Chanukah in Chennai

This holiday season brought to you by the letter ‘C’ and the number 2: Part I
4-13 December, 2007

On the first night of Chanukah, we placed two candles (one a little taller than the other) in the bed of wax accumulated on the upturned stainless steel lid we use as a Shabbat candle holder, and used one to light the other.

The train ran away from the stern station master, and soon we* were stretching in the early morning light filtered through the overpasses, blinking signs, and union election propaganda of Chennai Central Railway station. It was the special slow stretch of the traveler who is pretending to have gotten a satisfactory nights’ sleep in order to convince themselves that they’re ready for the next day’s unknown adventures. This illusion is aided by the common practice of waking up just a few minutes before getting down from the lumbering metal box in which they passed the last immeasurable stretch of hours. A driver, looking suspiciously like Kevin Kline, met us by a pile of unlabeled agricultural goods and drove us away, past the longest beach in Asia (I think), past the high-rises and sprawl of Chennai, past endless palm-roofed tea stands (one of which provided us with breakfast), past a strange DizzyWorld resort that looked suspiciously like it was trying to become DisneyLand, and down the statuette-dotted drive of the Tamil Nadu Tourism and Development Corporation (TNTDC) Resort.

*(These are different ‘we’s. The first is Myla, her father, and I. The second is two of my co-workers, K and M, and myself, joined at the station by a third co-worker, C. My life in India is a very communal experience.)

The ocean said hello, having already greeted a number of my NGO’s staff as they arrived from Kolkata (West Bengal), Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Karur (Tamil Nadu), and (of course) Chennai. But the ocean wasn’t happy with just a hello, and soon went in for a big sloppy kiss, soaking us with a vertical rain from the waves. The wind whipped our hair around our faces and curled our clothes around our bodies while the top layer of sand jumped up and danced an inch above the ground, covering and uncovering strange lumps, one of which turned out to be the remnants of a salty dog. At the end of the long curve of beach away from our resort stood the prize: a beautiful stone temple that survived the tsunami (and centuries of daily ocean kisses). We admired carvings and clambered over boulders. I tried to lift Krishna’s Butter Ball (that beloved mischievous boy) and memorized the coastline from the top of a monkey kingdom/tower/temple. As the sun ran away over the horizon, we gussied up and gathered. The first-ever gathering of all our NGO staff, from five different offices. There were speeches and applause, and symbolic oil lamps ringed with carefully arranged flower petals.

The second night of Chanukah, I placed eight neon storm candles in a row on a metal tray, and used a ninth to light two. I fell asleep with the waves whispering out the window, the candles burning low on an armoire, and a piece of the National AIDS Control Policy (NACP III for 2007-2012) on my lap.

And so began the Program Management Training, at which I learned a lot of useful technical information, took a lot of notes, and spent only one session writing a letter to a friend: ‘I’m sitting in a circular conference room, the waves of the Bay of Bengal hitting the beach to my right, a powerpoint on logical frame work analysis to my left… I missed tea, and I started to cry… I’m not sure if I needed the caffeine, the sugar, the warmth (over air-conditioned), or the excuse to pause… but I suddenly felt I’d been denied something essential. So as soon as I had the chance, I walked out to the ocean – the sky was dramatic, the waves affectionately chatty, the ancient temple at the far end of the beach properly poetic in the misty distance – but I couldn’t cry. A woman in a bright orange salwar kameez tapped my shoulder and offered me a pamphlet on ayurvedic massage – I set it in my lap, said I was sorry, but too busy with work, and went back to staring at the waves. When I gave up on the ocean and walked back to the conference room, she called out ‘which country?’ as I passed. My answer garnered a massive smile.’

The night of the missing tea incident each team stayed up writing concept notes for new grants, putting our session workshop on program planning and grant writing into instant action. It was the third night of Chanukah, and when I returned to my room, the sight of my room-mate’s peaceful sleeping face was more comforting than the idea of setting up rickety candles could ever be.

In between Learning Things from powerpoints, I learned other things, about gender politics in India, ambitions, plans, accents, pan. I made new friends, and positioned myself so that I could study the horizon at every possible moment. On our last night in Mahaballepuram, I opened the Cultural Show with the story of Chanukah, and lit four candles (plus one) in the window of our circular conference room. R played the veena, and the Kolkata office played a Bengali music video about accepting love and sexuality of all forms. Not all apples are red. Some might even be blue.

The next night, the Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar offices crammed into Kevin Kline’s car (five men in the backseat, two women riding shotgun) and sang songs in Hindi, Oria, Malayalam, Telugu, and English to quicken the drive back into the blinking lights of The City. I woke up in a wooden sleigh bed that came with a complementary breakfast of all-you-can-eat idly, dosa, upma, and wada (different ways to cook rice flour and ground lentils: patty, pancake, mush, or donut), and let someone else pay too much for auto that took us to our NGO’s Chennai office for… another training, on Comprehensive Care, Support, and Treatment. Incredulous that we were once again sitting and listening all day, but genuinely interested in the topics, ten of us spent three days sitting in the Country Director’s office and learning about anti-retroviral therapies, home-based care, and child-centered approaches.

Each night, we Ventured Out:

The first evening, I ran away, through muddy back allies of strange suburbs, to a massive ashram where my friend Blanca was chatting with a Spanish couple who fell in love through meditation. Blanca was spending the weekend with old friends in a small apartment outside the ashram, and we settled in to twisting realities projected from pretty faces with The Island. In the morning, I took a shared auto through the city, feeling like a regular World Traveler.

The second evening, six of us landed in the flashing neon lights and sparkling eighties party dresses and acres of saris and carpeting of chocolate ice-cream bar wrappers that fill T. Nagar. Two of my new friends helped me to pick out my first sari, and more co-workers trickled in to meet us on a rooftop restaurant.

The third evening, I went back to the ocean. The line between the water and the sky was lost in the dark past the grandmothers sleeping on the sidewalk and the couples cuddling in the sand and the fisherman lost in the shadows of their longboats, so that the sky that started behind me with wisps of clouds and a few blinking stars wrapped all the way back to my feet.

The fourth evening, which may or may not have been the last night of Chanukah, a train ran away from the station master. On board the Embassy Express – every other person was on their way from a hi-tech job in Hyderbad to the American Embassy in Chennai – I felt absolutely ready to come home.