My boyfriend built me a spice rack this weekend.

Not just your standard turntable or ledge, but a triple-deck vertical tower on tracks that slide cooking arsenal right into the casual reach of your left hand while the right, at the same time, can conveniently keep stirring, chopping, firing or flipping.

It’s beautiful. And at first glance my sentimental pinch was the memory of moving into this house: As a fitting right of passage, we spent the first three days touching every ledge, every corner, every sill and unfortunately even some spots on the floor of our new old house – with a fresh coat of paint. And on the fourth day, I opened up our empty cupboards and decided it was time to go to the market.

The spice isle – however, is no place for budgets. Especially for a girl who always opts organic. And as I held the pretty glass bottles in my hands while coveting the entire shelf – I irresponsibly decided it was worth the purchase on credit and impulsively selected my top seven. For some girls it’s shoes. For me, it’s spices. When I got home, I proudly lined the seven glass bottles up on a bare shelf. While they indeed, looked rather lonely, I was totally content. And I swatted away the day-dreamed vision of a one-day full shelf — it was simply too far into an unseen future to try to squint at.

“Look babe!” he shouts. And he has chosen the right girl for his heart, for I swoon for the sliding piece of art that he demonstrates. Our eyes meet, and no discussion is needed, as we both reach for the old shelf that once held only seven. As he begins grabbing fists full of clanking green, yellow and orange glass bottles – and hands them down to me – we begin lining them up according to favorites and frequency of use. The rack quickly fills and we’re left, still, with a pile on the ground. Doubles! And time and money hidden in the recesses of overlooked excess. Oh well. We store the duplicates back into the cupboard where they can wait their time and then turn our attention to marvel at our, now complete, creation.

My guy, ever the artist, is always more interested in the process than the result – and his ADD quickly moves him elsewhere. Yet I continue standing stalled in wonder. And suddenly I realize that I am overwhelmed with an enormous amount of emotion. Too much for a simple spice rack! Am I overlooking something here?

And so I look closer…

First, there is always garlic; number one on the shelf in its sea-rock-salt and organic cilantro variation. And I remember when I actually peeled my first garlic bulb, in Guatemala – where I learned the trick to the proper heat in Guacamole comes not from pepper, but three crushed cloves for every one avocado. (And don’t you dare forget to leave the seed in the spread to keep it from going brown.) Since then I have never less than tripled the call for cloves in any and every recipe calling for the ingredient. I also remember my Ladahki Himalayan guide, Rigzin-ji, offering me a raw slice to keep the parasites at bay and health as high as the attitude to which we were escalating. We’d chew fast, swallow whole, and snicker as our student group ducked from the aim of our laughing fire. And then there is also the day this summer that one of my best friends and I spent working at our local CSA; digging up the bulbs planted nine months prior – and giving good but ugly attempts at braiding their soft stems into something to catch the eye of shoppers at the farmers market.

Ginger, in its powdered form, is intentionally neglected. But I remember my first root – at a Buddhist retreat center, where hot ginger lemon tea was the only distraction allowed from the observance of our minds. What a holy relief it was – to marvel in the human luxury of taste, when your brain was put to the task of judging everything else equanimous. To Ginger, I will always be indebted.

Basil, a bottle also growing old in un-use. Basil was my first window-sill herb; a single plant, picked up totally on whim, as I was leaving the grocery store about five years ago. I put the tiny stem with only a few leaves in the sun of my kitchen window. And I could not believe, that ALL it wanted of me was a little water and that sunny sill. In return, I could pull off a leaf or (even) two a day – to toss in my omelet, sandwich or salad. When I left for India – I called my best friend and asked for her to pick it up and love it like I had. When she confessed, a year later, that she had forgotten to get it when I left, and picked it up, weeks later, dead – I almost punched her in the face and then fought the urge to cry. Who knew that such a tiny plant could become my “giving tree” of the famous storybook? And I am still grateful, for the seed of love that basil plant sowed in me, which has since, grown into the greenhouse and window sills now hosting, among much more, 4th generation basil grandchildren.

Cinnamon. For the purpose of how many teas and stews, from Senegal to India, have I used motar and pestle to crush these spicy, sweet sticks as the offhanded task by host mothers trying to keep me busy while they chatted off my ear in languages I was struggling to grasp? The slow building of these rock-relationships warmed me even more than the hot tea.

Braggs. Okay. Not a spice. But an amino acid quite directly attached to the six months of my life devoted to the political, health, environmental and spiritual experience and study of Veganism. It was living in the Planet Drum volunteer house, on the coast of Ecuador – where I smashed cacao fruit seeds into the paste of vegan chocolate and learned the delicious joys of Brewers yeast, Braggs and the other best friends of all vegans and the uber food conscious.

Toasted sesame oil. Which to me is exactly the taste of my short English teaching stint in South Korea. Which leads me down the trail of a fail-less giggle, in the memory of an assigned task to a group of 6th graders to draw their favorite food – and them each, in a row, standing up and proudly demonstrating the unanimous favorite: the fermented red cabbage, Kim Chi.

A bottle of bay leaves; a single one remaining – that will soon, like the others, be tossed into an Indian stew in the pressure cooker – whose screaming hissing used to send me running to the far edge of kitchens. Now, with Indian second nature, I confidently tap with my wooden spoon to release the steam while sending our dogs and cats into retreats under beds and outdoors.

Lemongrass. Occasionally put into a green or yellow curry – but let’s face it: Thai food in Thailand can simply never be replicated. And then there is the lemongrass tea that I will always remember as the drink of my desert. After spending 12 hours wandering with the spirits in the sacred Vilcabamba Valley on the cactus juice of San Pedro — being parched from having traveled the life cycle of a water droplet till the shaman chanted and dropped a sunrise of lucidity back upon earthly life — it was lemon grass tea that brought the grass back under my feet.

Turmeric. More medicine (in India) than spice, healing the joint pains of a sister, but whose miracles I haven’t yet directly discovered myself aside from the flavor of my lentils and the yellow stain on my cutting boards, finger nails and unluckier items of clothing marking the memory of house-warming dinners past.

Rosemary. Poor rosemary. Our first plant was sacrificed to the spider mites – before we looked closely enough to realize that you don’t have to be big to have bite. Poor rosemary sits, now, composting over my wooden gate – while another, started from seed, took a slow three months to sprout and still doesn’t look overly eager for the task of growing. In the meantime, a glass bottle of delicious needles tends to our sweet potato root roasts while we patiently await your eventual maturity into a season of giving.

Cayenne pepper. We tend to abuse you on our attempts at Thai. And then there is our pepper plant, upon which now hangs at least 50 peppers in shades of green, purple and red. Yet remaining a dangerous mystery is your hierarchy: who is more powerful, the 4 inch green ones? Or the 1-inch red ones? Or the 2-inch purple ones? Showing no consistency would, now that I think about, be quite in line with the character of this fiery-tempered plant. So we use the glass bottle when we don’t want surprises and we pull from the plant if we’ve already had a glass of wine or two.

Pepper-All Seasoning: this is the Mac & Cheese of my spices; the ultimate in comfort food! Stolen directly from my Dad’s spice rack – this old standby got me through college on micro-waved potatoes (gross) and still blackens an occasional wild salmon today (delicious). When my dad stocks up – he always does so in multiples of 4 – including one for each of his children for the one that will remain when the rest are stolen from his house.

Mustard seed: I never use. But the rural Indian village to where my mind and body always wander when my most vivid memories are sent to pasture – is one that swims in a sea of yellow mustard fields where we take shade under mango trees while sucking on the stalks of sugar cane. In mustard seeds too, there is, one of my Indian host mothers heating up her pot full of sizzling mustard seed oil, till she tosses in some seeds whose precise cackle tells her if and when it’s ready for the onions. I still don’t speak the language of boiling oil – but will be forever mystified by this Indian woman fluency.

I haven’t yet even spoken of Cumin, Garam Masala, Nutmeg, Pepper, Cardamom, Clove or Cilantro (Oh Cilantro!). But maybe now you see, as I did, how this display of spices put together a storyboard of memories worth a wet eye of appreciation and love for the people and places that have flavored my life.

Amen.

Chewed up purple Nepali homemade binding; I angle it out and ponder the hand painted elephant and cow atop each other on the cover. I can’t remember my exact reasoning at the time for choosing the blank pages of this particular yet-unwritten book, but feel now that purple is too chemical a color for my Dolpa memories — which are all strictly scripted in high-altitude grays and blues. And while the experience was as heavy and sacred as the beasts on the cover, at 15,000 feet these animals would be as mythical to those looking down, as we at lower-elevations consider the gods when looking up. No. The choice of journal was all wrong; saying something also of my miscalculated expectations of the journey. The latter, I’m sure, the very reason that I now remember one particular day on that trip as the most reality-quaking of my travels.

It’s for this day that the same finger that dragged across my bookshelf now searches in the tattered purple journal.

I come across a page splattered with large bleeding holes of black ink and the quip, “did you know that pens explode at 14,000 feet?!”

I laugh just as much at the comment itself as at the fact that I had correctly guessed that my future self would find this self-delivered jest, one day, funny.

I scan my thin and weak scribbles and suddenly sympathize with the exhaust evidenced by the simple bullet points that I hadn’t the energy to even expand upon.

I return to the top of the page and see in the corner that I’ve documented only:

June 7th
Santa
11 hours trekking
14,000 feet

I return to the bullet points – some so faint and foreign that I can’t remember the associations of things I clearly thought would burn in my permanent memory so deeply that I’d only need a single term or phrase of prompting. And for those lost associations, I feel a bit of sadness: does a memory cease to exist if it’s not remembered?

Then I read a note that sends my head back in a fit of laughter.

In the bullet-pointed memory, KT, also known as Sangheeta in this story, is looking at me blankly. Her cheeks are scalded red by the high altitude sun and wind. Her face is still covered in dirt from when, at the top of a 15,000 foot pass, a supposed dinn-powered whirlwind attacked her before being chased off with protection mantras and a few well-aimed stones by our Tibetan guide.

It’s with these eyes, black like the bleeding ink of my exploded pen, that KT turns to me after taking slow account of our surroundings:

A little frightened, I touch her arm and tell her, “KT, I just want you to know that this is the most culturally shocking place I have ever witnessed in my 7-years of travel.”

To this, she turns around and shows almost no reaction. Then she scans our surroundings again and comments, “No. I think I’ve seen this before.” She concludes her sentence in straight-faced shock, “on National Geographic.”

It’s the altitude and the exhaust and the absolute absurdity of where we’ve found ourselves that suddenly sends us, with this serious comment, into high-altitude hysterics. Her tears of laughter clear tiny pink streaks down her face and, in a place where there are no mirrors except for the face in front of yours, I am left forever wondering if mine have done the same.

Her cream and mint salwar-kameez is conservatively muted with fine emblem work that I have never seen in the popular clothing stores that I frequent in India. I’m wearing a linen kurta and thin dupatta in the fashion of a foreigner, not a local; but my attempts are noted with a half nod of approval. She unrolls her silver hair from a bun and it disappears far down her back. I take off my shoes and tuck them tightly together under the seat in front of me; for this good-mannered task of organization, I get another half nod. Then I pull out my Hindi flash cards.

She reaches over, touches them, and continues the conversation we have already started without words, “but what is this?”

I answer, “Hindi flashcards. So that my teacher does not punish me for not studying while I was away.”

An amused chuckle escapes and having finally hurdled an unseen bar, she rewards me by pulling out her boarding pass; “in which seat are you sitting in the next leg of this flight?”

I am pleased at having earned, so quickly, such an association of warmth. And together we begin to banter. She allows me to practice a few easy phrases and humors me with slow responses in Hindi. I don’t recognize the place, outside of Delhi, where she lives, and so ask her where she was born.

She grins and pauses; a sign I have inadvertently hit a story spot. She slowly replies, “Pakistan.” And scans my eyes for understanding of that implication. I cast my eyes down, knowing exactly the implication, but not knowing what permissions I have to explore the sensitive history. She catches this, and when I reply, “I’ve only read books and seen movies…” she cuts me off and points to her long silver hair, “An old woman of 70 now. I was only 10 at the time of partition.”

As I am clearly hanging onto her every word, she accepts my eager permission to proceed: “I saw the massacres; for many years I didn’t sleep after what I witnessed that day. Bodies. Women whose children were left running after the train. Children handed into the arms of strangers, their mothers left crying at the platform. We were not allowed to bring anything. Nothing but the clothes on our backs. That and chapatti and water. We knew that we could live without almost anything; but chapatti and water, that’s all we really needed to survive. Our houses, we left in full order and standing as if we still lived in them. Never to be seen again. On the train, it was only bodies, stacked and lined up, side by side, up and down the aisles; limbs hanging out everywhere. We were only happy to have found a space on the train. The night before, all the women and girls were rounded up and we slept in one building; one building surrounded by male attendants whose only directive was to set our building on fire should the rioting come to the doors of our house; better that the wives, daughters burn, than have their honor and dignity stolen.”

I try to imagine, for a minute, sleeping in that building, curled up between my mother and sister, listening for the shouting that would engulf and smolder my small world. But of course, I can’t.

She continues, “but the rioters did not come that night. And we got on that train. When we arrived in Delhi, we had nothing. The government provided everything; clothing, blankets, food, shelter and even jobs. And slowly, slowly, things came together again for my family. We made a new life. Have I ever been back? Oh no. Never.”

After a sober silence, our chatter has no choice but to grow lighter. I learn of her sons; an engineer in Maryland and another working for Microsoft in Seattle, and of her daughter in Switzerland and the multiple languages she now speaks with fluency. Her grandchildren speak mostly English, and a little Hindi in the home. She’s currently looking for a suitable girl for her youngest son, and I am deeply embarrassed when I ask, “an Indian girl?” and the question is received as clearly ridiculous. She doesn’t need to answer as I look down and apologize, “Sorry. Of course an Indian girl.” To cover up the tracks of my mistake, I move quickly to a good question, “but don’t you miss them all?” To which she answers, “of course. But I am happy they are all well-settled.”

As the plane takes flight and the seatbelt light turns off, I help her recline her seat and pull out the inflight magazine to tell her what movie will be playing. As I flip through the pages with her, I’m horrified at the pages of women in tiny bikinis advertising romantic adventures to remote islands, and flip even faster through an advertisement (for Argentina?) prominently displaying a 4-inch thick slap of raw steak; as the cow is held sacred for most Indians, an image of a marbled thigh of Jesus Christ or flank of family pet black lab flashes through my mind as I try to conjure up an image that would be equally offensive to a American culture. To my great luck, the movie is animated and G-rated, which is the only rating appropriate to Indian audiences for whom a single kiss, on screen, was only permitted, for the first time, in early 2000.

When we’re not sleeping, she corrects my Hindi pronunciation, tries to grasp my profession (which fits into none of the standard Indian classifications or credentials), and asks me simple questions about my life. I try to navigate a way around admitting the fact that I live with my boyfriend, as I know she’ll disapprove, but she traps me into the confession. “In India, we never leave the girls alone. We always surround them, protect them; it is our culture.” She hopes, sincerely, that I will consider marriage soon.

When the plane lands, I help her gather herself and things together. And suddenly, seeing the world through the eyes of a 70-year old, I realize how cruel our youth-oriented world is set up against those of limited mobility. The overhead bins are too high and require upper arm strength far above that of even a young senior citizen. The step from the plane to the ramp is deep, and requires at least an arm or two for balancing. The metal stairs leading to the ground are too shallow and too inclined. The directions indicating paths to other terminals are scarce, hidden and misleading. The escalators move too quickly. The elevators are hidden. The departure boards are hard to read. And even within our terminal in Frankfurt, it still takes us 25 minutes just to walk to our gate. I carry her bag which, though small, is still certainly too heavy for the distance. When we finally find our gate, she is ready for the rest, and so I offer her coffee and watch her bags while pointing to the restroom. I will never look at airports the same. And I suddenly value, deeply, the inherited respect, sense of duty, and care, of Indian youth for their elderly relations.

After storing her bags and getting her comfortably seated into her assigned chair, I take my leave to my own aisle and immediately miss her presence as my new seat neighbor insists on making me watch him do his prana yoga breathing exercises. I conservatively wrap my shawl around my head and, hidden from the world and new intruding neighbor, sleep through the rest of the flight.

It’s only in baggage claim when I hear my name and turn around to her eager hands, shaking my own, wishing blessings upon my life and journey, and touching my heart in a simple show of sincere gratitude. But the honor has been all mine, and while I know not all Indian-daughter to mother-in-law relationships are so kind, I’m deeply thankful for my tiny taste of one.

This has been the longest year of my life.

I realize this entirely now upon touching down in India.  For while I feel this country to be at least be a few emotional Christmas’ distant, I count on my fingers to the realization that I was last here, less than three months ago. Not a single holiday in between.

Really?!

I’m trying to shake the fog of my time hangover, but it’s difficult when Delhi is covered in what the little weather box on the front of the India Times, which is normally the happy home of clip art yellow suns and frowning clouds, calls “smoke.” On that same front page, there is also an article on the worrisome blanket of “smog” that has tucked the city deep into a seasonless sleep. The author worries about the “Beijing effect” on a set of games planned in Delhi for 2010. I worry more about the 30% increase in complaints of congestion and burning eyes and ponder a new communist environmental disease that will level Delhi by discriminating against neither caste or class. And having never seen a blue sky in Delhi, I begin to wonder if human beings foster their short term memories, safely, for the purpose of forge-ahead acceptance? But those are just the insomniac thoughts of girl shrugging off a 12 hour time difference by sleeping 16 erratic hours in a room with a broken window but no light.

At some point in those rough 16 hours, the hotel receptionist knocks on my door to remind me, kindly, to eat. And for this alone, I forgive India all her environmental faults and, with a hand over my heart, pledge to cherish her people and culture till death do us part. India’s respect for the all-healing quality of food and concern for its guests (who by all Indian religions, are regarded as none less than tiny incarnations of God) rank the highest in the world. Respecting the kind prompt, I crawl the four flights of stairs to the rooftop restaurant. No other worldly cuisine pleases my tastes more, and as I say a tiny prayer of total gratitude over my single dish of maatar paneer and zeera rice, I look down and for the first time realize that Indian food is never meant to be eaten alone. Multiple dishes are meant to be served and communally dispersed and enjoyed. Cuisine that promotes sharing, family, service and community? Obama would be pressed for a better motto. And so while I proceed with eating my meal entirely wrong, I still do so with heightened respect and intention.

Ready to retreat right back into bed, I venture out into the street briefly to find a replacement for the tube of toothpaste that I left on my sink in the States. At the nearest pharmacy/everything shop (the most common of India street stands) I request a few toiletries and turn the rusty crank on my old Hindi. After our tiny chat, the shop owner sizes up own newfound 30-second friendship, puts a wait-one-minute finger into the air, and disappears into the back of the shop. When he returns, he removes the tube of toothpaste that I have chosen and paid for, and replaces it with another. It’s the same mark and size, but the replacement tube comes with a free toothbrush attached to the box, and the shopkeeper steps back a little and offers a smile with his gift to me. I almost don’t catch it. I almost push the toothbrush back at him with the insistence that I have no need for an extra toothbrush. But I catch myself just in time. It’s a gift. Not only has he decided not to rip me off (for something for which I’ve already paid), but he’s offering me a free commodity in a country where commodities are generally needed and never rejected. So instead, I appropriately and generously thank him. To which he says, “Yes! Same price! But with a toothbrush! Very good, yes?!”

Very good indeed. Okay. Story time over. A little light seems to be seeping through my broken window and it’s time for me to get out of this room and explore the day. I also need to re-explain myself to the receptionist who reminded me to eat. When he communicated his worry that I had been sleeping all day, I tried to explain to him the half-day time difference between the US and India and, in my exhaust, wrongly communicated that, “in the US, we sleep all day.” To which, of course, he just nodded kindly. Oh, what would we do without the curiosity and compassion that cultural miscommunications breed? The world would be a boring place indeed.

Handing me back the piece of paper with the single word on it, my student says,

“Um. I’m not sure I know what this is…”

Part of the mission of my work (in experiential education) is that of fostering eleven (what we call) “core values” in our students. It’s a tricky agenda because there are no simple equations or lists of instructions with which you can assist students in the tasks of realizing such intangible concepts as, “interconnectedness”, “authenticity” and “compassion.”

In fact, giving the word itself away too directly could even prove itself quite detrimental as it is in the nature of any teenager (or for that matter, inquisitive individual) to be suspicious of anything offered too freely. We also have to be careful of words over-quoted and sometimes, these days, even mass-marketed; any word that has made the tagline of coca-cola has most likely lost everything but its jingle.

So much like the popular party word game Taboo, it is our objective to have the students struggle not only with the answer (that we don’t name), but also the equation. And yes, they hate this game at first; especially because we don’t even tell them we’re playing it. (I’m realizing as I’m typing that this is likely to add a lot of fire to students’ friendly fire accusations that the leader team is, “secretly strategic.”) In any case, now that we are two months into our semester of intensive experiential lessons, we have seen our group, as individuals and a whole, give us easy evidence proving that they are now quite experienced with (even if they cannot name or define) all eleven of our core values. We’re confident that they have harvested all the raw vegetables necessary to put this recipe together.

Back to the student holding the word and prompt with which I started this post. And let me add the disclaimer that it is quite ironical that the student in our group who embraces and exemplifies the quality most doesn’t know that her most natural inclination is the very definition of the word in her hand (adding the final mark of purity to her quality).

Yet I am not going to fault her English teacher or general education for this vocabulary mishap. In fact, I’m going to enter some very dangerous territory and suggest that the responsibility might lie on the broad shoulders of American culture and society. But before anyone calls me a separatist or unpatriotic, please hear me out as I make the case by serving it in compliment-sandwich (a sneaky way to pass to some tough meat). For just as we (group leaders) encourage constructive criticism in our group, I think, as a country, we should also be taking some time to gently and compassionately give and receive the feedback that will evolve us to our highest nation.

With our students, after having them work to discover and define the words, we then asked them to each choose the “core value” that they, deep inside, intuitively know as the next most appropriate step in their personal development.

Now I’m clearly going to take some liberties here and choose a word for the United States of America, of which, if it matters, I am a citizen. And I hope to make the case a little more edible by emphasizing that the States does embrace many of our core values exceptionally well. As a country, we have proven ourselves quite skilled in the categories of, “courage,” “responsibility,” “ownership,” and “curiosity.” And then there are some classes in which we understand the term or goal even if we’re still sorting out which verbs we actually have to put into action to complete the realization of the lesson. But I’m looking for the word that we, deep inside, intuitively know as the next most appropriate step in our country’s personal development.

And the word I choose is Humility.

Now just as my student didn’t know the meaning of this word, I think this term is so far from the mind of American culture that we can barely conceive of a sentence to put it in. But let’s reach for a minute.

(And I know I’m predictable, but…)

Let’s reach across the world to my personal and favorite teacher and Guru-ji of all.

India.

For while India has her own set of core values that are in particular need of development (perhaps actually, even the same that we in the West have mastered), the quality that I have witnessed her culture, society and people to embrace with eloquence and grace, on both conscious and subliminal levels, from sunrise to sunset and from child to great grand parent, is that of Humility.

Modeling by example, let’s work on the definition first.

And instead of words, like a good experiential educator, I am going to use that which I’ve actually witnessed.

I am quite fortunate to be living between six sacred temples near Tulsi Ghat in Varanasi. The sacred pool outside my door is called, Lolark Kund and beside it is a temple dedicated to the planets with which our own is in orbit around the sun. So I need not step father than my doorstep to watch the following: a family approaching the temple, the father kneeling down and touching his forehead to the front step of the entrance, the youngest daughter delicately holding a string of fresh flowers between her hands clasped in the “namaste” of respect, the mother covering her head out of modestly (to the gods) and gently lowering her 4-year old toddler grandson from her hip so that he too can touch his head to the ground.

The family enters and proceeds in their circumambulation of the inside of the temple. They approach the statue of Ganesha, touch his feet, ask for him to give them the wisdom to remove the obstacles from their life, and place a mala of orange carnations around him. They approach the mother goddess Durga, light incense, and ask for her to bless upon them the weapons of her protection. They approach the monkey God Hanuman, offer him his favorite sweets (usually Ladoo), and ask for him to bless them with his unfaltering devotion. They approach Vishnu, bow to his feet, and light a butter lamp praying for the preservation of their good health and prosperity. They approach Shiva, represented by a lingam, offer milk and throw flowers while chanting mantras that might invoke his blessing of finding the fortunate new beginnings within his destruction.

In this way, the family proceeds to each enthroned god, lowering their heads, humbling their beings, bowing their respect, and making offerings to those divine beings and virtues that they host closest to their hearts. When they leave the temple, the dare not turn their back on the Gods, but walk out of the temple backwards, reaching down with their hand to first touch the step, then their forehead, and then their heart — in a symbolic gesture of holding themselves at the feet of their beloved.

Yet this family does not leave their humility in the temple. When the family returns home, they walk in the door and approach the 98-year old great grandmother. Each person — father, mother, daughter, toddler — before any chore or toy, approaches the elder and touches her foot and then their own head to symbolically swipe the sacred dust from her feet. Depending upon her mood, the great grandmother will either accept the gesture or, humbly, push it away. Either way, and even if only for the pangs of labor through which she birthed the existence of this family,
she deserves this show of respect.

The daughter in this family is of the age to marry. Contrary to what you might expect, she does not cry every night wishing she had been born in a Western country where she might have had the opportunity of a “love marriage.” Most likely, if you ask her, she will say that she respects, even more than the Indian tradition, the advice, experience, guidance, and ultimately, the choice of her mate by her parents. She questions her own lack of years and experience. She trusts their better judgment. She loves her parents and is loyal to trusting their love of her. She knows that they will make the decision that best befits her long-term and overall happiness. She shows her respect by submission and trust in their ultimate decision.

Okay. NOW let’s get out the dictionary and define the word on the piece of paper that my student is still holding…

hu·mil·i·ty (noun) the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc. a lack of false pride; freedom from pride and arrogance; An act of submission or courtesy.

So where do we take this as a culture and as a nation? Well, the truth is, while I’m great at isolating problems (aren’t we all?), solutions are never as simple. And even if I had one, neither would I be allowed to provide something so easy. For just as with the definition, it would be stealing something to give away the answer. We owe it to ourselves to allow and embrace the struggle, for only through that process can we ultimately claim full ownership of the resulting revelation.

So what we did with our students was simply ask them to hold the word in their minds.

humility

To see where it would take them.

For I think as individuals we have to do this first, as it is only in our collection, that we become a nation.

Perhaps it sounds like a funny recipe: to just “hold” the word in our consciousness. But as I learned from my favorite childhood storybook, “Stone Soup” – sometimes the best way to start is to just put a rock in the pot and then add as you may; stewing and stirring and building upon your stone ’till the soup starts to smell good. Perhaps even forgetting, in the process, with what (now irrelevant) intention we may have started.

Funny, actually now that I think about it, is that it would seem that the first step in recognizing our humility would be the very act of recognizing our lack of it!

In any case. Humility is the rock in my pot and I now have two weeks trekking in the Himalayas to stew on it. So do be patient with me as this post feels like it’s only at a simmer and still missing some key ingredients. Maybe I’ll find them growing in the mountains? In the meantime, will you just help me by holding this stone for a minute?

One of my students recently quipped, “…arranged marriages give me faith in marriage.”

And as quickly as I agreed with her, I wondered, “what a once-foreign idea with which I have so naturally nodded my head in agreement!”

It’s one of the subjects on India of which I find to be the fullest of misconceptions and unfounded, ethnocentric judgments. But I never wag a finger at a new student of India when he or she comments, “Can you just imagine?! Not marrying for love?!”

Because I know my students will soon enough be living with Indian families, surrounded by Indian brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. And that each of these family members will have his or her own story to tell which will illustrate that there’s a lot more hidden variables in marriage math. I have enormous faith that my students, too, will not just learn, but witness that Love, in the East or the West and regardless of method, is still just as likely to find itself on the other side of the equal sign in the wedded equation.

My first Hindi teacher is 24 years old and was married last year. Aside from a 1×1 inch passport photo, he did not see the face of his bride until after his marriage to her. My second Hindi teacher has been happily married for 41 years. He didn’t glimpse even a photo of his wife until hours after the wedding rituals were completed. What do these two men and generations have in common? A respected cultural tradition that accepts and pursues (with great faith) a committed and self-sacrificing investment in the lifetime partnership of parenthood.

I’ve visited and shared meals with both families. The young couple is no less caring, loving, and challenging-yet-functional, than any of my friends’ young married relationships. The older couple has not a single less story of compassion, sacrifice, tolerance, perseverance or tender love than that of our own Western parents.

What my student was saying is, “if people here can have perfectly successful and loving (arranged) marriages with someone they don’t even know, doesn’t that mean that opportunity exists for ANY two persons?”

(Whether we actually have an advantage in being able to choose our partner is then what becomes debatable!)

Let me provide two interesting linguistic examples that illustrate some of the differences on East and West perceptions in regards to their definitions of two of life’s most important social pillars; I’m going to start with “religion,” but stay with me as I’ll then return back to, “marriage.”

Hinduism in India is actually not as much a religion as it is a culture and way of life. Even the name, “Hinduism” was originally only a term created to characterize the, “people of the Indus Valley.” So essentially, it was a name invented by outsiders to categorize a group of people with a different “way of life” in order to differentiate it from their own.

If you you keep this definition in mind, it begins to make sense why there is no word in its scriptures or pressure within the “religion” to cultivate the spread of Hinduism. Nor can one, even of his or her own choice, really “convert” to being a Hindu. And finally, this would also perhaps provide logical reason for why there are no historical accounts of war or violence in the name of “saving” or “forcing” a group of non-Hindus to convert to practitioners of the “faith” of Hinduism.

For that would, plainly, be silly. It would be like Italians invading Montana and forcing them to make their pasta from scratch and drive scooters. Silly. And so if you translate religion to “culture” or, “way of life” then it makes perfect sense why on, more than one occasion, I have found different Indian persons challenging me with…

“What do you mean, you have no religion? Do you not have parents? Were you not born in a country?”

Because despite my soft claims that, “I chose to stop being, practicing and calling myself a Christian when I was 21,” this sentence is no more rational to an Indian than me saying, “I stopped being an American when I was 21.”

Let me interject my disclaimer now that this understanding is only my own; it’s a subtle and simple (and perhaps opinionated) observation that I’ve only hypothesized from the confused pauses before, after, and between sentences.

But what I was getting back to was the topic of marriage, and the link between the above example and the next, is only the similar confused pause at the end of the sentence…

“What do you mean you’re not sure you believe in marriage?”

For just as religion equates to culture. The term “marriage” is easily transferable with the words, “life” and “family.” And to challenge the existence or desire of marriage is quite equivalent to denying the existence of life or desire for love.

Now I can hear someone in the audience stirring in their seat and raising their hand with the following question: “But what about dowries (a type of early inheritance or investment paid to the groom’s family by the brides), and the fact that not only is the marriage arranged, but that the bride is little more than sold, for a price, to the most appropriate bidder?”

Well. I certainly do not doubt the likely correlation between the social construct of dowries and the social norm of preferential sex selection and even female feticide. But as is often the case when I investigate a stereotype or preconceived idea and begin to explore the more intimate details of the (Indian) relationships near me, I hear quite interesting stories.

Like that of my best friend here in India who, even as a Brahmin (the highest caste and often demanding of the highest dowry), accepted only a single symbolic rupee (equivalent to about 2 US cents) in dowry for his arranged marriage to his wife. And of his and his wife’s relationship, I can say that I would truly be tried to find a more accepting, self-sacrificing, committed and loving relationship than theirs on any continent. (Would you know by witnessing the tenderness in the above photo that there’s a 3-year old screaming for a toy in one corner and a 1-year old trying to eat Vaseline in the other?)

I’m not out to prove anything. I only want it down for the record that, from my experiences here in India, I have gathered absolutely NO evidence that would lead me to believe that a “love marriage” has any greater chances for “success” (which would take an essay of its own to define) than that of an arranged marriage. And if you have any doubt or questions, I challenge you to find any Indian couple who’s been married for a few dozen years, and sit down and have chai with them and hear out their stories; of anxiety, of fear, of desire, of bliss, of routine, of duties, of immaturity, of overwhelm, of challenges, of loss, of self-sacrifice, of commitment, of pride, of trust, and of the continuum and construction of love. And I challenge you to see if that story is really any different from those of the elders of the country where you were born. And if you come to any interesting conclusions, I’d like to have tea with you too.

India is the home of almost 1/6th of the world population; 1.13 billion people and around 80% of this population lives in rural areas.

Last weekend I spent a long weekend in a small, rural village on the outskirts of Varanasi of which I’ve visited and fostered some lovely friendships over the course of the last six months. Our students each lived with different families in the village and we gave them a set of questions (constituting a sort of, “anthropological survey”). We, as well, lived with one of the families and spent a day gathering answers to the same survey questions. The following are excerpts from the information gathered…

(I start off by addressing my questions to our 14-year daughter of the primary family occupying the house.)

Me: So this is the only Brahmin (highest caste) family in the village?

Daughter: Brahmin? What is this? I don’t know.

Me: You know, the caste system?

Daughter: No. I don’t know what that is.

Me: Do you know where the women of the village give birth?

Daughter: Now? Now, babies are born in the hospital. Before they were born in the house. But now, in the hospital.

Me: When do you worship and or make puja (prayer)?

Daughter: Sometimes we go to the ashram. And we make puja also in the house. The whole family participates. But mostly my grandfather does it. Which god we pray to depends on the day of the week and/or the festival.

Me: Do the kids in the village go to school?

Daughter: Yes. All the kids in the village go to school from 8am – 3pm, Monday through Saturday. I go to a special school because the teacher at the village school is very lazy – always sleeping. Many girls here study to class 8, and then they usually make marriage.

Me: Do you know who is the prime minister of India?

Daughter: Oh… I can’t remember his name.

Me: Do you know who is the president of the United States?

Daughter: Ummm. One of my friends is telling jokes about someone called, George Bush. And there was a big bomb blast in America in 2001, no? One of my friends is also calling me, Bin Laden. (She is particularly famous in the village for being a fireball with a temper who is ever eager to instigate brawls and fighting with, even, village boys.)

Me: Can you help me draw out your family tree?

(We draw out a tree of the 43 persons she knows to be in her family. After finishing, we take a chai break and move downstairs, where her uncle is sitting. I turn my next questions to him…)

Me: She told me that she doesn’t know what, “Brahmin” or the “caste system” is…

(The uncle calls his niece into the room and says,)

Uncle: What “janti” do you belong to?

Daughter: Pandey.

Uncle: Pandey is your (last) name. You are Brahmin, na?

Daughter: (She bobs her head in hesitant agreement.)

Uncle (addressing me): Did you know her grandfather (who lives here) was a freedom fighter for the movement with Gandhi?

Me: Really? The man whose feet I touched in the fields? That’s amazing.

Me: So here’s the family tree she and I drew together…

Uncle: (He looks at it for a minute and then asks me for a piece of paper. He then draws out the complete family tree of 64 persons.)

(The uncle leaves and the father of the house returns from working in the fields. His English is limited so I enlist the help of his 20-year old nephew to help me with the rest of the questions…)

Me: So what is your family business/trade?

Father & Nephew: Having land. Other families have shops and sell buffalo milk. We have land.

Me: And in addition to your family, you employ people to work on your fields? How much do you pay them?

House Father & Nephew: Those that work in our fields are paid in rupees, rice paddies (or land), food and jaggery. How many rupees? About 80 rupees per day. The government pays its field workers a rate of 110 rupees per day. But we also provide, each year, a plot of land to each worker. Then, they get 5 kilos of food from the fields they work on each day. And spices and essentials, like jaggery (sugar cane sweetener). We also make meals for them every day. What do we serve them? You know, because you eat the same thing. We all eat the same food. The same meals you are eating here for breakfast, lunch and dinner, are the same that they eat. Are they happy? Yes. They are happy because they have their own land and can do what they want with it; grow what they want on it.

Me: What about the caste system? How does it work here?

Nephew: If you’re in another caste, there is no thinking that another can’t come into your house or anything. We are always wanting and looking forward to nice things happening to all people. Many times I have gone to the “untouchable” part of the village and helped students to do these interviews there. I go into their houses too and we talk.

Me: Who is in charge of the village?

House Father & Nephew: The government leaders are in charge. But ours is a bad drunkard. He is a milker – because in our village, this is an important caste. He is still here, but he only likes to drink and lay around. He uses all the money that the government gives to the village for bad things. So now two others of the village have taken over managing the village. My uncle is one of them.

Me: And what happens when there are conflicts in the village?

House Father & Nephew: If there is a problem in the village, there is a panchayat (a committee of five elders chosen for their life experience and wisdom, to proceed over community disputes). The problem is taken to the panchayat to help. People can also choose their panchayat, if they want. If both people are not happy with the resolution of the panchayat, then they will go to the police.

Me: What happens in cases where people steal, or in the case of a woman who is raped?

Nephew: It’s never happened in my village that I’ve seen.

House Father: There is so much work for the women in the village. Hard work. They work till 12 at night; with the baby,
in the fields, cleaning, cooking…

Me: And the men work hard too?

House Father: Yes. But the women work harder.

Me: Is this fair?

House Father & Nephew: No.

Me: What is the water system here?

Nephew: Rain, when there is rain. But we haven’t had rain for four years. When is the rain season? July. No. September. Hum. I don’t remember, it’s been so long since we’ve had a rain season. The village had to make wells. The government didn’t make them, but my uncle, he had a contact with someone who makes wells for the government and so this family put two wells in: one inside our house for our family, and one outside the house for the village to use. These wells are 350-420 feet deep. This is very deep, and each year we have to go deeper. The government made a water tank two years ago. Six months ago, it started working. It costs 18 rupees per month to use, but it also costs 800 rupees for the connection. That well comes from the earth, 345 to 400 ft. There are maybe 10-12 wells in the village, but only six of them still work.

Me: Does the village have electricity?

House Father & Nephew: Yes. We have electricity. When? From about 11pm to 5pm. But we don’t really know the times because it changes every day. For example, since you are coming, we haven’t had light. The electricity is most important because we need it to pump the water in the fields. 75% of the village has electricity. Normally it costs 70- 80 rupees per month, but most people are using the lines without paying for it by just taking it.

Me: What forms of fuel do you use here?

House Father & Nephew: We use dung from the animals for cooking. And some wood. One time, each year, we go up to the mountain and take wood from the forest. We take 2-3 bushels and use 1-2 small pieces per day. Are we running out? No. We only go a few times a year. There is so much wood. And we use diesel for the tractors.

Me: What kinds of electronics do you use here?

House Father & Nephew: We have TV’s. But ours is in the closet. There used to be only two or three TVs in the village, but now everyone has one. Not everyone uses them; sometimes we use to watch cricket matches, political news and serial pictures which the government plays for free on weekends. We use FM (radio) too – to hear the news. We have three cell towers here, and 30% of people in the village have cell phones. CD players too. Chinese players are so cheap on the black-market in Varanasi.

Me: What is the possession that you treasure most in the house?

House Father & Nephew: Our family.

Me: Where does the food that you cook the meals with come from?

House Father & Nephew: Mostly from the fields. Sometimes we get some vegetables from the market (in surrounding villages). Right now we grow (and are eating) carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, lentils, green peas, chick peas, zucchini, garlic, onion, potatoes, mustard seed (and oil), cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, ginger, bitter gourd, different leafy vegetables, sugar cane (and jaggery), and chili peppers. Soon we will begin to plant and harvest our summer foods: watermelon, cucumber, mangos, pumpkin, and rice when the rain season comes. Normally, we sell our surplus of these things in the city, but because we haven’t had a rain season for four years, we have just enough food for our own family.

Me: And the animals, what is your relationship to them?

Newphew: Do you know the Hindi word for animal? It is, “janvar.” This word means, “he who will kill himself for you.” Our animals take care of us. When my aunt died, we left our house empty (to attend to her death rites), and our dog watched over the house. We only have dogs and water buffalo here. We are Brahmin. So we do not eat any meat. If a Brahmin eats meat, another will say, “Don’t sit on my bed. Sit over there.”

Me: In the case of medical emergencies, what happens?

House Father & Nephew: Here, there are some doctors, but they are not very learned. For fevers and critical cases, people go to the hospital in the city. But it’s hard to get there; some people die on the way.

Me: Do you have any preventative health treatments, natural medicines?

Nephew: Yes. We pick natural medicines from the mountains. We use trees, grasses… I don’t know. My grandfather makes all the ayurveda medicine for our family. He still does it. What happens when he dies? It is so bad for the family. Because no one knows how to make the medicines. No one has the time to learn these things. But he will teach it, if anyone wants to learn.

Me: So when and for what do you go to the city?

House Father & Nephew: For some weddings, government work and to buy electronics. But, everything in the city – milk, vegetables, chick peas, rice, spices – comes from the villages.

Me: Interesting. So really, if there were a major disaster in the world that cut you off…

House Father & Nephew: We’d be fine.

Me: What are the things your family fears most?

House Father & Nephew: Separation of family.

Me: You mean physical separation? Like people moving away, to the city or other countries?

House Father & Nephew: No. I mean, if we don’t have nice relations with each other.

Me: Is there anything else your family is afraid of?

House Father & Nephew: Yes. Also drought and terrorists. Naxilites walked by our village once, two or three years ago. They just walked by. But there is a fear that they will come again and begin to kidnap persons.

Nephew: My uncle wants to know what you think of our village?

Me: I think it all works very well together. The community and family are such a strong and functional foundation to the village. And I think this emphasis is so important. I also see that while there are less material things here, there seems to be more peace and general happiness. Tell him that I think his village is beautiful.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

(This is an excerpt from a personal journal entry from the first week when I arrived in India. I sometimes cringe and curse at the weird way my sentences wrap around each other in odd-measured rhyme when I get writing. So know that it’s unintentional, but just the way my thoughts get scribbled. You see. A curse.)

india is an arranged marriage

There is no courtship with India. The face peering back at yours from behind the curtain does not bat her lashes or bite her lip. It is the lack of fear behind her stone stare that makes your heart race with unnamed emotion. The sterile passport-sized picture of her given to you does not invoke the vision of her as the mother of your dozen children. Yet your story with her seems dimensionless and pregnant with a million incarnations that could be conceived of the union. India is not coy. Nor is she shy. And you sense a thousand secrets, hidden millennia deep, when she finally chooses to give your gaze relief. India does not rank high by conventional standards and comparisons of beauty. But her features are sharp and distinguished and clues of a character that will not fade when fairness and years are incrementally dismissed. India does not flaunt, but neither does she hide. She does not rely on the skin she shows, but that which she doesn’t, to tantalize. India lowers her eyes. Not in feigned defeat, but in respect to that which she knows hides under the shadow of Earth’s own sari. India does not pretend — to know you, or that you know her. She knows that those worlds will take exponential lifetimes to explore. India hasn’t the time to, without prompt, monologue an explanation of herself to you. But she will reward each individual and invested question with her most straightforward and simple truth. For although India is a young bride, she feels no rush to attach herself to only one of her multiple lives. India dreams. And she trusts. She still calls it fate and questions those who say it’s not. India raises a candle to the sun. She feels no need to draw the theories when she can see the likeness clearly. India knows not what, but, that she doesn’t know. She doesn’t guess, but answers the biggest questions, honestly, with her silence. India knows she will grow old and, with time, wrinkle, but that is not how she remembers the line of women that came before her. She’s comfortable with her youth being shed and only hopes to inherit the pride of those whose footsteps left the path before her distinguished and well-tread. India trusts her ancestors. She counts on their mistakes to give merit to the wisdoms they pass along, even if the logical connection is ages lost or forgotten. India has great heart and hope. She sees no advantage in allowing herself to wander the fantasies of failure. India did not choose you. Neither did you choose her. Someone, something — above, older, wiser — of this proposal, was the organizer. And yet, the plank over this apparent divide, was the subconscious consent stated in the silence from both sides. One can insist on free will and draw a line. But, as India points out, fate can always draw another one, just an inch behind. Yes. India is wise. She’s an old wife, who has outlived her partner but lives on to share the recipes — for food, in love, of life — to any of those who bother to lean in and listen to the creaking treasure chest of her whisper. Perhaps you are circling India now, taking your wedding vows as she follows your steps around the sacred fire. You may not have ever seen her face, but you know she is there, a step behind you. Waiting for you to gather your courage, take her hand, lift her veil, and finally face her.

“If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor, even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength till it reaches the Glorious Sun.” - Paper on Hinduism, At the World’s Parliament of Religions Chicago, 19th September 1893

“Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus chemistry could not progress father when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are hut manifestations, and the science of religion becomes perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus it is, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached Religion can go no father. This is the goal of all science. All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today; and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in the more forcible language and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.” - Paper on Hinduism, At the World’s Parliament of Religions Chicago, 19th September 1893

“To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a travelling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.”- Paper on Hinduism, At the World’s Parliament of Religions Chicago, 19th September 1893

“The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing – not in believing, but in being and becoming.” - Paper on Hinduism, At the World’s Parliament of Religions Chicago, 19th September 1893

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

This is not my first cup of chai with Agam-ji.

While the kinship I feel for him might well transcend centuries, Agam has already become a revered character in one of my many lifetimes within this one; I studied the art of silversmith under his mentorship, three years ago, on my first trip to India. But in our many hours sitting cross-legged in the tiny carpeted studio attached to the shop showcasing his craft, I spent far less time melting, hammering and buffing than I did sipping, listening and laughing. And while my silver may have laid battered and unbuffed, my understanding of India was shaped and polished by Agam’s stories; of his beautiful arranged marriage, of his father’s life work and its distribution among his sons, and of his business, art, love and skill – silver – all in one.

Agam was the first star I found in my evening sky of India; my first friend born of the country. And on my last day in Banaras, I ran into his shop and asked him to mark our memory of times together, to which he agreed, as always, with a humor-her chuckle. He took out one of his tiny silver earrings and sharpened its blunt end to a piercing point. I stood with my back flat against the wall and when he told me to take a deep breath, as he’d instructed the hundreds of Indian women before me, I filled my lungs and exhaled my complete trust in him. What remains is the little star-like stud, on the left side of my nose, which I wear to this day.

Today, three years later, I find myself again in Agam-ji’s shop, wafting on the memories that the scent of silver dust in the air has yanked from past to present – as the smells of all the best stories do. And now, with a night sky full of Indian friends, I recognize just how lucky I was to have found such a North star: his character is un-faded by time; his charm as luminous, and wisdom striking, as the day I met him…

I look up over my chai cup and shout my surprise, “Agam! Look at all the little birds sitting above your shop door! That must be auspicious!”

He tips his wire-rimmed glasses up from the tiny earring that he is shaving with a hair-thin wire and with a chuckle says, “Well, yes, it is. And I am also feeding them!”

I laugh, stand up, and walk over to the doorway. I move slowly, but the dozen little finches and sparrows, in one great wing of wind, scatter to the tree across the street.

Agam laughs out loud and says, “They don’t know you!”

“Do they fly away when you go through the door, Agam?”

He laughs again, as he does with every response, and says, “well of course not!”

He instructs me to reach up and feel the top ledge of the metal door and as my fingers scope out inch-deep divide, I feel, with the tips of my fingers, a thick layer of seed lining the length of ledge.

“One day,” he begins as he holds up the earring for inspection of his work…

“One day, a bird came to my store. It was May. A very, very hot day. In the hottest month of the year. Everyone was hot and thirsty and this little bird came to my store. And it opened its mouth like this, breathing without closing its mouth, doing this, what is that called? Panting? Yes. Panting. It was panting and I thought to myself, “this bird is thirsty.” And I had a glass of water by my side and thought, “it does me no harm and it will make this bird happy if I give it water.” And so I put some of my water in a little dish and this little bird flew right to the dish and drank the water. And then I thought to myself; I wonder if this bird is also hungry? It will do me no harm to feed this bird and then the bird will be happy, isn’t it? So I went out and bought a bag of birdseed – which, in the market – it costs nothing. Only one rupee a day and this bird will be happy. And so I put the seed on the top of my door and the bird came back every day to eat and drink and it made me happy to see his bird happy. Then one day another bird came. And the two birds were happy and came back every day. Soon a third bird came. And the two birds did not like this one, and chased him away. They are very fun to watch; how they get along with each other, just like we do. But the third bird came back, and then a fourth came, and now they are many. Sometimes there are thirty or forty. They come for lunch at 11:30 and they come for dinner at 5:30. Everyday, they come at the same times. And they are very happy. Do you hear them singing? They are happy knowing that if they can not find any food that day, they can always come to my shop and have food. Do you know what it’s like to be very, very thirsty? Or very, very hungry? I am very happy to know that when they are feeling this, they come here. And that when they receive food, they give me their blessing. And this blessing is the blessing of a thousand. Because when you are very, very thirsty, or very, very hungry, your gratitude is of a thousand. And it is good karma to have thousands of such blessings sent into the world each day.”

He continues…

“Some people, they come into my shop, and they complain that the birds leave seed on my doorstep or their shirt– they say the birds make things dirty and ask me why I feed them. But I ignore them. It is nothing to me. I only need to clean just a little bit every day. Every morning I only need to use a rag to wipe the ledge and a broom to sweep the step, and it is so very little work for me to make the birds happy, isn’t it. Just a little bit of work every morning. Human beings are so selfish. We do not want to give, even when it costs us nothing. Only 1 rupee a day and look how many birds we can make happy. Look how many blessings we can have. And they chatter and sing and are beautiful to watch and they are happy and they are free.”

The smile fades from Agam’s face as he puts the piece he is working on down and raises his voice with an edge (not of anger, but of strength) that I have never heard before…

“Now, I go sometimes to a person’s house and I see a bird in cage. And I ask that person, ‘What are you doing! What are you doing to this bird? This bird is not happy!’ And that person says, ‘Well, I’m feeding it, aren’t I?’ And I say, but that bird is not free. Look at it. That bird is not singing or playing or fighting or flying. That bird is very unhappy! Why do you have to cage it to feed it? Your bird is unhappy and you have only one lonely and unhappy bird. Why only have one unhappy bird when you can make many, many birds happy and they will come to you the same, but they will sing, and fly and be happy and free?”

He puts the finger down that he was using to make his points in the air and picks up a soft cloth and starts to softly buff the silver while at the same time softly explaining…

“So this is my rule. Every morning. The first person who walks into the door of my shop. If it’s me, or one of the workers, or my trainee; no matter who it is, if you walk through the door first, it is your job, first, to clean the ledge and to sweep the step and to feed the birds. And if he, who comes through my door first, does not do this….”

Agam looks up at me above the wire rim of his glasses and says with a winking smile,

“Then I do not give him money for his breakfast either.”

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.