Friday, December 08, 2006

Saturday: Intentional Elephants, Dog Tales and a Doppelganger

Chapter Four of The Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha
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Thy loving smile will surely hail, the love-gift of a fairy-tale.

-- Lewis Carroll


Saturday I am awoken by what sounds like the impact of one thousand buckets of water being simultaneously discharged against the roof. The torrential deluge is shed in unbroken waterfalls to the all sides of the room and I picture canals of roiling rainwater being carved in the dark. Through the shimmering curtain of water outside the front window I am able to make out the blurred colored lights of the resort's main office, but nothing else. I open my laptop to check the clock. Thirty minutes past three ante meridiem. The clamorous complaint of the corrugated metal roof under the downpour is constant during my early-morning pranayama and sit.

Maybe it's the all-pervasiveness of the pinks in the room, or an association made with the sound of cascading water, but for whatever reason, elephants keep coming to mind. First Disney's "Pink Elephants on Parade", then Jean de Brunhoff's "Babar the Elephant", then Hannibal's Alpine crossing on elephant-back, and finally those incongruous canned shots of African elephants from Tarzan movies. This pondering on pachyderms inspires me to try an experiment suggested by Dr. Joseph Dispenza in the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" In designing my day I voice the intention to be shown a wild elephant. Like an enfant terrible I am unequivocal in my demand. No chained elephant, no laboring elephant, no porting elephant. I will only be satisfied with a wild elephant in its element. Period.

I continue my quest for smiles as soon as a number of guests emerge from their rooms for breakfast in the wall-less dining room. My three pieces of slightly charred toast with saccharine jelly go down roughly, but the nine smiles I harvest in the dining hall give me energy that food cannot heading into the day. A cloying, largish dog stands on my foot while I am trying to take notes on my laptop and looks up at me with eyes that say, "I love you so much it makes me wanna whine." I smile sympathetically at the tawny-colored retriever which only encourages him to double the doe-eyed intensity of his gaze. "I bet if you loved me one tenth as much as I love you, Mark, you would offer me an insignificant morsel off your plate." I toss some bits of burned crust to my unrelenting petitioner, who wolfs the offering down with salivating gratitude.

Lafir, refreshed from a good night's sleep and looking entirely pleased with the morning's inaugural cigarette, joins me at my table after dismissing my four-legged friend with a deft flick of his foot. He informs me that we will depart for Sigiriya in twenty minutes even though the rain is incessant. Go with the flow.

Still nervous from the previous day's debacle, I ask Lafir if I will be allowed to get down from the vehicle in a timely fashion should my bladder threaten to give way. He scrunches his brow as he contemplates my request and then counters that the trip should last less than half an hour. "We are quite close from here. Not taking long time. You using toilets now, before going. Not finding toilets or papers on the road." It is not the long-term solution I was hoping to come to, but it's a start.

Sigiriya is a ruin-topped citadel that rises from the jungle floor like a weathered pencil eraser of gargantuan proportions punched through a sheet of deep, wet green. It looks suspiciously like Richard Dreyfuss' fork-sculpted mound of mashed potato from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"--perhaps it is a harbinger of an extraterrestrial jam session, but I've neglected to pack my synthesizer.

The minute we drive up to the expansive garden that serves as a terraced preamble to the impressive rock, the rain halts. Save for a handful of umbrella-wielding guides at the ticket booth, the sea of greens surrounding the massive magma plug is completely unpeopled and eerily silent. Lafir bids me goodbye at the gate, and as I pass over the small bridge spanning the placid, mud-brown waters of the moat, I get the impression that I am an unwitting champion being sent forth to face some mythical menace. "Aye, the legend reads that it be a bandana-bedecked outlander who shall topple the monster, but this boy be so frail..." I am even appointed an animal sidekick in the form of a short-haired mutt that guides me through the misty garden landscape replete with hulking boulders and rectilinear, low-lying pools. My guide dog patiently waits as I stop to gawk at the immense scale of the looming rock ahead and admire the vista revealed at each new elevation. Higher and higher we ascend until we are on the rusted iron staircase appended to the giant rock itself. It is here that the pint-sized pooch sees fit to cut me free, but not before he strikes a regal pose on an stage of masoned stone and allows me to snap a photo. He quite naturally possesses the stuff that pure breeds are conditioned to ape with empty exactness at the annual shows of the Westminster Kennel Club.

Occupying a chain-linked cage, two apathetic security officers serve as reluctant gatekeepers for the natural tower. Beyond them the sinuous stairs of rusted orange-brown iron hugs the rock and spirals up out of view. My persistent smile confounds the seated guard, but his upright partner lets his guard down (ta-dum) and surrenders a tight-lipped grin before I pass and embark upon the stairs.

Midway up the western face of the rock I encounter a third guard who is charged with watching over the few remaining flesh-hued frescos of the panoply that once decorated the wall. His smile outshines my own and he is overjoyed to present the lissome, topless maidens for my perusal.

"You see here," he asks, while pointing at the nipple atop a perfectly spherical breast. "The placement is perfect. If you look closely you will see that earlier the artist painted the nipple lower, but then he moved it, so it would be perfect."

"Even the old placement looks pretty good to me," I confess.

"Pretty good, yes. But not perfect. The artist could not rest until it was perfect."

"Could not breast, you mean."

"Could not?"

"Could not breast, until it was perfect."

The official begins a rapid-fire wheezing that taken out of context could easily be mistaken for an asthma attack. "Oh yes, joking. I was not expecting," he gasps. I am tempted to grab hold of his shoulders as he rocks back dangerously near the centuries-old renderings of buxom babes.

"Bad joking," I correct him. "Well, I breast be getting on my way." The guard is sent into a fresh tizzy, but this time he steadies himself with arms akimbo. As I make my way up an incline to the next set of steps, I cannot resist the urge to turn back to fire one last salvo of puns in the direction of the now obscured guard. "Breast in peace, my friend. The breast man won." Fresh peals of his distinctive laughter mingle with the wind.

Three quarters of the way up Sigiriya, a sizable outcropping serves as a viewing platform and is occupied by a smattering of nervous monkey mamas clutching wide-eyed babes. Bull monkeys, chests puffed out, pace back and forth on the rock above--unofficial sentries guarding whatever treasure may await at the summit. A monumental pair of lion's paws frames the steps leading to the final ascent, and gives the milieu the doomful feel of an Indiana Jones or Harry Potter film. At the far side of the landing, a signboard, lacquered green, warns 'Noise May Provoke Hornet Attacks' and features a terrified hiker being pursued by exactly twenty thigh-sized hornets--the biggest of which is an antenna's length from biting the runner's hind end.

The final set of steps is the steepest. Mirroring their ascent, two or three meters superior, are man-made grooves in the smooth face of the rock that in the days before the stairs was installed, were used for tenuous foot and hand holds. I cannot resist but to find a spot on the steps nearest the olden grooves and do a bit of climbing. To reach the lowest of the indentations I am forced to stand on the outer iron handrail and lean against the rock. Although the path is just a short distance below to arrest a fall, the perceived exposure is nonetheless dramatic. The rock curves away both above and below such that I feel like I am clinging to the edge of a smooth moon suspended recklessly high above a verdant orb. For the seasoned free climber, high-rise construction worker, or barefoot palm-tree harvester, the ancient route might constitute nothing more than the quotidian gravity-defying workout. For the less spider-like, however, it's a hair-raising experience. With my diet-withered physique, I count myself squarely among the latter group, and quickly negotiate my way back to the stairs after the most modest of traversals.

Atop the rock I am utterly alone with the hoary bricks that outline the floor plan to a once-palatial splendor. The monkeys that had watched my ascent with considerable interest have ominously peeled away and there is only the sound of the wind to keep me company. The jungle canopy below is broken at intervals by ponds that are not hard to imagine as the still-steaming footfalls of a recently-passed colossus. Nevertheless I am inclined to reflect that if any beast remains here to do battle with, it is but myself. In my focus on hitting the goal of one thousand smiles I stand to lose sight of the potential uplift each individual smile offers. Like so many of the projects initiated over the past year in India, this exemplifies the ongoing battle; to do justice to each fragile moment while weaving together larger projects with the potential to resonate beyond the original impulse. Goals, however grand or noble, tend to pull the aspirant from the here and now. Depth is traded for breadth. Holding this thought, I watch the mite-like sprinkle of newly-arrived tourists--three, followed by ten, then five more--drawn along the circuitous garden pathway to the rock. The sun threatens to pierce the gray underbelly of sky. Come, there are smiles to collect. One at a time. Just one at a time.

After encountering the first half dozen or so groups on my descent, I note that the ever-present drive for more smiles is providing a window onto choiceless awareness. The minute I exalt in garnering a couple of smiles, the next person will remain stoic. When I despair at encountering several non-smilers in row, suddenly a smile crops up out of nowhere. I exalt once more, and the pattern repeats. When, instead, I see each response as an equally viable aspect of the divine play--flip sides of the same coin--I am released briefly from my desire to grasp or push away the fruits of my dimple-rippling labor. A fragile bubble of equanimity arises, at least for a few fleeting moments, in which I am free of expectation or fear of what might or might not happen. I'm just smiling at that which is, again and again, without judgement. The action alone is enough. I take refuge in the smile, my smile, shining forth without discrimination. But this mode is short-lived as I inevitably get excited again. I get a little high when I realize everyone is smiling, one after the other. No sooner than this thought forms and suddenly no one is smiling anymore. My bubble is burst and the roller coaster of emotions begins anew. Hardcore training from the great beyond.

Back at the car I find Lafir sound asleep on the fully-reclined front seat and I take advantage of his dormancy to empty my bladder in the shadow of a looming, rain-streaked boulder. A tap on the door rouses Lafir from his slumber and when he comes to he informs me that our next destination is the ancient city-kingdom-capital Polonnaruwa--just over an hour's journey east-by-northeast. The second I take my place next to Lafir in the Tempo the sky opens up and unleashes wave after wave of rain against the suddenly teary-eyed windows. The furious car wash is unrelenting for the duration of our drive. When we stop at Polonnaruwa, the rain stops. Just like that.

Lafir uses an invisible map on the Tempo's hood to indicate how I am to make a loop of the site before returning to our parking spot near the colossal half eggshell of the spike-crowned main stupa.

"Not taking guide," Lafir says while removing the wrapper from a fresh pack of cigarettes. "Big wasting of money and our times. If guide coming you not talking, just walking. Just making loop and coming here again." He is unmoved by my invitation to join me on the tour. "Many times seeing. Now smoking and waiting."

I leisurely stroll about the ruins--reclaimed from the smattering of jungle that is still evident in domesticated patches about the site--and marvel in particular at the crumbling walls demarcating where the royal palace stood. The bygone seven-storied palace was purported to have had no less than one thousand rooms (how many of these were half baths is a figure lost in the annals of real-estate lore). I amuse myself by imagining each of the ghostly chambers as a unique and subtle container for one of the one thousand smiles I will collect. Ideal material for a Hayao Miyazaki animated feature.

In front of the palace I am descended upon by an tattered-umbrella-wielding man with a powder-white mane of hair. He brusquely grasps me by the arm and leads across a lane to where a small group of Asian tourists is standing. "Staying together, staying together," the seasoned guide scolds disapprovingly while glaring at me. His unwarranted rant complete, he uses his umbrella to motion down a flight of steps at an attractive terraced pool trimmed with right-angled stonework. "This is where Parakramabahu and other Kings are having their bath. To the right of the bath you are seeing Royal Changing Room."

Perhaps it is inspired by the guide's use, like Lafir's, of the present tense for the past, or the fact that no one in the tour group is deigning to look in my direction, but a sure-fire bit of smiling-winning drama quite suddenly presents itself to me. "Cheerio," I say to no one in particular then descend the steps toward the Royal Changing Room at a brisk clip. I step over a moon stone (foreshadowing, mayhaps?) engraved with concentric rings of elephants, creepers, and horses, before scampering up the several weathered steps to the open-aired platform. I surreptitiously ascertain that I have my audience's undivided attention, then make a big show of removing my flip flops and placing them neatly on the raised stone border. This is followed by wiping my bandana from my head, neatly folding it into diminishing triangles, and patting it to rest atop my footwear. I turn my back to the onlookers, before working my t-shirt over my head in an exaggerated pantomime and flinging it to the convenient branch of an overhanging tree. Next I shimmy out of my sweat pants and toss them nonchalantly to join my precariously hanging t-shirt. Finally, I cross over to the bath with nothing between me and the curious eyes of the guide and tourists, other than a thin layer of Old Navy 100% cotton gym shorts made in South Africa and worn for far too long in India.

The murky rain water of the bath appears pregnant with microbial menace, so I alter my original plans to immerse myself, and instead conceal my lower half behind the short wall that borders the pool while removing my last bit of modesty. Crouching out of view, I simulate bathing by taking large handfuls of water in cupped hands and animatedly throwing it overhead in glistening arcs. I stand slowly, backside to the audience, while mock scrubbing one armpit, then the other, with theatrical vigor. A casual turn of my head in the direction of the onlookers initiates a cartoonish double take (What are they still doing here? I'm being watched!) before I sink out of view while frenetically crisscrossing my arms and hands to cover myself. I pull my shorts from the wall and don them from a sequestered squatting position. I emerge slowly, with mock sheepishness, and call out, "Right then, who's next?". The guide looks hopelessly perplexed, but the others span the gamut from bemusedly smiling to outright laughing. Feigning embarrassment, I gingerly tiptoe across the divide between the bath and changing room to retrieve my clothes from the tree limb. While I am pretending to dry off with my shirt, two teenage girls from the party of tourists are emboldened to descend the stairs and ask in broken English for permission to take photos. I oblige by striking dramatic poses during a reverse strip tease and can only assume the photographers will have the common sense to show their slides in last-taken-first-shown order. Regardless, I consider my one-man show to be an unqualified success, as less than five minutes work has yielded nine more smiles.

On my way back up the stairs I am surprised to see what looks like myself sans bandana looking back at me and looking just as surprised at seeing myself looking like him. My doppelganger has his arm draped around a fetching blond girl who looks like nobody I've ever dated before, and I find myself begrudging him this bit of dissymmetry.

"Hi me," I say nonchalantly in passing, as if I fully expected my spitting-image to be in attendance all along. My bettered-half lacks my cleverness and can only smile and stare dumbly as I walk on by and continue down the path without turning. Maybe he doesn't speak English, I muse.

A hundred yards up the path and to my left, a labyrinth of ancient stone footings offers mute testimony to where bustling shops catering to pilgrims, monks and ministers once competed. Partially overgrown with long-bladed grass in multi-hued greens, the low-lying masonry appears as a frozen snail trail left by Nature in her relentless crawl of reduction. To my right, clusters of snack and souvenir sellers compete for attention among the anemic smattering of tourists which they outnumber four to one. I wonder if the modern-day merchants ever reflect on the fate they share with their long-gone neighbors on the other side of the path.

I pause in front of a phalanx of cold drink vendors that immediately start vying for my business while seated on a ramshackle collection of lawn chairs arrayed around similarly decrepit folding tables. One enterprising salesman snatches a bottle from an age-worn cooler and raps it with an iron bottle opener in an attempt to beguile me with the resultant headache-inducing cacophony. Sensing another opportunity for multiple smiles, I begin a hyperkinetic jitterbug to the frenetic beat established by the temporarily-befuddled vendor. Fearing that their potential customer is being won over by the clank maker, a couple of competing tables start bottle beating of their own. I move like a hapless marionette with unseen strings pulling me erratically from one group to the next and am able to induce laughter in all. Ultimately I settle on purchasing a bottle of Coke from an old-woman that appears to be a sole-proprietor. In a joyful fit of germ-sharing, I insist on letting each vendor have a sip, before I down the last bit of highly-commercialized amber-colored ambrosia. My body remains relatively dehydrated, but I am quenched by the nineteen additional smiles produced.

Near the grand central stupa I spy a monkey and dog grappling on a hillock. I jog over with the intention of separating the combatants, only to to have my peacekeeping mission cut short by the realization that there was never any fight to break up. I watch slack jawed as the monkey rides atop the frolicking dog, slapping his flank like some furry-faced, long-tailed rodeo cowboy. The bucking canine manages to throw his simian rider and proceeds to pin him to the ground with paws atop shoulders and a muzzle pushed firmly against his chest. The monkey, utterly unfazed, remains supine while snacking on fleas extracted from the scruff of the dog's neck. A minute later the impatient dog nudges the monkey's butt with his nose to initiate another round of friendly fracas. Just adjacent to the wrestling duo, two dogs growl menacingly at a pack of monkeys that scramble for the trees as if to remind prying eyes of the normal order of things.

I fumble for my camera and can only manage two badly composed and blurred snaps before the battery dies. I motion Lafir over from the car where he is taking a drag off a cigarette. I point out the odd couple that is still engaged in mock combat under the pines. He is similarly dumbfounded by the pairing.

"I driving here for the past 35 years and have never seen anything like this," he says. "Dog and monkeys, they not liking each other. It's really good, no?"

"It really makes me curious as to how they became friends. I mean, it's impressive how they overcame the hostility the others exhibit toward one another."

"You snapping picture?"

"No, nothing good. I tried, but the battery died."

"No picture? Because this is really good, no? People need learning this. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians. Really good, no?" Lafir takes a thoughtful drag on his cigarette while studying my face. "You taking bath this morning?"

"Why, do I look dirty?"

"No, no. Just more drivers saying that maybe someone like you taking bath, like king taking bath in palace." Lafir allows his half smile to grow to three quarters.

"I had a shower back at the hotel, but it was pretty plebeian. The water was freezing cold."

"Okay, no bath?" His smiles waxes to full. Unfortunately, the informal, unwritten, and self-imposed rules of the Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha project prevent me from tabulating more than one smile per individual.

"Well, the shower seemed to do the trick. Maybe the other drivers had me confused with that guy over there with the blond girl." I point to a bend in the path where my doppelganger and his girlfriend, hand-in-hand, have just come into view. Lafir is visibly confused by the uncanny similarity of the stranger's appearance to my own. He works his half moustache impulsively between his thumb and index finger.

"Is it your brother?" he asks.

"We are all brothers, isn't it?" I tease Lafir impishly. "But this fellow is more like my parasitic external twin." Lafir's smile fades by degrees as he squints his eyes in the direction of my body double. My doppelganger and the girl smile as they pass, but do not speak. Lafir's jaw drops in dumb disbelief.

"He not speaking to you?"

"He has always been jealous of me for getting to stay at home when we were kids. Mom and Dad forced him out of the house even before he could walk to toughen him up for the mean streets. They didn't want my doppelganger to be a milquetoast." Lafir listens to my ridiculous introduction with concerned nods of his head, which only encourages me to continue the narrative with increasing gravitas. "He was raised by an unruly pack of wild dogs in the jungle. A bona fide feral child. When he finally returned home after several years, he terrorized the mailman by snapping at his heels and would go wee-wee on the sofa. It was a complete mess. Nevertheless, I had just started to bond with him when one day my parents spied him humping the babysitter's leg. For my parents, it was the final straw and he was forever banished from the house. He hasn't spoken to or barked at me since."

The unraveling of my yarn leaves Lafir perplexed. It's clear that he has gotten the gist of my story--if not the particulars--and is troubled by it. "So, maybe he taking wild bath in royal palace," he offers after some lip-chewing deliberation.

"Sadly, yes," I say, while squeezing Lafir's shoulder comfortingly. "And I will bet you anything that the girl he's with is simply an escort he hired to mask his loneliness. He is one sick puppy. But, then again, doppelgangers usually are a bit off."

Lafir sucks deeply on his cigarette as we weighs all he has seen and heard. The sight of the mirror-image man combined with my unrelenting deadpan has either sold Lafir on the veracity of my tale or cemented my place in his head as a lunatic. Unable to decide, Lafir points me in the direction of the path that curves past each of the ruins, and tells me he will drive the car around to the parking lot on the other side to meet me. "Following brother for second half tour."

A kilometer long walk along the red-clay path culminates in a gentle rise that reveals three handsomely larger-than-life Buddhas exquisitely coaxed from a massive sweep of rock. It is Sri Lanka's own Mount Rushmore, or perhaps more aptly, Mount Rushless. The leftmost Buddha, in full lotus posture, is lost in a centuries-old samadhi atop a throne adorned with lions and thunderbolts. Buddha number two, no less persistent, stands serenely statue-like, contemplating the countless thousands who come to marvel at the artistry evident in his granite-hewn form. The last and largest of the Buddhas, almost fifty feet from tip to toe, lies supine, his stacked feet protruding from the bottom of his robe and exceeding me in stature (by no less than two feet). A dog lies on the walkway in front of the last Buddha in a pose that approximates the enlightened one to a surprising degree considering the inherent limitations of fissiped anatomy. Her body is so inert that I begin to wonder if she is among the living and I am prompted to kneel to administer strokes to her forehead. "Hey little one, are you alive?" She is startled from her slumber and rises to sit in spite of my comforting cooing. The apparent lack of threat and the narcotic heat of the midday sun compel her, in time, to resume her original attitude. I can't help but think that, like her, the Buddha too is simply in repose before rising again for a sit.

PDSC Previous Day's Smile Count
SPH Smiles Per Hour (calculations based on a fourteen hour work day or seven hour half day; reflects the previous day's tally)
STG Smiles To Go (smiles remaining to reach 1,000)
RSR Required Smile Rate (SPH needed over remaining day(s) to reach 1,000)

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Lafir and the Captive Smiler

Chapter Three of The Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha

Lafir's aggressively trimmed mustache, disturbingly Hitler-esque in its brevity, is the center of gravity of his compact features. A half-smile serves to lighten, by a delicate degree, the stern impression created by his comportment, and yet it is hard to imagine him ever surrendering to the recklessness of a belly laugh. His spotless silk shirt, wrinkle-free pants, and polished black dress shoes, suggest a commitment to personal hygiene that borders on the obsessive.

My stubble-studded face, Holi-stained Dandi March t-shirt, sun-bleached shorts, and decomposing flip flops, present me as the visual antithesis to Lafir's fastidiousness. With the better part of a foot differentiating us in height, we make an odd couple.

We collect my luggage from the guest house where I had stayed briefly in the wee hours of the morning and then Lafir proceeds to his home in the outskirts of Colombo to assemble his wardrobe for our road trip. While I wait in Lafir's impeccably-maintained Ford Taurus station wagon, I become transfixed on a mangy dog that cannot stop scratching her shoulder with her hind leg. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch, scratch. There is almost nothing left of her skinless, infected shoulder and yet she cannot resist the urge to continue scratching. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch, scratch. I scan my person for any food items I can offer the haggard canine, but come up empty. I coo sympathetically from the car window and the dog looks up at me, momentarily freed from her self-destructive imperative. Do dog smiles count? I open the door to approach the miserable creature, but she has been too conditioned by ill-intentioned humans to stick around and scrambles desperately to her feet before limping pathetically down the road and out of sight. (Perverse poetasters note: the itchy bitch had a glitch in her hitch.) Three mischievous schoolboys round the corner and for the dog's sake I am thankful she has vacated the scene. The eldest of the boys, upon seeing me, makes a face and mockingly starts blathering with a faux accent to the delight of his mates. I smile at him and he responds with a sneer, but his companions smile. Two outta three ain't bad, I figure.

The smile project is little more than an hour old and I have already had my first epiphany. My drive to elicit smiles is short circuiting the judgmental mind to some degree. Under normal circumstances I probably would have returned fire at the trio's ringleader – jabbered back at him with an equally ridiculous accent or feigned getting out of the car to give chase. But the imperative to smile has created a distance from my reactive self. Once a smile has been issued it's too difficult to return to an inimical or defensive posture. The brief gap created by smiling has withdrawn power from my emotional computer. In the flash flood precipitated by conscious volition, weedy passions are are swept away before they are able to find purchase. I actually am able (or so I imagine) to sense the fearful burden of the boy's pantomime and realize it is blocking him from truly carefree interaction with others. Where I might normally have felt indignation, I am discovering fledgling pangs of compassion.

Lafir returns to the car with one large suitcase in tow and anxiously taking drags from the cigarette suspended at the corner of his mouth.

"I not smoke in car," Lafir assures me, smiting the half-spent John Player Gold Leaf underfoot. "Make bad air and hard to breathe."

"It's really hard to give up though, isn't it?"

"Not possible," he smiles. "She is bad love, but not possible for leaving alone."

As Sri Lanka is Lafir's gig, I leave our destination and itinerary in his hands with the caveat that he take me to well-peopled places. He decides quickly on Sigiriya, which I misunderstand to be another comment on his smoking, but he ensures me is a destination of "too many people." En route, I am soon disheartened to discover that he is only minimally under my direction. The first time I see a large gathering of people at a roadside stand (a perfect opportunity for more smiles) I ask Lafir to pull over, but he drives on with nary a hint of hesitation on the accelerator.

"Nothing to see there," Lafir explains, "This kind of people will just make trouble for you. You know, you strange guy so crowd will come. Just asking too many questions and you are not liking it. Not clean people."

"But I like meeting people like this. I am liking it."

Lafir, with an implacable grimace commanding the lower half of his facial anatomy, ignores my feeble protest and continues apace. Daylight is fast giving way to the murky tones of evening and I have become a hostage in the car I hired. I smile frantically at intersections hoping to make eye contact with pedestrians, but the few that notice me just assume I have a screw loose and quickly divert their gaze. On and on we drive – past sharply inclined embankments with oddly-bent palm trees, past cloud-shrouded super hills, past rail-thin, long-skirted women, past boys fecklessly careening on ancient bicycles – ever deeper into Tarzanesque jungle.

"Jungle," Lafir comments, with irregular application of the accelerator lest I entertain any foolish mission-interrupting notions of escape from my mobile prison. Pleas to purchase bottled water and relieve myself go unheeded. His response is undeviating. "You are not liking it here. Too dirty. Waiting until hotel come. Almost here." I threaten to wet myself in the car, but it only elicits a barely-audible chortle from Lafir, and he drives on. The sadistic tease is to last another ninety minutes.

The hotel where I am finally allowed to disembark caters to newlyweds, but as it is off-season the proprietors are only too happy to host a motley-attired single with bursting bladder. I'm checked into a gaudy suite of varnished browns and intense pinks. I immediately make a beeline for the toilet where I cast my gaze skyward and sigh with relief as evacuation is initiated. My joy is short lived as the urine stream bifurcates and is redirected from the bowl to my leg and the tiled floor. A frantic attempt at realignment only exacerbates my pathetic condition such that my shorts and dry leg are amply watered.

After washing, changing clothes, and mopping my ill-aimed effluent from the bathroom floor, I return to the bedroom and cautiously lift the pink mosquito net of the canopied bed to collapse on an even pinker blanket and rest my head on the pinkest-of-pink heart-shaped pillows. I look around at the walls which are adorned with vaguely sexual renderings of Buddhist demigoddesses and feel like an involuntary Liberace in a giant gut of Pepto Bismol-medicated indigestion. With the smile project in shambles and imagining myself to be a captive of hard-driving Lafir, I am tempted to curl up in a sickly pink swirl of forgetfulness. But I have smiles to go before I sleep. Smiles to go before I sleep.

I summon the will power to pull myself from the bed and to make the rounds of the hotel grounds in the hopes of chalking up a few more grin wins. The smiles I offer up belie my anti-social and exhausted state. Between the handful of guests and staff, I harvest another 14 smiles and finish the day with 39 unique hits. The modest victory momentarily spells my flagging spirit, but only a half day into the project and I'm woefully off the required pace to reach one thousand. One thousand? What was I thinking?

Friday, November 17, 2006

Friday: Don't Fear the Grin Reaper

Chapter Two of The Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha
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All the statistics in the world can't measure the warmth of a smile.

-- Chris Hart


An accountant at heart, I immediately start to crunch numbers. Seven into one thousand. Take seven times one hundred... leaves three hundred... seven times forty... leaves twenty... seven times almost three. So a nearly 143 smiles-per-day average will be required to reach one thousand smiles in a weeks time. Assuming ten-plus hours a day lost to sleep, daily ablutions, and meditation, it works out to just over 10 smiles-per-hour. Ten smiles-per-hour! Quite suddenly I am engulfed by a wave of doubt. I may not even encounter 143 people in a day and there's no way I'm going to induce a smile in every person I meet. Maybe I should shoot for a more reasonable figure. Mother Teresa had encouraged her fan base to attempt to offer smiles to five strangers per day. Maybe I could take that number times five; twenty five smiles-per-day. One hundred seventy five smiles total over my seven day stay. Not too shabby a figure at all. My meandering mind is brought to a halt by a clear, yet unsounded injunction. It's one thousand smiles or bust. It's not 175, 250, or even 500 - it's the 1,000 faces of the smiling Buddha you're after. Time is slip sliding away and you need to start creasing some cheeks.

My pondering is cut short when a towering man built like an offensive-end proceeds to the head of the queue at the Indian consulate and brazenly pushes through the crush of people. He presents his snout at the mouse hole cut in the service window and snorts some unintelligible inquiry. I feel my indignation swell at his temerity. I have witnessed this behavior too many times before in India: some business-suited bigwig won't be bothered with peon protocol and is going to demand immediate satisfaction.

I'm about to abandon my place in line to educate the uncouth interloper in the finer points of linemanship, when he whirls about and we make eye contact. He smiles and I am immediately disarmed. Instead of reproaching him, I reluctantly find myself returning his smile. Thirty seconds into my grand smilethon and I've been preempted by my adversarial archetype. Remarkably, I discover my righteous indignation is nowhere to be found having been eviscerated in the exchange of smiles. I am annoyed, however, that I cannot tally the stranger's smile as he smiled first. The thousand smiles I intend to collect are going to have to be initiated by me and not the other way around. Continuing to beam, the stranger marches over to my position and thrusts his hand into mine to shake.

"I'm Sanjay," he announces with vigor. I look around as if for hidden cameras, dumbfounded by his inscrutable focus on myself. Sanjay leans in to confide in me that no one need be standing in line.

"The consulate staff will only see people in the order of the numbers handed out by the door," he explains, "These guys with higher numbers, or no numbers at all, are simply slowing up the process by crowding at the windows."

I remain baffled by my new acquaintance even as we work in concert to educate the others as to how the system, at least in theory, is supposed to work. The majority of those who were congregating in the unruly lines are convinced to return to their seats or retrieve a number. The congestion at the windows is considerably reduced, and for a while I imagine with smarmy self-satisfaction that the lines are dissipating at an improved clip.

Afterward I chat more with the broad-shouldered and baby-faced Sanjay and learn he is a pilot for Singapore Airlines and a competitive hot-air balloonist. He is in the process of porting his balloon to Delhi for a major international event. "You have to go with the flow," he explains of his pastime, "The only way to control the speed and direction of the balloon is by making altitudinal adjustments to catch differently moving currents of air." His explanation seems imbued with greater meaning as I embark on the smile project. And yet his parting grin only serves to remind me that I have yet to claim my first smilee.

I make the rounds of the waiting room, but have difficulty making eye contact, as the majority of those gathered stare vacantly at the ground or are engrossed in forms to be completed. A group of monks glance briefly at my nascent smile, but are unmoved and return to murmuring amongst themselves. My fledgling efforts do manage to make a painfully shy infant cry and elicit a nasty glare from her parents - but that's another project for another day.

Peering out a consulate window I spy army sharpshooters stationed on the rooftops of neighboring office buildings. Tomorrow will be Sri Lanka's Independence Day and the capital, always wary of bomb attacks from separatist rebels, is even more on edge in anticipation of the annual military parade. Although distant, I smile and wave to a serviceman scrutinizing the consulate with his binoculars. He hesitates on my position, as if weighing the propriety of responding to my childlike gesture, and then waves back. Though I am certain he is smiling – in the way that you know when someone is watching you even when you don't see them – I decide I cannot advance my smile counter with a clean conscience. I remain stuck at diddly-squat in my smile-pumping aspirations.

Once my number is called, the transaction of submitting my visa form and passport takes less than thirty seconds.

"I don't get to keep my passport?"

"No, you come back in six days." The consulate staffer responds without looking up from a cumbrous pile of passports that he thumbs through with dull precision. The jumble proves too unwieldy for even his seasoned, nimble fingers and a small avalanche of deep blue and maroon jacketed passports finds its way to the floor. I note with some chagrin that my passport is among the casualties. After the debacle of having my last passport lost by the consulate in San Francisco and then stolen in Ahmedabad, I have become keenly sensitized to the whereabouts of its hard-earned replacement.

"You'll have it ready next Thursday?"

"You come back in six days," the staffer answers from beneath his desk where he sets about retrieving the fallen passports. He is clearly disappointed to find me still at his window when he rights himself and my smile cannot penetrate his stolid facade. I scan the passports and with some relief recognize mine among the scatter.

"Thursday?"

"Six days. Next!"

"But there is a sign in the stairwell that says the consulate will be closed on Thursday and I have to fly out on Friday in the early afternoon."

"Sign is old. Six days."

"So the sign is incorrect?"

"Old. Six days. Next!"

Only partially reassured I make my way for the exit. On the stairs to the foyer I come upon an elderly cleaning woman using a hand rag to wipe down the stone steps. Her muscles appear taut under darkly wrinkled skin and her high cheek bones hint at a former pulchritude. I slow my pace and she looks up from her thankless task just long enough to make eye contact. I smile warmly. She returns to her work, but after a moment's deliberation looks up again and smiles back at me. My spirits soar. The campaign's inaugural smile. I'm finally on my way to one thousand. Only nine hundred ninety nine to go. I fairly skip down the remaining steps.

Near the exit I collect smiles from two security officers and a second cleaning woman. Score four for the proletariat. Outside I am set upon by a trio of competing tour guides. With the new project in mind, I am torn as to whether I should stay in Colombo to maximize the number of people with which I will be interacting, or head out to explore the island at large. The smallest and eldest of the three guides begrudgingly returns my smile and introduces himself as Lafir. I take his name to be a wink from the great beyond and agree to enlist his services after he asserts that a road trip will be slightly more economical than staying in the city. A wider arena to spread the good cheer, I reason. Go with the flow.

PDSC Previous Day's Smile Count
SPH Smiles Per Hour (calculations based on a fourteen hour work day or seven hour half day; reflects the previous day's tally)
STG Smiles To Go (smiles remaining to reach 1,000)
RSR Required Smile Rate (SPH needed over remaining day(s) to reach 1,000)

Thursday, November 16, 2006

The Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha

The idea is born in the confluence of three streams of thought flowing more or less simultaneously in the stagnant queue at the Indian Consulate in Columbo, Sri Lanka.

The Buddha Stream

I'm marveling at how little I actually know of this country that, at least geographically, is fated to be a mere adjunct to India - a disjointed full stop off the tapered exclamation mark formed by the Indian sub-continent. For many of the foreigners here, Sri Lanka is significant only in that it represents the most convenient midpoint on a visa run back to India. If you're in the northern part of India you go to Nepal; in the south you fly to Sri Lanka. Even the titular hero of the Hindu epic Ramayana deigned to visit the island just long enough to slay the ten-headed Ravana and grab Sita, before booking the first available swan-powered aerial car back to Bharat.

In my earliest memories of Sri Lanka, it is still Ceylon, and, for me, one of the top three islands of exotic intrigue, along with Madagascar and the Galapagos. Certainly it played a role in inspiring a seven-year-old's wanderlust as I studied the Rand McNally Mercator Projection Map of the World fastened to the wall alongside my bed. The intervening years had added bits of incongruous trivia to my sparse knowledge of Sri Lanka: Tamil Tigers somewhere the north, Arthur C. Clarke in Colombo, and a majority Buddhist population.

It's this last bit of trivia that sparks a distant memory of a lamp spotted amongst the ancient waffle irons and gewgaws I had coveted in one of the few remaining antique shops off of Gilbert Street in Iowa City. Entitled "The Thousand Faces of the Buddha," it had, evidently, exactly that number of hand-painted buddhas on its lacquered base. This memory, in turn, precipitates my wondering about the significance of the pot-bellied, mirthful Buddha so popular in Chinese depictions of the sage. How did that all get started?

The Service Stream

What kind of service project can I initiate in the few short days I will be on the island nation? Being on the lean side of my planned stay in South Asia, I'm given over to an increasingly reflective mood regarding the unfolding of events over the past year. Nipun comes to mind as one of the prime forces impelling me to return to the beloved region. I decide that whatever project I ultimately undertake, I will, in appropriately Buddhist fashion, dedicate any merit accrued to his side of the karmic ledger.

One idea for a service project that arises almost immediately is to act as a tour guide for a tour guide – a number of whom are staking out the consulate doors with the intention of ensnaring hapless foreigners. My thinking is that I could enlist one of them to take me to the poorest of the poor areas on the island, and then, through osmosis rather than proselytization, link the guide up with the spirit of service by administering to various families and individuals in need. We could visit a hospital, orphanage, and school in this whirlwind tour of goodwill. It would be an on-the-road, buddy film with an ulterior 'do-unto-others' motive. The idea, while a good start I reckon, borders on the presumptive. Nothing would be more humiliating than to have the notoriously imperious Nipun pooh-pooh my endeavor as deficient in personal sacrifice or lacking mythic import.

The Flat Liners Stream

As I scan the hundreds of people crowded in front of the eight service windows at the consulate I get the overwhelming impression of a conference of zombies. Dull, worn out, irritable expressions dominate. Nobody likes waiting, and many here have been waiting for hours in lines that seem frozen in place. A few Europeans fold themselves into meditative postures, while orange-robed Buddhist monks gather in conspiratorial twos and threes to discuss the best way to extract the stone-faced bureaucrats from their fish bowl of bullet-proof glass. This, I muse, is why people, or at least the vast majority of South Asians, are so fond of musicals. The melodic interludes offer the hope of escape from the crushing monotony of daily existence. When the music starts people are pulled from a milieu of the mundane into a spontaneous community of song and dance. But there is no song here, no dance, no Alpine hills to tumble down while locked in an embrace with a buxom sari-clad lover.

So these are the three thoughts (along with the omnipresent, "where, when, and what am I going to eat next") being juggled: Buddha, service, flat liners. Buddha, service, flat liners. Then, whoop, there it is. The three streams of consciousness cascade together, and like an expectant salmon leaping from the resultant froth, the "Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha" service project cuts a wet arch into the grizzly maw of my noetic body. My mission is clear. I will endeavor to make one thousand people smile in the seven days I have remaining in Sri Lanka. No, scratch endeavor. Let it be writ: I will make one thousand people smile during my stay. And my time starts now.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

You've Been In India for Over a Year When...

• You talk about enmity, rather than animosity.
• You no longer shake or nod your head – you waggle.
• You boldly cross the street when traffic is coming from both directions and all places in between.
• You find it just fine, when someone says IN-tes-tine (rhyming with fine).
• You refuse to eat anything without mango pickle on the side.
• You show up, without apology, for a 9 o'clock meeting at 10:45.
• You know the difference between a googly and a leg break.
• You eschew toilet paper, even when available.
• You know that Big B approves of Little B going out with Ash, while Jaya would prefer he woo Rani.
• You keep the bathroom door closed even when unoccupied.
• You are able to tie a dhoti in ten seconds or less.
• You know the answer to 'Kaun Banega Crorepati?' is probably not you.
• You derisively flick your thumb off your front teeth to let someone know you aren't talking to them.
• You motion for someone to come hither with palm down.
• You impulsively laugh when a Sadarji appears on screen.
• You refer to people from Britain as Britishers, rather than British.
• You say something was 'too good' when it was 'very good.'
• You have tried every flavor of ice candy.
• You suck the insides of a massaged mango out a small incision made at the top of the fruit.
• You call Bombay, Mumbai; Calcutta, Kolkata; Madras, Chennai; and Bangalore, Bangalooroo.
• You know what you 'lakh' is 100,000.
• You feel hot at 40 degrees, not cold (it's centigrade, Baby).
• You tip the scales at less than 100, and it's not because of the weight you've lost (talkin' kilos, Baby).
• You can bangra, garba and dandiya until the sun comes up and the cows come home.
• You know Krack cream is for your soles and not your nose.
• You feel that Rajiv Gandhi is predestined to become PM, just as John Jr. was to become President.
• You prefer Limca over Sprite, Maaza over Fanta, and Thums Up over Pepsi.
• You refer to a mosque as a masjid, and a temple as a mandir.
• You know that in Bharat 'Highly Inflammable' means exactly the same thing as 'Highly Flammable.'
• You feign to reach for a rock to scare off aggressive dogs.
• You have flown on Sahara, Jet, Spice and Kingfisher.
• You know that 'kuch daal mein kala hai' when you're offered a free taxi ride.
• You have held hands with a friend of the same sex without getting the heebie jeebies.
• You know all the titillating details behind the DPS, RK Puram scandal.
• You have ridden in a straw-filled bullock cart with a man whose ear hair can be tied secure beneath his chin.
• You know that Bipasha is a babe and John Abraham is a hunk.
• You always choose the upper berth on the train to avoid having passengers trod on you in the night.
• You complain about the meter being 'fast' in your auto rickshaw.
• You walk away from vendors to coax them into quoting the lowest price.
• You prefer to eat by hand off a banana leaf while sitting cross-legged on the ground.
• You have stepped in an elephant pie to avoid being flattened by a Tata truck.
• You can reproduce the inane jingle for Fair and Handsome skin creme.
• You have tried every flavor of Lay's potato chips including Magic Masala, Australian, Latino Salsa, Spanish Tomato Tango, Hot & Sweet Chilli Caribbean, Chaat Street Bindaas Bhel and Golguppa Style.
• You opt for the movie starring King Khan over King Kong.
• You kabadi, kabadi, kabadi in your sleep.
• You have shamelessly relieved yourself on the side of a public building on a well-travelled road.
• You know it's only a matter of time before Salman Khan kills someone, or at least threatens to do so over the phone.
• You have employed a scissors shot in carrom to best the diamond merchant from Surat.
• You know that it's a Hindu in Hindustan that speaks Hindi and not the other way around.
• You can determine whether a person is from Secunderabad or Hyderabad by their accent.
• You whistle the theme to 'Main Hoon Na' while riding a motorbike with five others.
• You know that nine times out of ten your Delhi rickshawala will be from Bihar.
• You have had Corn in a Cup and you want your thunder.
• You know the bewafaa in 'Bewafaa' is Kareena Kapoor, granddaughter of the one and only Raj.
• You have ridden a camel bareback and buck naked through the Rann of Kutchchh (well, at least in your dreams).
• You know Rani and Baps are from Bengal, Ash is from Mangalore, and Mallika from Haryana.
• You have been to the CID to file an FIR with the KBC-viewing SI who belongs to the BJP.

Those who have marked the passage of twelve full-moons whilst trekking the jasmine and pee-scented byways in the hallowed land of techies, thuggis, and Tamilians, are cordially invited to append to the list.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Evil Happy Birthday

"Mark Uncle, Mark Uncle! Sing a song. Sing a song," comes the hue and cry from the ravenous pack of Nav Jeevan scallywags. I have already performed my limited repertoire of Hindi numbers innumerable times and now my adoring audience's appetite will be satiated with an English tune only. The problem is I don't think I know any English songs, or at least not beyond the first two lines or so. The pathetic truth is that my lyrical memory is about as sharp as a Nerf ball's edges. After false starts with "My Country Tis of Thee" (sung in mock operatic style), "America the Beautiful" (chest puffed out and arm raised in a salute), and "This Land is Your Land" (much knee slapping and foot stomping as if auditioning for Country Bear Jamboree) I default to singing "Happy Birthday." The rousing accolades engendered by the first three offerings give way to expressions of ennui. Ho hum. Been there, heard that.

Sensing my sterling reputation as a paragon of entertainment is about to be irreparably tarnished, I improvise. I pull Ajma to me, as she is closest of the ten or so kids that fall within a three-foot radius of my person. I focus my complete attention on her and allow my eyes to glass over while my vocals grow raspy and slightly menacing. Much giggling ensues, but some of it is clearly tinged with anxiety. The younger children have already guessed as to the tragic transformation that is underway deep within my bowels. Yes, my precious little dearies, I am going bad fast – succumbing to the dark side. I curl my upper lip back in a devilish sneer and my hands, once soft and tender, turn into claws gripping Ajma's fragile arms with increasing threat. Despite it being midday a shadowy unease spreads across the room. The lyrics are now being delivered with the guttural ferocity characteristic of the unfortunate progeny of demon seed and the faintest members of my audience peel away screaming in terror. This triggers wide spread panic and there is a mad scramble for the two exits. A terrified Ajma is the last to escape after wresting herself free from my clutches. With an irascible roar I lurch to the doorway and claw at the sky.

The devilishly robust kids, only minutes removed from having been frightened out of their wits, gather their peers and drag them to my room demanding an encore performance. I claim complete ignorance as to their petition.

"Is it somebody's birthday? Who's birthday is it? If I had known I would have bought a cake. I feel really bad. Well, I'll just go now to the bakery." I rise as if prepared to exit, but am rudely thrust back onto my cot by a multiplicity of tiny hands.

Haritha, who along with Shalini, is the only orphan able to understand some English, explains my subterfuge to the others gathered. The miniature mob waxes tempestuous.

"No, Mark Uncle. You sing. You sing Happy Birthday now!" Haritha demands.

Resigned to my lot I launch once more into the tired hallmark of the birth anniversary. The veterans of my drama shift uncomfortably waiting for Mr. Hyde to appear. The others are similarly restless – they were called here for this? What was all the excitement about? Then it starts. My right hand starts to twitch spasmodically. I look to it first and then to my audience with obvious concern while continuing to sing, albeit somewhat hesitantly. The ones in the know, know what I know, while the newcomers look to the knowers wanting to know what they know, but cannot, themselves, possibly know: Something wicked this way comes. The left hand joins the right in it's unnatural vellication and then my entire torso becomes afflicted with the malevolent twitching. My face registers panic and moments later the singing turns shrill. The youngest cannot bear to witness the complete transition to evil and slip out the door to relative safety. Second row viewers push the front row forward and chaos reigns. I screech the refrain now with unmitigated malice while clawing wildly into the fray. I cackle with such diabolic conviction that I manage to give myself the creeps.

The third iteration of my iniquitous rendition of "Happy Birthday" draws an even greater audience, but this time one of the girls is blocked from easy exit and turns to defiantly face my screeching tirade. She crosses her arms across her chest and squints confidently a la Clint Eastwood. What can a demon do in the presence of such a penetrating gaze? I make as if I am about to pounce on her, but she remains intrepidly unflinching and steps forward to hug me. She has stared fear directly in the eye and is going nowhere. The curtains have been pulled aside and the Wicked Wizard of Oz has been revealed for what he really is. The gig is up.

With some embarrasment, I am forced to repeat the song for the orphan's twenty-something Tamil tudor and finally for a visiting priest who can only look at me quizzically and wonder why today, of all days, he failed to pack his holy water. At the conclusion of my farewell performance no one bothers to run. Even Monkey, the most diminuitive of orphans, simply jumps hyperactively in place, pumping her arms with fists clenched tightly, and anxiously grinning like there's no tomorrow. She too has learned something of defusing terror and disarming the terrible.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The Omen and the Seen

Nothing new will pass this way,
It can't possibly, as I have counted the waves,
And I know the silver surf will pull me in soon,
Pressing wrinkled skin smooth, bobbing bleached bones.
One hundred thousand young lovers have sifted the sands,
Uncovering the sharp shells of broken promises.
One thousand lame dogs have dug their final fur-cooling pool,
Drawn in and drowned by the high tide of a full moon.
One hundred more like me will come with sea-sized dreams,
And witness with rusted eyes and scarred tongues,
As one-by-one they are pounded into smooth bits of glass.

So what's this now?
Why does the sun-rimmed whitey stare so,
When all has been said and done,
Said and done, said and done.
His smile is the idiot's smile,
So late in the game,
Yet I feel my face breaking,
And feel like playing the lottery one last time.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Orphans

We orphans we lament to the world:
World, why have you taken our soft mothers from us
And the fathers who say: My child, you are like me!
We orphans are like no one in this world any more!
O world, we accuse you!

-- Nelly Sachs (1891–1970)
“Chorus of the Orphans"


Haritha steals up to me after breakfast and whispers in my ear. The driver has gone home to his family. Can you walk Shalini and me to school? Ask Auntie. Go fast.

To the children, Swarna is the ever-compassionate, yet no-nonsense, matriarch Auntie. To me she is still the slender, singly-braided South Indian that studied computer science at the University of Iowa and went to church on Sundays with Kevin. It was only over the course of many meetings that I learned of her long-held ambition to start an orphanage/old persons home in her native country. It had, at that time, sounded to me like so many childhood dreams – something to be taken down from the bedroom closet shelf next to the family albums, dusted off and shared with the occasional guest as a quaint reminder of a once-innocent universe. But her dream persisted.

Haritha fires the green-apron-and-white-blouse uniformed missile of a body over the twenty-yards of crumbling concrete separating us, altering her trajectory at the very last by thrusting a bobby-soxed leg down hard and going airborne for my torso. She wraps her arms around my neck and pushes her button nose into my cheek to half-kiss her query. We go? Yes, we go, I assure her, but where is Shalini?

After graduation, Swarna found employment, first in nearby Cedar Rapids, then later in Davenport off of I-80 on the Mississippi River. Kevin and I would visit once every few months and try, most often without success, to tempt her out to dinner and a movie. She preferred to live austerely and save whatever money she made for that persistent vision born in her youth of creating a refuge for the homeless, both young and old. Her co-workers, growing ever fonder of the reticent, but quick-witted girl from Andhra, began to plant in her seeds of doubt. Wouldn't it make more sense to just send money to India and let others do the work over there for her? Her earning potential in the US was almost five times that in her homeland and she could have so much more impact. Maybe it was ego-gratification that was calling her to India and not purely concern for orphaned children and street-dwelling seniors.

Weeks of intense prayer put an end to the growing incertitude and strengthened Swarna's resolve. A deadline was set for departing for India. She was going to go for it. I remember clearly our last supper together before she left the States. We ate at a nondescript Indian restaurant under the drab-gray pall that perpetually enshrouds economically-challenged Davenport. My memory of the meeting, however, fired by the intense force of her conviction, remains saturated with color. It was a seminal moment – she was willfully drawing the stuff of dreams into the flash-bright intensity of waking reality. In spite of this, she recounted the trials that she had endured and their ultimate verdict with complete modesty. She was just an instrument and He was the doer. Classic Swarna.

With military precision, Shalini rounds the corner of the administrative villa at nine fifteen and announces she is ready to depart. I lift her unto a ledge contiguous with the building's facade, so that we are standing very nearly eye-to-eye, and then straighten her collar and adjust her belt till it is perfectly centered. I take a step back for one final inspection, and then snap my heels together before crisply saluting her. She giggles, and in a move that spanks of insubordination, jumps into my arms. I swing her to the ground and then take her and Haritha by the hand and walk through the compound gates.

Kadapa, with a sizable population of needy and relatively unserved by other agencies, was chosen as good city to pull the enterprise down from the ether and into the realm of the manifest. A hostel was found with the help of the local dioscese and populated by ones and twos with youngsters and oldsters alike. Swarna's genius was to create a household that would foster a symbiotic relationship between the two displaced populations. The children would create a vivacious environment and provide physical aid for the seniors, while the oldsters, in turn, would scold the children for their hyperactivity and not being helpful enough. Perfect.

Never married to founding principals, Swarna availed the newly christened Nav Jeevan to all manner of guest irrespective of age and familial background. Stories with a distinctly Mother Theresa flavor began to emerge. A young woman, rejected by her family and withered away by AIDs, was found languishing by the bus stand. Swarna brought her to the orphanage where she was given a bath, fed a warm meal, and provided with a clean cot upon which to sleep. Before passing away peacefully in the early hours of the morning, the woman had managed her first smile in many months. Others, suffering from physical or mental disabilities, were found work in the kitchen or cleaning the compound. Never a bleeding heart, Swarna always had a heart for the bleeding.

Immediately I start to whine. How far do we have to walk? It's not far, according to Shalini, just across the football field and... I've never walked across a football field before I complain. I'm cold, hungry, wet and tired and I have to go weewee. I wanna go home. Haritha is delighted at my apparent suffering, while Shalini, quite matter-of-factly, points out that I'm not wet. But it feels like I'm wet, I counter with hyperventilated snorts and start to remove my shirt, ostensibly to dry off. Shalini shouts her disapproval and tells me to walk simply. She will come to rue this directive as my legs immediately turn to strands of spaghetti and I start to waltz catatonically. No, walk simply. Not like that! But this is simple, I counter. You just relax your hips and knees and start to waddle like a peg-legged sailor.

The story of how Shalini came to be an inmate at Nav Jeevan is lost on me now. All too frequently the backstories here involve the death of a mother and the life of an alcoholic father, unwilling or unable to care for them. The common conception of the orphan is that where both of the child's parents have perished. The word itself comes from the Greek 'orphanos' which literally means 'deprived' or 'bereft.' But just as often as not, it is not death that robs the child of parents – it is only that the child has perished in the eyes of one or both parents. Alcoholism can kill a parent, although the alcoholic may be alive and kicking. Ironically, it is often alcohol that greases the machinery leading to the child's conception in the first place. So many young lives shaped by cheap sharaab, the influence of which is now held at bay by an imposing eight foot wall topped with broken glass.

Haritha's story is no less tragic. Her mother was found hanging in their apartment and foul play at the hands of her often inebriated father was suspected. Neighbors persisted in the casting of aspersions and a few weeks later the father, too, was found floating lifelessly just inches above the broken tiles of the bathroom floor. Grandparents cared for Haritha and her elder sister for a few short weeks, before her grandfather suffered a fatal heart attack. The widowed and grieving grandmother, too frail to serve as guardian, brought them to Nav Jeevan.

Emails, unimaginatively entitled, 'Hello from NavJeevan,' were sent every three or four months and provided updates on progress on the orphanage/old persons home. Swarna's roots in software development could be detected in a schizophrenic toggling between the very techie 'NavJeevan' sans space, and the more traditional 'Nav Jeevan.' Her spelling of Kadapa still followed the older British interpretation: C-U-D-D-A-P-A-H. A typical offering from December 1, 2003 follows in its entirety.

Dear friends in Christ,

Hope this letter finds you all in good health. We wish you all a happy holiday season. Hope you will have a meaningful advent and welcome Jesus into your hearts happily. I remember a Telugu song which says that it is true Christmas only when Jesus is born in our hearts. So let us all strive to have Jesus in our hearts always and one-day we may become like Jesus!

Hope the ones at St.Paul's had a chance to watch the video I have sent. If not contact Mary Adams. We have got 40 children with us now and 26 elderly. We have finished 3 years this October, since we started this home.

In the last 10 days we lost two old men. One man, Hussain, was with us for the last two and half years. He is diabetic and has Blood pressure. He broke his leg at the beginning of last month and was bed ridden for the last 17 days of his life. He was a huge man and we had plenty of good exercise taking care of him! The other man who died was Obaiah. We picked him up from the street at the beginning of November. He has nothing but bones. We had to give him bath and feed him. He was smelling awful and was in his last stages. He pulled on for 3 weeks before he died. He was afraid to die; though I kept talking with him. He kept calling Amma, which means mother, looking at me before he became unconscious to the surroundings and later died. That afternoon he told me that he will live for another two days, but by evening he got worse and died at 7:30PM.

A day before he died we picked up another old lady from the street. You must be wondering from where all these people are coming. Well, Obaiah did not have anybody. As long as he worked he was okay, but once he started growing old and couldn't work then he has no other option but to live in the streets. This old lady was abandoned by her son, who cheated her of her property and put her on a train. She came to Cuddapah and was lying near the Church with high fever. We brought her in and gave her a good bath. She is not doing that well. God only knows how long she will live.

We have got a new sweet little girl, Suma. She has no parents. She is 5 years old. She has a grandma who was begging for food and feeding Suma. The little girl was very much attached to her grandma and it took her nearly 2 weeks to get used to us. She is very quiet but observes everything very keenly. In a short time she found out the names of all the children in the home and calls them all by name! Yesterday she made me take her around to the grandma's and learnt their names.

Here are some funny things, which happened in our home this last year.

One day one of our old women was having severe diarrhea and became very weak. She thought she was going to die. As she is afraid to die she tied herself securely to the cot! She is doing very well now and we make fun of her sometimes.

On All Souls day we went to the cemetery to celebrate Mass there and some of our children also came with us. One of our little ones said, "It is full of Samadhanalu (Peace)‚" instead of saying Samadhulu (Graves)! We all had a good laugh at that. When you give a thought to it, what he said is very true. Right?

Our old lady, Subbamma sometimes loses track of time. Once she got up at 10PM and got ready to go to Church!

Well that's all for now,

In Christ,

Swarna


Haritha, infected by the enthusiasm with which I cataloged my imaginary complaints, bats her eyelashes and notes that her legs are paining her. She smiles surreptitiously at Shalini. Just watch me get a ride from Mark Uncle. If your legs are already hurting then you shouldn't mind carrying me I point out. I promptly offer my fanny in her face and drop to the ground. I have been in India for over a year and can't be suckered so easily anymore by a cherub's saccharine smile. Haritha has met her match, and if not for the gap of considerable years, we would promptly be married and sent packing in a bullock cart. As it is she contents herself to fall in line behind me and join in singing 'This Old Man' with extemporaneous lyrical amendment.

I promised Swarna I would come and help at the orphanage when she left for India. But six years would elapse before I made it back to the land of tigers and Tatas, and another ten months would go by before I embarked for Kadapa. So it was only after a bruising overnight bus trip two days before Christmas 2005, that I would finally make good on the offer made in 1999. On arrival at Nav Jeevan, John and I discovered a handful of recumbent oldsters dispersed about the entrance. They greeted us with mute repugnance and looks of consternation – a countenance, I would later discover, that was more or less perpetually engraved on their faces. The children, however, welcomed us like conquering heroes. Within minutes I was being pulled hither and yon to perform my limited repertoire of song and dance numbers. When it was discovered that I was willing to give all manner of piggyback rides I became the eye of a inward-spiraling hurricane. Wave after wave of children threw themselves at me, jumping, grasping and shouting. Their war cry (intended to convey 'Me too!' or 'I'm next') was the charmingly life-affirming declaration, 'I am!' Over and over. I am! Uncle, Uncle. I am! I am! And, indeed, by sheer force of will, they were.

The intermittently drunken-stumbling and shabbily-dressed foreigner with a smartly uniformed schoolgirl by each hand attracts every available eye on the road to school. This suits the attention-loving Haritha just fine, but causes Shalini to issue her injunction more forcefully. Walk simply. But even she is not totally averse to the neck-craning smiles left in our wake and can only manage a lukewarm upbraiding. Shortly after passing the Police Fancy (???) building a roadside officer with pouting potbelly and high leather boots orders our party to a full stop. He very deliberately looks me over from head to toe and back again. And just where are you going? Emboldened with the equally devilish Haritha in my company, I am not inclined to make life easy for the exceedingly imperious policeman. I am a child peddler from Bihar and am looking to unload my captives. The smiling one is a handful I concede, but I offer to make some allowance for the shortcoming. Two for the price of one and one half, provided you promise not to inform the authorities.

A couple of eavesdropping college boys rescue me from my foolhardy attempt at bureaucratic suicide. He must be taking the girls to school, sir. I'm sure he is only confused, sir. We've seen him over at the orphanage, sir.

The policeman is torn. He fingers his lathi thoughtfully. It is his first and probably only opportunity to whack a whitey and the idea has its appeal. Before he can come to a decision on it, I tug my wards into motion again. We are going to get late for school. Say goodbye to the officer. Chalo. Haritha flashes such a smug smile at the lawman I am momentarily afraid his desire for engagement will be rekindled. Chalo chalenge. So long solenge. Shalini remains silent in semi-bemused shock while Haritha's chortles her approval at our run in with the law. Unlike the protagonist of John Cougar Mellenkcamp's signature anthem, we have fought authority and won.

At my behest, Swarna, John and I would spend the better half of Christmas Eve day shopping for small stocking stuffers for each of the seventy or so children, seniors and staff at Nav Jeevan. Each of us soon succumbed to gift-giving fever and a fat box of cricket bats, rubber balls, plastic purses, hair ties, candy and colored markers was put together in the bazaar. The quality of the merchandise was marginal and Swarna wisely insisted upon a two-day warranty from the shop's reluctant proprietors. She also dissuaded me against purchasing stockings. What would the children do with unpaired socks in perpetually toasty Kadapa?

When we returned to the orphanage John and Swarna created a distraction while I smuggled the box of goodies inside. Haritha, ever cognizant of my whereabouts, located me just as I had finished secreting away the day's bounty. You come, Uncle. She led me to the neighboring churchyard which was alive with Christmas lights of every color. Next to the chapel a small stand was offering various religious icons and knickknacks for sale. There, Uncle. Haritha pointed to a box of plastic rings flecked with gold paint and topped with faceted faux topaz in the shape of crosses and hearts. Wow, I lied, they're really beautiful. But did you put it on your Christmas list? Haritha stamped her foot down with frustration. No, Mark Uncle. You...on. She took one of the rings and with considerable effort attempted to shimmy it down my index finger. I'm too young to get married, I protested. She paid no heed to me and with unbroken concentration redoubled her efforts, this time on my pinky. Torqued with sufficient vigor my smallest of fingers gave way to accommodate the sparkling band. I was about to ask the vendor how much I owed when Haritha produced a five rupee coin and dropped it in his hand. Ring for you, she said taut with pride. What do you say when someone possessing so little gives so much? It's really beautiful, I told her. And truly it was – transformed from kitsch to kingly adornment by her act of unbound generosity.

When I was a child, I explain to Shalini, it was a matter of pride to be able kick a rock all the way to school. Here, let me show you. I locate a decently spherical rock and send it tumbling with the side of my sandle. I jog after the rock and give it another boot before it loses momentum. You see, it's best if you can keep it in motion the whole time. Shalini locates a rock for herself, and Haritha, unwilling to be left out of anything, does likewise. Shalini exhibits considerable skill in keeping the rock under control and becomes quite absorbed in the challenge. Haritha, on the other hand, loses interest almost immediately and takes turns attacking my and Shalini's chosen targets. Impressively, the unperturbed Shalini persists, and manages to shepherd her rock all the way to the school gates. I show her how to put her pet rock put to bed in a molehill of dirt until the afternoon's return trip. I stroke the rock with my middle and index fingers and make contented purring sounds. It's a big responsibility taking your little friend to school, I explain.

Christmas Eve, John and I, hidden from the eyes of prying children, would spend the better part of the night assembling the gift packages. One by one the residents of Nav Jeevan were checked off the list Swarna had hastily compiled. A slip of paper identifying the recipient was tucked under the rubber bands that secured each prismatically-colored, teflon wrapped package. I found myself reenacting the occult ritual performed thanklessly by my parents for so many years. How easy it is to take parents for granted, until, that is, you find yourself serving as a surrogate father of forty over the holidays.

At six I was awoken by voices in the hallway. Excited conversation was followed by a sonic explosion. I stepped into the `
hallway to find a bemused Swarna watching over the fracas of Christmas morning. A grave Joseph approached me to pinch both my cheeks and then bunch his fingertips at his pursed lips. It was the vicarious method of kissing to which I had already become accustomed in my short 48 hours at the orphanage. Thank you, Mark Uncle. No, I respond dumbly, thank you.

Shalini, reluctantly charmed by my rascality on the walk to school, is still sober enough to promptly inform me that I can return home after thanking me for serving as chaperone. Okay, Uncle, you go back now. Haritha, however, is not eager to see me depart. Free from any anxiety of having her unpredictable temporary guardian seen by classmates, she takes me by the hand and pulls me inside the campus grounds. You come, Uncle. You come! Shalini's face registers chagrin as I heed Haritha's call. Not wanting to cause Shalini undue stress I offer again to go home, but Haritha will have none of it. No, Uncle you come only. You come! The school yard is dotted with doting parents biding their young ones adieu. The scene, to my eye, is amusingly topsy-turvy, as I have the impression of exceedingly well-dressed and meticulously groomed micro adults releasing their slightly disheveled Brobdingnagian brood for playtime. Okay, Mommy and Daddy have work to do, so you kids go outside and play.

On Christmas Day we took the kids to a city park in a fleet of sputtering auto rickshaws. The park is closed until noon so we gathered at the gates and stared inside as idle park attendants stared back at us with curiosity to match our own. Inside a carpet of intense green grass was crisscrossed with sidewalk and inhabited by a menagerie of larger-than-life critters happily clutching waste bins. Landscaped hillocks were crowned with smallish trees and colorful plantings. Three flattened, wrinkled wads of vinyl were dragged from a storage shed and inflated by giant fans into a castle, hot air balloon, and octopus-shaped amusements. The park was a dreamy vision of primary colors in the otherwise dusty expanse of Kadapa.

Once opened, the park's dreamlike quality was made more intense as the grounds were quickly populated by a vast assortment of differently dressed locals. It was as if the sparkling dots of Seurat's 'La grande Jatte' had been extruded into the third dimension on a distant planet. Before I could cross over to the inflatable rides I found myself completely encircled by a giggling black curtain of burka-attired college girls. Questions were issued by the largest of their group in tentative English. Where are you from and why did you come to Kadapa? Who did you come with and how long will you be here? Each of my responses was followed by a new wave of tittering. I'm from the United States of America. Oh, tee hee hee. Tee hee hee. I came to Kadapa to check out the orphanage. Oh, tee hee hee. My parents were incinerated in a horrible fire, so I'm hoping Nav Jeevan will take me and my pale-skinned brother in. Oh, tee hee hee. Tee hee hee. A platoon of orphans penetrated the circle of bad comedy and tugged me by my shirt, pant legs and both hands to the puffed-up octopus. I managed to pull a hand free to wave goodbye to the muslim girls inducing one last burst of laughter from their group.

The ride cost five rupees a head and the minute I sponsored a couple children, then all demanded the satisfaction of bouncing on the cellophane cephalopod. The few willing to heed my call to form a queue were immediately pushed into noncompliance by belligerent peers. Slightly older local boys could smell blood and elbow their way to the front of the growing mob. Uncle, you give us too. When I didn't heed their demands they became aggressive and my t-shirt was grabbed from behind until it ripped and my bandana was pulled down round my neck. I was fast sinking in a sea of choking, pulling and prodding lilliputians. With the last bit of energy left in my sleep and food-deprived body I tore free from the maddening crowd and jogged to the far side of the park where I found protection in Swana's fellowship. Still reeling from the attack, even the formerly cute garbage-guarding monkeys, rabbits and frogs took on a beastly appearance – as if preparing to disgorge in their respective containers.

Before I can usher Shalini and Haritha to their classroom I am spotted by the principal who recognizes me from his visit to the orphanage. He invites the girls and me to his office. Even the normally unflappable Haritha is on edge in his office which is reserved almost exclusively for disciplinary action. She and Shalini eye each other nervously. They won't get in trouble for getting to class late? The principal laughs. He is the only one that can make trouble for the students he assures me. He directs his secretary to bring three cold drinks. Two days earlier the principal and his wife had generously sponsored a dinner for the residents at Nav Jeevan complete with ice cream for dessert. I thank him again for the kind gesture, but he is quick to deflect the praise. The pleasure, he explains, was all his in seeing the smiles on the children's faces. When the cold drinks arrive I set one in front of each girl, but they aren't convinced they are the intended recipients. Is it a cruel test of their resolve? Drink, drink, urges the principal.

By nightfall all of Swarna's predictions with regards to the Christmas gifts had proved true. Half the children had lost their cricket balls, one of the bats was broken, both badminton rackets were bent, and the majority of the girls' purses had malfunctioning zips. John and I sought refuge from the day's hubbub in our room and were successful for all of twenty minutes, before Haritha cracked the door open and squeezed her ever-piquant face in the gap. Uncle? The room we were staying in was usually reserved for visiting priests and the children know it is largely off limits, or, at the very least, so pregnant with the air of religious severity that it best be avoided. Uncle? Haritha slipped in the room while keeping a cautious eye on the hallway behind her, lest someone spy her trespass. She proceeded to my bed where I was resting and took a seat next to me. John, as is his custom, lay in his bed with his laptop perched on his chest busily firing off emails. Haritha coursed her fingers through my goatee before finally giving it a gentle tug. Mark Uncle? Chocolates? I sat upright bringing my index finger to my lips, then tip toed with exaggerated effect to the adjoining storage room. I returned with two candies and slipped them in Haritha's eager hand. Don't tell Auntie, she whispered. Don't tell John, I whispered back. Ajma's face was the next to appear at the door and her entry proved to be the cork off a bottle of bubbly newcomers. John had mastered the art of adult gravitas and the kids left him to his keyboard, choosing instead to pile on top of my bed in an orgy of giggling and hair pulling.

The grappling was interrupted by Swarna's appearance at the doorway. The children scrambled to their feet and filed out of the room under Swarna's disapproving stare. It was well past their bedtime and they knew it – Swarna was cutting them some slack only because it was Christmas. Mark, your food is ready, she announced. I expected to eat alone at that late hour, but Swarna stayed up to sit with me as I broke my fast. We shared a laugh about the abysmal condition of the gifts we bought, while Swarna peeled an orange and washed grapes. Food is always potent stuff after a fast, but the home-cooked repast, set aside for my benefit, induced in me a particularly profound thankfulness. It had been the best Christmas ever.

I offer to talk to the girls' class and avail myself for questions, but the principal requests I speak to his ninth through twelfth standard students instead and I accept. After dropping Shalini and Haritha in front of their claustrophobic classroom of wall-to-wall concrete, I am taken to the neighboring room which is considerably larger and already elbow-to-elbow with buzzing students. The kids fall pin-drop silent as I give my spiel on looking for opportunities to be of service and then introduce the idea of writing letters to friends in Pakistan. So, what do you think, should we write some letters? Nary a heartbeat. I lean over to the presiding teacher. Is it okay if they write letters? Do they have to be somewhere? No, no, she replies. Oh, what's wrong? They can't go to Pakistan with you. What? No, I was just hoping for letters. The students aren't be required to come with me to Pakistan. I'll deliver the letters myself.

Once the confusion is cleared up the teacher starts barking with rabid enthusiasm at the students to compose letters. They haven't had a moment to think and already she is goading them like a drill sergeant. Come on. Come on. Start writing those letters. I want to see everyone's pen moving. Come on. Come on. Get those pens moving. Somehow the children are able to produce under the intense pressure and the letters turn out decently. Afterwards the students crowd around me for autographs. Why did you come to Tirunelveli? I had to come here to walk my girls to school, I answer cryptically. Confusion is writ large in the student's expressions. He has girls in school here? Haritha and Shalini appear in the doorway and are awed by the attention the upperclassmen are paying to me. They snake their way through hips and legs to flank me on either side. My girls, I announce, squeezing them to my torso with each arm.

John and I had to take an early bus back the day after Christmas and anticipated leaving without fanfare. At five thirty a half-asleep Ajma staggered in our room, gift purse still in hand, and came over for hugs. She was immediately followed by an equally drowsy Haritha who pawed the cobwebs of dreams from her eyes with the back of her hands. I slipped them each an extra candy and swore them to secrecy. Within earshot of Ajma I tell Haritha not to let Ajma know about the extra sweets, then turn to Ajma and do the same regarding Haritha. Shhhhh! Haritha mat batao. Both can manage only wry grins in their somnambulism. As John and I hauled our luggage into the hallway, we were met by eight more orphans who had us bend over to administer a flurry of finger kisses. Outside we stood in the cool stillness of pre-dawn as Swarna scootered off to secure us an auto rickshaw. When she returned we enjoyed one last round of hugs before she provided us with a police-like escort to the bus stand.

Swarna insisted on waiting for our bus with us in the nascent hubbub of the faintly pee-scented station. When our vehicle growled and lurched to life we stood by its door where John shook Swarna's hand and I blindsided her with a half hug. How to quantify my feelings for her? She represents for me that crystallization of will that transforms our best intentions into action while remaining free from ego attachment. Where I am the blare of vainglorious trumpets, she is low notes on the cello, bowed with even-keeled sensibility. As we rolled away in the Bangalore-bound bus, I craned out my head out the window to wave goodbye to Swarna's helmeted profile one last time. I was longing to stay, but even then knew that fate would lead me back to the kids. So when Swarna emailed me some weeks later that she had moved operations to Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu I roughly unfolded my map of India on the floor and started plotting my return visit. How close was this new place to Bangalore? Just two moon cycles later would find me in the deepest south of South India, entrusted with walking the girls to Magdelene Matric Higher Secondary School.

I have been at the school for almost two hours by the time I bid Haritha and Shalini adieu at the front gate. Haritha points a questioning finger up at my nose. You come to get us at three thirty, Mark Uncle? Does someone usually pick you up from school? I thought you just walk home on your own. Shalini's confirmation that they always walk home on their own is shot down by Haritha. No, Mark Uncle, it is compulsory that you come. Compulsory? Yes, compulsory. What does that mean? It means you come. Zarur. Then I will come. Compulsory? Compulsory.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Triceratops

Sura 4 Al-Nesaa'

[4:2]  You shall hand over to the orphans their rightful properties. Do not substitute the bad for the good, and do not consume their properties by combining them with yours. This would be a gross injustice.
 
[4:10]  Those who consume the orphans' properties unjustly, eat fire into their bellies, and will suffer in Hell.

-- The Qur'an


Three threes times three. What are the odds? The basketball court at College Green Park in Iowa City is decidedly shooter unfriendly. The goal is fractionally higher than ten feet and lacks a net making it hard to judge its distance. The court slopes downward across its width from north to south and a lone tree branch serves as a giant rejecting arm for properly-arched shots. Making 3-point shots from the low southern corner is never an easy feat and for Eric, Franz and me that afternoon it had been seemingly impossible.

As day gave way to twilight I recognized the opportunity for a wager and asked Franz what he would give me if I could hit three consecutive three-pointers from the inauspicious location. As fate would have it, Franz had gone to the bank earlier in the day with the intention of changing currency leftover from his semester in India to dollars, but had balked at the poor exchange rate. Now he had a pocket rife with rupees and offered this as my prize should I successfully pull off the improbable demonstration of shooting prowess. I readily accepted his unusual ante and in retrospect should have recognized it as a harbinger of the strange events that were to unfold.

I pushed the first shot up with no confidence, but still it rattled through the rim – the first basket made from the spot all day. This fluke of fate was followed by good-natured hooting from Eric and Frantz. Fully expecting the second shot to go awry I tossed it up with blithe unconcern. Disbelieving laughter by all, as the ball found its way through the hoop. Now I became focused – so much so that it virtually ensured disruption of the smooth flow of muscle, joint and tendon necessary for proper release of the basketball. To make matters worse I was thinking. I have to make this shot. I have to make this shot. I was getting tight. Over-concentrating. The internal nattering nababs of negativity were beginning to hold sway. There's no way you'll hit three in a row. I tensed unnaturally as I flicked the ball skyward, and yet immediately experienced that uncanny shooter's foreknowledge of success. Evidently the various misalignments caused by frayed nerves had cancelled each other out. I raised a triumphant fist even as the ball was still in flight and began a victory strut to center court. 'Swish' the ball went through the hoop (or rather 'phwoof' for lack of a net).

Three threes in a row. What are the odds?

I had never really wanted Franz's pocket money – it was the challenge of a good bet that motivated me. I told him to keep his loot, but he was insistent that I had rightly earned it by connecting on the remarkable trio of baskets. He suggested I donate the money to Swarna's orphanage or some other worthy cause should I not want to spend it on myself. This I could accept, but I told him he at least had to take a chance at winning the money back by replicating the shooting stunt. Finally he acquiesced and took up position in the low corner of the court. The daylight was starting to fade, so visibility of the rim was fast becoming an issue.

After Franz's first shot found the basket the frivolity that had followed each of my attempts gave way to an awed solemnity. The three of us had entered a magical realm and none wanted to break the spell. I retrieved the first shot, bounced it to myself and then crisply delivered a chest pass to Franz. Franz dribbled the ball once, twice, three times. All were quiet. In the movie version of the incident we would hear only Franz's heartbeat as he lined the shot up. Bwump-bwump. Bwump-bwump. Bwump-bwump. Complete silence as the ball was sent airborne. Super slow motion of the rotation of the basketball's seams counter to the motion of the ball. Seam, seam, seam, Voit. Seam, seam, seam, Voit. Seam, seam, seam, Voit. The ball hit the rim and began a precarious trek around its perimeter. As kids we had called these shots 'toilet bowl rimmers' and knew that half the time such shots were fated to spin out of the basket by centrifugal force. One, two, three times it circled the rim. Breaths were held before the ball sank through the basket. Sighs of relief.

I repeated the single-bounce ritual from the previous shot before sending another chest pass to Franz. Don't change the routine. Franz wiped the perspiration from his hands before bouncing the ball to himself. Once, twice, three times. He sent the ball on its way toward the basket and just as with my third shot I felt certain of its passage through the hoop. This time Eric, Franz and I all march to center court with arms upraised.

Three threes twice in a row. What are the odds?

Franz still insisted that I keep his sizable wad of rupees and put them to good use in India. I vowed to match his contribution with a like amount effectively doubling his charitable offering. Now Eric fell prey to our philanthropic fervor – he announced his intention to have a go at the challenge and, if successful, match our donations.

The sun had set now and the only light on the court was reflected from high-flying cirrus clouds on the horizon. Eric launched the first two shots post haste as if there were a Cinderella timer on our charmed marksmanship. The three of us were operating as one mind now, collectively building on the streak. Triceratops. Statisticians will tell you that the success of the proceeding shots should have had no effect on the outcome of the next shot, but we knew otherwise. The final shot would be exactly the same one that had not been makable all afternoon. But now I had hit three in a row, followed by Franz's three and Eric's two.

For us the outcome of Eric's final shot was fait accompli. The Gods of Benevolence were underwriting our assault on statistical sensibility. We could have drawn and quartered Eric and his disembodied right arm would have managed to set that final shot on its hoopward journey. Fate was not going to be denied on this day. The early stars twinkling in the sky bore witness to the final flight of the basketball and the celebration that followed.

Three threes three times in a row. What are the odds?

If we figure the odds of hitting a single three-point shot at College Green Park at ten percent, then the odds of hitting two in a row are just one percent. The odds of hitting three in a row dwindle to one in one thousand. But the odds of connecting on nine such baskets in succession are just one in one hundred million. The exact same odds, incidentally, as an emaciated parrot with bad hair randomly typing every word of this blog with its sunburnt beak.

PS: It turned out that Franz had over eighty US dollars worth of rupees in his pocket. An amount roughly three times this was presented to Nav Jeevan Home for the Aged and Orphaned Children on February 20, 2006.