Tag Archives: India

The best thing I’ve ever done.

Gavine, a strange fellow who never speaks but hums Bollywood songs when he hangs out the washing.

This is Bikkie, he ignores you for the most part, but if you sing his name enough (Oh Bikkie you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind Hey Bikkie) he’ll turn and face you with a huge grin.

This is Chotu, one of the sweetest boys you’ll ever meet, and Atul, one of the two carers who lives at the hostel literally 365 days a year. He gives up a regular life and the opportunity to get married in order to work there.

Raju and Babu, the best of friends. Neither can speak or use sign language, but they communicate all the same.

Raj Luxme, a 24yo woman with cerebral palsy. She was the little girl left by her parents on the train tracks and is the reason that the IID began.

Gomaal and I. She is sassy as sass comes, it took about half an hour of throwing around clothes for her to choose an outfit everyday. She pretended to hate being tickled but secretly she loved it, look at that smile.

And finally, Babu. The sweetest boy I’ve ever met, with the most beautiful smile. The only man for me.

 

While in India, I lived and volunteered at the Integrated Institute for the Disabled (IID) in Varanasi. The IID is a hostel, school and university for children with special needs. I worked in a classroom with the most severely disabled children in the school 30hrs a week for four and half months, and during my time off I cared for the sixteen children who I lived with at the hostel.

Now I don’t consider myself to be a particularly charitable or humanitarian person, I took the trip because I received a scholarship for it and was scared shitless for the first two weeks. It quickly became the most full on, confronting, fulfilling and joyful experience of my life.

I’ve never experienced happiness as blissful and pure at those four and a half months spent at the institute.

But it wasn’t all butterflies and roses. Out of just a handful of my students, one regularly had seizures, one vomits after every meal, three soil themselves multiple times a day, three kids will eat their poo if given a chance and as a result their hands are tied when they go to the toilet, four kids would have random violent outburst, several boys were sexually abusive towards other students and that’s just scraping the surface.

The kids rarely wash their hands, their environment is unhygienic, they often get sick, they eat the same meal three times a day, (rice, dal and potato) and don’t always have access to clean drinking water.

These issues are serious, but the staff at the IID is doing the best it can to take care of the kids while it is extremely understaffed and lacking in resources and finances.

But, all the while, the kids are extremely happy. These kids don’t realize the shitty hand that they’ve been dealt in life. Most of the children living at the hostel have been abandoned by their parents, one girl was left by her family on railway tracks, but their new family is the IID, and for a while it was my family too.

I would wake up to the strange sounds of the screaming children, many don’t speak but make strange noises constantly, and we’d go downstairs and they’d greet us with the most amazing smiles. Chotu would shout, “Didi, Didi,” meaning ‘older sister’, Raju would indicate for me to check out his outfit, generally all denim, he’s such a little dude, and Vatsal would come and hold both my hands for several minutes for no apparent reason, without making eye contact and then casually walk off again.

That was my life for four and a half months. Feeding the kids (with our hands, no cutlery in India), brushing their teeth, clothing them, cleaning up after them, playing with them, lulling them to sleep, helping a little girl with cerebral palsy learn to walk, teaching Chotu to count, playing cricket with makeshift cricket bats and balls, buying bananas in bulk and trying to stop Shantiman from snatching other kids’ treats.

It was incredible. After my long trip in 2012, I had to visit again in 2013. And my little family was still the same; some of the kids even remembered me. The IID is an incredible place, and it taught me so many important things about myself and about other people that I never expected to learn. They always say that true happiness comes from helping others. I didn’t exactly find this true, at times looking after the kids was exhausting and we sometimes felt under-appreciated, it was seeing the other kids happy that was the most rewarding of all. And earning their love. The way that Raju’s eye lit up when he saw us come down the stairs and the way Vatsal would push my legs open so that he could sit in my lap and play with the fabric of my pants.

That’s about as corny as I’ll ever get in a blog post, I hope. But it’s all true. It’s a sad and confronting place, but also the most loving and happy place that I’ve ever experienced. Here’s a video that I made in order to raise money for the Institute. It isn’t completed, but it’s the draft of what I’m working on at the moment and offers more information about the IID itself rather than my experience there.

IID Video Draft from Mardy Bridges on Vimeo.

 

Indian Culture in Varanasi

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I returned from India less than two weeks ago. It was my second trip to the wonderful country, having decided to spend December there after living there for six months in 2012.

India is a world away from Australia. The sights, smells, tastes, colours and noises are all more intense and everything works in a completely different way, but it has that familiar sense of community that gives a place its substance.

India is an incredibly diverse and interesting country. Thousand of different dialects, a myriad of devout religious communities, extremely varied cuisine, arts and fashion are just some examples of the diversity of the culture. And just to scrape the surface of the landscape there’s the coastal areas such as Kerela, the desert in Rajasthan, the mountainous areas of Ladakh (described to me once as “heaven on earth”), the entrance to the Himalayas and then there’s the Holy City, my home in India, Varanasi.

Varanasi is, in my opinion, the most cultured city in India. Where other cities of Varanasi’s size are becoming increasingly less traditional and more westernized, Varanasi is doing it old school. This is because the Holy City is situated on India’s holiest river, the Ganjes. Every year millions of pilgrims come to Varanasi for religious festivals and cleansing. It is an extremely holy place. As a result there is no alcohol, women choose to mostly wear traditional Indian sarees or Punjab suits, cows roam the streets (literally strolling down extremely busy roads, without a care) and most religious traditions are still thriving.

Living in Varanasi for six months, I became very close to several families. One woman who I was particularly close to, Mumta Ji (Ji is an Indian mark of respect) was very interested in Australian culture and we would swap stories about our cultures, she would laugh at my choice of clothing and the fact that I get so excited about elephants, and I would show her photos from home and marvel at how different our cultures in fact are.

As a woman, Mumta Ji lacks many of the freedoms that I am privileged to enjoy in Australia: dating, wearing what ever I like, talking to whom ever I please, deciding where I want to live and who I will marry, drinking alcohol and eating meat to name a few.

Mumta Ji isn’t all that bothered by this, for the most part, she finds my lifestyle a novelty. She is most shocked that I don’t intend to have children until I’m in my late 20s-if at all; this she cannot comprehend.

However, as many differences there are between Mumta’s culture and mine, there are so many similarities. The most important thing that I learned while in India is that people are the same, despite their differences, where ever you go.

Sorry for the paradox, but it’s the simplest way to put it and it must be simply put. Where ever you go, you will find the same office politics, kids who are loud and giggly and shy kids who hide behind their parent’s legs, community gossip, affectionate teasing, the same willingness to help out a stranger, the same laughter, the same terrifying and passionate mothers, the same friendships and the same conflicts and the same

While our cultures differ, our emotions and our connections are the same.

That’s the brilliant thing about India. It’s a whole other world, the sights, smells, tastes and sights are all more intense, everything works in a completely different way, but there’s that same sense of community and it still feels like home.