Dragon Slaying at Mother Teresa's in Kolkata, India

This is about my experience with Mother Teresa’s mission at Prem Dan, where I volunteered for just one day in December, 2015.

After 6am mass at Mother House and a breakfast of Indian tea, white bread and banana, I walked for 20 minutes with a group of 10 or so volunteers (mostly from Europe and Latin America) through some gritty, poor neighborhoods. When we arrived, I walked past a van where they were loading a very skinny dead body wrapped in a white sheet, with a small flower arrangement laid on the abdomen of the covered body (wrapped like a package). I appreciated the clean whiteness, and the beautiful simple flowers on this body being carefully placed alone in the van. I said a prayer for the recently departed soul, still floating around, perhaps.

We went towards the women's dorm, as the men in our group went to the men's area. There was a covered area with a long concrete slab with 4 sinks and concrete slab in between. Two sinks were for washing and two were for rinsing with slab space for sliding laundry to the next stage. At the last stage, three resident ladies and a young volunteer was doing the wringing by hand of the sheets, towels, washrags and smocks. The older ladies were a bit tired, sitting, not able to wring too well… I was wringing strongly, gotta get more water out! I and a girl from Argentina worked the stairs to get buckets of wringed laundry up 3 flights to the roof where it would get hung to dry on the 100 clothes lines.

One young volunteer from China who was so beautiful to me, had bought jasmine flower garlands in a market on the way to the place, and gifted them to two ladies by putting them around their neck. One lady was very out of it and doing repetitive actions near the staircase where I was transferring laundry buckets. She kept opening a metal gate that was behind her as she sat in a wheelchair. She wanted to reach back and close it, or open it... or close it. Then she discovered this garland. As I brought buckets of laundry to the staircase for my Argentinian friend to haul to the roof, I saw the process of her inspection and dissection of this foreign and interesting object someone had placed upon her. She wasn't seeing beautiful flowers, but interesting shapes and textures, I think. She dropped the garland, I gave it back to her. A few times... There were lots of buckets going to the staircase...

After all laundry was done (40 or 50 metal buckets worth), we went up to hang… I loved this part, up on the roof, able to see out to the neighborhood. We looked at the other rooftops where there is quite a bit of life in India... Many people sleep, visit and hang laundry on rooftop terracess. Cats hang on rooftops to be safe from all the dogs. There could have been some great pics but no pics were allowed. Alis from Mexico said she would send me pics, but I have yet to email her to ask!

We then went to the ladies sitting at tables in their little cotton smocks with a random flower print. All but a few had shorn hair and no jewelry. They were sitting dutifully at the tables… maybe they had metal cups of water. Now it was time to be with these Bengali-speaking ladies. How to spend time with them?

There was a little toiletry bucket of nail polishes, combs, brushes and oils. We could paint their nails, comb/brush their hair, or massage them. Massage seemed the most therapeutic and intimate, so I decided to take the glycerine and offer massages. I massaged about 12 ladies… first arms and shoulders. Then decided to do full arms, hands and shoulders. One lady asked for leg massage after, so I did her legs and feet after arms, hands and shoulders.

One lady spoke to me in Bengali for 10 minutes before I started any massages, and she was telling me her dramatic story, of some injustice, I think… maybe how her family left her there… because Alis told me later that day that she saw a horrible thing when she arrived that morning. A man with a cane asked where is the exit, “I can’t find the door, where is the door?” and a pair of younger men came at him and pulled him away from the entrance while he protested, “No, I am not supposed to be here! Where is my family! I need to find my family, we just came here to go to mass! They will wonder where I am, I have to find my family!” They dragged him toward a building and obviously the family had abandoned him there without telling him. Will they ever visit him? Will they explain later, why he could not live with them anymore?

How many of these women I was with, were abandoned by their families at the stage of life where they are supposed to be relaxing after all the work of their lives, enjoying their grandchildren, and enjoying the labors of the children who would not cook and clean for them as they enjoy their elderhood. But now they are stuck in a Catholic home stripped of their Indian clothes, their long hair, their jewelry, their deities, and even of their pranams and “Namaskar.” I was told by a volunteer that the sisters do not like it when people pranam or say Namaste, or Namaskar. These women I massaged had interesting tattoos on their forearms, a relic of their past devotion and it was clear to me that many of them must be Hindus, and many probably are not Catholic converts in this Bengali city where women are extra proud of their extra shiny red and white sarees and Durga and Laxmi festivals.

I could not get a good sense of the mental capacities of these women that mostly didn’t speak. Some did speak to each other but without knowing the language, I could not tell how lucid and in reality they were. The hired staff were super efficient and logistical, not giving much loving empathy to residents in the tiny short time I was around them. After massages, the lunch was served onto plates and the ladies were given plates of rice with a rice/chicken/potato stew which looked pretty good.

One lady needed to be fed, as her hands were folded in and useless. She hardly had teeth, but was a vigorous eater. I would bring a spoon of food to her mouth and she would help me guide it in. She successfully communicated that she wanted more food on each spoon. She ravished the food. Not sure why... She was happy to be eating. She smiled at me after many of the bites. Maybe those were the bites that had the best amount of food and went into her mouth at the right angle. In a place like this, those little things make a person happy. I worked the side of the spoon to cut the chicken hearts into bitesize pieces... I think she liked getting little pieces of chicken heart in each bite like that. This was the highlight of my day. Helping a woman eat and catching the food not making it into her mouth with my other hand, and seeing her smile with a lot of the bites.

It was time to help some of the ladies to the dormitory now. Everyone moved with the routine and were tuned in to the timing of it all. I think they depended on teh timing of it all, like babies love the security of feeding, bathing and nap times. It was time to nap. I wheeled a few ladies to the dormitory. The beds are covered with clean sheets. The beds are about 2 and a half feet apart from each other. Set up in 4 rows with one aisle down the middle. There are beds in the breezeway area. It looks like an overflow, they couldn't fit more beds into the proper dorm hall. Soon there were traffic jams of wheelchairs as volunteers and staff were delivering their charges to their respective beds. One lady needed to use the bathroom. It's times like these that having a physically handicapped father who was unashamed of his limitations and asking for help comes in handy in my life. I didn't bat an eye going into the shared toilet area with water running constantly into a trash can for I have no idea what purpose so that the floor had a 1/4 inch of water on it... but when I wheeled my lady towards a toilet, she eased off her wheelchair, I struggled to help her to the seat, but she grunted that she would do her thing which was to move slightly away from the chair to pee right on the floor that had that constant flushing of 1/4 inch of water. OK, I see why the water is running over the edge of that container. Another woman was naked sitting on a toilet facing away from the door, hoping for something to happen. It looked like some level of struggle, but she was balanced and stable as far as I could tell. We were standing in the water she just peed in, but oh well, here we go back to the dormitory (attached by the door) tracking in the pee-water. But this place is clean. It looks and smells clean and the huge quantity of laundry we did that morning was a profession of the cleanliness. The ladies were all accumulating on their beds... sitting, lying. If they were sitting, I thought, "they must get so bored," but if they were lying I thought "it's nice they have a clean place to rest their body."

This is not the home for the dying, this is a nursing home for ladies that are not all there mentally, many probably rejected by their families... I wish I knew that their families visited them. I wish I felt that my visit had helped them some how. They seem unphased. Maybe I was just one of many new strangers that looks strange and speaks a strange tongue that comes to do something interesting overseas. I am not their daughter or husband. But I hope the human touch and gentle regard does support them somehow at some level they may not even be too aware of. The most important thing is for us to have an intention to help and give.

In India, Christians love St. George, the dragon slayer. A statue was installed here on an exterior wall. You can pick which dragon you are slaying in any particular time of your life - it seems we always have to be slaying one. Maybe anyone who needs to (me or some of the ladies) can slay the dragon of attachment to holding on to life as it likely was for many of these ladies in their rich Hindu Bengali culture living with their immediate families, all factors which are gone in this place. But who am I to say these ladies are sad for that, I am assuming... and projecting, perhaps, but it seems at the end of life people need their spiritual practice more than ever. I hope the internal practice can happen for these ladies, as their external world that I saw does not reflect the spiritual life that is practiced by most Hindu Indian people I have seen.

#motherhouse #motherteresa #kolkata #premdan #volunteering #hinduculture #missions #catholicmissions #india

Sick Dogs of Bodhgaya

I received amazing news yesterday and am feeling so happy and grateful! A sick dog in India that I spent 2 days trying to capture to take to hospital has been treated for cancer and released by Dogs of Gaya. 

I had stayed in Bodhgaya for weeks and saw him 4 times on the road sitting helpless, sad and weak with a terrible open wound around his testicle area that he continually licked. When I heard about an animal hospital (Maitri Foundation) a few km away, I went there to get help. After pleading, phone calls and the promise of donating, two men took me back to town in their dog-catching jeep to find the dog and bring him for treatment. That day we couldn't find him.

The next morning I found him and took him breakfast and called the men back to meet me with their jeep. But the dog ran and ran in fear.

One man chased and chased for an hour, and I ran around town looking for the man chasing the dog. One nice tuktuk driver helped me get around (he had taken me to the dog hospital the day before, waited with me that morning for the jeep and men, gave me a tea... he was eager to help with my dog rescue). I was in and out of the tuk tuk, and in and out of the hospital jeep. I tried to coax that fearful sick dog. We had to give up for the day.

I was leaving town the next morning. I felt worried about this dog. I named him Balaram! I figured that might help the Maitri Foundation want to help this pet even after I left town. Why was I so attached to getting help for this dog?

Yesterday I messaged Dogs of Gaya (an NGO that helps dogs on the streets in that area) and learned that they got the dog to the annual Kagyu Monlam Animal Medical Camp where they fixed an infected tumor he had. The dog is now healthy, playing, and happy to be pet and cuddled!

So many dogs in India are forced to live at the literal margins of society. They can't live in the road, or will be run over, and are eschewed from the sidewalks by people doing business there. They must literally live on that line where the road meets the edge. They live on this thin line of nothingness, hoping for a scrap of food, and avoiding the cars and scooters that drive within inches of their bodies. Many do get hit or run over and suffer with the injuries or die. 

I am so very glad and grateful to the amazing things Dogs Of Gaya is doing for a very needy population of loving emotional beings who are neglected. I saw some people shouting at them or hitting them with sticks, but mostly they are ignored. Luckily many people do get rid of old leftovers by leaving them on the ground for the dogs or cows. Interestingly, dogs usually stay in the same area to live. This dog stays in front of the Thai temple on the main road.

When I would walk and see stray dogs, I would bend down and talk to them in a friendly way. Most would look up and wag their tails a bit, looking hopeful. I would pet those dogs, and they would stand up and get all happy. Most want some love and attention. After all they are domesticated animals, not meant to be living out on their own alone. If they did not wag the tail I would leave those dogs alone. I saw so many mangy and undernourished dogs. The weaker ones will lose opportunities to eat food and are treated even worse by people, being seen as a source of sickness.

Dogs of Gaya really represents the important Compassion in Action that His Holiness the Dalai Lama talks about! 

Please donate -- www.dogsofgaya.org

‪#‎bodhgaya‬ ‪#‎mahayana‬ ‪#‎dogrescue‬ ‪#‎dogs‬ ‪#‎india‬‪ #‎animalrescue‬ ‪#‎animallove‬ ‪#‎compassion‬

I read "Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut

I finished reading Mother Night today. I took it from my room in Mom’s house… it was amazing writing by a guy who was a prisoner of war in Dresden when it got hit. He had to excavate burned bodies after the firestorm that Churchill ordered on that city that had a bunch of refugees from other cities that were carpet-bombed in an attempt to wear down civilian morale to stop Hitler’s advance around Europe/Asia.

How awful! To bomb civilians as a tactic of war; isn’t this a first form of terrorism in our western history? See his book, Slaughterhouse Five, one of his most famous.

I read an interview with Kurt Vonnegut which was amazing. He said he wished everyone in the US would read more books and write book reports. So I decided to write a little book report for him, may he rest or live on in peace and enlightenment (he died in 2007 while living in New York).

I want to start by saying I loved this book. Vonnegut has a genius droll sense of humor. A bit cynical in a fun clean way that helps us develop our own opinions. This book caused me to delved into WWII documentaries on Netflix. I guess I should be grateful, history is good to learn... better than learning what the damn Kardashians or maids of Downton Abbey are doing, probably. 

So the book is about an American-born guy, Howard W. Campbell, Jr., who moved to Germany with his parents at age 8 or 10 and became a propaganda announcer on the radio while sending code messages to Americans with his different intonations and speech patterns. The book didn’t really get into that so much… but it was about the character’s indifference toward the war and to either side of the warring factions. He just cared about his beautiful wife Helga and the “nation of two” that they created in their big double bed. That was the center of his world, and everything else was just puppetry. But he became a famous German war criminal across the world, and was not keen on being caught for it for a while.

Outside of his interest in the “nation of two” with Helga, he was driven by curiosity in the rest of his life. Not by beliefs, attachments or hatreds. He didn’t seem to have opinions on anything, and just listened to people with a reflective, supportive simple curiosity.

He wrote about one friend, “I was very fond of you, to the extent that I could be fond of anybody.”

Favorite passage in the book: page 162:

I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought-machine, driven by a standard or even a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of cuckoo clock in Hell.

The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. “You’re completely crazy,” he said.

Jones wasn’t completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell – keeping perfect time for eight minutes and thirty three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead for two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year. 

The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases. The willful filing off of gear teeth , the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information. That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfueherer Krapptauer and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony. That was how my father in law could contain in one mind indifference toward slave women and love for a blue vase.

That was how Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz the great music [symphonies] and calls for corpse-carriers [that jewish prisoners volunteered to do].

That was how Nazi Germany could sense no important differences between civilization and hydrophobia.

That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I’ve seen in my time. And for me to attempt such a mechanical explanation is perhaps a reflection of the father whose son I was. Am. When I pause to think about it, which is rarely, I am after all, the son of an engineer.

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself – will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows – some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history.

But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, “This fact I can do without.”

His Helga was killed in the war but it seemed for a few moments that she was saved, for she found him in New York where he was living under the cover of the busy confusing place of that city. She admitted to him later that she was in fact Helga’s sister, Resi, who was extremely attached to Mr. Campbell. He carried on with her as with his wife, and seemed to lover her in his way. But she killed herself with a cyanide pill when authorities came to the house of spies and operatives that he was mixed up in. Their little friendly group of people who all admired Campbell was getting broken up. People who admired him including Russian spies (Resi was one of them). She had a singleminded attachment to him and departed saying he had no capacity to love anymore, he just had “curiosity and a pair of eyes.” He was sad to lose the time with her, but was not attached to her specifically.

He was the epitome of passive. He got upset and violent one time (in his whole life!) when his prime hater and pursuer -hiding in his ransacked apartment - tried to kill him. But even then he explained away his comparison of Bernard B. O’Hare to the sounds and movings of a rat. But then clarified:

I do not mean to slander him by associating the sound he made with the sound of a rat. I do not think of O’Hare as a rat, though his actions with regard to me had the same nagging irrelevance as the rats’ scrabbling passions in my attic walls. I didn’t really know O’Hare and I didn’t want to know him. The fact of his having put me under arrest in Germany was a fact of submicroscopic interest to me. He wasn’t my nemesis. My gave was up long before O’Hare took me into custody. To me, O’Hare was simply one more gatherer of wind-blown trash in the tracks of war.

That guy accused Howard of being pure evil, and had obsessed his whole life about capturing Campbell. All the while Campbell never gave this guy, or much of anything else, a second thought. Campbell sort of lived in the moment.

That O’Hare guy vomited down the stairwell, and this disgusting mess kept Campbell from going out the building… but it was also the apartment of a Dr. Epstein on that landing that made him freeze and not move. He wanted to be captured for being a spy. He wanted to be turned in. Epstein was a jew and must want to help capture a known German war criminal. 

The only thing that could save him in the case was if there was proof that he had associated with an American spy agent. He was shipped off to Israel (he repeatedly reminded us that he was in that prison of his own free will). The Haifa institute was providing him with all sort of research and copy services. He seemed appreciative. He was appreciative of so many on all sides, of all ilks. He didn’t really hate anyone, but had a humorous lack of attachments to beliefs, morals, or sense of a correct life. If anyone was hurt due to his actions on the radio, he was oblivious and uninterested. 

An example of Vonnegut's funny ironic humor was an exchange that our hero Campbell had with Adolf Eichmann while walking down the hallway of the prison. The guards assumed they would want to talk to each other. Eichmann did not recognize Campell (though Eichmann had danced with Campbells' wife at a party in Germany) but when told who he was, asked Campbell for writing advice. "Should one get an agent?"

When released to freedom at one point, he froze standing in the street, not wanting to move or go anywhere. “It was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt”

It was not a ghastly sense of loss when his friends were taken away and Resi died; it was not a loathing of death; it was not heartbroken rage against injustice (“one might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair”); it was not the thought that he was so unloved. What froze him, after being released from the house raid, was being released by his Blue Fairy Godfather (the American Spy Frank Wirtanen who appreciated his ‘service’) was the lack of curiosity.  It had flickered out.

“What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.”

In the end, while in the Israeli prison cell, he decided he would kill himself the next day after receiving a letter from his American agent who proclaimed his innocence as a German war criminal, and who in fact, “at personal sacrifices that proved total, became one of the most effective agents of the Second World War.”  

Several time in the book we see this guy Frank Wirtanen saying that Campbell was such an important American spy, which seemed a ridiculous claim about a playwright radio personality who so dispassionately followed simple orders to talk and cough in certain ways while writing plays on the side that actually did become quite popular.  So in the end, he was just a playwright who loved making love to his wife. 

#vonnegut #WWII #blackhumor #nazigermany #mothernight