March 13, 2009

How fortunate we are to stay with a family in Kolkata. We’re grateful for the conversation, delicious meals, looking at old photographs, learning family history and stories, and the way they weave together with the larger history of India. How great it is to be in a neighborhood and walk to the market to shop for fruits and vegetables. We’re able to wash out our clothes and hang them on the line outside on the balcony. One evening we all sat together in front of the television eating dinner and watching a weekday nightly drama on Partition. Good to experience normal life.

We’ve talked with the elder of the household. She is 84years old and her wedding was on the rooftop terrace of this house. She gave birth to her two children in the bedroom in which she now stays in a hospital bed. She has many stories to share.

We’ve visited the cemetery and the gravesites of family members.

When we get lost in the larger neighborhood, someone always shows up to lead us where we want to go. So much happens on the street corner right outside the house. Chickens are raised, sold, and slaughtered. Clothes, dishes, and bodies are washed. People sleep, sell grain, laugh, and play.

We walked to the Mother Teresa Mission House. We attended the rosary and mass. The chapel was full of sisters, novices, and guests. The sermon was on going beyond just feeding the hungry and nursing the sick, to respecting people. After all the blessings we’ve been fortunate to receive at temples, we feel fortunate to receive communion and blessings here. We are seeing the connections among religions—displaying images, offering food, blessing with touch. Afterward we talked with the priest who had just flown to Kolkata from San Diego, CA. He currently ministers in Tijuana.

In Kolkata, we have also sat silently in Jain Temples.

We traveled from the heat of Kolkata to the cool Khasi Hills to Shillong, Jowai, and Padu to visit Unitarian congregations, schools, and people. We visited Children’s Village, a Unitarian home for children whose mothers have died. Children’s Village was just opened and dedicated on February 28. Though the children come from as far away as 100 kilometers and they have so recently left their extended families and villages, they are open to being with us. We sat together, took hands, smiled, and hugged. We also visited Unitarian primary and secondary schools—schools open to all and without tuition. We walked around classrooms shaking hands with each student. The children and youth are polite and friendly. There is a shortage of teachers and these children all seem curious and eager to learn.

The Unitarian churches are throughout remote areas of the Khasi Hills. The ministers we met are third generation Unitarians. They are respectful of the tribal indigenous religions. We travelled with a minister who is General Secretary of the Unitarian Union over rugged dirt roads. To arrive to a small rural village and see a steeple with a flaming chalice amazed us.

This minister also took us to visit a sacred grove where tribal rituals are practiced. He told us local legends of creation and of the workings of the cosmos.

We received warm hospitality from Unitarians. They sang hymns to us, shared food with us, and before meals offered blessings in the Khasi language. As we talked with people, we felt connected in common beliefs and principles. We attended a service and heard familiar readings and hymns read and sung in Khasi.

We drove from city to town to village to town to city. The roads are full of bright, colorfully painted trucks, some with pictures of the Hindu god Krishna, some with the Islamic moon and star, some with a Sikh warrior, some with Jesus, and we hear there are some even with a flaming chalice!

These beautiful trucks are hauling loads of coal, much of it exported to Bangladesh. The mining and trucking are changing the lives of these rural villagers, the air, the rivers, and the mountains.

We learned of a tribal system of a numbers code of dream interpretation. People use this code to select lottery numbers! And the lottery is conducted with bows and arrows. We witnessed 20 men each shooting 20 arrows into a target of hay. The last two digits of the total number of arrows hitting the target is the winning number.

The people in the Khasi Hills have features that appear Tibetan and Chinese. They carry loads and dress differently than people in other areas. They don’t speak much Hindi and the dialects of Khasi vary village to village.

The Khasi Hills are so unlike other places we have visited. All this is India too.

We are grateful for such a variety of experiences.

We are back in Kolkata for a couple of more nights staying in our friends’ family home. We will leave to visit Varanarsi and then travel to Buddhist sacred sites.

We hope all is well for you.
Love,
Barbara and Bill