December 2014 - A $2 Cushion

A $2 Orange Pillow   

It's almost impossible to get through December without thinking about the holidays and gift giving.  But how many people remember what they got for Christmas last year, or Christmas a few years ago?  It's not that the gift had to be memorable.  Instead, maybe it's because gift giving has become like eating - just something one does.  I was like that myself, until one day in India when I realized, trite as it may sound, gift giving was more about what I was receiving.

I went to India on a three-week pilgrimage with a spiritual group intent on meditating in holy sites, visiting temples, and doing what we could in the slums of India. It's a country of two billion people that assaults the senses on every level. The cultural adjustment is immediate.  Upon arrival, the sights, smells, sounds, pollution, heat and humidity are overwhelming, yet there's a noticeable current of serenity amid the noises of traffic, the endless horn blowing, and the people and cows walking the overcrowded streets. 

 

India is also a land of contrasts with designer stores on paved foundations flanked by small shops on dirt pathways selling inventories of single items like thread or tin pots.  Our boutique hotel, complete with a uniformed doorman, shared a lane with squatters living in the dirt under rotted tarps supported by tree branches.  Some of the dwellers lived in the shells of rusted out cars.  A few shared a patchwork hut of corrugated cardboard with a galvanized awning that was considered a luxury.  These living conditions, prevalent in the country, defy comprehension.

Because we sat on the floor of the temple during meditations several of us needed to buy a cushion.  Our hotel driver Salim took us to a local seller because he felt the designer stores would be horribly overpriced.  He was right.  We bought four cushions for $8 whereas the cushions would have cost $25 each in the designer stores.  It was then we learned from Salim that a good wage in Delhi was $20 a month.

 

Before leaving Delhi for northern India we had to lighten our luggage so I wanted to give the cushion away.  I'd seen the woman who lived in the dirt under the tarps.  Every day she cut fresh tree branches to support her decaying roof.  I'd walked past her dwelling several times, noticing only a small candle for light in the dingy interior.

Not knowing what protocol to follow I went down the lane to give her the cushion.  I was stopped by the uniformed door man who did not speak English but clearly did not want me to walk down the lane.  Our pantomime of flailing gestures summoned an elderly man who came out of the dwelling to see what was happening.  He spoke English so translated for the doorman what I wanted to do.

 

All of a sudden the doorman began to tear up as he moaned in Hindi.  He put his hand over his heart and kept shaking his head.  The old man translated for me what was happening.  It seems the woman I'd seen cutting the tree branches was his wife.  This job he held was the sole support of an extended family living under the tarps and cardboard.  He too lived under the tarps, appearing at the hotel daily to shower and put on the hotel-provided uniform.  He was crying because no one had simply given something to him or his wife before and he was overcome with emotion.  The old man who I learned later was his father, put his arm around the uniformed man's shoulder and both of them cried as they hugged the orange cushion.

 

In that single moment I understood the impact of what he said and tears welled up in my eyes as well.  This was India, where people living in the dirt under tarps could never afford a $2 orange cushion.  This was India, where a $2 orange cushion that I could have easily tossed away, had caused a grown man and his father to cry with gratitude.  This was India, where upon my return to Delhi, walking past the dwelling one night, I saw a $2 orange cushion glowing in the candlelight of the otherwise colorless interior.

This was the gift of a $2 orange cushion.  But the gift was in receiving the unheard of gratitude and heart-felt smiles from street dwellers who saw the cushion as a beacon that someone cared.  The gift kindled a visceral appreciation for the bounty we have in this country and often take for granted.  The $2 orange cushion memory stays with me every day, but it's especially magnified during the Christmas gift-giving season.   

Jo Mooy - December 2014  

   

My Cup Runs Over

My Cup Runs Over!
by Patricia Cockerill 

India was a chaotic bubbling cauldron of overcrowding, poverty, dirt, and unpleasant and offensive smells that I grew to despise. Especially when every morning we made a pilgrimage into the "Basti" a poor neighborhood where Inayat Khan's temple-tomb was located. On the walk through the Basti I saw people living on sidewalks without even a tarp overhead. There were narrow dirty alleys weaving through the hovels with what appeared to be frightened and strange people staring back at me like I was an intruder. In fact, I felt that I was.

I could not understand how these people could live under such horrid conditions. They had so little while I had so much. My heart ached for the barefoot children dressed in rags; for the emaciated animals - goats, dogs, an occasional pig. India for me was not exotic, it was a horror. Each day I found myself withdrawing my heart deeper into my chest so I could walk through this scene without feeling the pain or the fears that were welling up. All I wanted to do was get out - out the dirt, out of the poverty, and out of the pain that I witnessed everywhere I looked.

 

One morning I asked the spiritual leader of our trip, "How can this pain exist on the planet and on this massive scale?" He saw my struggle and said, "Let me get back to you..." The next morning at breakfast he told me the answer had come to him in a dream. He said, "It depends on your perspective. When you see with the mind you are one of the patients filled with the pain. When you see with the heart you are the doctor. Through that love you able to help ease their pain."

Without words, I had been praying for an answer, and praying for help without realizing I was praying for help. When I heard his reply something happened to me. My hardened "protected" heart cracked open and I began to cry tears of joy. Everything changed in an instant. I saw a whole new India I'd not seen before. It was as though my heart grew eyes, ears and nostrils. Yes, the squalor was still there, the smells of raw sewage still existed, and everything was still covered in the pervasive dust. But I was also seeing the color, music and sweetness beneath the canvas that all of India had been painted on.

I felt a connection with every being in every shop, in every rickshaw, and in every humble person sweeping debris on the streets of Delhi. In the ramshackle hovels I  now saw a business enterprise supporting a family and I became part of the ebb and flow of that life. I realized it was the God within me that was seeing India anew. It was not me, nor this ego that judges everything as good or bad while pushing away anything I could not understand.

Because of my fear and anger at the horrors on the streets of India, I had missed almost a whole week of India. I had pulled inside and shut the door; missing out on the Qawali musicians that play chants at the mosques where everyone gathers around and joins in joyously. All that I had been able to feel was the oppressive heat, the crush of strangers invading "my" space, the extreme poverty and the ever present odors.

Our local guide Sanjay who grew up in India though he now lives in Boulder,  explained how life works in India, how the people live, how they think, and what their expectations are. He said, "Notice how everyone smiles. They don't know they have nothing." What he said was true.  I saw more smiles on these faces than I usually see from people at home who have so much. Sanjay's lessons were to continue for most of the trip.

Traveling by bus from Agra to Ajmer, we had to stop and pay local taxes as we went from one region to the next. As the driver left the bus to attend to the taxes, I noticed a small shop on the side of the road. The shop had tree branches holding up a roof made of black plastic and twigs. The counter-top was an old worn wooden plank with a few items for sale. Sanjay explained that the whole family lives in the back of the shop. He also explained that in the East they believe that every guest is God and that it is an honor to serve the guest.

In the hut an old woman smiled at us. Sanjay said she was offering us her hospitality so he got off the bus to sit with her. I watched them laughing and talking. She offered him a small terracotta cup, home made and fired in the woman's cook-fire. She was about to pour hot tea into the cup. But as I watched him he shook his head "no." Instead, he pressed a few rupees into her hand while taking the empty cup. Then he returned to the bus.

When he got on the bus he handed me the terracotta cup. He said he'd told the old woman it was for someone on the bus so she would be remembered.  I held the precious cup in wonder as my heart melted in my chest. Sanjay could see how much it meant to touch such a simple offering from someone who I considered had nothing. Yet, it was the most precious gift that I brought back from India. 

   

In that moment, when he saw my eyes fill with tears, he knew. With this simple offering, I had shared a spiritual experience with a fellow human being - a woman who gave her guest (God) a cup of tea, and a man who understood that a small terracotta cup, made by a strange woman sitting in the dirt, had transformed me.   

Her terracotta cup now sits on my personal altar, reminding me of the indelible life lesson learned on the side of the road in India.