From Bassi Pathana to Chandigarh

We are on the 15^th of November and it’s 10 to 11 at night.

We probably just had the most home feeling evening consisting of a couch, a laptop with a very cheesy movie (I will not even name the movie as it might put me into a certain embarrassing situation), some rum, sneaked in with our connection s (thanks to Jesse’s need of nicotine) and a little candle which actually transformed the whole ambiance! And I have to admit it kind of made me homesick, mostly of our uni days when Jess and me  used to have such  cheese moments together almost every evening. The only difference is that in England at the end of the movie we did not feel like it was to warm to be wrapped around a cover but rather wished it was warmer!

It was a big contrast in relation to our pretty hectic week, where even when we thought we would not have a plan  something came up and we would find ourselves in a bus full a children dressed in their hockey nursery team joggers (very orange by the way) and going to a museum dedicated to a very important Guru, sadly I have again forgotten his name and I am quite embarrassed about this continuous forgetting of Indian names. This happened on the day of Guru Nanak’s birthday (the day after we could not join the amazingly sounding parade in honour of this Guru).  And to top this day we ended up, on the way back to Bassi Pathana, in a community kitchen. I think I will have to describe you the sequence of this whole community Kitchen ritual. When we arrived with the bus everybody took his shoes off and left them on the bus. We were told that we should cover up our head when we would enter the community kitchen, you could see how everybody tried to cover up their head in every possible way, even just with a little handkerchief they probably had per chance in their pocket. When then finally entered the community kitchen and Jess and me felt like we probably were something like a walking zoo... People were trying to speak to us in English and introduce all their family to us. What I find fascinating is how, as much as we are foreigners, as much as we are a white English French Italian spot in the middle of the rest, you do not feel like you should not be there, on the contrary, people make you feel, as if it was a pleasure for them that you are here with them. We therefore entered the community kitchen where you could see rows of people sitting on the floor and drinking tea and eating some kind of fried bread. We washed out hands and then received a metal plate with different little sectors, we were then told to go inside and have a seat on the floor like the rest of the room was doing, so that we could finally be served by people going around and continuously serving dhal, chapatti bread and vegetables 24h  each day. I believe I never saw something of this sort, something this.... you would probably call it civilized. This was one of those strange moments where I feel like crying, in the same way as I feel like crying when I see the cars stopping on the side to let the ambulance pass by... Maybe it’s a feeling of amazement in relation to what we can be.

The rest of the working week stayed pretty normal within our routine as volunteers at the trust. A  combination of teaching English, trying to teach computer basic but ending in being taught Punjabi by our students, or being continuously visited by people from the trust in our room who are always very nicely asking us if we are happy or whether we need something. It is very strange how people here just come in in your room, sit down and tell you; “please have a seat” and try to start having a conversation with you. And I am afraid we might come across as being rude and not wanting to relate with them, but sometimes they just come in at the worst moments and you just don’t know how to tell them, or probably we are afraid to tell them, that this might not be the best moment to simply sit down on our couch and try to have a conversation. But I believe we will slowly get used to this entering of the private sphere and maybe even end up inviting them for nice Italian pasta or a cup cake and a cup of tea.

But on saturday night we where put on the trust mini bus so that we could go back to Chandigarh and stay a professor’s Mejie’s house  (the so called president of the trust), we hence had a week-end with his son who took care of us for the rest of the week-end by making us experiencing a whole different Indian reality. This started by having a nice south Indian dinner with some business colleagues, which we had met before on the same day at the trust, topped with a rum and coke for Jess and a gin tonic for, which was then prolonged with white wine and more old friend and business friends. For the next day the plan was to go to the “hills” for a certain show of the Mehar Baba hockey nursery in a school, there somewhere in the hills... What really happened was a three hours car drive, with Jess feeling sick in relation to the curvy road and arriving at a altitude of aprox 2400 meters (hence I have trouble calling them hills, even if it truly does not feel like being at that height). It was the annual celebration of the school, which as every school consists in incredible creepy but extremely amusing spectacles where you ask yourself how the kids can accept to be put in such costumes and doing those dances. What happened next was probably even more crazy, as when honour prizes were given, Jess and I got called on the stage to receive ourselves a “Guest of Honour” prize, as the head master of the school found it incredible that we were here doing volunteering and hence treated us as one of her best guest to the celebration of her newly created school. We both did not know how to take this, being unsure whether we should be honoured and whether this whole thing was simply ridiculous.

Our last evening in Chandigarh seemed like a pretty relaxed evening, everybody very tired even if the professor’s son invited us to join him to go to a friend’s house. As we always do since we are here we kind of say yes , even if we don’t really know in what the night will consist. And as always what happen never is what we expect to happen.  The night therefore end in a house dinner/cocktail party surrounded by a certain Chandigarh upper society which are drinking whiskey and smoking a narguilé, while talking about more business. Jess and I probably had to drink 5 classes of whiskey if not more by the motto of “sippy sippy sippy” and end up at bed at 2 in the morning, half drunk and not truly sure about what we experienced that evening, as well as knowing that we will have to get up at seven to go back to Bassi Pathana in the trust where we teach English and try to help developing this rural area of Bassi Pathana and the surrounding villages.

I am still not sure what to make about this contrasting experiences, but what I know is that I never thought I would experience within one week two completely opposing sides of India, I never thought that I would directly experience these two environments so closely. And the only thing I can say is that I think it’s amazing! My brain is simply being filled with new realities new encounters, new cultures and new languages and every time I realises or rather conceptualise that I am here and what I am seeing, feeling and experiencing I have this strange feeling of infinite happiness going through my mind. I would never have thought that within a week I would have the possibility to experience Punjab from so near.

The problem lies in the fact that our brain is so full of thoughts, feeling and even more little experiences, but as I am not a professional writer I find trouble in condensing thoughts, therefore if I would continue to write, this article would probably double its length or even be tripled. Hence I will stop here and wish you all the best and till the next time!

Good night from Bassi Pathana!