One year ago I was covered in brightly colored powder. My nail beds and feet were pink for a week after our Holi celebration at Shani Bhavan. Eventually the color washed away and the last of the dye rubbed off during a cold bucket shower.
When I initially decided to keep a blog of my time in India writing a last entry seemed daunting. A final entry seemed to suggest a neat little bow atop my experience. Yet the time I spent in India is not meant to be a story I tell for attention. And I do not want praise. I do want the young men and women of Shanti Bhavan and their stories to grow beyond the entries of this blog.
It's been one year since I flew to India to volunteer with ASTEP. One year has passed since I took the two hour off-road taxi ride to Shanti Bhavan campus for the first time--- sans luggage and wide-eyed. Some of the students I taught have completed their first year of college. Some will be high school graduates this spring. Some are navigating new territory of middle school or adjusting to the increased work load demanded by high school ICSE and ISC exams. Still others are no longer at Shanti Bhavan. I wonder about these students as much as I think about the futures of those still studying late into the night and clandestinely stealing coconuts from the school's fruit trees.
I can see the boys' red soil-stained socks as they walk back from the sports field. The students' bright white smiles against dusky light. Spicy veg dishes are thankfully cooled by curd and basmati. I can feel the cold metal of the plates and chai cups in the outdoor cafeteria. The warmth of a southern Indian evening whispers, then stays, on my shoulders. Palm trees and tropical flowers the size of my face. Jasmine. Plumeria. Vijay wise-cracking, now in seventh grade. Prem relentlessly answering each biology question correctly. Bhavani reading the latest novel she found at the school's library. Maheshwari elegantly walking, arms full of books, along the main path.
Look at any international news website and you will find two tales of India. Within these two tales are individual stories. Granted enough luck to be a part of some of these stories I now understand the heavy choice SB students make. Shanti Bhavan, a residential school, is not only separated by distance from its students' families, but remains distinct in station. SB students will go to college. Maheshwari will go to medical school. She will be the first from her village to do so, and probably the first to fully conceive of the chance. The choice to separate oneself brings honor but also carries division. There is a bumpy rural road, hours and hours long, between the young girl from a southern Indian village and the physician she will become. What will she feel when she goes back to the village? Will the Shanti Bhavan Children's Project work? As one reviewer of the similar Promise Academy Charter Schools project in Harlem, led by Geoffrey Canada, put it: "Poverty is a vortex."
The weight of Maheswari's choice seems more grave than any choice I've ever made. I know my job as a teacher for those blessed three months was to reaffirm and foster that choice. As Dr. George puts it: Poverty is a state of suffering without hope. Everyday the students at Shanti Bhavan mark the world with hope. They literally dye the soil with color and life.
This final entry will not complete my experience at Shanti Bhavan, nor will India's dye ever wash off.
When I initially decided to keep a blog of my time in India writing a last entry seemed daunting. A final entry seemed to suggest a neat little bow atop my experience. Yet the time I spent in India is not meant to be a story I tell for attention. And I do not want praise. I do want the young men and women of Shanti Bhavan and their stories to grow beyond the entries of this blog.
It's been one year since I flew to India to volunteer with ASTEP. One year has passed since I took the two hour off-road taxi ride to Shanti Bhavan campus for the first time--- sans luggage and wide-eyed. Some of the students I taught have completed their first year of college. Some will be high school graduates this spring. Some are navigating new territory of middle school or adjusting to the increased work load demanded by high school ICSE and ISC exams. Still others are no longer at Shanti Bhavan. I wonder about these students as much as I think about the futures of those still studying late into the night and clandestinely stealing coconuts from the school's fruit trees.
I can see the boys' red soil-stained socks as they walk back from the sports field. The students' bright white smiles against dusky light. Spicy veg dishes are thankfully cooled by curd and basmati. I can feel the cold metal of the plates and chai cups in the outdoor cafeteria. The warmth of a southern Indian evening whispers, then stays, on my shoulders. Palm trees and tropical flowers the size of my face. Jasmine. Plumeria. Vijay wise-cracking, now in seventh grade. Prem relentlessly answering each biology question correctly. Bhavani reading the latest novel she found at the school's library. Maheshwari elegantly walking, arms full of books, along the main path.
Look at any international news website and you will find two tales of India. Within these two tales are individual stories. Granted enough luck to be a part of some of these stories I now understand the heavy choice SB students make. Shanti Bhavan, a residential school, is not only separated by distance from its students' families, but remains distinct in station. SB students will go to college. Maheshwari will go to medical school. She will be the first from her village to do so, and probably the first to fully conceive of the chance. The choice to separate oneself brings honor but also carries division. There is a bumpy rural road, hours and hours long, between the young girl from a southern Indian village and the physician she will become. What will she feel when she goes back to the village? Will the Shanti Bhavan Children's Project work? As one reviewer of the similar Promise Academy Charter Schools project in Harlem, led by Geoffrey Canada, put it: "Poverty is a vortex."
The weight of Maheswari's choice seems more grave than any choice I've ever made. I know my job as a teacher for those blessed three months was to reaffirm and foster that choice. As Dr. George puts it: Poverty is a state of suffering without hope. Everyday the students at Shanti Bhavan mark the world with hope. They literally dye the soil with color and life.
This final entry will not complete my experience at Shanti Bhavan, nor will India's dye ever wash off.
