Enough Water

I recently turned forty-two.  Most of my birthdays are marked by yearly traditions: amazing breakfasts in bed, dinner or a motorcycle ride with Greg, and maybe a meal shared with friends.  This birthday, however, few traditions applied since our annual Avalanche Camp was in full swing.

Instead of breakfast in bed, I awoke cramped and sore and crawled over the slumbering bodies of my tent mates and out into the early dawn of a new day.  Avalanche camp, nestled next to a resevoir an hour and half from Ooty, was quiet and serene.  Over thirty-five rescued girls and another 20 staff were scattered in various tents on the hill side.  A few early risers started their hot water bucket baths and sounds of splashing and quiet whispers punctuated the silence. 

I wandered away from camp, down to the cracked dry earth and the shrunken stream of water, all that was left of the lake after 3 months of the seasonal drought.  Its a regular cycle; the lakes fill in January from the 6 months of monsoon rains, and then slowly are depleated by thirsty Ooty, and fill again in June when the rains return. 

Enough water remains for kyaking, enough water to splash in after repelling down the cliff into the pool below, enough water for washing feet.

Here I was, at Avalanche, for the 6th year running, staying with girls, many of whom Freedom Firm had rescued, most whom I would never see again.  A moment in time, a brief window into their world.  A pause in their stories. A place to be a child again.  To forget the horrors of the past.

Avalanche.  The beauty of the mountains surrounding us speak of a good God.  Gut wrenching stories spoken around campfires end in applause as we cheer each other through pain.  And the ultimate culmination of the camp?   A couple of servant men, good men, washing their feet in a ceremony echoing Christ washing the disciples' feet.

That's the image branded in my mind. Girls, stripping off their shoes and socks in a hurry and slipping and sliding on rocks to be the next in line. Waiting as they lifted their feet in expectation.   The urgency of their movement.  Tears streaming down faces, unashamed.   God's Spirit, palapable and near, moving over the pool of water, touching, healing, cleansing.

But I can't stay in that place of intense emotion, where my heart feel split in too.  I can't hold on, don't want to hold on to the one story I will remember.  A girl approached me before the foot washing.
"Didi (sister), I get so angry when we sing and pray to God."

 "Why," I asked.
 I thought I had heard every story under the sun and was immune to shock.  I was wrong.

Her mother was very religious, and when her daughter was eight years old , they travelled to Hindu shrines to worship and pray.  As part of the rituals, priests violated her at every temple.  "The gods have hurt me, didi, the priests hurt me.  Why should I want to worship again?"

Christian pastors wound and maim too.  How do I tell her there is a loving God?  A God who does not take, only gives?  The one God who does not force our worship.  The God of free choice.

Sunayana, our camp leader, and I spoke long and earnestly to the girl.  Her face cleared as we walked toward the pool.  She rushed forward with the others for her feet to be washed by men who represented the sacrificial God.  Something pure and undefiled was given that day.  For once. One moment in time.  By men.  Mere falible humans. Did she catch a glimps of the loving God? Will she be betrayed again?
But who can carry these questions for long?  I cannot stay here.

 Avalanche ended, and I woke up the next morning to an omelett, strawberrys and cream, my own soft bed, Greg and my sweet innocent ones surrounding me, comforting me, lavishing me with thier cards and little gifts and words of love.  My heart wrenches back into place.  Another life comes into focus again, the seesaw balances.  The girl and her story receed.  The moment at the pool of water fades.  I can breath again.

Greg and I headed off that weekend to Bangalore to celebrate my birthday.  I told Greg I wanted a gift that committs me to write.  A desk.  Now its the desk's job to pin me down.  I will have to name her, since I have already personified her.  A little desk, please, to fit into the bay window of the bedroom, where I can look out on the garden, the mountains and write.  A place to remember.  A place to will the mind to look again.

So once in Bangalore, Commercial Market, we started asking for old furniture shops.  I knew the nice shops were expensive, and I am lover of garage sales and deals, so we wound our way through crowded streets into the Muslim section of the market.  A completely different world.  Mosques on every corner, goats the size of Shetland ponies tied to shop corners, sizzling mutton shiskababs on skewers, and the best yogurt lassies (a drink) I have ever tasted.  Rats scuttled everywhere in the bright sunshine, unafraid. 

 a new born Rajasthani kid, not a dog

Junk shops emerged.  Shop after shop of broken plywood furniture, rusty skeletons of beds and metal tables, old filing cupboards and chairs all tossed in high mountains.  I was in heaven.  Somewhere, I was sure, in all of this, was my desk.  I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Greg was engaged, a good sign.  Both in high humor, streaming with sweat and dust, we started pushing our way through tiny passages in the junk. 

Right in the middle of the first shop, like a jewel among rubble, we spotted a teak wood old-fashioned cupboard, (not a desk).   And the price.  It was cheap.  Like they didn't know its worth.  Back in Ooty it would have cost a bomb.

By the end of the afternoon we were proud owners of a host of "finds." The jewel- like cupboard, an old table, a chair, a mechanical art/drafting table (for Kavi) a teak wood bed (for Abbi ) But no desk.  The ones we found were either too broken, too masculine, or, horrors of horrors had a laminate top. 

Independent of each other, we spied an old sewing machine table.  The ones here in India have a cast iron wheel and pedal, as even today most tailors don't use electric machines.  Coaxing a shop owner to remove the sewing machine, we bought the table.  We will put on a desk top later (when Greg gets back from the latest rescue in Nagpur).

That night we dined on buffalo wings and french fries. For dessert we went to the Hard Rock Cafe which rents space from the Bible Society of India.  We couldn't hear each other at all, the music pulsed through our skin, our stomachs.  Even the waiters had to use sign language.  We grinned like idiots and ate our cheese cake and in my heart I tried to reconcile my life of hunting for second hand furniture in the underbelly of Bangalore, and the luxury of good food and music, and the world of pain glimpsed at Avalanche.  Did all this happen just a day apart?  Really?  Can one person contain it all?

The next day Greg flew to Nagpur and I drove back the eight hours to Ooty, my minivan piled high with furniture, and somehow it reminded me of Grapes of Wrath and the jalopy full of old furniture, and I had high adventures getting home, but that must be saved for another blog.

My own personal gift to myself this year was made possible by two people.  My mother bought the harness, and Laura, our Leg Up volunteer left Ooty at 10 am and returned at 2am with a white and apple green cart.  It is a way to use the ponies in a different capacity, it adds options to our horse therapy, and very small ponies like Herc will be used much more often.  Hercules (the pony) seems to like it as much as I do.


 To see more photos of the horses visit http://www.facebook.com/legupindia


So last but not least on the list of profound and mundane things of my birthday, after two years of searching in the archives of Calcutta for proof of my birth in Calcutta, multiple paper swaps with the Indian government, enormous frustration for my tenacious husband (he is balder now), hiring a lawyer, and finally the invaluable help of Indian friends, I am now a proud OCI.  That stands for "Oversees Citizen of India." 

It means I have a life-time right to be here.  No more visas for me.  It means my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can choose to live here.  It means the property we bought is safe, since I cannot be denied access to this country.  In a way, it means I belong. 

And so, God surprises me once again.  A sense of rootedness washes over me this 42nd birthday, and I stand in awe of sovereignty, timing and eternity.  I also know I am not bound by fate, but have the gift of free choice and I chose to be here.

 In the midst of all that is my life, the stories of the girls run like a stream, a stream of gravity, sadness and great loss that continue to haunt my dreams, even as I experience the privilege of sharing life with a  few of the girls we rescue.

I am deeply grateful for the punctuations, the pauses, the surprises:  a camp in the woods, just for fun, the pony and cart, hunting desks with my husband (who humors me), Hard rock cafe and my children's hand-made cards of abiding affection,OCI, which all weave together, inseperable, as gifts from a good God as I walk down the center of the stream. As the spring rains have suddenly burst forth filling our parched mountains with lush growth,  I am grateful for enough water.