the medical bill.

I try to comfort the woman, and then my guide and I leave. It is the hard lot of a journalist, seeing these things and photographing or writing about them without actually doing anything. My hope is that showing these images to enough people will spur some action, some donations.

I want to come back here and do a longer piece on this woman and her grandchildren. She and her family have touched me.

****

One of the final widows we visit today is a one-eyed elderly woman. She is lying on her cot and smoking hookah when we arrive, but she quickly sits upright and is ready to be photographed.

She tells the story of how she lost her left eye. Thieves were trying to steal from her one night many years ago. She tried to stop them, but one jammed the butt of his gun into her eye.

She permanently lost her eye when electric wire somehow burned it.

Yet this lady is spunky as can be and eagerly tells her story. She grabs my arm.

****

It is getting dark now, a dangerous time to be out on the streets of Vrindavan. My guide asks me if I have dinner plans, and when I say no, invites me to his house.

We sit and talk while his mother is preparing dinner. About life, about what motivates us, about why we’re in Vrindavan.

We go up to the roof of his home, from which you can see a large part of Vrindavan. It glows in the twilight. It’s funny how a town where poverty is so rampant, where life is so backward, can be so beautiful and satisfying. There is something about the simplicity of it all. How a child is so happy just to get his photo taken, how good a simple meal of bread and stew tastes. How people are content to rise with the sun and go to bed with the darkness. How they can somehow be content with what little they have. How they live only from day to day, to the pulse of village life.

****

My guide’s mother makes a spicy stew, which we eat with bread, jam and pickles. Then he asks me if I like sweets. Of course I do.

We head to a trusted market. I sit on the back of his scooter as we zip through the dark streets. We eat a dessert made of crushed carrots, cashews, and butter. It is unlike anything I have ever tasted.

We stop briefly at the most famous temple in Vrindavan. I am in awe at how many people crowd inside to see the deities.

We leave, and he takes me back to the Food For Life ashram. We zip along the roads in the dark guided by the sole light on the front of his scooter. The cold wind rips through my hair.

And, for once in a very long time, I feel truly at peace.