As Nutan concluded class on our last day, I leaned against the
back wall and checked once more that Mamta was present. I wanted to
make sure she got a copy of the “School Book.” She was there,
sitting in her smudged white dress, paying strict attention to the teacher for
once.
The School Book wasn’t much. It contained numbers,
written in Arabic numerals alongside their Hindi and Rajasthani spellings;
tables for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; the months of
the year, the days of the week; a map of the world; and a map of
India. I created it on my laptop early one morning, asked the other
volunteers to contribute to it over breakfast, then had the hotel print copies
while we were out teaching. It would be, as best I could tell, the
only schoolbook these children had.
The forty copies I’d asked for weren’t going to be
enough. We’d distributed twenty-one copies to the older kids the day
before, but Mamta—who was old enough for those older-kids’ sessions, but still
young enough for this younger-kid session—hadn’t been there. Now, as
I counted the heads seated on the dusty blanket spread across the floor, I saw
we’d be five or six copies short. No matter—some of these children
were too small to read anyway.
Nutan started to conclude and the kids started to move
around. As Mamta turned to stand I tapped her on the
shoulder. “Wait,” I whispered, holding my palm out to
her. “One minute. I have something to give
you.” Her face was a question. I gestured as if passing a
gift to her, then motioned again for her to sit. When Nutan
finished, I moved toward the aluminum chest that held the remaining School
Books and gestured for Mamta to follow.
Nutan knows that Mamta is one of my favorites. Mamta’s
face is expressive but matter-of-fact—she can warm your heart with a smile or
instill guilt with a scowl. She’s smart, assertive, and
charismatic. She is also mercurial. Sometimes she needs
discipline, as when we were playing “music” in a small circle and Mamta kept
taking other kids’ instruments. I warned her twice, provoking eye
rolls, then confiscated her instrument, provoking a scowl and some
nasty-sounding Hindi. I leaned forward, mimicked her scowl, laughed
to show gentle mockery, and kept the instrument. That appears to
have been the right move, as Mamta and I were friends after
that. Mamta would approach me before class to hold hands or slap
high-fives, and I liked it when she did. In retrospect I think Mamta
wanted affection but didn’t know how to ask for it.
I opened the aluminum chest and pulled out the stack of nineteen
School Books. Nutan, who noticed what I was doing, explained in
Hindi to Mamta what the School Book was and that I wanted her, in
particular, to have one. I turned, stack in hand, and gave a copy to
Mamta. Her expression was uncertain as she figured out what this
was.
You cannot hand an item to one child in a classroom without every
other child in the room rushing forward for the same thing, and I was
immediately surrounded. Little children with little open hands,
reaching, jumping, chirping “sir!,” “sir!,” “sir!” (This is especially
true if some of the children have experience as street beggars.) I
held the stack high so the children could not reach them, and moved across the
room so I could set it down on a high wall and use both hands for distribution
and crowd control. Kids who had no idea what the School Book was and
would not have cared about it if they had known desperately wanted a
copy. I distributed to the older children first, then to the younger
ones, trying to place each copy in the correct hands without another hand
grabbing it first, trying to ensure that siblings had a copy to share, trying
to ensure that larger children didn’t come back for a second copy before the
smaller children got one. In the midst of it all I saw Mampta
pushing into the crowd, reaching. I was not going to give her a copy
because she already had one, but she was reaching for my empty
hand. As I turned toward another kid to hand out a book, I heard her
say “thank you” and I saw her face—an appreciative expression—out of the corner
of my eye. I kept distributing the school books, figuring that I’d
have that conversation with Mamta in a few seconds when I was finished.
* * *
Intimacy does not come easy, but it is worth
chasing. If the point of traveling is to experience and learn about
something new—as opposed to merely doing the same things in front of a new
backdrop, or snapping photos of Wikipedia-ed landmarks so you can prove that
you’ve been there—then intimacy is irreplaceable. If yours is a
people-oriented trip, it is not enough to see them in restaurants, hotels, and
the street. You’ve got to participate in their daily lives. If
yours is a nature-oriented trip, it is not enough to see the terrain from a
train window. You have to shoulder a pack and live in
it. Those are not easy things to do.
At intimacy, volunteer vacations excel. Had I come to
India without GlobeAware (my volunteer vacation company), I would never have
met any of the children. I would not have entered a
slum. I would not have gotten to know Nutan. I would not
have experienced the closeness of the slum, the smell of the people, the sounds
of an upstairs neighbor walking across the sheet of tin that constitutes the
ceiling. With GlobeAware, I could join the camaraderie of the
children, feel their small hands in mine, hear the happy shouts of
“tri-an-gle!” as I hopped across a dusty floor. I could ask Nutan
frank questions about her arranged marriage and I could feel the way that India
is changing.
* * *
As soon as I handed out the last School Book I looked for
Mamta. She was gone from where the circle of kids had stood and gone
from the schoolhouse. I stepped into the schoolyard, but I did not
see her. I stepped through the metal door into the dirt paths
of the slum, scanning for the hip-height girl in the smudged white dress. She
was not there. I wanted this last goodbye with Mamta; I wanted her
to know that she was special to me; I wanted to know that I meant something to
her. I left the group and walked to her house. Nothing.
I never found her. Since then I have often remembered
her, and Nutan, and the other children, and I regret that my last interaction
with Mamta brought no more closure. I wish I had not turned away
when she came to say thank you; I wish I had not ignored her outstretched hand.
Fulfillment is meeting an outstretched hand. I hope that one day, Mamta can read this post.
But I am thankful that, through this
volunteer vacation, we were at least able to brush fingers.
No comments:
Post a Comment