Wish You Were Here: July 2005

In an effort to create a refuge of quiet John and I secure a flat in a relatively anonymous, yet centrally located area known as Mithakali in Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad is really a collection of forty or so villages that over a span of many years grew and spilled into one another. The majority of neighborhoods are known by their original village names and their former borders are hazily outlined by variations in architecture. Neighborhoods are further divided into collections of apartment buildings and bungalows known as societies. Nearly all apartment buildings have a plastered masonry wall around the perimeter (with or without barbed wire) and a watchman posted at night by the gate. These walls serve more as general guidelines for dogs and cows to recognize than human barriers, as children or five years can easily scale, or walk atop these singing Hindi filmy songs, no problem.

Our five-story building according to the sign out front is Swarg Flat of Maharaj society. In fact it is in Maharastra society (Maharaj is a painto) and is for Jains only, though no one seems terribly put out by the presence of two Americans of Christian descent. Once you enter the gate you proceed five yards to the front of the building and then walk under the building, through the parking lot to where the sole staircase and elevator are located. Each flight of stairs leads to a new level, so in essence there are five stories on each half of the building, but they are offset by a half floor--making ten possible elevations for living quarters. A placard just in front of the stairwell lists the owners of each flat. Ours is Shilpaben Sanghavi's flat 101. To get there requires ascending no fewer than three flights of stairs--an anomaly of the British numbering scheme I am told.

Unlocking a fat brass padlock and opening the door for the first time reveals an apartment of contemporary design covered with a year's worth of dust and paint peelings. Almost immediately I notice the property just behind our new building through the rear window. It features two attractively designed, albeit age-worn structures. One is a charming two story that appears to be of British-influenced design with a corrugated metal roof overhang that is oddly suggestive of a pagoda. Each floor is close to fifteen feet in height and a stairs runs on the outside of the building to a second story veranda that wraps around three sides of the building. Another steeply inclined stairs leads from the veranda to a terrace on the roof. It appears from the weathered paint that a three-toned blue scheme was used many years back with the windows and trim a darker shade than the walls. To its right a concrete gray, single story building makes an L-shape around a patio completely covered with dirt, dust and fallen leaves. With a barred portico and windows it has the appearance of a condemned jail from Alcatraz. In this light, it's not hard not to imagine the first building as the abandoned officer quarter's and watch tower. Both buildings are marked with lightening-like cracks frozen in time, uneasy reminders of the 2001 earthquake. Two trees decapitated mid-trunk provide the only greenery in the yard other than the few leaning interlopers of flora from neighboring yards.

The yard between the two buildings is completely be-spoiled with refuse. Plastic bags, crumpled paper, shredded foam, old underwear, tangled kite string, broken bricks, coconut husks, shattered glassware, and all manner of partially burnt debris creates a man-made, wall-to-wall ground cover. By comparison the inside of our flat looks almost clean, save for a heavy coating of dust, mold and cobwebs. We find buckets in both of the smallish bathrooms but no water. The upper-flat dwelling and English speaking Jinesh is recruited to address the water issue. He is a good inch over six lanky feet in height which is no small feat coming from a gene pool that favors the five foot five and below. Like so many college-aged male Ahmedabadis he wears the ideal camouflage for a botanical garden--an outrageously colorful floral shirt with earth-hued dress slacks. When he speaks his shoulders involuntarily churn the air and his head bobbles. "I and a Kinisha can a speak English, so whenever you need a help with anything, just a come up to the top floor and I can help you. Are you a thinking my English is a very good?" It turns out the water to the entire building goes off several times a day for reasons I still do not understand. Jinesh is the keeper of the key to the room where you flick some switches to turn the water on and must turn it back off after a half hour or it comes cascading from a pipe on the top of the roof to the parking area. With water at our disposal and a couple of rags it takes us less than three hours to remove the vast majority of mold from the walls and mop the floors. After we transfer the previous-occupant's seldom-used luggage to the master bedroom for storage the flat is looking ready for occupancy if not a little under-furnished. During our cleaning the Gujarati-speaking neighbors generously offer refreshment in the form of Aqua-guard water and limu pani (Indian lemonade, or literally, lemon water) and even an additional, albeit reluctant helper, Raju, who we later discover is a servant on loan from one of the upstairs flats.

Taking a break from cleaning in the ground-level parking area I am surrounded by the resident children of the flat, who tirelessly pepper me with questions in Gujarati despite my injunctions for them to speak in Hindi or English. A veiled girl glides into the Swarg compound on her Kinetic scooter and is clearly distracted by the odd interloper. She unwinds her dipurta, one twirl at a time, and shakes her hair out, ultimately revealing an attractive, now-smiling face of unblemished complexion. A small, solitary mole draws one's attention to the tip of her nose. In a cheesy seventies film the frame would be frozen here and her name, Kinisha, would be revealed left-to-right in flowery pink script. But this is real life Ahmedabad, 2005 and she asks, "Who are you?" in an impossible to reconcile accent. Introductions are made and I give the usual lowdown on the India trip. We're here for one year to do seva of any sort, yadda, yadda. What? Seva, say-vaah, service work. Oh, say-vaah! Kinisha takes me up to meet her affable father, mother and two younger siblings Nisharg and Malvi. John and I are soon adopted as older brothers. "Our" family begins to provide us with fresh water on a daily basis as we lack any filtering means in our flat, just as we lack a stove and refrigerator. Pillows, sheets and a fairly regular supply of limu pani are also provided for.

John's and my days are filled with meetings with the who's who of Ahmedabad's governing administration, or "corporation." (When people talk about the Corporation doing this or that here, it still sounds slightly ominous to my Americanized ears--a faceless antagonist in a John Grisham thriller.) At night we return home to re-cap the days events with Sanghavi's and then play games in the parking lot with the increasingly differentiable rug-rats of Swarg Flat. In no particular order there is Prahchi, the ultra-feminine waif that likes to bat her eyelashes Bollywood close-up style; Prahchi's older sister, Saloni, the reserved, super athlete; Saloni's best friend Bhoomi, the competitive, shy girl with large, transparent ears; Bhoomi's younger brother, Manan, the ultra-small daredevil with eyes set at slightly different angles; Manan's tormentor, Kevan, the devilish, television addict with preternaturally hairy arms and a penchant for throwing sucker punches; Kevan's sister, Reeti, the gesturing, mugging and posing wisp of a girl with a similar pugilistic disposition; Reeti's sparring partner, Rajwi, the attention-starved, cherub-faced youngster; Rajwi's brother, Raj, the perpetually smiling Campbell's Soup kid; Raj's best friend, Darshan, the disciplined, organizer of game time with the no-nonsense demeanor; Darshan's older sister Pooja, the equally intense child subject to bouts of unexpected giddiness.

As for the Sanghvi's, Kinisha at nineteen, considers herself to be far too old to be playing downstairs and spends her time either glued to her cell phone or watching horror serials, and very frequently does both in concert. Her sister Malvi, too, tends to shy away from the game arena, choosing instead to shuffle about their flat distracting herself with odd sections of newspaper, or sitting on the couch and staring off into space. While Kinisha has fleshed out into womanly proportions, Malvi, at sixteen, is still rail thin and opts for spectacles over contacts. Their younger brother Nisharg, like Malvi, is exceptionally thin, bespectacled and a bit on the shy side. In stark contrast to their leanness, both parents are amply padded. In India extra poundage is still, in the main, seen as a sign of health and/or wealth, although increasingly less so with the ideal of beauty peddled by Madison Avenue or its Mumbai equivalent. The father, whose girth relaxes in abundance over his belt line, is not at all too self-conscious to pad about their flat sans shirt. When Raj and Rajwi's father happens by the Sanghvi's door he is enthusiastically introduced to me as a fatty. I expect him to be at least be a wee bit disgruntled at being described as such, but he smiles his approval and even seems to puff his stomach out a bit more in confirmation. I am told he makes 20,000 rupees every day in the stock market. "He is a real fatty," Yashvant offers again. He probably outweighs his neighbor by a few kilograms, but no matter.

Yashvant, himself, makes a living on the ups and downs of the Sensex, India's stock exchange. You can retroactively read the stock market's moves in his body language: when it's down his shoulders droop and he squints his eyes as if suffering from abdominal pain; when it's up he bounces into the flat on tip toes and his face blossoms. Discovering how transparent his reactions to the market are he playfully tries to contraindicate the day's events, but is far too over dramatic to pull it off. He is quick to point out that he is a day trader and not an investor. The difference, he explains, is in the amount of money you have. "You can only be an investor if you have lots of money. I am only day trader." Over time I begin to suspect his claims of poverty are primarily for Kinisha's ears, who largely isn't convinced and continues to demand a personal computer for the home.

Dipikaben (aka Mrs. Sanghvi), like all the other women of Swarg flat, is in charge of managing the home. This includes food acquisition and preparation, general cleaning and frequent child wrangling. In many cases a naukar (Hindi for servant) is hired to help out or take over these duties completely. Two of the servants, Raju and Khushoo, spend nearly all their time at the apartment building and try to integrate themselves in the play time when they can sneak a few minutes here and there. Many of the Swarg men too, it seems, spend nearly all their time at home, which makes one wonder how cash flow is generated. Some will exit the building at odd times during the day saying something to the effect, "I think I will go into work now," and then return thirty minutes later looking especially unruffled. The effect is reminiscent of Hjalmar Ekdal in Ibsen's The Wild Duck dutifully working on his wholly imaginary "invention," except in this case the wife isn't earning any income either.

The property behind Swarg Flat continues to intrigue me. Enough so that I start to make inquiries and am told that the owner lives in America and that the dwellings have been vacant for many years save for a ghost. "How do you get back there?" I ask.

"No. You don't. It is haunted," Nisharg tells me.

"I know. It's okay. I'm just curious where the entrance is. Do you know how people got in?"

"It is from the other road. But you can't go back there, because there is a ghost."

The next morning I tell John of my plans and head out with a half-full Nalgene bottle and a broom. Darshan sees me leaving the building and shakes his hand, palm upward, to inquire where I am going. "For cleaning," I answer in Hindi leaving him in dumb bewilderment within the confines of Swarg. Around the corner and just down the street I locate the entrance to the ghost's compound--a large wrought iron gate, slightly askew on its hinges with bars clawing menacingly in both directions. The perfect gateway to a nightmare, but with the sun overhead pushing the temperature well in excess of 100 degrees it is hard to generate any anxiety buzz. The gate is locked so I sashay to the side and scale the wall, pause momentarily on top to assess loss of knee skin, and then plop to the parched earth on the other side. I walk past the lower of the two buildings where it appears the earth has been swept in the not too distant past and into the yard which is covered in rubbish. I make my way to the impressively tall two story bungalow and find circumnavigating the locked door to the outdoor staircase to be as easy as holding on to it and swinging around to the stairs. The steps are narrow and covered with steeply ramped dust--the accumulation of untold years. All of the windows are shuttered and latched offering no opportunity to peer in. I make my way around the similarly dirt and dust occluded second story balcony and finally up the ladder-like stairs to the rooftop terrace. The feel of the yard is that of an abandoned set from Indiana Jones complete with large stone swastikas that serve as windows in the terrace wall. When I close my eyes it is not hard to imagine a time when the bungalow was an idyllic hide-a-way from the din of the surrounding city. The two trees would have been towering back in the day, and provided ample shade to the terrace and opposite building's patio area.

Back on the ground I grab a couple of discarded plastic bags and easily stuff them close to the point of breaking without making any discernible dent in the amount of trash. An empty concrete well serves as a nice dumping ground. I start making piles. When cleaning making piles is always a feel-good first step. One pile is for the considerable thorny brush that is entangled everywhere with the man-made refuse. Man and nature have cooperated here in the cruelest of ways to maximize entropy. Untangle and pile. A second pile is made for glass and broken bottles. A third pile is started for all broken, crumbling or about-to-be-broken-and-crumbling-after-I-toss-them bricks, ceramic pipe and stone. I think it is the sound of this pile taking form that gives rise to The Spectacle.

"Oh, Mark. Mark. No!" Dipikaben, the matron of the next door flat (and Dipika #4 of this saga if you're counting), is shouting from her back window. She waves a prohibitive hand in my direction and and shakes her head vigorously. At first I am concerned that her demonstrativeness is the result of some unforeseen transgression I have made, above and beyond trespassing. But after some Gujarati-English-Hindi mixed dialog I am able to determine that she is thinking I should just not be cleaning, period. Soon Bhoomi and Manan's father appears at his window and joins Dipikaben's pleas with equal vim.

"Noooo Mark. Not this. Nooooo!"

I pretend to not fully understand their objections and continue with my pile making. John comes over the wall and I point out the onlookers which have momentarily fallen silent to watch my efforts. When he too starts plucking up the varied refuse the hue and cry recommences promptly joined by two, then five and ten more voices.

"No Mark, John. Noooo! What are you doing? It's dirty. Mark! John! No!" Gujarati injunctions are joined by those in English from a few of the upper flat dwellers. "Mark. Hey a Mark, what are you a doing?" Jinesh queries in his unmistakable voice.

"Just cleaning for a bit," I yell, pausing to look up.

"But, why here?"

"It's our backyard and it's a mess."

"But you shouldn't a clean here," he begins, "It will just a get dirty again in a couple of days. The people will just a throw their trash here again."

"But maybe it will look nice for a couple of days," I counter, chucking another brick pile-ward.

All the rear windows of Swarg are barred, some with with protruding cages. About four feet separate the back of the building from the wall that surrounds the abandoned property. In an effort to get as close as possible to John and I, Bhoomi, Manan, their parents and several other kids climb into the cage surrounding their double window. The smaller children stand while the adults squat in the cramped quarters of the cage and arms are thrust out at us in protest. Another cage is filled and arms extend between bars from windows everywhere Broadway musical style. I worry that one will give way under the unnatural weight it's being subjected to.

John pauses from collecting bits of styrofoam and assesses the unfolding chaos of which we are the focus. "It's like a zoo," he muses, in disbelief, "I wish I had my camera."

"It's like a prison riot," I add, "Only they want us to get back in jail." Actually it's hard to come up with an adequate simile, as is so often the case at the intersection of Western perspective with the wild and wooly Indian experience. On the one hand you have the odd, increasingly emaciated, Americans doing the work suited to the lower castes in the mid-day heat, seemingly unable to comprehend even the simplest Gujarati sentences. On the other hand you have a building burgeoning with howling protesters at barred windows crying out on a yard that appears to have a vacated jail and officer quarters with occasional monkeys (the tailed kind, in addition to John and I) marveling at the commotion. Just weird and weirder.

"Hey a Mark." Jinesh has come down and scaled the wall to reiterate his appeal in person. "Don't do this because they will a just a throw their waste again."

"There's a chance that once they see how nice the yard can be they won't throw their trash anymore. In any case it might look a little bit nicer for a few days and even that's okay with me."

"Yes, but this is a dirty work. Some sweeper can be a found to do this."

"It's okay. I enjoy sweeping."

"And a Mark. This a place is haunted. There's a bhoot . . . a ghost."

"Even ghosts need lovin'," I counter.

Jinesh, arms akimbo, stares on in frustration as John and I continue to grow the various piles. Dipika-behin reappears at her window with a couple of burlap sacks which she throws down into the yard with unerring precision. Hmmmm. "Hey, use!" she says pointing to the bags at our feet. She comes back once more to throw a hat down to John who is at the mercy of the searing heat of the sun sans bandana. The two small acts represent a crack in the previously unified front against our cleaning and are appreciatively acknowledged with smiling politician-like waves. The others continue to rattle cages and shake bars while pleading with us to cease and desist from our madness. Over the next hour their vigor wanes as the heat waxes against the unshaded Swarg and the novelty of our impropriety begins to wear off. An occasional new voice will offer a few shouts of disapproval until, brought up to speed by the other Swargites.

As the temperature peaks in the 110 neighborhood we decide to call it a day. I am covered in fine dust from big toe to bandana and the cool reprieve of a shower is supernal. Peering between the glass slat's of the bathroom window I survey our handiwork. There is still a healthy amount of litter scattered about, but things are definitely looking better. One result of removing so much litter is that the dirt covering the buildings has become more noticeable. It seems like all cleaning is that way--once you start your attention is simply refined to find subtler uncleanliness.

The following day I head out early and once more run into Darshan in the parking lot where again he probes my intention the hand shaking "where-are-you-going" thing that I have only encountered in Gujarat. "Cleaning?" he asks with the grave intensity of a brain doc.

"Hanh. Saaf karne ke liye," I confirm. He nods his head soberly and stares at the ground lost in thought. Finally he looks up frowning. "I come?"

"Sure, why not? Chalo!" I am a little nervous about what the reaction of the Swargite's will be upon seeing one of their own in the cleaning dome. With a bag in one hand I start collecting from the thinning layer of trash in the yard. With the other hand I scoop and toss the bits of brick and tile to their now pyramidal pile. Darshan is intent on exploring the property and does so calling out to me periodically from different vantage points. Satisfied at having found no obvious signs of a ghost, he joins me in the dirt and adds to my trash bag and the masonry pile.

The perpetual smile that is Raj is the first to spot us from his back window. "Hi Mark!" he bubbles.

"Hey Raj!" I call back. He pauses at the window smiling daffily before disappearing inside his flat and then reappearing ten minutes later in the yard. Like Darshan he explores for a while before joining our cleaning efforts in the growing heat. John is the next to arrive and is pleasantly surprised to see my young comrades in cleaning. He is followed in short order by Nisharg who comes armed with a rubber ball which abruptly disrupts the nascent impulse for cleaning. Pooja comes to the window to yell hysterically at Darshan and while her blistering diatribe is in Gujarati it is not hard to catch her intent which is to have her brother get back to their flat double-time before their mother sees him in the yard and flips out over his dirty clothes. Her warning is prescient as almost immediately, tipped off by Pooja's shouting, their mother sees him in the yard and flips out over his dirty clothes. Darshan bids us adieu and exits stage left, head hung low. Nisharg and Raj continue to bounce the ball off walls unperturbed by the loss of their partner in play. Occasionally they toss a few stones and bricks into the pile utilizing some of the skills honed with the rubber ball--which leads me to my theory: all human play is simply skill building for cleaning and other mundane tasks.

Scattered objections are shouted down at us during our hour or two of cleaning, but not nearly to the degree of opening day. Nisharg is kind enough to serve as intermittent translator when pressed. "They are saying, 'Don't do this,' because it is dirty work." "He is saying this will never be clean." "She is telling you not to work in the sun because your skin will grow dark." "They are saying a sweeper can do this and you should not." I acknowledge each protest with a single wave and squinting smile which serves only to solidify my reputation as the crazy American. Of all characteristics to be ascribed to oneself, craziness is best because it leaves the scope of future operations wide open within the bounds of classification.

Back in our flat, I note, not for the first time, how the vivifying aspect of a shower is on a whole different order when one is covered in the sweat and dirt engendered by intense physical labor. Once again I conduct a post-ablutionary survey of the day's clean up from between the slats of the bathroom window. The ground is nearly ninety percent litter free, but the collection of dust on the building now screams for attention.

The following day Darshan and Nisharg procure brooms and we set about creating a vast cloud of fine dust and ash. In the process of dust removal, I am surprised to discover the taller of the two buildings sports an eight-foot apron of concrete and a small walkway. Another frenzy of sweeping by the jail-like building reveals large diamond-shaped concrete tiles that comprise the floor of a walled patio. I feel like an archeologist steadily uncovering the long-unseen handiwork of not-so-ancient Ahmedabadis. My daydream paints the yard with lush greenery and strings variegated lights between uncut trees. The quick rhythm of a tabla lays a bed of sound for a sitar and laughing voices to dance upon. A swirl of saris explode in color on the patio while men in kurtas gather on the veranda to discuss the latest goings on in the world of cricket. Packs of chattering children run between the two groups tugging on fingers to get attention. My fanciful reverie is cut short by a well-dressed, middle-aged man motioning for me through the bars of the front gate.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"The yard was dirty so I thought I'd clean it," I say, "The owner lives in America so no one is taking care of the property and the people from our building use it as a waste bin."

"I am the owner."

"What?"

"I own this property. The two buildings are mine."

"Oh, are you just visiting from America?"

"I stay just here on the other side of Swarg."

"How often do you come to Ahmedabad."

"I live here only."

"Oh."

It is slightly whimsical to be conversing with the owner through the gate, he unable to enter his own property and being challenged by a trespasser as to his place of residence. With a mind hell-bent for metaphors again I am at a loss to find the appropriate fit and instead concentrate on masking my growing amusement at the situation. Laughing, I figure, will only further complicate a topsy-turvy situation. As fortune should have it the owner is completely understanding and even appreciative of my efforts.

"These people have no manners," he explains pointing over to Swarg, "My wife has told them so many times not to throw their waste back here but they will not listen."

"Maybe they will stop if we make it look really nice," I offer, "Anyway it's really amazing that the kids are helping out. They came on their own."

The owner scrunches his lips and nods his head slowly, apparently reluctant to cede any credit to the Swargites and then, after a pause, invites me to his house at my convenience. I agree to come soon and we part with a handshake through the bars. Nisharg and Darshan have long since scaled the wall in a remote corner of the property and disappeared. I return to cleaning and fall into a meditative rhythm.

Over the following days I start to appreciate fully the focus on cleaning that is central to so many ashram's programs. What drudgery to sweep and pick up for a number of hours every day, I used to think, doubly so when the mess isn't "yours." Even as our neighbors had pointed out, the unkempt state will only return after a time, so, at best any visible changes are only temporary. But as I am sweeping something happens to these resistances and one by one they are brushed away. Other, unrelated, long simmering vexations rise up in the noosphere but they too are whisked away in time with the hypnotic motion of sweeping. In time I am only sweeping--no longer daydreaming, worrying, planning, plotting or introspecting. Then after some more time there is just the sweeping and no me. Even the sound of the hand broom contacting the ground fall away. The respite from the weightiness of self is short as I start to reflect on the origins of the various dust specks that are sent billowing left then right, left then right. In their particulate state the specks are nearly indistinguishable, yet at one time these were the paint on the buildings, the pollen on the rose given to a girl on her birthday, the rose petals, stem and thorn, aphid and ladybug, the girl's hand, the giver's toes, a rival's heart. Under the tireless pistil of time, beloved and detested, agreed and contested, healthy and infested, master and servant, before and after are all ground into fine sameness. All these things that at one time seemed so real and distinct now float together on the currents of air driven by my broom. They were only as solid as the willfulness of the various players that breathed life into these forms. When the will ebbed they sank into the undifferentiated sea of Atlantis and joined the ashes of the great library at Alexandria. In time, too, sweeper will join swept and these thoughts will still.

Sunday comes and I sweep alone in a self-imposed silence. I feel the intensity of an icy stare coming from over the wall at Swarg. A woman with a scowl that would send Roberto Duran running for his corner, unleashes at torrent of anger in my direction. Unwilling to speak I simply return her gaze and try to my best to divine the source of her ire. Her blistering lambaste continues unabated and I imagine slow wisps of smoke curling from her ears. I am certain she is going to blow her top at any moment and uncork her lava-red head over the wall to bite at my heels. I conjecture that she is upset that I am using a broom supplied from the Swarg side and hence I offer it up knowing full well I have two secreted away in reserve. She spitefully snatches the broom from my hand and continues to spew unadulterated invective, but now punctuates her epithets with menacing jousts. My offering eventually pays dividends as she backtracks into the shadows of the building now fencing with invisible demons. With the sting of her words still sticking like the dirt to my sweat I am motioned over to the opposite side of the yard where another middle-aged woman is waiting patiently for her turn to unload on the videshi sweeper. After her comparatively mild first salvo I pinch my index finger to thumb and make a zipping motion across my lips to indicate I am speechless. She waggles her head in resignation and retreats into her yard. What could she have possibly taken offense to I wonder. How odd the bitterness they directed at me feels, being unable to understand a word of the complaints and unwilling to respond with words. I can feel the anger as a build up of heat throughout my body, but particularly near the skin on my face and neck. My gut instinct to lash back was short-circuited by my silence, but I am still burning from the verbal assault. I sweep and within a few minutes the sudden build up of heat has largely dissipated. I sweep some more and all urges to reciprocate or defend myself lose steam and are replaced with nascent feelings of pity then compassion. It's not so hard to see myself on their side of the wall. It's not so hard to see the cleaning American is only a foil--a scape goat for a lifetime faintly echoing with broken promises, broken dreams and broken relationships. A crystal of salt abrading an old wound.

The following day yet another housewife is beckons me hither, this time from the gate side of the compound. With the previous day's experience fresh in my mind I resolve to stay cool, to share in her frustration rather than oppose it. I take a deep breath and smile as I approach, a broom in one hand and a stuffed plastic bag in the other. Darshan and Raju follow. "What are you doing here?" she frowns, pointing behind me to the yard from whence I have come.

"We've been cleaning for a while everyday just to make the neighborhood look a little nicer."

Her frown softens. "Where are you coming from? What are you doing in India?"

"A few friends and I came from the U.S. to conduct experiments in service, silence and now sanitation--which seems to combine a little bit of both. Are you from across the street?" I thrust my nose in the direction of a palatial bungalow with resplendent garden and lawn.

"Yes. Would you like to come over?" I am stunned both at the invitation and quick turnabout in tone, but jump at the opportunity to see the mysterious emerald residence behind the gilded gate. Darshan and Raju are quick to scale the wall just after me in the hopes of piggybacking on the invitation into the world of the rich, and as I am to learn later, famous. The fancifully adorned gatekeepers are not at all amused to see local ragamuffins penetrate their domain without a fight and disdainfully eye our dirt-coated trio. My request that John be included on the tour is granted and Darshan is sent running to Swarg to fetch him.

The yard looks remarkably like my daydream for the ghost bungalow come to life. A lush lawn (a true rarity in Ahmedabad) is flanked by towering trees and perfumed flora. We sit in a artistically embellished gazebo sipping limu pani and are introduced to the woman's daughter who is studying fashion design at a local college. To one side of us a bungalow that in size and design looks more like an eight-unit apartment building than a single family residence towers overhead, to the other side a guest cottage that is taken straight from a tourist brochure for Switzerland. During a leisurely tour of both buildings we learn that the family has attempted local greening and cleaning initiatives but were disappointed with a lack of cooperation from neighbors. Our meager cleaning efforts have re-fired their imagination at the possibilities, though they inform us, in the most matter-of-fact manner, that our theater of operation is most definitely haunted--so assuredly so that the property is not marketable. "There is a ghost living there so no one will buy this place," the mother relates as if talking about the price of cable, "Everybody knows about it." Mother and daughter shrug shoulders. What can one do? Ghosts depress real-estate valuations and that's that.

l admire the photo of a wise looking senior hanging over the door in the living room and am told the story of the family patriarch: how he started selling saris from the back of his bike until he could afford rent on a cramped shop in the old city; how he parlayed his savings to start another shop, then another; how the shops grew under his, then his sons' watch and culminated with operation of three of the city's largest and most prestigious sari stores. Then at the peak of success, how grandpa left all of his material wealth behind and took up the white robes of a Jain monk much to the chagrin of immediate family. He's still out there, they inform me, though they know not where as he walks kilometers daily, the time-honored regimen of the wandering sadhu.

I am cleaning the top level of the ghost bungalow the following morning when the owner hails me from his home which lies kitty-corner of the property. "It is not safe to clean up there," he warns, "the earthquake has weakened the structure."

"It's okay, I'm not safe either. I'm almost finished anyway. How are you doing?"

"I am okay, but you must be careful. I don't want you to fall" he says, "Can you and John come over to my house soon? People want to meet you that are interested in uplifting the neighborhood."

"Sure, just let me know when."

"Also my wife runs a summer camp for the local children at Mangal Vidyalaya and would like you to help instruct the kids. It's held from five to seven p.m. and you can come over with the children from Swarg if you like."

"No problem. I'd love to come."

That evening I head over to the school grounds with Nisharg and Darshan just behind Bhoomi, Prachi and Saloni. About twenty kids are already gathered and a ripple of excitement sweeps through their ranks when big whitey arrives. I am introduced to the beaming neighbor's wife who started the camp. She explains that she was concerned that the city kids were forgetting how to play and spending too much time in front of the television or playing video games. "We want them to know all the games we played when we were young," she says.

"We are still young, aren't we?"

"Oh, ho, ho, ho," she chortles. She is probably all of thirty years of age but has clearly accepted this as middle years not suited for play and when the games begin, true to form she opts out standing to the side smiling wildly.

I am bigger, faster and meaner than all the kids assembled and have no problem dominating at each of the games most of which I play nightly with the Swarg crew anyway. I make sure the kids won't soon forget their humiliating defeat at the hands of a foreigner and am quick to pump my fists skyward chanting, "U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!" so there can be no mistaking who their daddy is. Unfortunately the kids delight in what should be a crushing loss and chant along with me. I change the chant to "I-N-D-I-A, I-N-D-I-A," hoping to throw their little minds off the scent, but they are only increasingly ecstatic and feed off of my fickle allegiance. The odd assortment of adults gathered doesn't quite know what to make of the overly enthusiastic American, but the kids have clearly adopted me as one of their own.

That night I amuse myself by casting giant creepy shadows from our flat against the ghost bungalow. I wonder with delight if any of the other Swarg residents will happen to glance at my ghoulish shadow show. Perhaps I have become the notorious apparition--haunting the locals with my unconventional behavior. Other times I intend to steal a glance at the eerily illuminated buildings and instead find my gaze locked for a spine-chilling moment or two with full expectation of seeing a face appear at a window, a hand grasping a window bar or a figure disappear around a corner. The latter of these is, in fact, exactly what I see, or think I see, although it transpires the following day in the full sunlight. Raj and Nisharg are idly throwing a rubber ball between the two buildings while John and I sweep. Darshan scales the wall and completes a ball-tossing triangle with Nisharg and Raj. I am stooped over sweeping, but see someone go behind the ghost bungalow and I follow to warn them about the crumbling masonry and open sewer pit. No one is there. I peer inside the building, but the illumination is poor and in any case it would be extremely difficult to enter through the jagged gap in the bricks. I go to the far side of the bungalow. Still no one. I complete one round of the perimeter. John is still cleaning and the three boys playing catch. "Is anyone else here?" I ask.

"No one else has come," Nisharg says, "Why are you asking?"

"I saw someone go behind the building, but no one is there."

"You saw the ghost?" he asks.

"Yes. I guess I did."

A buzz goes up among the three boys and word quickly gets back to Swarg where a number of residents gather at the wall to hear more details. It's hard to make anything of it at all due to the improbable timing--so many people are around and its the middle of the day. John is amused.

The following Monday we walk the short distance to the owner of the ghost bungalow's bungalow, for the previously promised pow-wow. The get-together has been organized by Maheshbhai to clarify what it is exactly that we are doing in India and to see if we can all work together on a project. Personally I am thrilled that such a meeting has come to transpire. It is confirmation, I muse, of the purity of our cleaning efforts that they are having positive ripple effects and a larger action appears to be self-organizing around the seed we've planted. We ascend a side stairs and enter a room where Maheshbhai, his wife and daughter, an elderly woman and one local teen are seated. There are others too, we are informed, that wanted to attend, but could not because of the timing. Originally scheduled for Sunday the meeting was moved to accommodate my day of silence. Reenaben, the elderly woman wastes no time in convening the meeting and wants to know what we will do about the trash that accumulates near her flat adjacent to the Am-Way building. "They have a cold-drink machine and people are throwing the cans at my wall. There are Coca-Cola cans and all the other drinks you have brought from America. No waste bin has been provided. You are from America right?"

"We are, but we have nothing to do with the Am-Way. I think it's even outlawed in America because it was determined to be a pyramid scheme" I say, a little surprised and amused by the accusatory tone she has struck.

"But you support these things, right?"

"Pyramid schemes or Coca-Cola? No, I don't support pyramid schemes, though I did invest in the US stock market at one time, and it pretty much operates largely like a pyramid scheme. I sometimes drink Coke, but I prefer Limca. But I think both are owned by Coke now and ThumsUp too. I don't know, really."

"But you are from America, right?"

"Yes, but we no more control the policies of our government or corporations as you do of Mahendra Modi or the Tata Group. We're just trying to give something back to a country, or ideal, that has given us so much. Really our whole message is that every moment is an opportunity for service, and we hope to inspire others to get dirty to get clean, so to speak. We don't have to look outside of ourselves to find cleaning to do. We could spend several lifetimes pointing our fingers at the faults of others, including our respective governments, various companies or individuals, or we could instead see these as only projections of internal dirt that needs to be scrubbed away. We aren't here as proponents of the Americanization of India or anything."

"But even with your cleaning in the back there you also have get the residents to stop littering or the problem will remain. Nothing will really change. What I want to know is how can you help me."

"You can help yourself," John chimes in, "You don't have to wait for anyone else to start cleaning."

"There is an English saying that you must be being familiar with," Maheshbhai says in a tight smile, "that says that when I point at someone else there are four fingers pointing back at me." He demonstrates by pointing across the couch at me. I am tempted to point out that there are only three fingers pointing back at him and a thumb cocked at some obscure angle but hold my tongue as his point is appreciated. I smile back at him and he nods his head up and down and makes a chortling sound with raised eyebrows. Reenaben is scowling now.

"So are you willing to help me or not," she asks flatly.

"We would be glad to help," I say, "but the I think the best of what we have to share is what happens when we start to do what appears to be the work of others. There are some really beautiful, subtle things that go on within us when we do something as simple as sweeping and the effect is magnified when we clean for others. But it is one thing to talk about it and another to give it a go. Everyone should test for themselves if there is any value in this idea."

"But are you willing to go to the president of Am-Way and tell him about my problem?" Reenaben says, "You are here to give service, isn't it?" She is starting to appear as female aspect of the ever-challenging Golum.

"We don't have any special contacts with Am-Way," John says, "You should probably look into contacting them yourself. But we can all clean together, even right now."

"I have contacted Am-Way," Reenaben says pointedly, "but they haven't responded."

A tense silence fills the room. Reenaben is glowering and John appears to be in no mood to accommodate her specific grievance. My high expectations for the meeting have crashed gloriously. I am desperate to recover some of the goodwill that led us to come together in the first place. "You know one thing is for sure. All of us came here because of some impulse to do some outside the scope our immediate interests," I lean in Reenaben's direction, "You want the cans collected not just for you, but for the benefit of everyone in your neighborhood, " then I turn to Maheshbhai, "And you were willing to let us clean on your property even though we were doing so without prior permission, because you something of value there, beyond the simple fact that your property was being cleaned. And you graciously called for this important meeting at your flat. Your wife has inspired me and other mothers in the area with her summer camp for the kids. She could be playing bridge at the local sports club, but she felt that it was more important to offer positive instruction for all the children in the neighborhood and not just your daughter."

"You must play with the kids of your flat everyday," Reenaben says reproachfully.

"But, I do!" I say, "Usually a couple hours everyday."

"I know," she says, "but you must teach them new games too and values."

"The kids have have been the most inspirational of all," I offer trying to recapture the thrust of my soapbox soliloquy, "In fact, they have been amazing. They have come almost everyday to help clean even sometimes against the wishes of their parents. Now they pester me in the evening about what time we will be cleaning next."

"But you will notice no older children will join you, isn't it?" Reenaben says, "The younger ones are willing to do it just because they want to be like you, but the older ones are beyond reach and will not think it is a good thing to do."

"If we are reaching only the younger kids I think still has tremendous value. They are tomorrow's teenagers and next year's adults. Just in having cleaned for a while themselves with some crazy American when they were young they might get the idea that there is no shame in it. Maybe they will even experience some of the deeper benefits and be encouraged to continue experimenting on their own. Maybe it won't be cleaning per se, but something else."

Reenaben appears dubious of my grand claims, but is silent. John makes his own push to salvage the meeting. "Let's do something right now instead of just talking," he says, "Let's go out right now and do some action together. We should make an action a part of every meeting instead of just sitting the whole time." The implications of his invitation do not appear to sit well with those gathered.

"I compost almost all my wet waste at home," Reenaben says, shifting.

"That's great, but let's do something right now," John says impatiently. He is spring-loaded in his chair like a tenuous cork in a wine bottle waiting for the party to begin.

"But it will take time..." Reenaben says.

"This is taking time." John is unapologetic. Nobody stirs.

"I think John's right and we should end every meeting with some action even if for only five minutes. It could just be something symbolic if nothing else," I offer in the hopes of establishing some easily manageable timeframe to ease the fears of the assembled.

"But we need tools and I don't have time..." Reenaben says, now visibly fidgeting.

"We are the tools we need," says John. He is starting to stand which evidently is too much for Reenaben to bear.

"I have to go now," she says and promptly exits toward the kitchen.

"Did she just leave?" I ask no one in particular, not able to accept the suddenness of her departure. I am amused both at her apparent aversion to work and the unreal quality of the entire get together. The Golum episode is brought to memory. Is this a dream? In real life John is not this aggressive and someone else would have contributed a sentence here or there other than Reenaben and us. My question remains unanswered so I take the opportunity to lean over to Maheshbhai and ask if his property really has a ghost.

"Yes it has a ghost," he smiles, "It is you!" He can barely contain his glee at his witticism and successful deflection of my question. Lest I probe further he quickly begins delivering what sounds like the post-mortem to our meeting when Reenaben pokes her head back into the room.

"Okay, let's go," she says to our dumbstruck group. The rest of us crash into formation behind her and we descend the stairs to the driveway. At ground level John takes charge and suggests we clean the street from the bungalow's gates to the park some hundred yards distant. John and I swoop down and gather enough discarded plastic bags to distribute to the others and then begin plucking up the various tobacco packs and bits of waste that have accumulated since the last pass of the rag pickers and street sweepers. I sneak peeks at Reenaben who is cautious at first but then quite proficient in her cleaning efforts. It is impressive, too, to catch glimpses of Maheshbhai in his immaculate business attire stooping over to collect waste. Our party re-convenes at the gate to the park where we find a rare waste bin to deposit our bags. Of the hundred or so folk that happen to be a street-side every eye is glued to our odd procession. Congratulations and handshakes are shared with the promise to meet again soon. The late afternoon sun still holds sway in our quaint corner of Mithakali and the sweat flows freely. Our backyard revolution has spilled out onto the streets and the feel is good.

Wish You Were Here

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Friday, July 22, 2005

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Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Flat 101: Backyard Revolution