(I started writing this in Baratpur, so excuse the fact that it’s way uber latesies).
We just left the mountains.
We had the days off on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday we went back down to Dharamsala, but the lot we’d been going to was empty and everybody had moved. And then Thursday was our last day here. We couldn’t get in touch with the shelter home for streetchildren that we were hoping to go see, so I ended up walking around McLeod Ganj after Hindi class, shopping for Christmas presents, stopping in to say goodbye to some of the shopkeepers I knew, and all in general tying up loose ends.
So… Suraj.
I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days. But I wanted to get him something, for putting up with me this week. I felt like I’d been using him—sitting down to interview him the first day, but brushing him off when I couldn’t talk for the next few. For being too busy, and for having come into this interaction with my own goals and decisions about what I would take out of it, what I would learn, which I figure is sort of unfair and one sided. He has his goals and wants and needs. I figure, I aught honor his definition of a ‘successful interaction’, too.
I wanted to get him a bag of rice, or a blanket after he asked me for one on Saturday. I was hoping to get one and give it to him if I saw him, or if I didn’t, then maybe to leave it with a storekeeper and ask them to please pass it on (he’s pretty infamous…)
Earlier he had told me he wasn’t talking to me anymore, when I didn’t buy him a blanket upon our happenstance collision this Saturday. Then later, I had been walking, all of a sudden heard whistling right behind me, and turned around to say hello and ask how he was. He stopped, ignored me as if he hadn’t noticed he had materialized at my exact tail, and told me he wasn’t my friend anymore, remember? And so I shrugged and kept going.
He has such an act.
Anyway, this last Thursday, as I was making my way back from Neemala’s restaurant, he came up to me again, nonchalantly following my path. I said hello. “You buy me blanket today?” he ventured coolly. And I think he was surprised when I nodded that “han ji. Bil koul (of course). I’m leaving tomorrow, and I told you I would, yeah?”
He got excited, and whipped me to this certain blanket stall, where he had his bounty all picked out. “This one is best quality. Velvet. Very soft.” It was only 800 rupees.
Kay cool. The one he showed me on Saturday was 300.
So I told him he was ridiculous, and pulled him around to some different stalls, checking the prices of and inspecting some smaller, fleecey deals. He’s good at what he does, knows how to work, knows how to bargain (with me): this one is much nicer quality. This one will last longer. This one will be okay when I wash it. This one is only 100 rupees more for double size. Yes yes!
As we were walking around, he hugged my arm. “I am sorry I said you were not my friend.” He puts on his show, but I know it’s rehearsed and has been said to a thousand travelers before me. I’ve seen him this week even, walking around with at least four or five different 20-something year old girls by the hand, crooning to them (I can only assume) about his poor grandmother, asking for something specific, like a pair of shoes or a coat, being ridiculous and friendly and trying to lure them into camaraderie: playing music on the horns outside some of the shops, looking light and adorable.
I finally bought him a double-width fleecey blanket. (He settled for that when I continued to insist that no way was he incrementing into a 20 dollar investment). But he was pretty happy.
He was throwing it up in the air and catching it for me as he skipped down the street, clearly proud of his bounty. He went to this one street vendor, who he clearly knew, and had them give him a glass of water (probably what they use to splash on their dishes to clean them) from this bucket. He’s friends with everybody… or rather, everybody knows him. Neemala (our Hindi teacher) and my Amala both asked me how things were going with him, and told me to watch out: he is clever and conniving and sneaky and steals.
Infamous.
He balanced the packaged blanket on his head, dancing his way down the lane. He saw this other beggar kid wandering the street, and started playfully (and proudly, and excitedly) smacking him with his prize—though Nanu was not particularly amused.
I asked Suraj for a picture, intending to take a couple of snaps, but first he pulled out of his bag this crumpled printed photo of him—his hair a little shorter, maybe a few months or weeks back—sitting on the steps of some building around here, smiling innocently, hands on his knees like a school photo.
Last week, too, I had looked in his bag, and he had showed me a picture of himself wearing a mask on one of the nearby streets.
I have no idea where they came from. Maybe tourists he’s made friends with. Maybe he gets them made as an investment, to give to people, to multiply their love and trust will which pay back in some other material form.
But in any case, he handed it to me. “A gift,” he said.
He scampered down the lane for a bit, and then I headed off in my own direction to buy pencils and prayer flags and finish my errands.
Later, on the way down to the hotel to meet our group for presentations, I saw him, not holding the blanket, freely wandering.
I waved at him, and he ran up to me. “I sold it back!” he said mischievously and proudly. I was pretty sure he hadn’t, in a span of 7 minutes, and that he wouldn’t have admitted it if he had. But I told him that it was okay, that the blanket was his to do whatever he wanted or needed with it. I got it for him as a gift for putting up with my come and go friendship for the last week, and I trusted his judgment. No conditions or strings or tests.
I think he was sort of caught unawares by that too. And he just smiled and was like “No, I didn’t really. My grandma [not his real one, just an old lady with a shop] is holding it for me.” Did I want to come see?
I told him no. “I believe you, I know.”
But he absolutely insisted I come, took me by the hand and led me to this scarf stall, where he pointed to the blanket tucked behind a tarp. The lady was shouting something to him in Tibetan (I think…), and gave it to him to take. (He referred to her as his friend, but I’m sort of doubtful she thinks any more of him than ‘that mischievous pushy little boy that runs around’.)
So he played catch with it more—and then another youngish lady came over. Pointing to his blanket “I see your problem is solved,” she said in a European accent. He looked a little caught off guard. “Yes yes,” he said, and then began explaining but how much he desperately, desperately needs a new backpack. “I think you’ll be okay,” she said.
“No no no, I need” he said, and then took her by the hand and began walking her off. He called a “See you later” to me over his shoulder, way already enveloped in and focusing on his new ‘prey.’ She put her hand on this wily child’s back, as he led her off into the fray.
It would be epic if that was the last I ever saw of him, wandering away with another potential payday in tow. The process starting all over again, him beginning work on his next project, like one of the many craftsmen we’ve been meeting finishing one traditional handicraft and beginning to weave his next day’s rug, or trace out his next tankha.
In truth, though, I bumped into him one more time-- though him snagged by the smell of a new investment, disappearing down the street, is what I think will stick out in my memory as the mental picture of our paths diverging.
I was on my way back to my house, about half an hour later. I saw him standing with a familiar homeless beggar by the side of the road. He was making a cup out of a piece of discardboard (that’s a word I invented right now), for begging money he explained. He held it up and widened his eyes and looked cute, in demonstration, as I took another photo.
I told him I couldn’t talk right now (as always,) had to go, had to keep walking to get back in time for ISP presentations, but maybe I’d see him again on the way back. He finally (I believe his exact words), with a shrug and affirming tilt of his head, said “Okay, give me a hug and go”. He then proceeded to cling onto my torso like a monkey for about two minutes as I walked. I told him that I knew he already knew, but he was bohut bohut clever. And hoshiyar (smart). He replied “ap bhi hoshiyar hai” (basically, you too).
And I proceeded to feel smart for understanding.
Finally I managed to shake him off/he dismounted. We parted with a last casual “see you later,” and he coolly went back to talk to sit with that fragile, old homeless lady who planted herself at that corner every day, whose toothless smile and wrinkled face were a familiar site to me by the end of our stay, laughing at his antics as he interacted with me.
The End.
(but I’ll keep blabbing, don’t worry).:
I’ve been thinking about him a lot: I know I will continue to, that he will continue to pop up in my mind as the example and rubber stamp and cookie cutter image of third world street children as I study and learn and think about community development and its social implications for the rest of my life. His antics and demeanor—or rather, my impressions and interpretations of his antics and demeanor (my memory of which will also, I’m sure, morph itself with time and distance)—will represent and define a whole ‘category’ of people to me. Him interacting with me—giving me the chance to use his life as input, to label and stereotype and intake impressions and misrepresent, misremember, and distort it as I’m sure I will—that’s a gift I took from him.
I have no idea what our little encounter/crossing of paths means (or, meant) to him. I have no idea if he’ll remember it, how he’ll remember, or whether he’ll look back with hidden affection or sly pride at one more foreigner he deceived and played like a game of cards.
When I asked him about it again on the way to get the blanket, he had admitted sort of proudly that yes, sometimes he does sell back. He referred to it as “the milk thing.” He smiled with sort of a sly pride in it, at being cool and sneaky enough to be able to pull off such shenanigans and manipulations. He was pretty pleased with himself. And in a way, when I looked back later that night, reflecting on the day’s events and progressions, I realized that having seen that was sort of a step. That he trusted me enough to tell me that—or, let his guard down enough to let me see, whether he knew it or not. I realized that when I had asked him the first week about selling back, I had met with a train of sort of startled, sort of half-hearted “I don’t know”s. And that he told me—was proud of it in front of me, was proud to me about how sneaky he is to all the tourists coming through—maybe it’s a tiny, subtle means-nothing detail, that is really a sort of expression that I’m on his side of that line between him and his audiences, that I can know his tricks and see a tiny glimpse of his mischievous pride. Maybe.
Or maybe it was totally scripted and prepared to let me think he trusted me a little. Maybe he is actually way smarter than I’m giving him credit for, and is just messing with my head more to let me think I’m noticing that.
Could be either.
I thought, again, too, about him dragging me to the old lady’s stall. I told him it’s okay, the blanket is his and he doesn’t owe me anything. That I believed him that he hadn’t sold it back if he said so. But he insisted I see, that I know with my own eyes.
I realized/wondered, in hindsight, why did he do THAT? Why did he even come up to me again? He had what he wanted from me. His investments and displays of friendship had already reaped their reward. Why did he care what I thought still? Why feel the need to prove himself? To maintain my respect and trust?
I’d like to believe that that faith does mean something—whether he realizes it or not. Whether he’d ever intentionally let on, and let that guard down, and open up that vulnerability of dependence.
I’d kind of like to think that that’s part of the reason... maybe an eensy weensy tiny bit… behind his euphoric aerial acrobats with the blanket as he danced down the street showing off to me. I’d like to believe that in a way, part of his delight and excitement was in having something bought for him from a potential clientele he thought was lost: at being at the receiving end of some sort of trust or faith regardless of dramatically declaring our ‘friendship’ a thing of the past.
Somewhere, deep down, hidden in a way maybe he doesn’t even realize he kind of sort of maybe valued or connection.
But people are apt to see what they want to see. I’d love to believe that.
But maybe it was plain and simply just because he had a new blanket, and that’s pretty delightful.
Or maybe it was because he had succeeded in fooling another tourist into thinking he relied on them, that they’d opened his heart and changed his life forever with their love and friendship.
He probably did.
But regardless, I wanted to leave something, with and for him. I wanted to give him a piece of me… just in case.
I went back to my homestay home, and picked out a photo of me and my family at home, like I’d left in Ladakh and AP already.
I forget exactly what it said by now. I probably should have written it down, for posterity. But it was something to this effect, that I wrote down on the back of the Walmart print:
that I never really knew what to believe about him, but I never stopped believing in him. That I had endless faith in him. That he should love himself and take care. And thanks.
So I have no idea. No idea what to do or be or what. No idea where I stand, where he is. How or if he remembers me, as I’m sitting here. Whether he’s smarter than I give him credit for, totally fooled and tricked me and knew all along exactly how to make me think I could be important.
I don’t think so, really. I know I didn’t change his life. But hopefully, maybe a little bit, I could mean something to him, in what little bit of faith and friendship I could offer.
But that’s probably my naïve and uncallused optimism getting the best of me.
I don’t know. And I’ll never know. but I can give him what I have, and hope that he’s still soft enough for it to mean something to him.
Hope is a tricky thing. Maybe it’s blind. But I think I’d still rather have it.
I’ve been thinking about that a bunch in the last week and a half I guess: about my ‘faith’ in people in the world, about trusting, and mistrusting, and second guessing, and having to or not. I guess I sort of see the world through this lens of optimism and faith. And that can be dangerous, and misguided. And in a way, it can’t alter truth— So maybe it’s dumb, and blind, and just a perpetuation of illusion.
But in a way also, it informs how I interact with people, and with life. And in that way, it does sort of create the world I live in, because it changes how I see and behave in it. It colors and creates interactions and experiences I might not have. Opens up doors and streets and lifetimes I might otherwise shy away from.
So it’s sort of dumb. But then again, I think in some ways it’s almost as tragic to shut oneself off from a world of unknowns as it is to stumble and fall and make mistakes in it.
But the world can be a scary place. There are dangers and risks and I guess it’s important to balance and be conscious of that too, knowing when to ask questions or doubt motives and intentions.
I hate doubting. And I think that’s what was one of the hardest parts of this study/research/series of experiments for me.
But that’s a whole different tangent I didn’t even mean to start rambling about.
So, to reiterate what I’ve basically repeated for six pages now: I have no idea what any of this means. And really, I can’t know.
There are this certain series of events that have occurred, which I’ve laid out and detailed for you in this and the previous post. How I, or you, or anyone, interpret and remember them is all up for grabs. I can tell you the day by day. But I have no idea what any of adds up to. On that, I can only speculate. And that’s where interpretation, and misinterpretation, come into the picture.
I’ve chronicled to you the events of the past two weeks. But it’s only how I’ve been able to perceive them. I wonder whether and how I’m judging Suraj, how in looking back I’m projecting my own opinions and wants and thoughts upon our encounters: seeing his life through the lens of my own experiences. Wanting to believe he’s unhappy, because I want to believe he needs me.
So, that’s the state of that. I wanted to throw you all a bit of closure, though I wouldn’t say anything is really tied with a bow.
Not necessarily conclusion and summation, but here at least is the tail ends of the chapters.
I’ll let them be that: bits and pieces and individuals I bumped into and crossed paths with once, that I can’t claim to know, even, or understand in truth—to take or leave for what they are.
Love you all,
<3 sandy
p.s. And I never saw Aarthi again.
I’ll show you her bracelet when I see you.
Go figure
p.p.s. HINDI-ke KAKSHA
Chah bje hai. Mere magarmaj ooth raha hai. Unko sadhna acha lagta hai, or kabhi kabhi mere cabre pahnata hai. Namaste.
(It’s six o clock. My crocodile is waking up. He likes to meditate, and sometimes he wears my clothes. Peace out, girl scout.)
p.p.s. ADENDUM: By now, also, I should mention we’re in Jaipur, at homestays, yaddayadda. I started writing this on the laptop over two weeks ago. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get it into my hands and to finish it. I meant to ages ago.
I would tell you more about Jaipur and my family, except it’s getting late and I should be heading back to them right about now. So suffice to say, they’re nice. It’s nice. AAAAND Indian sweets are fantastic. Almost as good as chai. FEAR NOT, Mother, father, and brother bear dearest—I am testing out all of the varieties and can clue you quite in upon my imminent arrival back in the land of evergreens and salmon. My fake family fed me “bundi” the other day. SOOOOoOoOOoo good. I’ll keep researching,
And will post soon again hopefully with a more updated update.
I want to tell you all about Jainism.
And how I just realized it’s almost thanksgiving. And that you probably have pumpkins and spiced warm beverages, and cozy blankets and things to snuggle under there.
I miss you all
<3 sandy
What up fools?
Jaipur is definitely not Dharamsala or Ladakh. The city is fast-paced and loud; it takes five minutes to plan and execute a safe passage across a road (even with a pedestrian crossing clearly marked) and because it is wedding season, you can often hear the melodic strains of one or more brass bands wafting through your bedroom window from the neighbor's front yard, always right as you are drifting off to sleep.
Jaipur is not what I'd expected, to say the least. A few days ago, we went to the old city to see metal workers, and that was what I'd thought our Jaipur experience would be like: narrow roads, crammed houses, load noises and a sensory overload. But, as Mirise said to me when we were talking about this, that would have defeated the purpose. We are already comfortable with more simplistic living. Instead, we're staying with very...modern families. I live in a nice house with only a mom, dad, brother and sister, so there's plenty of space to go around. Shivani, our local coordinator and my yoga teacher lives in a house that's even funkier than (and easily as big as) Ellen's house, for all of the people at home. She and her husband are graphic designers (amongst other things) and have journals for sale and Barnes and Noble. Our lecturer on traditional Indian crafts is also a big time designer and just did the interior for a Spanish Tapas rester aunt opening soon in Chicago. Rick Bayless (my friend's father and the owner of Frontara Grill, a rester aunt at home) was quoted in "The Times of India," in an article about Chicago's current state of joy. Upper-middle class Jaipur seems hard to separate from American culture, especially when it comes to my homestay sister.
After our speaker, I have sewing with my 
So, I made a coat. I am very proud of myself. I believe there will be pictures to come, if they are not up already. This coat was made in my delightful Tibetan tailoring ISP. Its funny, coming here I didn't think tailoring would particularly interest me, and sort of took it because Tracy mentioned it. And when she did I was just like sure, OK, without really thinking about it. But I LOVE it. Two hours every night in a family's home. I walk in each night and they assault me with chai and pastries (the husband is a baker which is an added bonus), and make sure I eat and drink copious amounts before starting. And then we sew, or cut. The machine is manual, which was disconcerting at first, and you have to pump a pedal with your foot while making sure you sew perfectly straight (otherwise, my guru smiles kindly and then proceeds to tear it out). So far we have made 2 little bags, 2 "mobile phone cases," the aforementioned coat, and the beginning of a Tibetan shirt. The coat we made from a pattern but everything else she just knows, and makes me take notes on the pattern, which make me happy. But the most exciting part is that even in this short amount of time, I am already feeling more independent with sewing. She measured me for the shirt last night and took me step by step through the pattern, and I really think I could replicate it and transpose what I have learned onto other things I want to make, in the future. (Margot I think I owe you an item of clothing and now it can actually be good).