Thoughts on my two weeks in Kabul, Afghanistan

The faculty (including the volunteers) at Shanti Bhavan had a two-week vacation September 19th – October 3rd and I decided to spend my break volunteering at a music school in Kabul, Afghanistan. For those of you who don’t know this about me, I’ve been itching to go to Afghanistan for years. To state it simply, I’ve read book after book about the country and the conflicts there and have always felt inexplicably fascinated by it and drawn to it. And now that I’m back in India, I’m finding it hard to write about. I could write about what I did there each day, the people I met, the food I ate, the places I saw…but what I’m most interested in conveying to you is how it felt to be there. And that’s much more daunting of a task…and one that I’m not sure I’ll be able to succeed at. But I’ll try.

I have two favorite quotes that perfectly supplement my philosophy on life (if I’m old enough to have one already)…

“Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort.” - From a fortune cookie I got last year

“Nothing in life is to be feared – it is only to be understood.” - Marie Curie

In anticipation of what certain people (namely, my parents ☺) might retort to that second quote, let me just clarify why I think it applies to Afghanistan. Saying that there’s nothing to fear doesn’t mean that I think there are only wonderful people in Afghanistan and only good things happening. Clearly, that’s not the case. But instead of reacting with fear, I believe we should try to understand the whole situation and its various parts.

When most people think of Afghanistan, they think of extremists, oppressed women, AK-47s, IEDs, landmines, poppies, and dust. Am I right? Did I miss anything? While all of these are definitely a part of Afghanistan, the other side of the coin is hardly ever depicted in the news. When I remember my two-weeks’ time in Afghanistan, I think of roses, kites, and the way people greet each other – with the right hand over the heart…try it – you’ll instantly feel a genuine connection with who you're greeting.

I did not know what to expect from my trip to Afghanistan, but I could not have imagined a more amazing experience. From learning Dari to receiving a compliment from Hamid Karzai on my oboe playing…it all was way better than any dream I could have had. And yes, I got to play oboe for the president. More on that later. For now, I’m going to do my best to break down my experience into a few parts:

First: The People
The Afghan people I had the privilege of working with were some of the kindest, friendliest, and most gentle people while also being incredibly funny and quick-witted. And of the vast international community in Kabul, I’ll say this: you will never meet a boring person. Ever. Everyone you meet has a fascinating reason to be there, be they government workers, NGO workers, journalists, aid-workers, or music teachers!

Second: The Music School
Dr. Sarmast, the founder, has done an incredible job of creating this first-ever music school. I highly recommend you check out the website and read more about his project: www.afghanistannationalinstituteofmusic.org. In addition, I was collaborating with the organization Cultures in Harmony (www.culturesinharmony.org) which invited me to ANIM to observe the music students practicing and make recommendations on how to develop a better practice methodology. With this task at hand, I was able to work with students on a variety of instruments instead of the usual pianists I come across (being a pianist, myself). With the language barrier, I had to immediately learn the music-practicing-basics in Dari such as “good!”, “do that three times in a row”, “listen!”, “beautiful!”, “do that again from this measure”, and “This is very difficult.” And - of course - counting the beats in Dari: yak, du, se, char!

The music students at ANIM are dedicated, hard working, and always eager to learn. Ever respectful, my favorite time of day was walking into the guitar students’ practice room and seeing them stand, put their hand on their heart and say “Welcome, Teacher.” I’m not even a guitar teacher! But their respect for any type of teacher is astounding.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but one day I mentioned that I could play the oboe. Turns out, there were two oboes in the music closet and no one knew how to play them. One thing led to another, and I ended up playing oboe in the school orchestra, which in turn had the opportunity to play for President Karzai at a Literacy Day celebration. The oboe is a new instrument to the musical landscape of Afghanistan, and I had the honor of introducing it. The students around me in orchestra commented on how “sad” the instrument’s tone was and got our their cell phones to record me playing. They were enthralled at the oboe’s sound and its capacity for emotion. Mr. Shefta, the clarinet teacher at ANIM had arranged a beautiful and touching Afghan song for choir, piano, violin, cello, oboe, and tabla – and it was this arrangement that we played for the president, after the whole orchestra performed the National Anthem which was arranged by William Harvey, the American violin teacher at ANIM. After we performed, President Karzai came over to the orchestra and thanked us in Dari, and then he pointed at me and said in Dari “That girl played very well.” Then he said “very good” in English and went up on stage for his speech. True story.

Third: Kabul Itself
On the days off from school – Fridays – the founder of the music school was so kind to show us (myself and the foreign faculty members) around Kabul. What we were able to see still boggles my mind. From smelling the roses in Babur Gardens to witnessing the war scars on Darul Aman Palace – a palace completely destroyed by war and still standing, from driving up one of the mountains which frame Kabul, to walking around the side streets of the musician’s neighborhood…we were SO lucky. One of my favorite experiences was walking around the top of a particular hill whose name escapes me – a hill with two scars remaining from Kabul’s tortured past. One scar is a set of deserted tanks that was used in the civil war in the 1990s. From the hills surrounding Kabul, the mujahedin would fire at each other, destroying the city and killing tens of thousands of people in the crossfire. The second scar is an empty Olympic-sized swimming pool originally built by the soviets. The Taliban, I have read, used to throw blindfolded criminal-offenders off the diving boards to the concrete below. Despite these scars and what they remind us of – or more appropriately – in spite of these scars and what they remind us of - this hill has now been turned into a public park by USAID. We arrived there right as the sun was beginning to make its descent through the dusty sky into a beautiful sunset. Families were out with their children, kids were flying kites, and friends were sitting together enjoying the peaceful view from the hill. It was a striking moment when I truly felt how resilient Afghanistan is and how much hope it really has. And while there’s a lot in Afghanistan to be “afraid” of, we have so much more to understand.

I need to end this blog post, as a long week of teaching at Shanti Bhavan lies ahead of me. So while I don’t have any brilliant way of tying my thoughts together, I’ll conclude by saying that if you encourage yourself to expand your comfort zones every day and exchange fear for a studious heart, you never know when you might end up playing oboe for the president of Afghanistan.

Validation and Gratification

This afternoon (Friday), after a long week of teaching – I wasn’t sure I had the energy to go back to the school building and teach an extra piano lesson to Saritha, one of my 11th graders who needed a make-up lesson. My headache almost convinced me to cancel and take what I would refer to as a ‘well-deserved’ nap.

I thought about Saritha’s last lesson. We had worked for one solid hour on just three measures of music. It was a lesson that would have made me cry, had I been in her shoes….and I HAVE been in her shoes. Any musician can recall at least one lesson where their frustration at the page of music and at themselves brought them to tears. I would say it’s a rite of passage for any student. Saritha hadn’t cried, although her brow was perpetually wrinkled as the metronome kept clicking and we kept trying over and over and over. As her teacher, I felt two conflicting feelings. First, I wanted to ease her pain and move on to an easier section…why, I asked myself, does she come to my piano lessons after all – to express her feelings and reduce stress through music? Or to hold herself to perfection’s standards and want to pull her hair out in the process? But secondly, my eyes were nearly tearing up themselves as I realized what I was experiencing – in front of me sat a student who didn’t want to move on to an easier section. She had gotten to that stage of being a pianist where you no longer wish you were NOT practicing and instead out and playing with your friends….you knew the value of a hard practice session. You knew that the music you were working on was worth it. You knew that even if you wanted to cry, you’d get through it.

So thinking about where we left off in our last lesson, I decided that my nap could wait and I headed to the school building. Saritha is the definition of soft-spoken. Her voice is soft, her smile is gentle, and she reserves most of her words for before and after lesson – though even then, I rarely get more than a shy smile and a nearly inaudible “Thanks, Allegra” on her way out. So you can imagine my surprise when I walked in the music room and Saritha said “I got it.” She already had the metronome on and was poised to play those same three bars we had toiled over. And there it was – she had it perfectly. I was ecstatic for her, and started to say something about how amazed I was and she quietly interrupted me and began to tell me about how she had worked again on this passage alone in her practice time and it was from this very passage that she first “learned to concentrate.” She told me how her mind wanders a lot naturally, and having to work on this piece of music taught her how to truly focus. Then she went on to tell me about how she applied her newly found concentration skills in her Economics class. She said she prepared so well for her quiz and she’s pretty sure she’ll get a perfect score. I was speechless. Not only was I so proud of her and shared in her joy as a fellow pianist, but I let myself have a quiet moment of validation and gratification in my heart of hearts. THIS is it. THIS is why I’m halfway across the world trying to teach piano in rural India. I always fight my nagging question – “How is teaching piano going to REALLY help these children from destitute circumstances succeed in school and in life?” and Saritha is my answer.

Apparently, it’s possible for an afternoon to get EVEN BETTER than that. After our piano lesson which lasted an hour and 15 minutes (they’re usually 30 mins) – my other piano students came into the music room for our weekly Theory Class which is another name for My-Favorite-Class-of-All-Time. Today, I had planned, we would talk about Dominant Seventh chords. For those of you non-music readers out there – these chords are awesome. I STILL remember when I first learned about them. They’re chords whose whole purpose in life is to make music satisfying to listen to. They are built of harmonies that in their very nature lead us to yearn for other harmonies. Tension and release. It’s all about tension and release – dissonance to consonance. So we all worked at the chalkboard, learning which notes in the dominant seventh chord are the notes that cause us to wish for a resolution. Then we went to the keyboard to pick out a few dominant sevenths and figure out which chords they resolve to. Kumar got to the piano bench and I had Shashi pick a key. He picked E-flat major. So we recapped – we’re going to figure out what dominant seventh chord leads to E-flat major. We counted up the scale to B-flat (the dominant of E-flat) and then built a seventh chord on B-flat. Then the class picked out the two notes that together form a dissonance that leads us to yearn for resolution – the leading tone and the fourth. Kumar played his B-flat dominant seventh chord loudly and clearly and was all set to resolve it to the E-flat chord when he accidently played the wrong chord instead. The whole class erupted in a mixture of laughter and pleading – the PERFECT reaction to a dominant seventh chord that isn’t properly resolved. Desperately yearning for the right chord, I saw a jumble of hands poking at Kumar’s hand trying to help him find the correct chord. When he found it, we all let out a sigh of relief.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about – you can imagine my anxiety over this lesson plan. Are they going to understand the whole “dominant” and “seventh” thing? And the “leading tone” and “fourth” that have to “resolve” to the “tonic”? They did!!! So much so, that when I had Shashi bring out a piece he’s being working on with me (Solfieggetto, by C.P.E Bach) – to play a section that is a whole line of dominant sevenths resolving to other dominant sevenths resolving to still more dominant sevenths (leading the listener to expect resolution but never receiving it until the very end of the string of dominant sevenths) - Nikhil laughed and said “what a sly fellow” (referring to how clever it was of the composer to keep writing dominant sevenths and make the listener hold out for the resolution.)

Again, I ask myself – how am I so lucky to be the piano teacher here? What more could I possibly ask for?

Saritha stayed after class to clarify a question she had about dominant sevenths. I explained it to her and then showed her my favorite thing about a dominant seventh chord – when it resolves to a chord you don’t expect it to: the minor sixth chord. It’s one of the most beautiful chord progressions out there and when I played it for her, her face lit up. Then she said in her quiet, sweet voice: “Music is so cool.”

Gratefulness

Sometimes I think of my life these past few months in India – REALLY think about it. Two months have already passed, and I already feel a little frantic that as each day ends, I am one day closer to leaving. How did that happen?? Here I was, expecting to make it through “a year in India” one day at a time – mosquitos, bucket showers, gigantic spiders and all. But as I’ve adjusted to those aforementioned amenities, I have instead realized that I might actually be one of the luckiest people alive.

How was I chosen by the universe to be where I am? Why is it ME who gets to work with these amazing children and be with them every day? I was under the impression that I was coming here to teach, yet I’ll be lucky if I teach half as much as I’m learning.

Let me start with my piano students. Every week, we have a group lesson for the advanced piano students. In this group, we learn music theory together, do some listening activities, etc. – I have nine students in this group between 8th grade and 11th grade. When I think of those ages in the USA, I don’t imagine a class where students smile constantly, support eachother, encourage eachother, and dance to my music on their way out of class. With these same students, I have a “major scales challenge” – I’ve made a chart that is hung on the wall with each of the students’ names. For every major scale, they have 9 different metronome marking goals (for speed). For example, if they can play a D Major scale three times in a row with the metronome on at 80, they can put a sticker up on the chart. Again, when I think of this age group in the USA, I don’t think of them getting excited about scales, much less about stickers. And I especially don’t imagine the children being happy for their peers getting stickers before them. But here at Shanti Bhavan, I walk a proud student into the music room to award them a sticker for the chart, and the other piano students smile broadly and say “You’re getting a sticker???” and watch, beaming, as the other student places their sticker on the chart. In our group lesson this week, I had one of the students – Kumar – perform the piece he had just finished learning, “Barcarolle” by Bernard Shaak (my teacher from childhood). The rest of the class sat on the steps in the assembly hall to listen to Kumar perform. Afterwards, I asked each student to comment on the performance – something positive and something that he could improve on. Each audience member, so articulate as usual, was able to give praise AND constructive criticism. After a round of comments, I turned to Kumar and asked him how he had felt performing. I was worried for a split second that Kumar might be feeling a little fragile, as these students are not accustomed to performing and being critiqued. But Kumar was beaming – as usual – and said “I felt awesome.”

One last story – a really funny one - from this week that I will leave you with is a story about the sweet children in 7th grade. This past week I taught 7th grade literature, grammar, and creative writing. Being in the rural setting where we are, talk of animals always comes up somehow. They were mentioning something about a rat being in one of the classrooms, and I got really excited and told them how much I love rats and that I had had two pet rats back at home. They thought that was funny, and we moved on with our lesson. Later that day, after classes had finished, I was back in my room at the volunteer house and I heard little voices yelling my name from outside. I came out of the volunteer house and all of the 7th grade boys were so excited and laughing – they had been out on the field and had caught a baby mouse. They brought it to me in a little sack they had found as a gift.

Thinking about the children of Shanti Bhavan, and my year with them - the one world that truly gives voice to the warmth in my heart is “gratefulness.” I cannot think of a better word.

Trip to Delhi and Agra

I just returned from my first "vacation" here in India. I'm back in Bangalore now at our favorite coffee shop Matteo which has wireless internet. Shreya left this morning on her flight back home to Dubai, and my sister and a few other volunteers from Shanti Bhavan will be arriving here this evening. So I'm spending the day alone in Bangalore which feels surprisingly relaxing.

So now I can reflect on our trip to Delhi and somehow describe it in words. This will be a challenge. I'd like to pick one word to describe India, but I have too many to choose from. The closest I can come is the word "excessive." But not with the negative connotation we naturally assume with that word. It's not a negative thing - it's invigorating.

All of your senses are engaged here, whether you like it or not:

Your eyes are overwhelmed by the brilliant colors everywhere around you - bright orange saris decorated with sequins, women with huge gold earrings and nose rings, bright purple turbans, houses that are painted neon pink and yellow, trucks on the highways with painted designs covering every inch...

Your sense of smell is assaulted by the sour smell of garbage...the exhaust from rickshaws, buses, cars...the raw smell of livestock - cows roaming the streets, donkeys, goats, and buffalo...then your nose is delighted by the scent of jasmine flowers sold on the streets, dropped into your hands at temples, and decorating women's hair. My favorite smell, though, is rose. Rivaling the popularity of jasmine, rose water, rose soap, and rose petals are found everywhere.


Your ears are overwhelmed by the incessant honking on the streets and highways - instead of turn signals, cars honk to signal their intentions. Trucks and buses have the most interesting yet obnoxious horns I've ever heard - usually three or four different notes played in some sequence as opposed to just one tone. When cars are backing up, instead of the beeping we're used to with trucks in the USA, they instead play a melody. Your ears are still overwhelmed by the constant music coming from all corners. Everything from car radios to a lone man on his bike singing a Bollywood song to himself.

Your sense of taste is perhaps the happiest of the senses here. Though it takes a little getting used to. I never thought I'd see a day where a plate of onions is served with breakfast - and I happily add them to my plate. Raw onions?? But they're SO good. Spice for breakfast, spice for lunch, spice for dinner.

Lastly, the sense of touch. In Delhi there is 85% humidity. You step outside and your clothes stick to you. Something lightly tickles your skin and it's either a drop of sweat rolling down your skin or a fly crawling on you. I guess it could be a variety of other insects, but I won't go there. Then there are the itchy mosquito bites - can't forget those. But then there's my favorite sense of touch which is what you feel with the bottoms of your feet. You must take off your shoes in India more times than you can count - temples, mosques, people's houses, etc. But by far, my favorite time I took off my shoes was at the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara in Delhi. We took off our shoes and then there was a shallow canal of sorts that was at the base of the stairway leading up to the Gurudwara. We all had to walk through the water to cleanse our feet before climbing the stairs. I've written about this feeling before in earlier blog posts - but there's something about being barefoot with everyone else that instantly grounds you and connects you to those around you.

It's been a while since I was in elementary school studying the five sense, but where do emotions come? Sense of "touch" there? Like homesickness, loneliness, happiness, gratefulness...? In the interest of not being "excessive", I'll save that for another blog post.

Being a piano teacher in rural India, I constantly battle the nagging thought that piano lessons are, well…I can never find the exact word for it – but something along the lines of “not really necessary or useful.”

The odds the children of Shanti Bhavan face are enormous. They come from extremely poor, disadvantaged families – and in India, the words “poor” and “disadvantaged” take on entirely new meanings when you truly start to see the effects of the caste system. These children are the first in their families to make it through high school. They do not have any academic role models: no father who is a lawyer, no mother who is a doctor, no one pushing them to go to college and follow in the prestigious footsteps set before them. Instead, they are blazing a trail. And they must walk this trail with the weight of the poverty of their entire family resting on their shoulders. They do not go home after school to parents who ask “What did you learn in school today?” or “How did you do on that math test?” They live here, amongst each other, with only themselves, their teachers, the volunteers, and their “aunties” (residential staff) to guide them – personalized attention and support is never a guarantee. If they do not succeed at Shanti Bhavan, if they were go to back home – they would face the realties of manual labor, factory work, early marriage…

So given these circumstances – where they come from and what they are trying to achieve, it is literally IMPERATIVE that they do well in their classes and successfully pass the entrance examinations for college. They need to learn math, physics, chemistry, biology, English, writing, Hindi, Tamil, economics, civics, history…the list of needs goes on. But where on that list does “learning how to play an E-harmonic-minor scale” fit? Does playing a Bach Sarabande REALLY help?

This is my existential dilemma. Is my year’s purpose really to equip these students to fight against the odds with…piano?

Inevitably, I return to my own experience to begin to answer that question. Music has never paid my rent or bought me food. But was it useless to me? What has it given me? Besides the obvious: work ethic, patience, artistic sensibilities, “culture” – it has also given me who I am. Quite literally. Sometimes I forget how much music is a part of me – but subconsciously, it’s always there. I felt this my first week at Shanti Bhavan when I walked to the cafeteria for lunch one day. My jet lag was waning, I had begun to settle in, and get used to life here. As I was eating, the music that had been playing on the CD player in the cafeteria switched suddenly to a Mozart piano sonata. It was like someone I knew and loved had walked through the door. It was the first time I had listened to classical music since leaving Colorado and starting my life over here – and without even realizing what was happening, my eyes completely teared up. The purity and depth, the meaning, the memories… If in the middle of rural India, an American girl can instantly feel at home through a few clear notes of Mozart, the implications of music must run deep in the veins.

So there it is. If my piano lessons can provide that touchstone in the hearts of my students here…if I can help them cultivate their own self-discovery, self-acceptance, and self-confidence…then I won’t just be teaching piano lessons – I will be making a real difference.

And 5-6-7-8: Performance Time at Shanti Bhavan!

It’s now July (is it really, already??) and my sister Summer is here! She’ll be here teaching at Shanti Bhavan for six weeks. She brought a ¾-size cello to donate to the school to go with the regular-sized cello she donated last summer. However, that original cello was a near disaster. When I first arrived in June, Summer had me email her an update on that cello…when I found it in the music room, there were no strings on it, the bridge was nowhere to be found, and when I picked it up to see if the sound post was still standing (on the inside of the cello), I heard something rattling around – the sound post was most definitely NOT still in place. So Summer met with a luthier in New York City who gave her a lesson in re-setting a sound post in a cello and loaned her the tools to use.

The day after she arrived here in India, we brought the cello into our room, laid it out on a table and basically did some major surgery on it. I held the flashlight through one of the F-holes while she stuck the “sound post grabber” in through the other F-hole – it took a couple of tries to get the sound post standing again, but in about 30 minutes, the cello was playable! The sound post and bridge were back in place, new strings were strung up and tuned. Pretty crazy.

The crazier thing was that we had no idea that within a few days that cello would be a part of a concert in celebration of “School Day” – the anniversary of the founding of Shanti Bhavan. Concerts at Shanti Bhavan usually come together within an afternoon. It usually freaks out most of the Western volunteers who are used to planning, organization, and preparation time – but like I said before, one of the greatest lessons India has taught me so far is to just let go.

By show time, Summer was ready to play a prelude from one of the Bach cello suites, I would be playing a Chopin piece, we’d both be playing “The Swan” from Carnival of the Animals, and all of the volunteers (over a dozen!) danced a Bhangra – successfully choreographed and taught in under one hour by one of our really awesome volunteers Sabala who has been doing Indian dance for a number of years. It was SO much fun to learn an Indian dance and put it together as a group. Shanti Bhavan is known for making all of its volunteers somehow participate in these performances – and just about every volunteer who’s come through the door here has at some point learned and performed an Indian dance (complete with Indian attire). It’s just part of the program here!

Some volunteers – especially the professional musicians and/or actors – are at first pretty nervous to have to perform under these circumstances. Nothing is ideal for performing – the instruments are in rough shape, the lighting can fail at any moment when the power goes out, loud and exotic bird calls interrupting your concentration….you name it. One tends, at first, to try to make the usual excuses “Oh no, I can’t perform - I haven’t practiced in weeks” or “I don’t have anything ready to perform” or “I don’t dance”– but you quickly learn that here at Shanti Bhavan, everything is about love and support. Everyone is accepted here – no excuses. Everyone wants the happiness of listening to you play, watching you dance, hearing you sing, etc. – judgment never crosses their minds as it seems all “performances” are not performances but simply celebrations.

A Few Lessons in Hate, Love, and Self-Discovery

I've realized in India there are days when I HATE it and days when I LOVE it. This past weekend’s trip to Mysore included two such days.

A group of seven of us went by car to Mysore for the weekend (about a four hour drive from Shanti Bhavan). Some stomach bug must have been going around, so three from our group fell dangerously sick. I was one of the lucky healthy few, but it was scary to see just how sick the three other volunteers got. They were vomiting, feverish, and one of them actually fainted, hit her head, and it started bleeding. Not good! After taking care of the sick volunteers and getting them resting in our squalid hotel rooms (Recommendation #1: never go super-budget in India)..the other three volunteers and I went out to explore Mysore for a few hours. Finding your way around the streets of Indian cities whether alone or in a group can be daunting and disappointing. On the days when you hate India, you are overwhelmed by how incredibly dirty, smelly, pushy, gratingly loud, rough, depressing, hopeless and unrelenting it feels. The amount of trash, number of people, number of cars, bikes, carts, rusty buses, motorcycles, the number of stray, starving, suffering animals…sometimes you just want to close your eyes, ears, nose and take a break even for a few minutes – but you can’t. You are in the middle of it all and thousands of miles from home.

But then another day comes and you see the other side of the coin. Our next day in Mysore was one of those days. I hope I can adequately describe this day and its brilliance. All healthy again (amazingly), we got an early start and took our car up Chamundi Hill which is a sacred hill outside Mysore. There are two temples on top of the hill that we were going to visit. When we reached the top of the hill, we had amazing views of Mysore and the surrounding country. And the closer we got towards the temples, we started seeing countless monkeys and their babies. I just about died seeing them because they were SO cute. When we got to the main temple, everyone has to take their shoes off. It's become one of my favorite parts about India because when you first see the hundreds of people, the very American thoughts of "someone's going to steal my shoes" and "my feet are going to be disgustingly dirty after this" pop into your head. But the best lesson India has taught me is to let go. Just let go. It’s a simple demonstration of that very profound lesson, but it’s true - I've never lost my shoes and I've learned to actually love the feeling of walking around India barefoot. There's something so human, natural, and right about getting your feet dirty in India. And there's a deep spiritual energy felt from the bottom of your bare feet through the rest of your body as you walk through a holy temple. Your feet are dirty, yes - but finally alive and sharing the feel of the cool, smooth stones with the rest of humanity.

There are two temples, as I said, at the top of Chamundi Hill. Most people stand in a massive line to see the big, main temple. There was a really nice old man who offered to be our tour guide (for the equivalent of about $2) and he took us to the smaller temple at the back, which is close to 2,000 years old. Apparently they only decorate it one day every year, and the day we were there happened to be the special day. The universe here in India does it’s best to make up for the days where you hate India. ☺ So at the temple this day, they were celebrating the marriage of the god Shiva to Parvathi. Our guide gave us kumkum powder to sprinkle on the stone idols as an offering. The old temple was so quiet and peaceful - definitely one of my favorite places in India so far. And behind the stone idols grows a beautiful "holy tree”.

While we were making the offerings, a monkey came up to see if we had any food. When our guide shoed it away, it got mad, stole the palm-frond decorations that were laying on the stones and ran away. I didn't mean to, but I laughed SO hard. The monkey totally jacked all the decorations from the temple. Hilarious.

As we left the old temple, my friend Shreya and I bought a small bracelet which the priest blessed for us - it's a simple string bracelet with one rudraksh bead on it. Here's what my friend's book says about the rudraksh bead: "The word rudraksh literally means the eyes of Rudra, lord Shiva. Once when Shiva opened his eyes after a long deep meditation his tears of joy and peace fell on the earth and took the shape of the fruit of the rudraksh tree which grows wild in the Himalayas. The berries drop off, the green fruit skin dries up and the seeds harden into the rudraskh beads." So they represent Shiva's tears.

After the old temple, we walked a thousand steps down the hill to see Nandi, Shiva's bull statue. More monkeys, beautiful views of Mysore, and more spirituality.

As we all drove home, my favorite time of day in rural India was approaching – dusk and sunset. Randomly, for the first time yet this trip, I decided to pull out my iPod and listen to my favorite music. Usually I let the Indian music that spins out of every car radio be my soundtrack…but not this time. I’d call it a rare form of homesickness, perhaps, though I didn’t necessarily feel sad or nostalgic. Instead, I was watching my new environment pass by out the window while listening to the music that always reminds me of who I truly am. It felt as if I was both Old Allegra and New Allegra all at the same time…I thought about all of the people I love – my friends, my family, the many people who make up the fabric of my life....and instead of sadness, I felt for the first time that where I am is exactly where I am supposed to be right now. This year is a gift to me, and one month has already past. My heart filled up, my courage sparked, and I turned up my music.

Monsoon season! A huge storm knocked out our electricity two days ago and we’re still not back up on power. The administration will turn on the generator a few times a day for everyone to have a few hours of electricity and to get the water pumps pumping water up to the dorms and volunteer quarters.

Maura and I have been slowed down a lot the last few days because our computers will only stay charged for a certain number of hours. So we decided to take a rickshaw into Hosur, the nearest town that would have an internet café. It’s always nice to get off the Shanti Bhavan campus and out into the “real” India, but this trip was especially fun because we decided to step into the temple that’s across the street from the internet café just to check it out. It was a Hare Krishna temple. We were blessed by the priest and given Jasmine flowers to put at the base of one of the statues. Then we went into the main meditation room at the temple, and much to our surprise, we were visiting during one of their holy days. Not 10 minutes into going into that room, 5-10 other priests came in, got out their drums and symbols and started to sing the Hare Krishna chant. The main priest opened a curtain at the front of the room, behind which were several Krishna statues decorated with jasmine flowers and other colorful trinkets. As soon as the curtain opened, everyone fell to the ground and prostrated themselves completely and said a certain mantra. Then they all stood up and started singing again. During the music, the main priest took several items and waved them in a ceremonial way around the statues. First he took incense, then a candle-lit lamp, then jasmine flowers, then he sprinkled everything with water. The lamp was then taken out to the people in the room, and each person waved their hands around the flame and touched their foreheads. Then the jasmine flowers were taken and everyone breathed in their fragrance. It was pretty cool to take part in the ceremony. After the ceremony finished, we all went up to the priest and he put some water in our hands twice –the first time you drink it, the second time you put it on your face. Then the priests laid out mats on the floor and we all sat down. They came around with big banana leafs for us to use as a “plate” of sorts for what’s called “Prasad” which is when they serve food that is prepared at the temple (considered holy). It’s so holy, that they don’t think of themselves as “eating” the food, but rather “honoring” it. So they came around and put rice, daal, naan, some potato dish, some vegetable dish, and then a gulab jamun for dessert (the most amazing Indian desert EVER – it tastes like a donut that’s been doused in sugary syrup.) We ate all of this with our hands and then took our banana leafs and put them in a pile outside the temple. Maura finished first because she had been really hungry, and then they came over and gave her more rice and some “buttermilk” concoction which was some sort of milky sour stuff. She was so awesome because she actually was able to force herself to finish it – because it’s sacrilegious to leave any Prasad uneaten. After the meal, we bought a “mala” which is a string of beads – basically like a rosary, or prayer beads – that have 108 beads for 108 mantras when you chant. The Hare Krishnas have their own mantras, but Maura has a good book of other mantas that are not from any specific sect. The book has mantras on everything from curing headaches to finding happiness. Should be pretty interesting to try them out . While Maura is not a Hindu, she is a very serious yoga student and identifies with a lot of Hinduism and meditates frequently. On the summer solstice (June 21) we went out to “the rocks” – these huge boulders at the edge of the Shanti Bhavan campus where if you climb up to the top of them you can see out over the rural fields and watch the sun set. We did a chakra alignment and then meditated for a bit. It was really nice to sit outside on a boulder in India and meditate.

Although the Hare Krishnas are known to be pretty cult-ish in the USA, they’re very common in India. Being in a very small town in the middle of rural India, we were able to set our judgments aside and feel the wonderful love and spirituality of the place. It was an authentic and vibrant afternoon, to say the least.

Just finished week three in India! It’s strange, in some ways I feel like I’ve been here 3 months instead of 3 weeks. Other times, I remember what it was like to be here for 5 weeks last summer and I can’t believe 3 weeks have already passed.

This past week was packed. The younger grades came back from break – it was so great to see all their little faces and hear lots of “Hi, miss Allegra!” They are SO cute. One child, Tulasi, is in second grade – she and I always played together during their recess time and when she saw me this time, her eyes got so big and she ran right up to me and I gave her a huge hug. None of the kids can believe that I’m here for a whole year. They all ask me “Miss, how long are you going to stay for?” and when I say “a whole year!” they do a little gasp and smile. One little fourth grade girl came up to me and asked “Miss!!!! Do you want to hear some exciting news??? I’m going to take piano lessons!!!” She was SO excited.

I also began teaching piano lessons on Monday and Tuesday. So far I can only teach two days a week because my administrative work is so much. Hopefully our work load will lighten as the academic year gets off the ground. It’s always stressful to roll out a new year.

I gave Pushpa a piano lesson one night – Pushpa was one of the girls that graduated and has since gone off to Bangalore to college. She learned a couple of the piano pieces I brought last summer and really wanted to play them for me. When we finally found a time to have a piano lesson, the power went out – as it so often does in rural India. It was pitch black and Pushpa kept playing. We finished an hour lesson completely in the dark – neither one of us commented on it at all. THAT’S just one example of how amazing these kids are.





It’s been rough taking cold “showers” from a bucket. We call them “bucket showers” as we literally just fill up a bucket with water and use a smaller container to pour the water over ourselves. We only get hot water when there’s enough sunshine to heat the water (we use solar panels on campus). Since it’s monsoon season, we’ve had a lot of cloudy and partially-cloudy days. Other tough moments are having to see a really gross beehive every day as I walk through campus. I can do spiders, snakes, scorpions - but a bunch of little bees all gathered together somehow in a perfect circle? THAT grosses me out. Oh, and the giant ant hills – this anthill pictured here is taller than I am.

In other news, I trained my first volunteer! Maura, the current Volunteer Coordinator who has been here since January has been training me on how to orient the new volunteers. It’s been so much fun working with her. She’s an awesome girl who is a drama therapist with a background working with abused children. Truly a cool girl. We get along really well and have the same work ethic.

Maura and I took a rickshaw into the nearest town, Hosur, to run a few errands. We needed to make photocopies of some training documents we give to new volunteers. Every trip outside of the Shanti Bhavan compound reminds me of why I’m here. As soon as you leave the school you see the “real” India. Hosur is dirty, dusty, and crammed with people and garbage. The smells, the dust stinging your eyes, and the beggars that come up to you holding their babies…that is the reality of India. When we went to go make photocopies, we walked into a dingy hallway where a barefoot woman in a dirty sari stands all day making photocopies for people on a huge, archaic copier… on the rickshaw ride home to Shanti Bhavan, I was thinking about my piano teaching. Sometimes it feels terribly useless to teach piano. These students need science teachers, math teachers, English teachers – if they do not do well on their exams, they do not get into college, and their lives drastically change. They inevitably have to go out and live in “real” India – not Shanti Bhavan. But after seeing the woman making photocopies in Hosur, I realized – when else would these children get to take 30 minutes out of their day to work with another pianist to learn a Bach piece? Chopin? Beethoven?

Graduation and First Week of School

It’s been nearly two weeks since arriving, and SO much has happened! The 12th graders graduated last Sunday and there were so many events, performances, etc. to celebrate. The main school hall has been completely transformed by hand-made decorations for the graduation. The children and staff have been working around the clock to make this graduation a truly special event. Many volunteers from around the world have returned to take part in the celebration, so it’s been quite a full and energetic campus.

The graduation celebration was a 3-day event. The first night the children, aunties, and teachers put on a performance with lots of Indian dances. It was AMAZING. Absolutely amazing. They were all dressed up in traditional Indian dress and it was so great to see the aunties and teachers dance as well!


The second night was a performance put on by the volunteers. There are two Broadway performers here from ASTEP who helped organize the performance – Michael and Michelle. I’ve been working a lot with them to help put together the music for the show. Michelle wrote a few songs for the performance that she sang, Michael taught the Shanti Bhavan choir a song from a Broadway show, and I accompanied them, then we did a James Taylor number “Shower the People” with me on piano, Michael singing the solo, Dimitri and Hugh on guitar, and Becca, Michelle, and Lauren on back-up vocals. What else – Michael and Michelle taught the 12th graders a waltz, so they all danced as couples while I played a simple waltz on the piano. Maura, the volunteer other volunteer coordinator who I’ll be working with did a yoga demonstration, some of the other volunteers did a Hindi dance which was great, and then I played a piano solo – the Chopin Fantasie Impromptu which is the only piece I have in my fingers right now, since moving to India has left me little time to expand my repertoire. ☺ The kids have been asking to hear me play since I arrived, so it was really exicting for them. They all gave me a standing ovation – it was really exhilarating! The whole show came of wonderfully – it’s always great to be a part of performances and Shanti Bhavan. The children love EVERYONE and it’s just such a positive atmosphere. No need to be nervous,as no one here would ever judge you for anything – they just love you, no matter what! It was really touching, as well, when the graduating class came up to the stage to say a few words and thank Dr. George (the founder of Shanti Bhavan who is here right now), the staff, the teachers, the volunteers, etc. They each gave Dr. George a hug, and it was really emotional to watch. He has been a father to all of them. And then – to my surprise – Dr. George asked me to finish the program by playing my Chopin piece again because they loved it so much. It was quite a night.


Then the third day was the actual graduation ceremony. The graduating class all had their parents and/or relatives come for the celebration which was really touching.

Classes started Tuesday and I jumped right into teaching 10th and 12th grade compulsory English which was QUITE a bit of work (reading the books, planning lessons, studying the syllabus for the Indian testing system, and grading papers). The other wrench in the system is that the principal of Shanti Bhavan resigned a few weeks before I arrived - so Maura and I (Maura is the other volunteer coordinator) have stepped into roles assisting the administration of the school as well as curriculum reorganization. I haven't had 10 minutes to myself the entire last week because of all the work she and I have been doing. So thankfully a volunteer arrived yesterday who is actually an English major at Columbia right now - so she will be able to take over for me starting Monday. While I'm sad to give up my academic classes, I haven't had any time to start my piano lessons yet because I've been so swamped. It's been heart-breaking to have my piano students from last summer keep coming up to me and asking when piano classes will start.

I'm in Bangalore right now - we finished up our last classes this morning and then took a car into Bangalore (about 2 hours). We attempted to do some shopping, though it's monsoon season, so the rains started and flooded the streets which caused quite a traffic jam in Bangalore (cars AND pedestrians). At one point we were trying to cross the street and there was basically a rushing river where the gutter would normally be. So no one could get to the opposite side of the street unless they rolled up their pants and waded through brown water. Crazy!

We're heading back to Shanti Bhavan tonight, plan to sleep in a bit tomorrow, and then prepare for our next week of classes to start. I will keep you all posted as soon as I can!

My first day in India has come and gone – I can’t believe I managed to stay awake from landing in Banglaore at 4:30AM to right now, 8:30PM in my bed at Shanti Bhavan! It was both a wonderful and difficult day. It was wonderful in so many ways: to hear “Allegra!!!” in the voices of all the kids that I love, to see my former piano students’ faces beam, to have the younger students run up to tell me that they get to start piano lessons this year, to get 2 pieces of candy as a gift from a 6th grader, to get a huge hug from Ms. Ruth (the old woman on staff at Shanti Bhavan who I grew really close to last summer) and hear her tell me my coming back was an answer to her prayers, to jump right into giving a piano and violin lesson while completely jetlagged...this year will be great!!

Ahhh...but it was also one of the most difficult days I’ve had in years. It’s hard not to feel utterly and completely scared out of your mind when you realize you’ve actually left everything behind and relocated yourself to the other side of the world for an entire year. While India is a difficult place to live in, “roughing it” is not the hardest part. I can handle spiders, sweltering heat, mosquitoes, spicy food three times a day, cold showers….it’s really just the unknown that gets me. Not knowing what this job will actually entail. Not knowing whether I will be good at it. Not knowing how long a year will actually feel. Not knowing what I’m coming back to after the year runs out.

The only thing I can do right now is to try to take each day at a time. I am here for a purpose, and each day will bring me closer to understanding it. When Ms. Ruth asked me how I was, I admitted that I was scared. She smiled her big smile at me, hugged me and said “Don’t scare! God is with us!”

School hasn't started yet - right now the children are rehearsing dances, choir songs, and speeches for the graduation ceremonies that take place June 4th, 5th, and 6th. Right now only the 6th graders through 12th graders are at Shanti Bhavan - the younger ones return on June 13th.

I found out I will be teaching 10th and 12th grade English which I'm really looking forward to. I LOVE English, and I LOVE working with the older children more closely. They were talking to me about needing help writing, which would include working on their personal statements.

I'll start teaching piano lessons as well, and most likely take over choir rehearsals until other musical volunteers come :)

Please send me emails! I love to hear about what's going on back home!

Shanti Bhavan Graduating Class

http://www.shantibhavanonline.org/children/seniors.html

The first class of seniors is graduating from Shanti Bhavan next month! They have each written their personal story in their own words and you can read them at the Shanti Bhavan website shown above. SO INCREDIBLE.

I am SO excited to be moving to India for a year! I've decided to start a blog (never done this before) so that all of you wonderful friends and family can have access to my experiences without all the mass emails like last summer! :)

On May 30th, 2010 I will be on a plane to India where I've accepted the job of "Volunteer Coordinator" for the non-profit ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty). I will be working at a school called Shanti Bhavan which is outside of Bangalore in southern India. Shanti Bhavan provides education and support for children and orphans from the most impoverished backgrounds, formerly called the "untouchables" in the Indian caste system. Be sure to check out the links I've posted on my blog for more information!

Besides coordinating the overseas volunteers who come to Shanti Bhavan, I will also be teaching piano lessons, general music, choir, middle school English/English Literature, and other core academic subjects to be decided!