more routine

To get to Kalighat we need to take public transit which is lovely immersion into authentic Indian life. The bus is a whopping 8 rupees one way (about a half hour to two hour ride depending on traffic). This is equivalent to 16 Canadian cents. Upon entering the bus I notice that one side is reserved for ladies (it even says so painted in English on the side). On our travels so far I have noticed men sitting on the women's side but I have yet to see a woman sitting on the man's side: of this I am not at all surprised. Gender roles in India are interesting but I shall not begin to discuss this topic here at this time.

There is so much to see on the bus; Indian life does not seem to rest nor stagnate. There is a plethora of shops, stores and booths. Barbers give cuts and shaves on the sidewalks, people cook over open flames and there are others who sit and watch the world go by. On the streets some people beg or sleep on cardboard. Others are squatting in front of their wares. Overall we see many more men then women out and about. When we do see women they are often dressed in beautifully coloured saris; the vibrancy can be overwhelming. There are Muslims adorned in all white and Hindus in all orange, especially when close to the Kalighat temple. We pass by Baptist churches and boarding schools, hospitals, diagnostic centres and nursing homes. There are a plethora of tarps, sticks, bricks and mortar. Green is rare. The maximum number of trees we pass on this half hour+ bus ride is countable by a first grader (or Teresa's Kindergarteners; they can count to a trillion because she's a next-level teacher. You laugh, but it's so true, they can...YouTube is a fabulous resource. Cue it up to 2:40 for the trillion past: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e0dJWfQHF8Y). A highlight for me is the bed making shop: they take rough pieces of wood (maybe 1x2's...but all hand made pieces), fashion bed frames and stack them into a tower. Who needs IKEA? There is a shop that similarly makes ladders. Chai tea in small ceramic cups is commonplace and any car part you want can be purchased individually and affixed on the side of any road. Busses compete with cars, dogs, people, bicycles, motorcycles (sometimes with people wearing 80s hockey helmets), people pushing or pulling carts of goods or people and rickshaws (sidebar I was told by a friend today that they fit 11 people in one once and were pretty pumped about that, but then she was told about another group of volunteers who fit 13. Challenge accepted). I often encourage people not to get hit by busses but on the weekend I was actually close to doing so; it came out of "nowhere". The desire for any chance at serenity is impossible as horns are as prevalent as the heat. Kolkata streets are action-packed and full of potential adventure. Always.

Sidebar: on Friday afternoon after registration I felt like we had actually "arrived" in India. It is monsoon season and earlier that afternoon a flash heavy rain hit. As we left the Mother House to go to our hotel we passed an area where water was abundant and overflowing; it became the ideal place for an in the street community bathing party...well, only the men of the community.

We arrived at Nirmal Hriday's (the actual name of the home). This home welcomes the terminally ill (HIV/AIDS, cancer tuberculosis etc...) and the dying; essentially it is a hospice. It is in the district of Kalighat, hence the common reference. This home is near the famous temple of goddess Kali (and ghat means a wide set of steps descending to a river). Much of the following information is from 

http://m.asianews.it/index.php?art=19276&l=en: "This was the first hospice founded by Mother Teresa in 1952 to welcome, treat, clean the dying abandoned on the streets of the Bengali metropolis. Once the Mother calculated: "We have collected 54,000 people from the streets of Calcutta, at least 23,000 have died in this Home in Kalighat". (That was as of 1989).

This home gives people dignity. Now, it isn't quite as grave or drastic as I had anticipated. My gut reaction is that it is a basic, limited nursing home. Very basic. Very limited. I'm not at all saying it is a happy place or a place without pain, trouble, hardship or other difficult life things, but it isn't as my mind had envisioned given previous pictures. It is not a place where 100 residents lay in bed all day.

A 62 year old Filipino lady was our guide on Saturday; it was her last day after two weeks of volunteering. The home is a sectioned-off part of the Kalighat temple. The entrance is unassuming: there was no warning that we were there. We approached  the door and showed the doorman our card.

He wrote our names in the log and away we went. We went to the second floor volunteer room, washed our hands and put our stuff in lockers. We came back downstairs where the Brothers (who run the male side of the home) read their morning...meditation? (Not sure of the correct terminology). As they did so I noticed a small whiteboard that listed the capacity on both the men's and women's sides, and for the month of July: how many residents where there, discharged and the final row was entitled "death". In the men's side today it said 3. 0 on the ladies side.

We descended the stairs and to the right my first sight was 40ish women in uniformed bright yellow gowns with bold red flowers sitting in benches and chairs around high tables. Many seemed unresponsive. It was remarkably quiet for that number of people. We walked down, greeted a few residents and were quickly recruited by a massi (a local Indian worker: the word means "like a mother" or aunt) to help make beds. They're somewhat aggressive in Indian culture so Teresa, the Italian, wasn't phased at all by the yelling and not being able to do things right. I, on the other hand, had a bit of a harder time. If you don't give any indication on how to do something, lll watch and pay attention but don't holler at me if i do it wrong. We succeeded and properly made all the necessary beds.

Margaret, a massi, introduced herself. She speaks very good English and quickly became my favourite and my go-to. I noticed that she was forceful but also joked and loved on the residents. She's good people.

Margaret told us to go to laundry. This is a different process than at Prem Dan where I was four years ago. Here there are three sinks. Basically, the clothes/sheets are dumped in the first one with some likely powerful chemical, rinsed and mixed a bit by hand, transferred to the second sink where the same thing is done and then they're wrung out. Then at the third sink, where I usually find myself, the same thing happens. We pick up an article of clothing or sheets or cloths and swish them around a bit, wrong them out, and put them in a laundry basket. Again, I'm not entirely sure how this makes them clean but I'm a newbie and, to quote Tim the Toolman Taylor from the classic 90's sitcom, "I have no opinion" so I'm gonna just roll with it; they clearly have a system. After this the laundry is put into a machine that dries it better than we can do by hand and then laundry is brought to the roof 3 stories up to be hung.

After laundry there is about an hour to interact with the patients. I was instantly recruited to take the 10 or so mobile ladies and make them walk in circles around the room. A few of them were not at all happy with me but I didn't take no for an answer. One lady kept showing me her foot that had a scar on it, but as far as I could tell that was an excuse, not a reason, so I kept her moving. After walking we all sat down with the rest of the crew. Here I made faces or massaged hands or interacted with the residents in any way I could think of. 10:30-11:00 is tea time for the volunteers and if you forget, the massi's will remind you.

Tea time was the next chapter of interesting. There is free bananas, chai tea and biscuits. These biscuits are specifically made for and donated to Missionaries of Charity. They are apparently top shelf nutritionally as they're loaded with good stuff. They don't taste awful so that's a bonus. This is where volunteers get to connect for when we're working, socializing is essentially prohibitive. A future post will have details in co-volunteers but already, even at this home, we are a mini-United Nations gathering; we have representatives from Canada, United States, Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Hungary.

After break it is a mad scramble for lunch. Those that can feed themselves rhythmically mix their food with their right hands and eat away. Those that need help eating are fed by the right hands of massi's or by the spoons of internationals. My job was to feed a lady. It reminded me of growing up and watching my dad feed my siblings Farley's biscuits, pablum and fruit. My dad always did such a great job of keeping their mouths clean after every bite. I tried to do the same as I fed this elderly lady her rice and curried vegetables; it was an attempt at dignity, I suppose. She was a lunger so it was an easy task. She is also blind, I think, or close to it. It sure looked like she had at least one cataract and there was no indication that she followed visual cues. Whenever she felt the spoon on her mouth she opened her mouth wide and just went for it. I gave her a glass of water, cleaned her face and we were done.

Next comes another chaotic part: a small basin of water is passed around so they can wash their feeding hands. After that the mobile ones shuffle, literally - either standing or squatting along the ground - to their beds. Others wait to be brought to their beds. When in doubt, ask Margaret for she knows what bed number each resident is and she knows if they need to be brought or can take themselves. Many need to be brought on chairs so they're lifted from the benches to the chairs and pulled in the chairs or wheeled in the few wheelchairs. We then lift them into their beds that are close to the ground. The bed pans are brought out, used and emptied. We wipe down tables and benches, sweep the floor with a handmade broom the length of my arm (my squatting is getting really good), do dishes and we're done.