How I became a rock star
Rugmini says I have been here before. In a previous lifetime.
She said it the first day when I told her the heat felt good after the coolness of our Indiana springtime. The next morning at breakfast, she repeated her observation, saying that I am adapting too well to the food to have not been to Kerala before.
It’s true that I don’t seem to mind the spices and the chutneys and the rice. Eating with my hands, I can manage well, too, as long as it isn’t just rice. Too messy. The bean dishes tend to be another thing, subject to seasoning. But overall, the food has been no problem. It’s even been uplifting in a roundabout way.
There was something mysteriously captivating about waiting for my host under the sprawling Banyan tree outside the hotel restaurant hut two days ago. I sat on the concrete circle surrounding the giant tree and watched as early morning Palakkad came to life. And then it hit me: a strong waft of sandalwood.
Suddenly, I was in an ethereal moment with no time or sense of place. I paused, conscious of being transported from concrete and heat to some other place. Even with the sounds of buses honking and the beep beeeeeeep of the ultra compact cars and scooters, I was somewhere else, waiting, floating, quietly while a lone waiter nervously hovered outside the restaurant door debating whether to invite me to come inside to eat breakfast.
Sandalwood has always affected me that way. At the 10,000 Villages stores, I am pulled to the sandalwood section and just stand completely captivated, inhaling. I’ve been known to purchase a bar of soap to open from its package and set by my bedside to smell during the night until its fragrance has been completely sniffed away.
And now, I am in India, where the smell of sandalwood and lemongrass seem to linger in the air everywhere.
Funny, how it doesn’t seem as if I am really here, someplace so different. After getting into the small SUV taxi at Coimbatore airport, I could have been in the Caribbean. The tall coconut palms and the pastel houses reminded me of our harrowing ride up and down the mountains of St. Thomas. The constant honking of the horns took me back to a rental car excursion in Puerto Rico, and the sellers on the edge of the road only differed in their tropical fruit wares from those sidewalk hawkers in New York.
My first venture into Palakkad was Tuesday evening after resting. It was becoming dark and my host and I talked more than looked as we wandered through the city gardens. By the time that I was able to take in the surroundings by daylight, though, I had already stopped gaping at my new environment. My eyes were looking past the rags and paper scattered everywhere on the sides of roads and even on the leaf-topped houses. Past the bamboo scaffolded buildings with only half a roof under construction. Past the wandering cows and the occasional elephant. Past the goats tethered to the edge of the road. Past the throngs of people walking or just standing. When possible, past the mass of vehicles that compete for space on the narrow and bumpy roads.
Instead, my gaze was pulled to the shops and the people working inside. To their colorful clothing: Men in skirts, long and short, tugging them, retying them, hiking them up, and adjusting them to get into an auto rickshaw the way women do to climb on a bus back home. I noticed the variety of sarees, their colors and fabrics, the more wealthy women with the extra scarf training behind or pinned onto the front, modestly concealing their bosoms and arms, while their bellies peak out from underneath their fabric swaths.
My impressions are immediately more personal with the Indian teachers. Even though the women are clad with wispy draping cloth in glorious color combinations that leap out and shout, “Admire me!” it is their eyes that hold my stare. They are kind and generous and eager to help me fit in and feel comfortable, regardless of their gender. And my smiles are always broadly returned.
After the formalities of meeting, the tiny second-floor classrooms feel so right. I notice the peeling paint, the small, faded green chalkboard that every teacher throughout the day has written on, the worn and carved-on long benches and tables that the children are squeezed into, the lack of paper, and how no one takes notes. So different from my experiences.
But the whirling ceiling fan high above removes the heat, and the breeze from the latticed window pulls through the classroom to make it manageable- even comfortable.
The voices of the students chime together to fill in the almost imperceptible pause of the teacher during her lecture. They are so eager to learn, to demonstrate their knowledge.
I am captivated by the children, so polite and generous and attentive, especially for being one of 53 sitting in a classroom half the size of mine. They rise when I am introduced. “Good morning, Madam,” they chant in unison.
As I speak to them about my students and world, I walk up the only aisle, trying to make eye contact with as many as possible, to acknowledge their individuality. Each wears a neatly pressed and glowingly white uniform, but is so uniquely featured. I wonder about their heritage. A few stand out– those who bravely rise and venture a question in thickly-accented British English, much more formal than mine. They want to know about exams and punishments and what Americans do for fun. But mostly, they want to be noticed and praised and supported, as all kids do.
It must be hard to stand out in such a small space.
Afterward half of them advance upon me, shoving autograph books and pens in my face. At age fifty, I am an unlikely rock star.
Maybe Rugmini is right. I have been here before: If not in another lifetime, at least in my dreams.
Friday, April 8, 2010. 3:30 AM
In 2010, I participated in the US Department of State Teaching Excellence and Achivement (TEA) teacher exchange program that sent me to India and began the first of several cultural writing exchange projects between my students and students of my host teacher Rugmini Menon at Kendriya Vidyalya Kanjikode in Palakkad, India. While I was out of my classroom. I corresponded with my students via blog posts on a Google site.
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