SEHARAMPUR

I was not in Seharampur for 24 hours and I had experienced a monsoon rain which according to everyone there had not happened with such intensity for as long as they could remember. I stayed with a pastor who also heads up a remote training and education ministry for young adults in the city and surrounding villages. So this pastor turns to me this evening as we were driving to the fruit market to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables (including my new favorite, fresh mangos) and he says to me, “I think we should get some rain tonight.”

Some of the guys after doing a little clean up in the flooded basement.

Just a side note - I know that people in India have different ways of doing things and I really am all about engaging the culture and embracing the differences. Really I am... but there is one thing that is tough to get used to. I have noticed everywhere I go that men show affection for each other the way that women do in the states. Everywhere I go men are holding hands. You tend to see these kinds of things once in a while in the States, but it usually means something a little different. So when the pastor grabbed my hand and held it for a while as we walked through the market I swallowed my discomfort and told myself that this was India and they just do things differently here. When the pastor holds my hand he is not suggesting anything other than a simple demonstration of friendship.

Here is a little friend who appeared, I guess to avoid the flood waters that inundated his previous home.

Right… we get back to his home and his wife as cooked a wonderful meal, we are almost finished and we hear the rain come. It is loud on the tin and plastic roof. We have some fresh mangos after dinner and it is still raining. We step outside onto a small balcony and it is really raining and really windy out. We have a little chat outside in the wind and the rain, and one of the students runs up and says something with some urgency in his voice. I could not understand what he was saying because it was in Hindi, but the pastor begins to head for the stairs and I started to formulate some possible scenarios in my head.

The view from the rooftop where many household chores.

It turns out that it rained so hard the drainage system got backed up and could not drain all the runoff. It backed up into the basement, which is where the students sleep, and where the guest room is. Yeah, I am in the guest room. I could see water bubbling up through the floor and spilling into the area where the guest room is, which is in the lowest part of the basement, and where does water go?? It follows gravity, to the lowest part of the basement. Oh, and of course my duffle bag with all my stuff is sitting on the floor, in what is was two inches of water.

Storm clouds coming in before Sunset.

For a little extra drama, the door was locked and they could not find the key. Oh and so is the “electronic voltage corrector” was on the floor as well. It takes 220 volts of electricity and makes it 110 volts. If we were to turn that on at the wrong moment we would have been standing in two inches of electrocution. I pulled my bag out of the water, then got a chair and put the Electronic Voltage Converter on the chair, to avoid any possible accidental frying of myself. I checked through my bag to see how much I was going to have to string up on a clothesline over the course of the night. I was shocked to stick my hand in my bag and discover that everything was dry. Nothing got wet. I could not believe it. Except I did believe because I could see that nothing was wet. Needless to say my first day in Seharampur was a very interesting.

DANCE

The air sings with the sound of water droplets breaking through into this world.
The ground chants to the rhythm of rains that pound earthen drums.
The darkened sky and deepening clouds shield dampening air from equatorial sun.

Louder it grows as heavy skies open up,
like waves ever crashing and never receding,
like weights falling and crushing the ground.

The sun is gone,
The mountains vanish,
and the puddles dance...

FALLS

From the British graveyard we went to the home of some Americans who have been living in India for several years. They are friends of our host which is why we visited.

A picture of our gracious hosts on July 2nd.

The husband of this couple is a linguist currently learning his sixth Indian language so that he can translate official documents and other materials into that language. This language is spoken by about 50,000 people in a tribe in southern India.

A view looking south and down in the direction of where we came. From their balcony you can kind of get a feel of the steepness of the slope that this house and pretty much all the houses here seem to precariously sit.

The apartment house, sits on the edge of a steep drop off and was build in the late 1800’s for a British officer. It is a large building that is now a four level apartment with an orphanage on the top level. I guess the British officers lived pretty well. Their balcony has quite the view.

Up the road a little bit from their home was another impressive vista. In the post "Graveyard" I mentioned that the cows are everywhere, the even walk the streets like pedestrians. In the photo to the right, you not looking at mountain goats... those are cows.

After our visit and our lunch we went to a popular tourist area (though we were the only white people there) to see a huge waterfall tucked away in a ravine between mountain slopes… It is not a tourist trap in the sense that mostly westerners are there. It is a beautiful waterfall close to 100 feet high though main cascade is about 40 feet high. Kempty Falls, as it is called, is a place for people to find some fun and relaxation. Think of some of the naturally formed sites in New Hampshire or elsewhere. At some point someone saw this spectacular waterfall and then saw an opportunity to make some money.

The traffic was so bad and the roads are so narrow, that we were stopped about a mile from the falls to wait for the traffic to get going again, and even then it moved really slow. We took the opportunity to get in a few pics.

That being said, the people enjoying the water did not seem to mind at all. What we all observed was that the men when into the water in basically their underwear. The women however, wore their full traditional Salwar suit. There were a couple women who were progressive enough to wear shorts and a T-shirt, but nothing like the guys.

You can barely see that the bottom of this picture but there are people swimming and splashing in a small pool that has been built up at the base of the falls. This picture was taken on a bridge which crosses over the water as it flows into other pools further down the mountain side. This, as you can see, was a pretty popular spot.

The falls have been an attraction for people for more than 150 years dating back to the time when the British controlled the area. In fact even the name "Kempty Falls" comes from the British name for the place, "Camp tea." There is one road that goes through as you can see from the wide shot above. So traffic moves very slowly. Most people simply park by the side of the road and walk, which is what we ended up doing.

Here is part of the small market area that you have to walk through to get to the base of the falls. It's a good spot to do some shopping if you want to purchase some over priced souvenirs.

The long windy drive back down the steep mountain roads was quieter. The monkeys and cows and random pedestrians were things we had all seen before, so there were much few pictures being taken. We had a good dinner and slept very well that night...

CAMPUS

I took a walk around the campus here today (Friday) and took some pictures. The first half of the day was sunny for the most part so I took the opportunity to walk around the campus before the rains came. I took some pictures of the campus here so you can have an idea of where I am living.

This is the guest house where I am living for the next five and a half weeks. My room is on the upper right hand side. The school has many supporters in the states so it was built so people from the U.S. could come and not feel too far out of their comfort zone. It is home base for me. I will be going to more rural locations for a few days at a time from here.

This building is called Magdala. It is almost directly across the roadway from where the guest house is. It is the women's dorm.

This building is the academic building. There are maybe twelve or fifteen classrooms in this building. Students stay in their classrooms for five classes (there is a break for tea time) and the professors move from class to class.

This building is the chapel and mess hall. The chapel is on the upper level and is glass all the way around. The Mess, as they call it, (many words are carry-overs from the British days) is on the lower level. It is pretty big. Roughly 250 students are present for chapel services and they take up about a third of the floor space.

This building will house the new linguistics center that is being developed. The official language of India is English, in fact India is the largest English speaking nation in the world. Aside from that there are 4 major families of languages; within these four families there are just over distinct languages, from there there are over 4,000 dialects.

The mountains to the north east are often cloud covered which gives the place a bit of a mystical feel. It is easy to see why this region surrounding us was given the nickname “land of the gods”.

More campus vistas to come in a later post...

MONSOON

I found out just before leaving for Derhadun that in Northern India, this time of year is the beginning of their monsoon season. Yeah, I guess when I think of the Himalayas I don’t think of Monsoons, but here I am and it rains for at least half of the day, and is cloudy for most of the rest of the day. The sun has come out for an hour or so since I arrived.


I should say though that I love seeing the clouds pour over the mountains behind the school.

RAINS

The Summer rains are falling

They fill the dried up streams
The parched earth drinks it in
And dusty paths now are mud

Blue sky masked in shades of gray

God wrings out the clouds
Droplets form like buckets
And rain like puddles falls

Lakes and oceans merge
Rivers connect them all
The Summer rains are falling
The plush green grass returns
The babbling brooks are swelling
Liquid life on a sojourn