Best Laid Plans

This post isn't about reminiscing.

Three years ago almost to the day, I ventured with my dear friend Sári on an overnight train in sleeper class to Jammu in Northern India. The train was followed by an approximately 12 hour journey in the cramped rear seats of a jeep along the winding road through the western Himalayas to Srinagar, Kashmir. Misty, magical Srinagar, where we stayed with Ferooz and his gorgeous family on their modest flower farm, holding baskets of hot coals under our traditional cloaks to keep warm in the chilly April air, taking jerrycans full of hot water to keep our beds toasty, wandering through manicured, Mughal-era gardens and playing with the sassy toddler and red-cheeked newborn in the house. 

In the fall of 2014, severe floods affected large portions of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ferooz and his family's home and farm fell victim.

The sign on the left is for the family farm.
The water covers what is usually a busy road.

Across the street. These planters are about five feet tall. 

The lakeshore is normally 10+ feet to the left of the planters.

The family home

The green tarp hangs over the flooded greenhouse

According to Oxfam, over half a million people throughout Jammu and Kashmir were displaced by these floods, which were reported to be the worst in over 100 years. Roads that usually swarmed with traffic and bustle were now traversed using traditional shikaras, the long boats propelled by hand with small heart-shaped paddles normally used to shuttle tourists and traded goods across Dal Lake. "Yep," Ferooz said, when I asked him how his family had fared in the flood. "Too much water." After completing "some repairs," Ferooz and his family returned to their home where they began to rebuild the contents of their nursery from scratch in order to restore the family's primary source of income. 

But this post isn't about a flood. 

After a painless thirty minute flight from Kashmir to Delhi, Sári attended a wedding in Patna and I spent the next three months traversing Southeast Asia and Australia on my own and with spontaneous, wonderful companions. By October, I had begun my Master's degree in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies at King's College London, living in student housing and spending the same amount of money for a beer as I would have on a week's worth of groceries in India. I hoped that this degree would allow me access to the field of peacebuilding and conflict resolution that I had envisioned being a part of for so long. My professors were knowledgeable and (mostly) engaging and my classmates hailed from all over the world. They provided unique insights and experiences to create a rich basis for discussion of some of the most pressing issues of our time. 

But arguably the most important lesson I learned in this Master's program had nothing to do with the ins and outs of Track I diplomacy. Maybe the lesson I most needed to learn was that a job that does not involve working with children for most of the day will not work for me.

Fast forward to January 2016, when, after applying to dozens of jobs and experiencing a mounting sense of disappointment and rejection, I was hired for the position of Youth Facilitator at a charter school in Oakland that had been recently founded. I was told that my primary responsibilities in this position would involve leading exercises to nurture teamwork, build trust and educate students to effectively and nonviolently manage conflict. Yet the school's major structural, administrative and academic failings precluded my ability to do meaningful long-term work with the kids. Within the first week, it was clear to me that I had been hired to do a job that did not exist; I had been warmly invited onto a sinking ship and then left to bail myself out with little or no support. Two months after I had been hired, I was laid off when the administration chose/was forced to discontinue the sixth grade and send the students to other schools. (There are many more details to this story which are irrelevant to this discussion of my current plans and whereabouts.)

As luck would have it, my roommate/landlord informed me a month ago that I would have to move out, as the house's faulty foundation had possibly led to mold inside the walls of my room. And so I find myself back where I started a few months ago, without a place of my own or a job to speak of. Last fall, however, I did create a Plan B, taking exams and applying to teaching programs. I was accepted to UC Berkeley's Developmental Teacher Education Program, through which I will obtain a Master's in education and a K-8 Multiple Subjects teaching credential. My hope is that working as a teacher will allow me to work with children in an extended and meaningful way, and will eventually lead to a path that incorporates elements of peacebuilding and conflict resolution into educational systems. Or that's the dream, anyway. The program starts in June, which gives me about three months to make the most of before I become a student again (for hopefully the last time, though my mother has her eye on a PhD that I feel uninclined to pursue). 

And so we reach the reason for this post after such a long hiatus. I think the theme of my past year has been restarting, relearning lessons I thought I had learned, repeating mistakes I swore I would never make again, and emerging with a whole new set of plans. Because you can cultivate a nursery full of seedlings and hybrid flowers in your own backyard, the safest place in the world to you, and then floods come and suddenly you find yourself sitting in a rowboat, peering into the second story window of your house. I played my cards right, went for a degree in something I thought would lead to what I wanted, completed a lengthy interview process for a fellowship that was offered and then rescinded, was rejected from jobs that I knew I could do with my eyes closed, and offered a job which made me doubt myself and my abilities in profound ways. And yet I find myself with an acceptance to graduate school, surrounded by some of the kindest and most supportive friends imaginable, trying to take deep breaths and feel calm, content and accepting of whatever comes my way.

That last part is easier said than done. My new plan is this: 

On Tuesday, April 5, I fly to New York where I will hang out with my family and other people I love, help my mom settle in to her sweet new digs, sort all my possessions, which have been in storage since I went to India four(!) years ago, and eat a bagel or twelve (before Passover, of course). 

On Sunday, April 24, I fly to London, from which I will travel via rideshare to Calais, France. Calais is the current site of one of Europe's largest and most notorious refugee camps. It is the main French port on the English Channel and has housed a camp, with varying degrees of state sanction, for refugees and asylum seekers since the late 1990s. I spend eight or nine days volunteering there with Help Refugees, a UK-based charity that  is working to distribute resources and provide basic services for the estimated three to six thousand refugees that are living in the current camp sprawl. I have requested to work in the kitchen and will be posting again soon with more information about the work being done and how you can support the humanitarian efforts there.

On May 4 or 5 I return to London, where I will enthusiastically and joyfully snuggle the future newborn of Neta and Rotem, whose delightful two-year-old nugget I had the pleasure of caring for after finishing my (first) Master's. Neta is due on April 19 and I'm going to hang out with them and other London people I love until May 15, when I fly back to the Bay Area to look for an apartment once and for all! Or until it gets moldy, I guess. Words cannot describe how excited I am to see Alma again, the baby I nannied for who is now a year older than when I saw her last, or how thrilled I am to hang out with a neonate. Did I mention I love babies?

Who knows how this plan will work out, but at least it exists! If you will be in New York, Calais or London when I am there, and you care enough about me to have read until this point, I would lovelovelove to see you. Cheers to the waiting period between floods! 

Forbidden Territory

Going to Kashmir brought up some mixed feelings for me, as it was the place to which my roommate, Patricia, travelled, prompting the Fulbright program to unceremoniously kick her out. But so many people have told me throughout the year that it is the most beautiful place in India, and its status as disputed territory gave me an indication that this place was special enough to fight over. I was also excited to explore Kashmir with Sári, who spent time there before and had a good friend with whom we could stay. Before we went to Rajasthan, we bought train tickets at the Foreign Tourist Reservation Bureau, an air conditioned heaven within the madness of the New Delhi train station, the largest and most used in India. About 24 hours after returning from Rajasthan, Sári and I were on the move again, taking an auto to the metro, a metro to the train, and an overnight train to Jammu, the southernmost city of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. For the first time, I was traveling overnight in sleeper class, the unairconditioned equivalent of steerage (yes, the image I have in my head is from the movie Titanic), with bunk-beds stacked three on each side of the berth. We arrived in the morning and boarded a shared jeep that would drive the ten hour journey to the city of Srinagar. 

View from the journey from Jammu to Srinagar

Not. Comfortable. To ride. For 11 hours.

Dal Lake from across the street from Farooz's house

Unfortunately, we were the last to join the car, so Sári and I shared the back of the car with two other guys, on seats that faced each other, Sári's long legs crumpled and folded as small as they could go. Despite the discomfort, the ride was absolutely stunning, winding around the mountains and overlooking lush valleys with mountain streams. At one point all the cars were stopped on the highway for an hour, as we waited for a goatherder to get his flock through the mountain tunnel we needed to pass through. By the time we reached Srinagar an hour later than we expected (thanks to the goats), it had started to rain and was nearly dark. We shoved into one of Srinagar's black autos, closed on both sides to keep the cold out, but making you feel like you were trapped in a jewelry box on wheels. Around Dal Lake we drove, admiring the sunset through the rain and arriving 15 minutes later at Farooz's house on the other side of the lake. He and his father met us outside; we crossed the wooden footbridge leading past the greenhouse in front and into the simple sitting area at the front of the house. The most notable thing about the room, in which the entire family was congregated to watch the news and chat, was that it was absent of furniture. Everyone sat on the floor on the room's periphery, their long, poncho-like ferins covering their knees and insulating the heat released from the congars, small baskets filled with hot coals for exactly this purpose. Farooz's mom, thrilled to see Sári again, bustled around, rattling off in Kashmiri as if we could understand her clear as day, and bringing us kahva, traditional Kashmiri tea. Farooz's sister, Seyde, sat with her seventeen-day-old infant, alternating between nursing and rocking. We were treated to a piping hot dinner, consisting of vegetables flavored with turmeric and pressure-cooked to death, and, as always in Kashmir, an overly generous helping of rice. In Kashmir, they say if you haven't had rice, you haven't had a meal. We ate the way everyone eats there: with our hands, a skill I had fortunately already been taught by one of my students when I visited her house. If you're wondering why you need to learn to eat with your hands, I recommend you try eating rice with your hands and tell me how it goes. 

Farooz's mom tills the land

According to Farooz, the bureaucracy in Kashmir makes the rest of India look like a well-oiled machine. As a result, it's very difficult to get permits to do things like build houses on your own land, so Farooz's family took advantage of a government strike to build their home quickly, on the sly. The hasty building is barely insulated, making it pretty drafty and cold; Sári and I shared a room upstairs that we occupied only when we were under the covers. The absence of furniture is consistent throughout the house, with everyone sleeping on thin handmade mattresses on the floor and one room downstairs with shelves where the whole family keeps their possessions. Indeed, all the bedrooms were devoid of anything except for the mattresses on the floor. When Sári told Farooz she was cold, he went to get a hot water bottle and came back with an actual plastic bottle that once held cooking oil, filled with hot water. There was also only one bathroom for in the house, which included Farooz, his younger brother, his parents, his grandmother who looked about 16738462 years old, and his sister, who was abiding by the tradition stating that a woman returns to her mother's house just before and for a few months after giving birth. The bathroom included a squatter and a nearby spout, with a bucket placed underneath for bathing purposes. The great thing was that they had really hot water at all times of the day (don't know how, but it was awesome), so taking a bucket shower was really not unpleasant despite the morning chill. 

Mehru and Farooz chow down 

For our first full day, Farooz took us to the market near the holy shrine of Hazrat Bal, a mosque which is said to house a beard hair of the Prophet Muhammad. It was drizzling off and on all day, but the walk to Hazrat Bal was beautiful, the placid Dal Lake reflecting the sky as clearly as any mirror. Farooz took us to a bakery where we ate cream-filled pastries and rested from the rain before taking a minibus to Lal Chowk, a shopping area with a Sunday Market. The market consisted of used items from clothes to books, to dishes. Sári and I wore ferins that Farooz's mother had lent us, reducing the staring to less even than what it would be elsewhere in India. In the evening, we relaxed at the house and met Farooz's hilarious, too-clever-for-her-own-good three and a half year-old niece, Mehru. 

Ferin!

Paper maché madness at Khanqah Shah-i Hamadan

The next day, Sári and I headed for the Old City, saw the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) in all its glory, wandered the streets admiring the unique, wooden architecture and spending hours looking for the Khanqah Shah-i-Hamadan shrine, said to be the nicest in Srinagar. When we eventually arrived via auto, we were not disappointed. The entire façade and inner walls and ceilings are covered with decorative paper maché, bursting with bright color and intricate, hand-painted motifs. We started chatting with an older man working outside the mosque to welcome people, who was so impressed with my Hindi (Urdu) that he took us around and led us inside to where the women pray, a part of the mosque where foreigners and non-Muslims are not technically allowed. He was fascinated by my jewelry, asking me where I got each piece, and testing the stones to check their purity. He introduced us to every person we saw as we walked around the mosque, each person stopping to marvel at my limited Urdu and expressing their excitement at meeting me. When the namaz sounded and people began filing in to pray, a man who seemed to be homeless and drunk tried to gain access to the mosque, only to be physically escorted off the premises several times. The shrine was guarded by several Indian soldiers, which made for a somewhat strained atmosphere in the first place; then to see this old man being manhandled was pretty disturbing, even if he was drunk. 

Transplanting

We spent the next day helping Farooz and his family on the farm, transplanting seedlings that they  had grown from seeds by placing them with dirt in small plastic bags for sale. I warned Farooz about my black thumb, my unique talent for killing plants I try to cultivate, but he said it would be fine. Keep your fingers crossed! Farooz's mom commented that it usually takes farmers years to get a bent back, but that I had managed to acquire one in just a day! In the evening, we went down the road with Farooz and his cousin for kebabs, which consisted of a stick holding bite-zed pieces of meat, roti (bread) and fresh chutney on the side. Delicious! Though the food we ate at the house was not bad, I was completely tired of it after a few days and was anxious to eat something else. In the evening, we tagged along with John and Mehru to some festival celebrated in a few noteworthy cemeteries to commemorate Muslim saints buried there. It was pretty overwhelming, with so much staring and such huge crowds, but it was definitely interesting to witness. 

Pari Mahal

On Wednesday we did errands, spending a lazy morning and then running around making arrangements to get back to Delhi. No sooner did we buy train tickets from Jammu to Delhi (no trains go to Srinagar), did we discover that the entire highway between Jammu and Srinagar would be closed due to government ministers moving from their winter locale in Jammu to their summer workplace in Srinagar. So flying it would have to be! In the afternoon, Farooz took us to the Pari Mahal, a Mughal garden overlooking the whole city and lake. Much to my dismay, we walked the 2.5km uphill road to the site, watching the tour buses and vans zooming by. The view was incredible, and they were filming some kind of music video so there was music blaring, which made for an unusually funny atmosphere. It began to POUR rain and then hail on the way back, so the car that stopped for us to get in to take us to the nearest sheltered bus stop was surely a divine intervention.

Goat milking!!!

On Thursday, I milked a goat! I went with Farooz and his mother and squeezed the milk out of the teat! It was epic. Later, as we walked to Hazrat Bal to buy flight tickets, Farooz's brother, Irshad spotted us from his scooter on his way home from work, which it turned out he didn't have that day. He borrowed his brother-in-law's car and took us all around the valley, showing us some incredible places that I would never have gone on my own. What a gift it was to be taken around like that, to see the poppies and irises growing wild on the mountainside, meet nomadic tribespeople out for a stroll, spend time in the much-missed sunshine. Their cousin came along as well, which gave us the opportunity to talk about life in Kashmir, to ask their opinions about the situation and the future for the region. Most of what they said was thoughtful and unsurprising, but every once in a while they would say something so contrary to my frame of mind that it was hard to hold back my judgment. The most notable example of this was when the cousin claimed that the only rape that occurs in Kashmir is perpetrated by the Indian Army, that Kashmiris never rape. I asked him if he really thought that Kashmir was the only place in the world without rape, and he replied that Kashmiris would just never do such a thing, that women are respected in a way they are not in other places. This coming from a native of a city where maybe half the women we saw wore full burkas. The naïveté this displayed was not shocking, but rather echoed what I have heard in many parts of India, that their region, their people, their way of life is superior and somehow free of many of the contemporary issues that plague other societies.

Shikara walla?

Sunset on the lake

Dinner on the lake

In the evening, despite being tired from the wonderful day of sightseeing, Sári and I decided to go for a ride in a shikara, the traditional, wooden longboats propelled by a man rowing with a single, heart shaped paddle in the back. Farooz balked at this idea and said he was taking us on the lake himself, and disappeared for a few minutes before returning with a bag full of kebabs. He took us to his family's boat from which his father used to sell vegetables at the floating vegetable market, Farooz rowed to the middle of the lake and we turned in circles, watching the water become golden with the sunset and then fade into purple and black as the sun sank, eventually dotted with the jewels of lights reflected from Hazrat Bal. We ate our kebabs, making a mess and letting the juice from the chutney run down our fingers and chins, watching fisherman catch "illegal fish," as Farooz says, by casting nets into the water at night to collect in the morning, laughing and feeling the loveliness of the moment. It was truly a highlight of the trip.

It was on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, that the political tension was most remarkable. There seemed to be more police and soldiers on the street than usual; we saw a police truck on Lal Chowk being loaded with madly chanting people being arrested for protesting, and Farooz said the same thing happened as he was entering the mosque. It's hard to imagine this beautiful city under one of their relatively frequent curfews, in which no one is allowed on the streets until further notice. The military presence is hugely resented by Kashmiris, who are outnumbered by members of the Indian Army. Everyone we spoke to expressed a deep dislike for India and a desire to separate from the nation, though no one communicated wanting to be a part of Pakistan either. There were things about the situation that reminded me of Israel, in the presence of weapons in plain sight nearly everywhere you go, the sense of tension about the possibility of unrest and the feeling that the political situation was caused and perpetuated by forces outside their personal control or influence. The major difference, however, was the sense of occupation, the fact that none of the soldiers are from Kashmir, that they don't belong in or to this land. 

Seyde and baby

It poured all day on Friday, which didn't stop me and Sári from exploring the Friday markets at Lal Chowk and Hazrat Bal, pausing for coffee at a bookstore, buying postcards for our friends from Corrymeela and exploring the shops selling Kashmiri crafts. Farooz took us around the food bazaar outside of Hazrat Bal mosque after he finished praying, and we admired the piles of kohlrabi, the kilos of grapes draped over carts, the whole, skinned goats hanging from meat hooks in front of the butchers. In the evening we sat inside, listening to the rain, drinking kahva, keeping the congars secure under the ferins, taking turns holding the baby while she napped. 

Farooz, Irshad and nieces

Fun in Nishat Bagh 

We had all morning in Srinagar on Saturday before our flight, so we took advantage of the rain's pause to go to the two famous Mughal gardens, Shalimar Bagh and Nishat Bagh, both impressive in their own way. Nishat Bagh, though less famous outside of Kashmir, is breathtaking, set up overlooking the lake in terraced gardens bisected by a series of waterfall fountains. It was a great way to spend our last few hours, taking silly pictures and people-watching. Even the sun came out to send us off! We returned to the house for lunch and then said warm goodbyes to the family as we got in to auto to the airport. Words can't describe how grateful I am to have been able to stay with them, what a meaningful, beautiful experience they gave me in Kashmir. They told me I always have a place to stay there, that I should come visit soon, that they will miss me. People that genuinely kind and hospitable are nothing less than a blessing. 

Nishat Bagh

To see the rest of my photos from Kashmir, click here.

It was the best possible way to end this beautiful year in India. I have been staying with my friend Sim, who is from here but went to Scripps with me, and have been chatting with her a lot, processing my experience and gaining some closure. I have such a deep sense of gratitude, mostly to my roommates, the other ETAS and to the students and teachers at school, who were the people who completely made this year what it was. I am proud of myself for making it through with such a positive attitude, for rolling with the punches, learning what I could and letting go of what I couldn't control. Though the truth is that I think there are much better fellowships on which to come to India in terms of support, purpose and organization, I leave this experience with a deep personal satisfaction about my time here, and whether or not that comes from a completely internal place, I am equally happy about my year here and ready to move on.

I fly this evening to Southeast Asia, Where Iwill be traveling for the next three months, hoping to make a loop through Northern Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and maybe Burma, before visiting my good friend Roland in the Philippines and ending my journey in Australia. I fly to San Francisco on August 8th and will be visiting all my favorite people there before returning to New York for a few weeks and attending a master's program in England (haven't decided which yet!) for conflict resolution. I will try to blog during my upcoming travels but any regularity is doubtful, so sit tight! Sending much love for the last time from glorious Mother India. And what a Mother she is.