in summary...

My confused body is alert at five this morning, so I can see the first sunlight falling into the fenced yards of my hometown. There's a crust of snow on my backyard pool. I'm still jet-lagging and hacking Calcutta smog out of my throat, but my family's home is nothing if not a place of rest, a good one.

There are endless stories I've neglected to tell here. There are endless ways to tell this year as a story. And the writer I want to become knows not only how to tell his own stories, but those of others too. But I just looked on the blog of a friend I made in Calcutta, and he's written more in his three weeks there than I have since I left last July. He's got links to the pages of other volunteers, and again I'm struck by the staggering abundance of words floating around the web, and the world. And I'm content to watch them float along and trust mine to come out in good time.

I've grown pretty fond of the blog medium and its lightly-edited position halfway between conversational chattering and careful composition. But I like conversations and careful writing even more, and the season's changing. Let me point once more to Hannah's blog. She's recently written about Calcutta, Bodhgaya, and Delhi, and she tells the stories well. Read the linked poem about the Jain Bird Hospital and her T.S. Eliot passage.

Thanks for listening.

dharma bums

I've found myself with a more of a routine than I expected at Prem Dan. Turns out there are a lot of residents who won't let me leave without giving them back or leg massage. Most of them have such flabby or nonexistent muscles that they can't possibly be tight, but it's fun to be in demand.

Despite the daily stresses of living Calcutta, I'm glad we came. The work is rewarding, if simply because enthusiasm and optimism are welcomed and returned at Prem Dan. I hesitate to be another spiritual tourist ripping off a rich Indian religious term for my own use, but the word dharma keeps coming to mind. In the Baghavat Gita, Krishna introduces the doubt-ridden warrior Arjun to the idea of simple obedience to one's status/place/caste/season in life. While I don't know if fighting a war is ever one's God-given duty in life, I've been feeling that working with the residents here is the most obedient way I can end my time in India. It's an alignment of what I'm doing and what I feel called to do that doesn't come often, though I remember finding it during summers at Camp Roger.

Hannah and I leave Calcutta this Thursday. We will spend three days in Bodhgaya, meditating or collecting leaves under the tree where the Buddha was enlightened, admiring temples from all the Buddhist countries in the world, doing it all with monks and hippies and pilgrims from all over the place. Then an overnight train to Delhi and a March 8 flight to Chicago.

groovy mozzarella

Won, a Korean seminarian who I've been volunteering with, chose Pizza Hut for his farewell dinner last night. So half dozen of us made our way downtown to the joint, which is not nearly as depressing as the American version. Downright hip, actually: the waiters do choreographed dances to Bollywood pop hits while your chicken tikka pizza cooks. Tasty too, and I've chosen to begin a fast from pizza to prepare myself for returning to Chicago.

Volunteering at Prem Dan continues to go well. I don't have any spiritual insights to post here, and I learned pretty quickly any tidbits of revelation I can discover from a few days here are probably pretty easy to come by anyway. If I can learn to focus a little more on giving to the residents, and a little less on what I'm "learning from the experience," that's no small gain for me.

Hannah's latest blog post has some good description of Calcutta life. The link is on the right.

Anarchy Hotel

Moved into our fourth Calcutta hotel room today, and are optimistic about getting our first good night's sleep in too many days. Last week we found the Paragon Hotel, with sunny and cheap rooftop rooms. As a patriotic expat American, I wasn't sure about the large sickle and hammer signs outside, promoting Bengal's active Communist party, and inside I wasn't sure about all the posted rules: no outside visitors, no washing laundry in the shower, no cooking. But each night it was clear that anarchy was the reigning ideology, and the rules, especially the ones about visitors, drugs, and noisy parties, weren't enforced.

Having the hub of the city's backpackers' party scene on the rooftop just outside our door wouldn't be such a bad thing if we were just passing through, but after almost two months of traveling, Hannah and I both hoped to live more quietly and prayerfully while working here. We're still working on that. Most mornings we drag ourselves across town to 6 a.m. mass with the Sisters of Charity at the Mother House. It's not a walk I look forward to, but it is the only time that streets here aren't packed, and it's better to pass through the meat bazaar before things really get choppin'. After mass we share breakfast with thirty or forty other volunteers and walk to the place where we work.

Prem Dan, or Gift of Love, is a walled compound in the slums run by the Missionaries of Charity. Inside are Sisters, orderlies, volunteers in the mornings, a hundred men and women with mental and physical disabilities, palm trees and a garden. We wash dishes and laundry and bodies, make beds and massage legs. Not too many of the patients are verbally active, even fewer in English, but we find ways to interact.

For the last few nights Hannah's headphones and Over the Rhine CD have helped me regain a little serenity in this noisy city. Same goes for Thursday afternoon ultimate frisbee with other volunteers, and retreats to air-conditioned Starbucksian coffee shops. The cliche is that life is played out on the streets here, and I'm not inclined to argue with it.

fight or flight

Hannah and I have decided to leave Woodstock. After thinking about it a lot over the winter break and trying to find reason to be hopeful about our volunteer situations, it became clear upon return to the school that not enough was going to change. Very disappointing that we won't see our students return next week, but we're leaving for the most part on good terms with the school. It's hard to find anything thoughtful to write about our decision, because I'm pretty beat from wrestling with it all week.

In a month or two Hannah will know more about her grad school options for the fall, which will make it easier to figure out where we'll be living for the summer and next year. While we wait on that, we're heading to Calcutta for a month, to volunteer at one of the missions run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Hannah spent time there three years ago, and they're used to accommodating short-term volunteers. So, the idea is to do the simple work they give us, live modestly, and learn what we can from the place and it's people. Then we'll fly home in mid-March, before (I hope) the heat in Calcutta gets insane.

For now we're trying to stay present in the place we are, which is a pretty good time in life, despite some stuff at the school. Last night we huddled near the wood stove with our friends at their home atop Mount Hermon, then danced up our own warmth in their empty dining room, and for a few moments I managed to slip my worrying, planning, scenario-building mind and let my body celebrate the present moment. The kind of thing I wanted to do in the mountains, I just didn't expect I'd do it to the tune of Goan trance music.

I'll no longer have my Woodstock email address, so please keep in touch via jhiskes@gmail.com

the last leg

I'm not really sure things ended up this way. I'd like to say I don't have any excuses, but I do. I'll try to explain.

It might have been simply that Nizam's Kebabs kebabs weren't as filling as I'd hoped. Or that my wool shawl, which I was once so endered to, was no match for a January night rolling through the Rajasthani desert in a drafty train. It could have been the 5 a.m. stop in Jaipur, or any one of the fifteen extra passengers who found their way into our carriage built for eight. Maybe the Punjabi trying out all the ring options on his cell phone, or the twelve-year-old with the bony shoulders. We were weary, that's all.

So, stumbling through Delhi last Thursday, killing time between trains, the Connaught Place McDonald's caught us off guard, repulsed us, tempted us, and ultimately overpowered us. Inside, we munched fries and wondered if the New Jersey flavor engineers who designed their taste really use beef derivatives. I'm continually amazed at how polluted I feel after certain fast food, even though it's so damn tempting when I'm hungry. The soft serve ice cream did a little to cleanse my mouth, but it was a good thing we landed in Rishikesh that night--a holy and therefore vegetarian town where we could eat fresh food for a few days to wrap up the trip.

Today Mussoorie greeted us with scattered, dripping remains of last week's snowstorms, then with a rain and hail shower. But I managed to tape together my phone line that monkeys had torn apart, so I could call home. And a Nepali selling fire wood stopped shortly before I would have resorted to breaking up my furniture to feed into my wood stove. Shanti.

Mumbai and Jaisalmer

Last Friday Hannah and I rolled into Mumbai’s Victoria Terminus at 5:30 in the morning and joined the crowds hunched by their luggage, drinking chai and waiting for the city to wake up. Pale gray light filtered through the overhead windows and we noticed that the worn Victorian ornaments, like those on plenty of Mumbai’s old buildings, seem to be straining under the needs of one of the world’s largest cities.

Outside the wide intersections and commuter hustle reminded me of Chicago, and it was good to be in a city again. We stayed downtown, ate non-Indian meals like bacon and eggs and imagined what it would be like to live in the city, join the hustle, sample the night life, and figure out the bus system. We found a cheap, sketchy, and friendly place to stay only a block south of the Taj hotel, which might be my favorite building in India. (I haven’t seen the real Taj yet, but India’s premier luxury hotel chain shares the name.)

There was an arts festival going on that weekend, including a Saturday night outdoor jazz concert that we couldn’t afford. So we stood outside the fence, right next to the Arabian Sea, and had a merry time peeking in on Ravi Coltrane and friends, much like we did with Santana in Frankurt last July.

Now we’re in Jaisalmer, a small town in western Rajasthan, slowing down our traveling pace and preparing to return to Woodstock. Everything in Jaisalmer is made of sandstone and glows in warm sun light, including the 800 year old fort that dominates the place. It’s an historic landmark, for sure, but it’s also a living home to dozens of hotels, restaurants, souvenier-wallahs, a few Jain temples and a few hundred residents. The kind of thing that would be encased in glass in America, and here you can rent a room and ride a rickshaw through it.

We came here to meet a couple of Woodstock friends who had already booked a camel safari in the desert, so we spent two and a half bouncy, chaffing days with them on camels, which aren’t my favorite transportation. I liked the nights camping better, catching up with Angie and Kaitlin on travel stories and trying to find the right combination of chai, shawls, butter chicken and whisky to stay warm around the camfire.

I’ve been shoveling all kinds of sensory input into my pack for six weeks now, and the pack’s about full, and my guess is that I’ll be unpacking for quite some time, so I’ll save the rest of the stories for another day.

Cochi, Kerala, this year and last

Hannah and I spent last night with a cover band drummer turned yoga enthusiast from England and some ametuer film makers from Sweden. The last couple of days we had been thinking it was time to make friends with some fellow travelers, so we were glad to meet these folks. We had prawns and rice for dinner, and beer in ceramic tea pots, because the restaurant didn't have a license to sell it. They told us about trekking in Nepal, getting luggage stolen on the train. We told them about the Oregon Extension, and they were impressed. They were down to earth and friendly and it was one of those rare exchanges where we could talk about things of substance shortly after meeting each other. At midnight we watched fireworks across the harbor in Ernakaulim with more drinks, then took a rickshaw back to our guest house.

This morning I lay in bed under the ceiling fan, waiting for Hannah to wake up, listening to music on my headphones. At eight in the morning it is already hot and muggy. Last June, one of the last times I sat on the porch on Hope Street with my friends, Robin tried to convince us all that we'd reunite there for New Year's Eve. I was sure I wouldn't be there, but I tried to imagine it and knew already then how much I'd long to be there this year. I am listening to Wilco, and the joyful
gospel piano in Theologians pulls me out of bed and into the shower. I began writing a short story yesterday, and I am going to keep writing it.

postcard

Hannah and I are ok. More than ok, actually, but I wanted to post a word that we weren't put in danger by the tidal waves. At the time we were still in Goa, but by the time we found out about them we were on our way to Northern Kerala, where we are now. We're trying find out what kind of shape the city of Cochi is in, before deciding if we'll continue down there.

We spent Christmas weekend in the town of Arambol at the hospitable Ave Maria Guest House. We shared the flat, expansive beach with a few hundred Europeans and Israelis with disturbingly thourough tans. We sipped screwdrivers made with fresh orange juice and ate prawn curry with our feet in the sand, and it was all very good. That's all for now. Pray for the tsunami victims.

wanderlust continues

For all of you playing along at home, here's the rough itinerary for my winter break:

December 12-18: Hannah goes with a friend to Varanasi, reputedly the dirtiest, crowdedest, holiest Hindu city in India, and the site of Shusaku Endo's fabulous novel Deep River. I'm determined to get there before I leave this country. But meanwhile, I'm going backpacking with three other friends. Originally we planned to go into the mountains, but then we learned that on this side of the globe winter happens in December, so we're staying at a slightly lower altitude and trekking near Corbett Tiger Reserve. I think I heard that it's not eating season for tigers these days.

December 19: Hannah and I rendezvous at the Mendies' house in Delhi and embark on a forty-hour train ride to Goa. I'm either going to write a novel or read several of them on that trip.

December 20-January 12: We'll split this time between lounging on the beaches in Goa and lounging on the beaches and backwaters in Kerala. Goa is a tiny southern state with lots of hippies, European package vacationers, seafood, and Portugese colonial influence. We'll likely avoid most of the rave scene and stay in Benaulim, a relaxed town where lots of Woodstock staff gather. Kerala is even further south, with backwaters. I haven't yet figured out what backwaters are, but I want to ride a boat down them.

January 13-17: Another non-AC (cheap class) train takes us to Bombay/Mumbai where we'll meet Doug and Theresa and cheer them on in the marathon they're running. Also, Hannah may demand that we try to volunteer as extras on a Bollywood movie set.

January 18-30: Until recently, we had planned to fly to Kathmandu to extend our visas and visit the orphanage that Hannah volunteered at a few years ago. For a variety of reasons we decided to save that money, which means we'll probably have to leave Woodstock a month before school year ends. So this week and a half is still wide open. There's no lack of good options, and it's a great open space to have.

I'll have periodic email access over the break, so write and write with gusto, friends.

a toast to december

Today was a cold, gray, rainy day, but a good cold, gray, rainy day. The seamless expanse of clouds reminded me of the landscape of my freshman year at Loyola, and the long lonely walks around the north side I'd sometimes take on gray afternoons. It reminded me of sipping coffee on the porch of Pamoja House, watching leaves and trash gather on our lawn. Today the weather felt lonelier than I was, and there was really nothing to do except light a fire in my wood stove, play some early Wilco (back when they were still alternative country) and read on my sofa until Hannah came over.

Today was a good day for appreciating wool--the hat, sweater, and blanket I've aquired here are all remarkably cheap and light for the warmth they provide. Something's still right in the world when a Garwali woman can weave better hiking clothing using natural fibers than outdoor gear companies can produce with the best of modern technology. Mom and Dad, please note that I'm still very thankful for the fancy-pants socks you mailed to me.

Today America feels incredibly distant, as much as it has since I left. I think it's the holidays--it takes a lot of faith to believe in the barrage of baked goods, obnoxious radio ads, pine wreaths, donation solicitations--it's just weird to think of all that stuff swirling around, knowing it'll come and go without me. I guess I won't miss the shopping season, but the gatherings with family and friends will be another thing, and I'll be thinking about them.

May they be joyful affairs, all of them. May some of you send me an email, chronicling the events. May there be warmth aplenty, laughter in excess, drinks and baked goods in moderation.

power, trips

In her recent collection of essays War Talk, Arundhati Roy writes, "The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as nonfiction, is the relation between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in...There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing. So when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a storyteller who wants to share her way of seeing."

While I adore the way Roy wrapped flesh around this power question in her brilliant novel The God of Small Things, these essays struck me as so crippled by anger that they rarely got past a litany of grievances against American foreign policy, right-wing Indian Hindu nationalism and the violence it encouraged, and the aggression of transnational corporations. I sympathize with her because the power question has been on my mind too, when I read news from home and when I watched a confused kid I've come to know get expelled for getting caught with drugs here at school. Still, because of my faith in the heart-changing power of fiction I'm deeply disappointed to hear her write, as David James Duncan has, that she's unable to follow up her masterpiece novel with another one because she feels compelled to protest in a world that becomes increasingly unaccepting of art, creativity, and real democracy.

All this to say I continue to wonder whether its words or teenage boys that I should be dealing with, trying to get comfortable with. I haven't found much to write about at school lately, and I didn't want to reduce this page to monthly reports on my excursions and weekend trips.

But here's a weekend trip I want to report about. Last Saturday three fellas and I rode motorcycles down to Haridwar, got a hotel room overlooking the main bathing ghat on the Ganga, and let our foreign tourist instincts run rampant, gawking and snapping photos at every saffron-robed holy man in sight. Maybe not every one--there were hundreds. At dinner we sat next to an Austrian couple, shared stories, and they showed us a once-in-a-lifetime home video of wild tigers they'd just seen in a nearby wildlife park. I can't show you that, but instead here's a page with some of Doug's pics from our trip.

Winter break is tantalizingly near, and I comforted myself during the freak hail storm this afternoon with thoughts of the beaches in Goa and Kerala on which Hannah and I will soon be lounging.

Harkidun

It's amazing how far eight hours in a rickety bus on narrow, winding mountain roads gets you--it doesn't get you anywhere at all, looking at a map. But from Mussoorie it got me and a pack of middle-aged Woodstock alumni to the village of Sankri deep in the Garwal Himalaya, where we joined the trail to the 12,000-foot high Harkidun valley.

We weren't wasn't roughing it by most backpacking standards. Each night we slept in austere but sheltered concrete rest houses, two school cooks prepared our noodles, rice, and tea, and donkeys carried our food and most of the alums' backpacks. I wasn't sure about this--a lot of my favorite trekking memories with friends center on things like scavenging for campsites before running out of daylight and warmth, or cooking soup on an outdoor stove by flashlight. The alumns weren't so keen on the Thoreauvian simplicity that I love about backpacking, but we got along anyway.

I wasn't really the leader, Nathan and Kathy were. They're a couple from Vancouver who now live on the hillside, send their kids to Woodstock, and run a private trekking business for Westerners wanting a taste of Indian mountains. So they know the Harkidun region well and have great rapport with the villages we passed--villages that may be more stunning than any snowpeak in the world.

Untouched by road or electricity, spared by geography from most of the outside world, these places were almost entirely self-sufficient. The industrial revolution hasn't gotten there yet. Villagers live in three and a half-story houses made of stone and large wooden beams: cattle on the bottom, then goats and sheep, then the hearth and the people, and a waterproof attic for firewood. Like plenty of Indians, the men sit by the fires drinking chai and smoking bidis, but here they also knit while the women tend the fields, hauling in loads of grain double the size and weight of my pack. They practice an ancient, animistic Hinduism and tattoo their chests. Nathan got us invited into a few homes and answered some of our questions while we sat around the hearth, protected from the wind by Garwali carpentry and hospitality.

On the trail locals sped past us as we turned our heads back and forth from mountain peak to old-growth cedar, from snaking river to steaming donkey dung. I had lots of good empty time to daydream about the future, and had conversations with American doctors and social workers, a UK computer programmer, a Candadian park ranger. I'm still terrible at articulating to strangers what I want out of a career.

On the drive home, Nathan had the bus driver stop and told us that we could get out and ride on the roof if we wanted to. For the next hour I held onto the luggage rack, let my bottom go numb from its rumbling floor, and rode under a bright sky through cool forests, above and down into valleys full of green terraced fields and kids playing makeshift cricket. It was one of those moments. It was great.

It was one of those moments in which I found myself asking, is this what it's all about? Is it all about the wind, the green fields, the thrilling brakes when an oncoming truck meets us on a blind curve? Or is it all about slogging it out back at school, bandaging a the hand of a kid who's been punching windows after a fight with his girlfriend, arguing with kids why try to cook noodles in the dark after their bedtime? Is it about telling stories with friends around a campfire in south Texas, or about marching and writing in the hope that our country elects decent leaders? Not the kinds of questions I'm expecting answers to, but the kind I'm trying to keep in my pocket, to accept as companions. I'm try to not leave them behind in the mountains too, though we seem to find quality time there.

Activity Week Postcard

Well I'm back and mostly thawed out after a week of hiking in gloriously frigid Himalayan valleys. My students are back too: tenth graders from a week of mandatory service digging irrigation ditches and planting trees in local villages; eleventh and twelfth graders from such adventures as safaris in India's far east jungles, playing cricket in Delhi, and meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. Now I'm prodding them to clean up their rooms and together we're bracing ourselves for the onslaught of hundreds of alumni who will be visiting for Woodstock's 150th anniversary weekend.

Soon I'll write more about my hike, my fellow hikers, and the pre-industrial revolution Garwali villages we passed through. Next week, I hope.

Delhi fragments

I’ve been trying to write an entry about the weekend Hannah and I spent in Delhi before I head north for a week of backpacking tomorrow morning. Alas, it doesn’t seem to want to come out. Luckily, Hannah’s told some stories with more flair than I’m finding right now, and you can read them here.

After spending a good deal of money there, I’m still trying to figure out if exploring a culture will always be reduced to a lot of consumerism. We also did a lot of walking and sitting and watching, and I’d rather get really good at those things than at haggling with auto-rickshaw drivers and cheap clothes vendors.

David, Jessica, and their household were wonderful, gracious hosts. One night they treated us to a movie at a fancy cinema and a good ole’ greasy American dinner at Ruby Tuesday. I should add that the crookedly-hung Americana kitsch on the bright walls, the blaring hip hop music, and the deep-fried meats at the chain restaurant constituted the most chaotic and overwhelming scene my senses have encountered in India. It blows my mind that a 14-year-old in Traverse City, Michigan could try out for her high school cheerleading squad, and end up with her photo framed behind a plate of mozzarella sticks in Delhi.

“Bride and Prejudice” was certainly cheesy, as Hannah said, but it was also strangely joyful, leaving me feeling great about the silliness of Indian and American cultures alike. I think it comes out in the U.S. in December, and I recommend it.

On the train back to Dehra Dun I took a break from the insane air-conditioning to stand by the open door between the cars. A young Indian man was standing there, with a matching Adidas track suit and backpack. We began talking, and he told me he was returning to see his family in Haridwar, after working for Ebay in Santa Clara the past two years. I’m not sure why, but he brought to mind the sunny-day California stories in William Saroyan’s fine novel The Human Comedy. It made me think of the opening scene of the book, in which the little boy Ulysses waves at a passing train, and the only person to wave back is a man on the caboose who shouts, “Going home, boy! Going back to where I belong!” It’s a good story.

One more thing: my dad just returned from a fishing trip with his brothers in Cape Cod, which they do every few years. Sounds like they kept some good traditions alive, but broke their most consistent one by catching fish this year. Well done.

Small Good Things

1. I think I get to vote next month. After several hours scanning poorly-designed government web pages, three heartfelt emails to the Grand Rapids City Clerk’s office, and a visit to the tiny, cheap-wood-paneled office of a lawyer in downtown Mussoorie, I think I maneuvered past an obscure Michigan law that requires that an absentee ballot request form be witnessed by a Michigan notary or someone with a fancy stamp (the lawyer).

This is good, because I’ve heard about a troubling scandal that the Kerry campaign seems to have missed completely. You can read a short story about it here.

2. This morning the dorm work schedule that I designed goes into effect. So instead of losing all weekends off, we each get every third Saturday and Sunday off, along with a weekly day off. And I’ll have my weekly day off with Hannah again. Things look promising that we can get to Delhi two weeks from now to visit Hannah’s Westmont friends David and Jessica and their baby, who’s traveled more in his seven months of life than I have in twenty two years.

3. Last night Hannah and I had dinner at Chardukan (Hindi for “four shops”), a peaceful square at the top of the hill. It began to rain after we got there, and we sat under the canopy of a small tea shop drinking good chai and eating banana pancakes and cheese toast.

4. I read Douglas Coupland’s Life After God last week. Ethan suggested that I read the ending beside a stream. So at the Ganga Nature Camp, camping with students before rafting the next morning, I read about Scout’s flight to the Pacific rainforest and his baptism into a snow-melt stream, and sure enough, the roar of water sounds like the roar of clapping hands. Coupland puts it this way:

“The water from the stream above me roars. Oh, does it roar! Like a voice that knows only one message, one truth—never-ending, like the clapping of hands and the cheers of the citizens upon the coronation of the king, the crowds of the inauguration, cheering for hope and for that one voice that will speak for them.”

Even Grander Rapids

Most recent days the monsoon sends a sheet of drizzly clouds up from the plains around mid-morning, and it hangs around until late afternoon, clearing just in time for the sun to redden the sky before it passes behind the ridge. Mornings, I’m told, are the brightest, clearest time of day; they’re just not a very alert time for a dorm parent who begins his work day at four p.m., so I haven’t been seeing as much clear sky as I could use.

Today, though, was different: I spent the morning riding down the hillside in a taxi with Hannah and our friends Audrey, and William. This weekend we’re taking some high schoolers rafting on the Ganga (Ganges is the Anglicized word). There was some doubt about the river’s safety, so the rafting company offered to take William, a rafting “expert” for free to check things out. So after two hours riding down a sunny hillside, into the green Doon valley, through a forest to Rishikesh, and after an hour of searching for a German bakery that William swore he knew he remembered,
I cupped my first handful of Gangajal.

Let me tell you about it: It wasn't clear, at all, but the water smelled clean, and probably was, since Rishikesh is the first city it reaches after tumbling out of the mountains. It had a lot of sediment in it, including glittery silver flecks that also sparkle on the sandy banks. I don't know if it purified me, but I'm still open to the possibility.

Religion fascinates me here, perhaps more than any other aspect of Indian culture, and I'm not sure why. I'm sure that Jesus has caught me for life; it's not that I'm looking for a religion to call home, but I can't wait to learn about the iconography of Hindu temples, can't keep my eyes off long-haired holy men, can't keep my ears from perking up at the sound of the Muslim call to prayer being broadcast across the hillside.

I like the idea of pilgrimages as much as anything religious here in India. My reformed education tells me that, because every inch of the world is holy and God-touched, there's no need to trek up mountains or to ancient cities--you won't find anything there that you can't find at home. I don't like that idea. There's so much appeal in trying to link spiritual movement to physical movement, maybe because sitting with books is the only way I know how to seek spiritual movement. Maybe it reminds the pilgrim that spirituality needs to happen within the incarnate world, and that's the part I like. Maybe I'm short-changing reformed doctrine, and you can correct me on that.

Anyway, back into that physical world from which I'm so prone to stray: the rafting was great fun. It was warm down there, we rafted and joked with a British guy and a South African who were in town to study yoga (Rishikesh is famous for that stuff), and our time on the water barely exceeded our time stopped for lunch--tasty rice, dal, and flat bread, compliments of the rafting company. This weekend is quarter break, and we head back with 40 kids, spending the night on the river. We'll get a couple hours in town after the trip, and I'll be looking for the German bakery again.

Last week's mountain

Because it's more fun than I thought...


temple on Nag Tibba
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

Look closely in the clouds for the snow peaks near Yamnotri
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

IMG_0416.JPG
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

I learned that the Japanese poet Ryokan wrote:

In fields
where frogs sing
I pick wild roses
float them on wine.
Have all the fun you can!

Staff Mess, Part I

Like a good pilgrim, I didn't know exactly what I was searching for. Like a successful pilgrimage, my destination revealed more than I ever hoped for. On the far end of Mussoorie lies a community of Tibetan refugees centered around two large schools in Happy Valley. (Doesn't the name make you want to visit?) Today I walked there with Hannah and Sarah, a fellow dorm parent.

Two hours after we left, just past the last major bazaar, we came to a gorgeous estate with tall pine trees, well-tended lawns, flowers I can't name, and a sign advertising the "Peach Tree Restaurant" with "World Famous Fish and Fries." We ignored the sign, followed the path, and landed squarely in the British Raj, circa 1850. There was an ancient guest house with wicker furniture and white rails on the porch. Under the guise of potential customers, we let the proprietor tour us around the house, through a massive dining hall with a massive wooden table and into a fire place room with four (four!) tiger skins. Two on the floor, one on the wall, one stuffed and growling. I'd love to spend a couple days on a getaway there, but Hannah reminded me that to do it correctly, we'd have to drink tea ceaselessly, be haunted by ghosts from our past, and write formal letters home about enlightening the natives. So we headed to Happy Valley instead.

The most common Tibetan imports to Woodstock School are easily momos, pot sticker-like snacks stuffed with shredded onions and cabbage and sometimes mutton or chicken. Vendors come to the dorms a few nights a week and their fried momos are a fine boost for getting through my evening shifts. Today we were hoping to find out what else the Tibetan menu had to offer, but when we reached the valley most of the bazaars were eerily closed and we didn't find anything except tiny tea shops, until we reached the Tibetan Homes Foundation school. There we found a cafeteria named "Staff Mess." It was full of Tibetan adults and children in school uniforms, but a man drinking Mountain Dew on the door step told me that it was open to the public. Then the moment of revelation--beef! Not obstructing traffic and munching plastic bags, but thinly sliced and fried with onions, chillies, and tomatoes--a filling bowl of it for 25 rupees, about 60 cents. I had heard it was available in certain places here, like Muslim butcher shops, but stumbling upon it at the end of a long morning's walk was almost transcendent, in a strictly un-spiritual way.

Honestly, I've been doing fine without cheeseburgers and steaks, and Indian pizza is about as good as West Michigan pizza, which isn't saying much. My palate and my stomach have both adjusted to most Indian food, though school cafeteria food is as bad here as it is anywhere. But the school cooks have mastered the ancient art of making food spicy and bland at the same time. Luckily, food in the bazaar is dirt cheap, so I dine out a few times a week. Chinese food is popular here, and I've now had tasty Chinese food in America, Honduras, and India, without really knowing what Chinese Chinese food is like.

Staff Mess, Part II

I spent five summers at Camp Roger, and I spent each one grateful for the trustworthy and reliable leaders I had there. Which makes my introduction to another kind of institutional politics at Woodstock that much more jarring. I'm a volunteer for the year, which means that I get a tiny monthly stipend, instead of a modest salary. It doesn't mean, I've discovered, that I get any extra appreciation, freedom, or time off to travel than salaried staff. I came here understanding that I'd get roughly one weekend off a month, and since the second week of school I've joined other young dorm staff in debating with our supervisors about why they shouldn't take away all of those weekends off.

I've already spent too much time complaining about these things here, but to be honest with you folks at home, I should tell you I've been strugglig with this. One on level, I'm trying to find the balance between complaining too much and letting my self get screwed by being too passive. At the same time, I'm trying to constructively address these things and get them resolved while not letting the administrative mess consume more of my attention than it deserves.

I keep reminding myself that working with boys should give me enough satisfaction to ride out these other frustrations. Each time I do, though, it sounds a little trite and I remember that it remains a difficult job to learn and relax in. I work with a hundred and one boys, and I don't have the social energy to connect with them all. It's tough to find a balance between enjoying the rapport I've found with some of them and hunting for connection with the ones who don't think they need me. I'm usually happy when I'm with them, but there's still plenty I'm unsure about.

I don't want to perceive myself as victimized. I really don't. To dwell on injustices I've received seems one of the worst ways to respond to the gifts I've received. And, honestly, I haven't been. I've given my work schedule and the inconsistencies of my supervisors too much attention, but they haven't crippled me here.

This is a pretty disjointed entry, I know. It lacks quirky Indian anecdotes, stories, and any descriptions of physical things. I've neglected to tell you about the mountain (Nag Tibba, 3000 meters) that I climbed last weekend with some students and teachers. It's just tough to know whether it's more truthful to describe mountains and temples that I've seen or to confess frustrations with mundane stuff. Now I really don't want to wrap things up too tidily with a lame English major-ey observation, but I'm trying to say things truthfully, and my uncertainty about writing on this blog mirrors how I feel about life and work at Woodstock. Here too I'm getting by, moving along, but I haven't found my best stride.

Why I Don't Like Cameras

1. Because I don't want my life to be an act of consumption, but it feels like one when people are preoccupied with acquiring pictures of their adventures and holidays so that they can have something tangible to take home and add to their collection.

2. Because photos do a poor job of preserving a moment; what they include pales compared to what they crop out. Even more, they promote the illusion of immortality--they try to "preserve" what can only really be remembered, a distinction that my mind knows better than a mechanical lens does.

3. Because being ordered to halt, huddle together, tilt your head and smile can really mess up the flow of a good time; because smiling, at times, can be an act of complete dishonesty.

4. Because photo albums don't tell stories, people do; because Hollywood erodes the value of storytelling as a local craft and responsibility from one end, and Kodak does from the other end.

And still . . . to be inconsistent is honest, and to be malleable is virtuous:


monsoon greenery
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

Mussoorie from the top of Woodstock School
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

some of my boys on Indian Independence Day
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

Hannah and I on Independence Day
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

monkey!
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

Woodstock dorms from above
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

Cows in a nearby temple yard--India at it's finest
Originally uploaded by jhiskes.

Wanderlust

Today I talked to Darryl, Jodie, Doug, and William. Darryl and Jodie spent the last few years of their lives living in Bella Coola, a town halfway up the coast between Vancouver and Alaska, in an old growth forest full of native salmon and grizzly bears. Doug lived on Guam, the tiny island near the Philippines, and he does a pretty convincing job of describing it as a tropical paradise. William spent his first eight months after college riding a motorcycle from Egypt to South Africa, then he went to Honduras to work on a water development project and tried to drive a Land Rover, towing another Land Rover, back to the U.S. to sell them. (They ended up flipped in a ditch.)

It seems like everyone here has incredible travel stories, and they make me even more eager to see every inch of India that I can this year. Every time I pick up a guide book I find a new place I'd like to visit, and looking at maps seem to pull me in every direction at once. There are snow peaks and rural villages to the north, the holy cities of Haridwar and Rishikesh to the south, and Delhi just beyond that. And that's just within weekend-trip range. For winter break I'm wondering if it's possible to see deserts and camels in Rajasthan, beaches and backwater boat trips in Kerala, the ancient bathing ghats in Varanasi, and the orphanage run by Hannah's friend's family in Kathmandu, Nepal.

I know, I'm thinking it too---relax. I'm sure there's something good and righteous about a wide-eyed, wonder-filled approach to the world, about wanting to dive head first into the depth and breadth of it. But India has the size and diversity of a continent, and I can't see it all. I've been reminding myself to relax and accept my experience for what it is, trying to resist seeing new friends as rivals whose feats I need to match. I've never been a homeless traveler, and I probably shouldn't be. For one thing, it'd be darn hard to be a tourist (I'm not sure I buy the distinction between "tourist" and "traveler") for long without finding that it has too little to do with relationships and too much to do with consumption--meals, hotels, souveniers, etc.

Secondly, and I'm still uncovering this one, I've been wondering if there's a temptation to "collect" experiences the way you might collect baseball cards or books or cds. I'm tempted, especially after hearing the stories of my co-workers, to try to build a list of hikes, journeys, cities, mountains, temples, and such, shoring up adventures against the fear that my life won't be adventurous enough. So that, twenty years from now, I can point to a map and prove that I haven't lived timidly.

I'm admitting these thoughts because I don't think they're legitimate. I don't think living with bright eyes and a sense of wonder requires touring India, or any foreign place. I'm hoping that exposing these thoughts reveals how silly they are, and makes it easier to relax with where I am. I'm still unsure if there's any value in posting them on the web.

It's probably clear that I'll be thinking and learning a lot this year about traveling and settling down, trying to figure out, to use a distinction I've heard in a sermon, whether I'm more of an explorer or farmer. I'll get back to you when I get it figured out. And when I see cool stuff along the way.

The Lord's Bike

Yesterday my friend Doug went down to Dehra Dun with something like 40,000 rupees in his pocket and came back on a new Bajaj Wind 125, a small motorbike with a Kawasaki engine. Doug came to Woodstock with me last month to teach Religion classes at the high school, specifically "worldview" classes. It's tough to come out of Calvin and not be cynical about the word worldview, but Doug's helping me out. Today he handed me the extra key to his bike and said, "It's the Lord's bike, use it while I'm at work."

I'm not sure if I'll use it, though. The roads around here still terrify me, and also, despite the daily rain, I still like the idea of walking a lot, of having exercise be an integral part of my day, not an intense, isolated workout tacked on before or after work, and of being forced to do fewer errands in a day and taking longer to do them. Anyway, here's a stab at describing the town I live in.

From my apartment, it's half an hour to the first shops. After a steep ten-minute climp to Tehri road, the winding road is uncharacteristically flat, running across the winding hillside towards town. The only obstacles are speeding motorcycles, jeeps overloaded with passengers, cows, and goats. (The cows and goats aren't speeding, just the bikes and jeeps.)

At Mullingar hill the shops begin, tiny concrete boxes with homes above them. Lots of shoe-makers, produce vendors, tea shops, sweets shops, fabric stores, electronic stores--just lots of stuff, really. Last Tuesday I planned to stop at my tailor (he won my loyalty by offering me chai the first two times I came into his shop) to see if he'd finished my traditional Indian shirt in time for Independance Day. He's well known for doing good, cheap work, and also for taking his sweet time to get it done, so I wanted to remind him that I needed it soon.

Before Hannah and I reached him, though, a pack of men came down the street, instructing all shops to close for the afternoon. Apparently a bandh was called, a state-wide cessation of business, because an activist protesting the placement of the state capital (Uttaranchal only became a state in 2000) had died from a hunger strike. No one was visibly upset, about the man's death or about the bandh, but all shopkeepers promptly closed their gates.

But we were already down there, and we'd been itching to explore the other end of town, so we kept walking. Soon we reached Picture Palace Bazaar, where things start getting touristy. From here, a couple kilometers of Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan restaurants, and lots of vacationers from Delhi, most of the men in western clothing, most of the women in saris.

Picture Palace is a former cinema, now shuttered and dilapidated. The town isn't run down, really, and it still gets lots of weekend-trippers from Delhi and the plains, but its glory days as a vacation spot were for the British Raj. Still, there's some good restaurants here, a bank, two bookstores, and Cafe Coffee Day, an Indian chain that's been the only place in town I've found that serves real, non-Nescafe coffee. Most days it takes quite a while to get anywhere down here, navigating cars, packs of men walking together, and, you'll be glad to know, the occasional cow sleeping on the road. My friend said he saw a monkey climb down a fence to steal a banana from a fruit vendor down here, and it's good to know that sometimes things happen exactly as they should.

Normally we don't get any further than this district, but with the bandh the street was less crowded, and we'd been itching to explore the rest of town, so we walked on. The mall is a 3 km-long road that connects the bizaar on our end to the one on the other end. Today the side of the road, behind the junk vendors, was a wall of clouds, and you couldn't see ten feet off the cliff, where Dehra Dun lies below. But the road is wider here, lined with large trees and garish old hotels, a "Kwality Restuarant," and a revolving restuarant. It feels like a different town, like an Indian Gatlinburg or Wisconsin Dells. Hannah and I walked to the end, decling offers for rides from rickshaw drivers--even after you refuse the nine in a row, the tenth is sure you'll want to ride his. It felt oddly empty with all the shops closed, so we turned back, returning to our "home" neighborhood, where I was amazed at how quickly a place can feel familiar.

Wai Wai High

It's Saturday at the movies here at Clifton Hostel, an eighty-year-old building I live in with 101 high school boys. Some of them are watching Troy (pirated movies are easy to come by here) in the basement with their girl friends, others are playing soccer and cricket in the halls, others are in the kitchen cooking Wai Wai noodles, the South Asian version of Ramen.

I'm in the office chatting with other boys, watching the Cubs lose on espn.com, and answering phone calls from parents in Delhi, Hyderabad, London and Nigeria. When I'm not in the office I'm wandering the halls, trying to make conversations with students, playing pool with them, and vicariously re-living the excitement of finding a date for the school dance.

A lot of those conversations have been pretty awkward and stunted, and I've been consistently reminded, when meeting new staff and students this past month, that I need a lot of time to get comfortable with new people. It's happening, but slowly, and there have been plenty of times I wish I had a class to teach or a campout to lead--something more structured or defined. 101 kids. . . wow.

But they've got stories to tell, and I'll have time to hear them. A couple new Indian guys came from Saudi Arabia where their dads work for an American oil company. Another kid is from Dharamsala, a few hours away, where the Dalai Lama and his exiled Tibetan government are based. There's a kid with a bow tie and a new punk rock t-shirt every day who's an exchange student from a boarding school in Connecticut. A lot of them are the sons of missionaries and even more are the sons of successful businessmen in Delhi.

Some of them play video games after school all day and others spend their free time studying SAT prep books or reading books by Bill Gates and George Sauros. Some are applying to Ivy League schools and others are buying pot and other drugs from local coolies, we hear. So there's a lot of motivated students, with plenty of pressure from home, no doubt, but there's still a lot of the same kinds of kids you'd find at any other high school.

I think I'm adjusting to India pretty well, but learning my job has been rocky--lots of fun some times and I feel completely incompetant other times. The staff is as diverse as the students, and incredibly well-traveled, and I'm excited about seeking friendships with some of them. But we don't get to see much of teaching staff, since we work when they're off, and vice versa, which has been frustrating.

This is all I have energy for tonight, but soon I hope to write about Hindi lessons, Indian Independence Day (next Saturday), and drooling over stories of the Char Dham Yatra, the pilgrimage to the four main sources of the Ganges, in the mountains above me.

Frankfurt, Delhi, Mussoorie

We're here.  Let me tell you about the trip.  Hannah and I spent two days in Frankfurt in between flights, at a youth hostel. Nothing's cheap there, so we did lots of walking--along the river, into the palm garden, through financial districts and neighborhoods that looked far too much like Michigan Avenue. Since our time was limited, we tried to stick to things quintessentially German, the finest moment being  an open-air Santana concert, listening in with a crowd from outside the fence.  Oye como va!
 
Then we flew to Delhi and spent a night and a half in the ridiculously plush Radisson. The largest hotel room I've ever stayed in, and it seemed like the place had three times as many staff as guests. I guess the school wanted to cushion our entrance into India, but it was my first clue that living arrangements wouldn't be as rough as you might think.  There we met the two dozen other new staff, who we've been spending lots of time with this week.  They're from all kinds of places, and I'm hopeful about making some friends.
 
After a five hour train ride to Dehra Dun, 2nd class A/C,  and a terrifying taxi ride up the mountain (it makes the road to the Oregon Extension look like nothing) we reached the town of Mussoorie (pronounced Missouri, apparently) and Woodstock School. We've got this week basically for just getting our homes settled and getting oriented. Next week we learn about our jobs and the next week students arrive.
 
The mountainside is green almost everywhere--ferns sprout from the trunks of trees, stems shoot from every crack in roads and retaining walls, paths are slick (I've been learning!) with moss. And everything is steep! It's a twenty-minute walk from my apartment to the center of campus, and another half hour to the top, covering a thousand vertical feet. So I'm panting and sweating and getting in shape in a hurry.
 
The valleys and ridges are gorgeous, but I'm told we haven't seen anything yet, that behind the clouds (which will leave sometime around October) lie plains and the lights of Dehru Dun in one direction, and snow-capped peaks another. So I'm somewhat orientated, with some clue about how to get by and find meals and Western toilets, and I've got a tentative sense that this is a good place for me, but it's cloudy, and I can't see too far in any direction.
 
There's certainly a lot to explore here, and I'll try to post on this site every couple weeks.  Email is a fine way to remind me and say hello.  You can reach me at jonathanhiskes@woodstock.ac.in
Peace.

Wishful Thinking

There’s a song that I’ve been in love with lately: “Wishful Thinking,” the seventh song on Wilco’s new album. It begins with a wash of noise—I can’t name the instruments, but it reminds me of an approaching thunderstorm. Softly, the strumming of an acoustic guitar emerges from the disorder, as if it’s introducing not a polished, all-encompassing revelation, but a humble, tentavie one. After a few bars Jeff Tweedy’s voice follows. He sings:

“Fill up your mind with all it can know
Don’t forget that your body will let it all go
Fill up your mind with all it can know
What would we be without wishful thinking”

I can see my book shelves from where I sit, and it’s clear I’ve been trying to fill up my mind for a while. But as much as anything, I’ve tried to learn in college the business of living in the physical world, accepting that books and ideas finally aren’t going to save me. It feels pretty good to hear that Tweedy, a singer I adore, might think the same way.

But what would we be without wishful thinking? I love the ambiguity—it could be a cynical line, meaning that we only get by on fantasy or delusion. Actually, it could mean any number of things, which is what I love about Tweedy’s lyrics—they’re vague and abstract and leave listeners tons of room to interpret their own meaning. Sometimes I come up dry (I’d love suggestions on what “there’s a company in my back” means), but often I think he makes listening to the music just as creative as playing it.

Back to this particular line. Knowing barely a thing about Tweedy’s religious life, I’m convinced that, whether he knows it or not, this is a line about prayer—wishful thinking is a profoundly understated way of saying deepest longing. I’ve heard a great quote by some monk, whose name I keep forgetting: “Our minds would be surprised if they knew what our hearts said to God.” It reminds me of another of Tweedy’s songs, “Sunken Treasure” and the desperate line, “I am so out of tune with you.” Whether he’s singing to his wife or his band or his fans doesn’t matter—when I hear it, it’s a prayer.

I haven’t gotten very far in dissecting this song. I’d love to tell you about the tender, sustained guitar feedback after the first chorus, that almost dies but carriers on a few more aching seconds, or about the way Glen Kotche works his drum set so it sounds like a whisper, but I’m pretty illiterate when it comes to music terminology, and most of the adjectives I’m come up with sound silly. Which is okay—I’m grateful for songs that leave me powerless to understand them. About the line later in the song “the turntable sizzles / the casting of spells,” I don’t have a clue, but it gives me chills almost every time.

So instead let me tell you (it’s tough to know who I’m writing to on the web, but a lot of faces of friends and relatives keep appearing in my head) some of my wishful thinking. I miss my home in Grand Rapids like crazy. I miss front porches and cobblestone streets and too many friends. I’ve spent this week in suburban limbo, in a place that used to be my home but doesn’t feel much like one anymore, after leaving one of the best communities I’ve ever known, and before the Big Indian Adventure. I’m still incredibly excited about India and Woodstock School, but leaving my friends in Grand Rapids is a decision I’ll be second-guessing for a while. But spending time with my family has been a good thing, and seeing Hannah tomorrow after a week apart will be a very good thing, and I trust that being in Germany by Tuesday morning and Dehli by Friday morning will also be very good things, and who knows what levels of goodness of things will come after that?

Hello

Here's hoping Maine and Texas have something worth saying to each other after all. I'll write something for real in India.