Christmas gifts from Kolkata...

One of the official mottoes of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps is "Be broken open, fall in love, and be ruined for life..." Though I've never been a JV (Jesuit Volunteer), I've spent enough time with the Jesuits to have heard this phrase a few times. After returning from India two years ago, I found it especially meaningful, and considered myself to be one of the "ruined." I also assumed, as the phrase suggests, that my new "ruined-ness" would last "for life" and somehow then I would never have to repeat the turbulent process of truly being wrenched open, and falling head first into love. I was wrong.

Often when I would reflect on my time in Kolkata, one of the things I would recall most fondly was the rawness of the city. The colors, the food, the smells and sounds, beggars and street children, hagglers and hawkers, etc. I admit that to some degree I idealized the experience of just being here and remembered mostly the gifts and fruits of the process, but I honestly remember enjoying the chaos and intensity. What I think I forgot, and thus took for granted, was that it took me some time to get to place where I enjoyed chaos. Another way I like to look at it is in terms of clothing. In Seattle, most people wear clothes and often times many, many layers, and so of course, I wear clothes. In Kolkata, most people are naked, at least the people I interact with, and so I have to go through the arduous process of removing all my clothing, and then learn to be OK with being naked. It is only then that I can enjoy the chaos.

Let me explain. When I am in Seattle, it is very easy to get caught up with external things. Everything from work, money, what food I want to eat, shopping, cars, bicycles, and coffee shops (to name a few) to what other people think of me, what I think of me, future plans, accreditation, achievements, status, etc. All of these things can very easily hide or at least cloud the interior; what's really me, what I'm really feeling, what the quiet echoes of my heart are really saying. In Kolkata that's all stripped. Most of the people I meet here don't have the time, means, etc. to build up any external pretenses. Whatever they have, they have (at least for the time being) and thus who and what they are is real, in the moment, honest, raw and most of the time on display for everyone else to see. Life is open and everything occurs in pubic, on the streets, for presentation. Bathing, laundry, eating, shopping, peeing, fighting, talking, loving, breathing, dying and even birthing happen, for many people, in the open. No pretense, protection, or distraction allowed. This is the rawness of Kolkata.

So when I show up then, fully dressed and in many layers, and enter into the lives of people here, my clothes quickly and sometimes painfully begin to disappear. At least some of them I have chosen to leave (i.e. I live very simply here compared to in Seattle) but others are removed when I am exposed to people or situations that question or challenge my ideas of myself and any abilities that I may or may not have. For instance, I may think that I can remain peaceful and calm when we encounter a man who rudely ogles at or attempts to touch Devin, but after two months I have to acknowledge my quickness with anger. Other times I have to recognize how limited I am in my ability to help people, especially when all I want to do is communicate, and I don't even speak the language! This continuous process here really does end up feeling like I'm being stripped. Forcefully and unwillingly stripped. Grabbed at, pulled, pushed, hit, torn, broken, sad, lonely, small, angry, bitter, and eventually naked. Naked and vulnerable. Left with only me, only what is really and truly me. However ugly or beautiful, whatever scars and moles, whatever limitations or gifts are actually me.

This, more or less, has been the core of the last two months for me. Again.

The brink of culmination began ten days before Christmas, as the Mother House nativity play practices commenced. Seeing that we only began writing, rehearsing, blocking, lighting, and set design (Yes, a Mother House nativity play has all these things) all on the 14th of December, Sr. Karina decided that we needed to meet everyday for 2-3 hours, with six hour final rehearsals on the 22nd and 23rd. I was not expecting this. I had just started trying to be more deliberate with my days here and spend much needed time journaling, resting, thinking and just being. I was tired. Work was draining still and the city was getting to me. I wanted desperately for it to feel like Christmas and to send cards, packages and gifts back home as well as spend meaningful time with friends and volunteers here. But I was Joseph. And Devin was Mary. She had wanted to be Mary since arriving in Kolkata and even though I had thought about finding someone else, anyone else really, who could be Joseph instead of me, I also didn't really like the idea of Devin being the Holy Family for the Sisters with someone else. I quickly felt there was no real time in the day for anything else but work, food, rehearsal and sleep, much less all the over ambitious Christmas plans I had made in my head. I was already tired and even if I had wanted to I couldn't have killed myself to do it all. So after two play practices spent being grumpy, tired, frustrated, removed and some times resentful, I gave in. I let go of needing to do "everything" and tried to be present to all I was doing. I surrendered to where I was, what I had already committed to, and to how I was feeling. How tired and incapable I was feeling. This was exactly what I needed.

On the 23rd I showed up to work, terribly exhausted from the six hour rehearsal the day before, only to find we were short of volunteers. We usually work with seven or eight and that day we were three. We mustered all the energy we had and went to work. It took us longer than usual but we all knew what we were doing, we were comfortable with each other, and enjoyed the work we did. We left only an hour later than usual, tired and laughing. I got on the bus to head home and I plopped down, excited and grateful to have a seat, and took a breath. I felt comfortable, like I could rest a minute, and not at all weary about the long rehearsal that would start in a few hours. I somehow stepped back from that moment, and witnessed it in perspective, and realized "I feel comfortable, at rest, and capable." On a Kolakta bus, in the middle of the day... I was home. It had taken me two months, but I had gotten used to life here again, and I witnessed the moment it happened. Wow...

I talked to a friend that night on the phone and finally felt able to open up and let out all the frustrations and questions that had been sitting with me so long. We both shared and listened to stories about Kolkata and discussed how to make sense of it all, how to find worth in it, how to give yourself to it. I stayed up late talking, and her words stuck with me into the next day.

For those who don't know yet, I work at a dispensary the Sisters run at Sealdah train station. There they work with the many lost, abandoned, sick, injured, beaten, raped, abused, and mentally ill men, women, children and families that call the platforms their home. I help the Sisters give out food, medication, clothing, etc and sometimes change dressings or care for wounds. Although we're not technically supposed to have favorites, I certainly do, and one of them is a boy named Ajit. I first met him two months ago, just on my way to the dispensary outside the station. He is young, maybe 17 or 18, with pale tan skin, green eyes, sharp features and a big nose. His hair is thick and black, standing and twisting out of his head, wild and dirty. His hands and feet are thick, calloused and cracked; caked in dirt and grime. His skinny body is usually dressed in old, tattered clothes. I met him walking down the stairs of the station, moving slowly, engulfed by a streaming crowd. I spoke to him, "Namaste," and he looked up at me with one eye open, defensive and questioning, weary of my presence. My first thought was that he might be feral. He was instinctive, uncommunicative, and guarded. I left him that first day, but he did not leave me. I thought of him often and wondered what his story could be, how he functioned, how he survived. The next few days I looked for him, but never saw him. A week later I spotted him again, sitting near the stairs, and I went to him. I crouched down, putting my hand on his shoulder and offering my "Namaste." He was startled, and pulled back a bit, again cocking just one eye at me and saying nothing. I tried to ask him how he was, or his name, but he seemed confused by me and perhaps afraid. I left again, and again he stayed with me.

In Bengali they often say "aste, aste" which literally means "slowly, slowly." It was as such that I became friends with Ajit. I started by bringing him food and chai, and began talking with him little by little. I decided at some point that what he most desperately needed was a wash, and set it as my goal to get him clean before I left Kolkata. This might not seem too difficult a task, but once Ajit began to speak I discovered that he was mentally ill and perhaps even developmentally disabled. He lives in a world all his own, and converses and interacts with people and things I do not see. Worst of all for my goal, he is a wanderer, and easily distracted. The first few times I actually got him to walk with me towards the dispensary, he followed for only a hundred feet or so before stopping, saying "ta ta" and sauntering off. After a few weeks of similar encounters, I began to realize how frustrating and humbling a task I had put before myself. I wasn't sure I would be in Kolkata long enough to stretch our few hundred foot jaunts into the few hundred meters we needed to make it to the dispensary. All I could tell myself was, "Aste, aste bondhu. Aste, aste."

Christmas Eve. I went to work exhausted, but I was happy. I was still reveling in my comfort and capability, and felt open to the day and it's offerings. On the way there, I ran into Ajit and gladly made time to get him some food and chai. I had to get to the dispensary soon to help open and prepare for the day, but I stilled asked if he wanted to come in for a wash. I don't know why, but that day I really wanted it to happen. I thought maybe it would be a Christmas gift of sorts for him, a simple but happy gift. I told him to wait there for me, and that I would come back to take him. I dashed off to the dispensary to help set up, and put some water on to boil for Ajit's bath. As soon as I could I went to find him again, anxious and hopeful, knowing his desire to wander. As his old spot came into view through the crowd, I could see he was gone. Lost amongst the chaos. I was so disappointed and frustrated. I was planning on leaving in a week and Ajit had gone no where near the dispensary yet. My goal, Ajit's opportunity for a bath, and more importantly our friendship, would be gone in a week. As I walked slowly, dejectedly back to the dispensary, I said a little prayer. "Please God, please let Ajit be near the dispensary. Let me find him today. Please." I approached the dispensary looking out into the crowd for Ajit's slow saunter, hoping to see him there. I looked around for about ten minutes and then finally gave up. It was only as I opened the gate of the dispensary that I picked my head up, and saw Ajit sitting on the outside wall, smiling and nodding at me. "Washing?" he asked. "Washing?" Oh, I smiled! What a gift! I quickly took him in and began to wash him.

As I washed Ajit that morning, my friend's words came back to me. She had been told her first day of work, "Today, you have the best job in the world. The only thing you have to do, is be with and love the person in front of you. There is nothing else." Finally, after two months of being in Kolkata, I could do this again. As I washed Ajit, it was the only thing in the world I cared about, and I loved him as best I could. Again, I stepped back from this moment in the middle of it, and witnessed it in perspective. What I realized, was that I was in love again. Kolkata had wrenched, torn, and broken me open, and again I had fallen in love with her. For this gift there were no words. I cannot even give description to the bath itself, as definition seems only to simplify it. It was beyond words. It was numinous, and mystical.

The nativity play went well that night, despite last minute changes, technical difficulties, and casting problems (I was also supposed to be narrator but I had lost my voice). As Sr. Karina reflected later, "MC (usually Missionaries of Charity) stands for Mass Chaos, Much Confusion, and Many Changes," and so an MC event it was! But, baby Jesus was adorable, everyone's costumes looked great, and we finished just in time for mass. A good time was had by all to be sure.

On Christmas Day Kolkata gave me another gift: giardia. Again. I pushed through the morning at work and even made it to Christmas caroling around Sudder St. in the early afternoon, but by the end of it I felt weak, nauseous, and feverish. I put myself to bed at two and slept right through dinner. I missed the Seattle group's first trip to the only decent Italian restaurant in Kolkata, complete with minestrone soup and apple pie. It was sad to follow up such a great day with sickness, and missing Christmas in general is tough for me, not to mention Italian food and apple pie. I spent the next five days in bed recuperating and thinking about everything that had happened in the past two months. We also said goodbye to the second Seattle member on the 30th, and everyone's imminent departure dates (including mine) began to sit with me. I'm still not sure about anything, but I'm finding it hard to imagine leaving this place so soon, and I might be staying in Kolkata longer than anticipated. Time will tell.

Today I went back to work with all these many thoughts and questions sitting heavy in my head and gut. As Devin recommends, I am trying to hold uncertainty with open and gentle hands. But today a man came to the dispensary very sick, malnourished, and tired. He sat out front for maybe a half hour, eating only a little and laboring to drink water. I went to see him, and noticed his breathing slow down. He leaned his head back into his chair and set down his bread. I held his hand and took his pulse. It was weak. He was dying. I began to pray for him and told Sister to come. We stood over him, watching, waiting. He looked at me, and at her, then leaned back again. "I am here," I said. I watched his breath labor and slow further. He choked a last few breaths, stopped breathing, and I watched his pulse beat in his neck. One, two; one, two. Five beats and he was gone.

"I am here," I said. "I am here..."

I am here.

Merry Christmas and much love this year,
Jeremiah