Lucknow in a Nutshell

Spa for the Oppressed

Several years ago I was sitting in my living room with several close friends. We went around the room answering the question, "If you had limitless financial resources, what would you do with it?"

"I would set up a nice spa in a third world country for oppressed women," I said, even though I know virtually nothing about the spa business. I was sort of kidding. But only sort of. I was picturing the DRC, Rwanda, Sudan, Afghanistan. Women emerging from the Janjaweed or Taliban's harsh rule and entering spiritual revival to the tune of massage and exfoliation in cozy white robes. Then after personal renewal (and if time allowed), I wanted to teach illiterate women to read and write. Okay. Confession: teaching illiterate women in third world countries was actually my dream, but if I have limitless finances, why not throw a spa into the picture as well?

Almost one week ago I sat in a remote village in northern India. Before I knew it I was living out my dream. Sort of. I was volunteering on a team of five women my age. We partnered with some local contacts in India who requested that we come and serve women in villages located on the outskirts of Lucknow, which is located in Uttar Pradesh (India's most populated state). In six days we visited nine villages, and our last village was the most remote. In fact, we were told that in this last village many of the people there had not been around white people before.

We set up two facing cots under a large tree next to two mud huts. On one side our team sat and offered free manicures and hand massages to the Indian women seated opposite us. One by one the women trickled over to our little makeshift salon. We washed their dirt-stained hands, filed their shredded fingernails, and used lotion to massage hands that felt like leather. From young to old their hands were strong and rough from long hours of work. As I made eye contact, language barriers prevented me from asking endless questions about their world, and in them I saw a great deal of mutual curiosity. One lady talked up a storm to me while I painted her fingernails. "I'm sorry, I don't speak Hindi," I'd say smiling. Didn't matter. She kept on telling her rather animated story anyway.

Women in the villages perceived our team as high and themselves as low. They looked at us and saw: American. White. Wealthy. Educated. They saw themselves as: Indian. Poor. Uneducated. Low caste. As a result (and especially in this last village) many of them could not understand why we wanted to serve them. Why did we want to even touch them? Wash and massage their hands? Paint their fingernails? Both hands?! (In India the left hand is considered unholy. Taboo).

Now. I know that these women understand fingernail polish and pampering because we almost ran out of polish remover. Nail polish is a universal language among most women and often needs no translation. And these women are the type that despite their poverty they still get decked out in bangles, earrings, saris, etc. just to work in the fields, make bricks, or prepare cow manure to burn for fuel.

I began to wash the hands of the Indian woman who refused to sit on the cot facing me. She sat on the ground instead. She believed that she should always be lower when around one of higher social standing. Call me American, but I wanted us to be equal. I was tempted to sit on the ground next to her but was advised beforehand not to do so as village outrage would not be worth the gesture. As I hunched forward to file her nails, I stared at her face and wondered what she was thinking. I don't think she ever stopped smiling once during the whole manicure. I prayed that she would know something of God through me.

If she has trouble seeing me sit on her level and identify with her, what will she do when she discovers a God who is willing to sit on her level, identify with her, and touch her every inner wound? This is who God has been to me, and this is who he leads me to be for others -- even if that means sitting in a remote village and painting the fingernails of a woman who feels unworthy to be touched by someone like me. Little did she know, as I served her, I felt God coming out of me. I recalled a conversation years ago, a dream about a spa for oppressed women, and then I smiled as I painted a second coat of red on her fingernails. Ok. Maybe I didn't envision cots under a tree or flies in my chai or a bush next to the sugar cane field for a restroom. But somehow -- oddly, strangely -- this was better. This was real.

Train stations, Jetlag, and Silence

Train to Delhi was about 5 hours late. An Indian gentleman informed me that there is a saying in India, "There's India Standard Time and then there's India Stretched Time." We boarded a sleeper train that was supposed to leave at 6am and actually left at 11:30am-ish. While waiting, the Indian wildlife proved entertaining. A cow was chowing down on some garbage in the train terminal about two feet from Meghan. A pack of at least 15 monkeys screeched across the platform and up into the rafters when a woman threw a plastic bottle at them, thus disturbing their garbage feast with the rats down on the train tracks.



The smell of curry, cooking oil, cow manueur, and exhaust combined with bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, taxi's, Hindu and Islamic worship, foggy gray skies, blaring horns from some of the most chaotic driving I've ever seen, and vividly colorful clothing....truly, India is a place designed to assault the senses. And despite the searing poverty among many other unpleasantries, I loved being there.

After nearly 40 hours of travel, I arrived home yesterday, was able to sleep well for a whopping four hours before the jetlag had me wide awake at 3am this morning. This would be the first morning in two weeks I awoke to dead silence. No Islamic call to prayer at 5am. No blaring traffic horns outside. No snake-charmer music in the hotel hallway. Just dead silence. Eerily so. Loud silence, in fact.

It's funny the things we take for granted until living in an entirely different context. Drinkable tap water. Reliable electricity. Heat in the winter. People in the U.S. don't have to burn their garbage on the sidewalk in order to stay warm at night. And the morning newspaper headlines don't report how many people died from the cold the night before, especially when Lucknow's definition of cold is only 30 degrees Farenheit.

On the other hand, India is also a place of profound paradox. Before arriving I read about how India is making major headway in technology and software development, thus propelling itself onto the frontlines of techological advancements. Yet at the same time I'm convinced that without the hand-written ledger, India might cease to exist. Need a coke and a snack at the local food mart? The cashier whips out a legder that looks about 100 years old and records your items, then uses the calculator if you have a large order. Need to check in at your hotel? The world's largest ledger will somehow make it into the picture.

Before arriving in India, I was expecting poverty on a scale unlike anything I've ever seen. I'd seen the pictures, watched the documentaries, read reports. I saw Slumdog Millionaire just like everyone else. I thought I was ready. But there's academic knowing, and then there's the knowing that comes from hands-on interaction. Even with all my mental preparation and expectations, I was still shell-shocked. While so many of my American peers obsess about exfoliation, tannning beds, and name brands, I had to swallow the fact that one of the leading causes of death among women in the villages is simply from giving birth (their deaths being prevented had they had medical care available). Or how about parents refusing polio vaccinations for their children simply because one religious group spreads untrue rumors that the government is not actually vaccinating for polio. "They are out to sterilize your children," the rumor goes. The result? That's right. Polio epidemics, which lead to polio beggars. But hey, at least they're not sterilized, right? I could go on and on.

However, I was praying for God to help me see beyond what I saw. I know there is more to people than their poverty, and I didn't want to simply return home with an "oh-my-god-the-poverty-was-unreal" perspective. What God showed me was suprisingly beautiful. People in India are deeply spiritual. In fact, they will often talk spirituality and religion before they even tell you their name and profession. Community and communal living is so key to people in India that I found myself envious of their sense of warmth, generosity, hospitality, and simplicity (even more so in the villages). Many people warm themselves at night by collecting heaps of garbage and setting them on fire on the sidewalk. It is not an uncommon sight to drive through the city at night and see people huddled around minature garbage-bonfires talking and laughing together. Nor is it uncommon to see groups of children playing cricket, running across rooftops, and playing games in the streets. I saw one kid dancing on the slum rooftops early in the morning, God knows why. I had to ask myself, what in the world do you have to dance about? And then I realized that I was viewing their world entirely through a Western lens where life's highest premium is material wealth, safety, comfort, and convenience --these things come at their own great cost, very often breeding another type of poverty within (i.e. no time for others, materialism, greed, and obesity). Though the poor in India work harder than anyone I've ever seen, they also have a great deal of free time, as their pace of life is often much slower. Their free time is spent in community with their neighbors and families and an endless network of relationships. What does one do at night without electricty and heating in the winter? Build a fire and drink chai with your family and neighbors, that's what. (Can I just say that Chai in India is phenominally good? Except for this one village where the goat's milk tasted a little off....or maybe that was the salt.)

So, while there are many reasons to pity the poor in India (most of which are valid), the closer I moved toward them, I found myself envying them as well. I cried many times over their living conditions, but I also laughed with them, and they laughed at us. I thoroughly enjoyed the company of a people who make me smile within, and I experienced a joy independent of material wealth and convenience -- a joy strong enough to thrive in the dark and despised places of our world. In India God moved within the deepest part of my being, made my heart swell, and with an inaudible whisper said, "This is what it means to live."