Charlie and I each had a show of our work.  Mine was poetry reading on a Friday evening, with a dinner graciously hosted by my department, The Center for Exact Humanities.  Charlies was a sculpture exhibit with the young sculptor on campus, Narasingarao.  Please accept my apologies for the current absence of pictures of his work.  They are on other people’s cameras, and may be added in the future when I get them. The exhibit lasted three days and took place in the lobby of the Guest House where Charlie and I first stayed on campus.    Though there was some attempt to publicize outside, finally everyone decided just to keep it to campus attendance. It was lovely to watch the steady relaxed stream of visitors to the show, the first ever here.  Charlie explained his work to many interested observers.

As for my poetry reading,-  it was like a party with several new friends showing up from Hyderabad.  Prema, who I’d met by happy accident when a fellow Fulbrighter came to town to visit her daughter.  Prema then invited me to do a workshop at her school.  She also made the American Library available to me when I was doing research for the speech on Poet Laureates in Salem.  Priti and Ravi Shankar came!  He’s the tall diplomate and she’s the stylish writer in copper and emerald outfit.  And Mahon Ramanan and his wife, who turn out to be neighbors here — Mahon is currently Dean of Humanities at the University of Hyderabad, and also is a former Fulbrighter to Amherst Massachusetts.  My students were delightful.  I ended up giving them the last printed copy of my chapbook when they promised to share it and then donate it to the library. 

It was a lovely finale for both of us.

We are about to leave IIIT-H in a day or so and I’ve kept you all out of the zillions of loops that are entwining us.

So I’m going to unwind a few, rather quickly so you have a quick sense of the last few months. First, I’ll throw in a picture from February of a few students chatting with Manohar Shetty after his reading.

Then, my poetry class.  I will have lots to say about this at another point. But I think pictures may say a lot.  In the last month we finally found a room that suited us — one table for all of us and Air Conditioning!! we’d been a class on the move, auditioning various rooms.  All that possible since we were actually meeting outside regular class hours, having gotten permission to conduct the class as a once a week three hour seminar.  So we had lots of choices.

I can feel the energy of the class just by seeing these pictures, but I’m not sure how much comes through to you.  In any case, I think everyone’s engagement with the work and with each other is evident in the first three pictures.  In the second, Altmish is appreciating Rini’s poem.  In the third Manav and Siddhartha are separately engaged.

What’s the lesson? The habit one must learn and learn: to be careful what one says.  It will be taken to heart.  Or to  remember the notion from the other side,  that one must be as attentive to the guest as to a god, swinging at night on a garlanded moonswept swing?

So, to say to the host,oh gosh, our apartment is so dirty, is to catapult the host, the guest and all involved, into action.

In this case, the ACTION was to ask That Man to clean it. Even though he is already many other things:

1.     He’s the one who replaces our large jug of water with water we cannot tell – is this water that comes from some company?  Is it water from the general presumably clean filtering system at the college, which, by the way, I have begun at Manoj’s suggestion to drink , in large quantities.  Anyway, sometimes, and with his rather fetching small smile, like the smile of a small creature, he anticipates our need for a new fresh bottle.  And of course, that feels good, cared for.

2.     He the one who does the ironing.  I hadn’t realized this may be a moonlighting job.  After all, he is the same one that arrives most mornings, very early, to wash down at least the first floor and our floor and the stairs and who knows, maybe all five flights and all five halls.  Who knows?  Anyway, for weeks, I didn’t realize, because couldn’t have imagined, that he is that early morning washer, and also the large heavy sheets go-between, between here and wherever the guesthouse laundry is done, as well as being the water wallah and then the late in the afternoon and deep into the evening ironer.

3.     And about this ironing: he is set up on the first floor where he has a table more or less in the afternoon shade.  On the table is a cardboard box flattened out. On the box is a strip of fabric.  This is his ironing board. 

The iron is a huge heavy thing, filled with heated coals.  The temperature these days is approximately – well today it’s cool, only 90 degrees.  He goes door to door to collect wrinkled clothes and works into the night to iron them. 

So  when our neighbor who considers herself our annointed “host” asked him to clean our apartment, there was a long interchange in Telagu.  Not necessarily a problem, since as far as I can tell, everything is a long interchange, even when  it is asking a simple yes/no question like Are you going to dinner?  Lots of rolling rollicking back and forth.  But I was slightly concerned.  And more concerned when the report from the conversation was that Daymayente would call Scrinivas, the boss.  And soon after that he, the washer, waterer, ironer, came into our house. 

It seemed like a frown to me.  It seemed to me as if he let his broom fall to the floor in a demonstrative “I’m VERY annoyed” sort of way. More, had my entitled passive observation that our floor was dirty, undone the small smiles from him that seemed finally, after weeks, more frequent?  Before, when I used to notice,  late in an afternoon, that he was there that day, the reassuring thump of the iron, and would race down with a small stack of clean wrinkled laundry, it used to be that he’d answer “No. Tomorrow. “   I’d clearly asked too late. And then for days he wouldn’t be there.  Not tomorrow. Or the next tomorrow.   There so much so unreliability that we finally bought ourselves an iron so we’d not be dependent on his whimsical appearance if we had to pack to travel.  So the agreement, lately,  to take on our laundry even late in the day, seemed a major victory in trust, not to mention reliability of ironed ready clothes. So sad to think, seeing his sullen face, that his new cordiality, that I suddenly realized I treasured, and had tried to build, was now, would now be, in a single thoughtless comment, eradicated. I never should have mentioned the dirty floor, I thought.  It wasn’t worth it.

Still, I went to Daymayenti’s apartment, my neighbor, just across the clean floor out door hall, with a unconsidered hurt. I guess I had a mixed agenda, now that I think of it.  I was embarrassed to have caused him this annoyance.  I was embarrassed that I had only stood by when he was, without my agreement, summoned to tend to my “needs.”  But, also, because I was not consulted, I felt unfairly thought to be complicit.  And blamed, chastised by his display.  So I went mostly as a hurt unfairly implicated one, almost like a child complaining of another’s unjust accusation to a comforting mother.

“He’s throwing his broom on the ground and snarling,”I practically said. I didn’t really say that.  I meant it.  But what I said was more like,”He seems upset. His broom fell loudly on the floor and he just looked at it.”

“What?!!” 

Daymayenti was instantly on the phone again, and now, in a long long harangue. 

 “No, No “said I, too lame, too quiet, too late and anyway, ignored. 

“His supervisor will come,” she hung up, concluding.

“ No,” I said again, “I don’t want him berated. “ (Of course I didn’t say “berated” I said, “blamed.”)

“ No” said she.

Our no’s collided and cancelled each other out –

“No, he should not do that.  He is not good man. The other man, young man, he is nephew to Narsingham (D’s washing person) and he is good. “

Had my little complaint resulted in two layers of his “superiors” commanding action? First to send him into our apartment, and then, to criticize his display of pique?  

By the time I returned from her apt. the nephew of her washer woman was there, quietly sweeping sweeping .  Not the slapdash who-knows-what of the former ferret.  But what of him? The washer/waterer/ironer?  Would he damage my clothes? Would he get back at me somehow? 

D explained that I was right, he was being asked to do more work for the same pay. 

“But, “said I, “he seemed happy doing the ironing.”

 “Oh yes, he is getting paid lots for that.  I give him 100 rupees for that.”

She said.  Just for perspective, remember, that is a tiny bit more than $2. 

“ But can we pay him then?” I asked hoping that money would assuage him.

“ No no no!” she was adamant. “ Maybe at festivals.  But the festivals are over now.  “No. He should just do it. “

Today I’ve heard about the path to salvation that has to do with karma – doing what you are meant to do, without attention to the outcome.  Perhaps this plays a role here….

I was abashed.   I liked the calm of the young man, and the sense that he wanted to do it well and was learning… And I felt nervous about encountering the other.

Later in the day, the doorbell rang its crazy jazzy ring – and there he stood with a bundle of clothes.  “Ironing?” He asked,miming the action.  And I did.  An armful for him.  And even a small and crooked smile.

_____________

The story has not ended. Yesterday, several ironingless days later, I asked Daymayentidevi where he was. 

“Fired.” she announced.

“Oh No!” of course, I said!  “My fault.”

“No.  I thoght it was my fault too,” she said, “but many people complained about him.”

So I went to sleep last night with that additional layer.

Now today, on our way down to breakfast on this festival day, there he was.  At the ironing table.  As if nothing had happened.

This is the way it is and shifts and is and shifts.  Softly sliding though what we would think were boundaries, into ever evolving or at least changing, temporary realities.

We were picked up by a car with THIS painted on its front window. It set the tone of exuberance.

I hope by letting you see the sequence in the title you can see that we are moving upside down, as usual. 

And I hope you also understand that these pictures are only the pictures.  They do not tell much of the story.  They do not tell what is in my mind.  They are not worth a thousand words, but they are more interesting to look at, perhaps, than words.  And they do, perhaps, let you form your own impressions, instead of always hearing mine.

  The event was a court ritual, or something like one. It began with several visits in the morning to the offices of the officials at the university who’d helped Sangeetha, or at least, who were in positions to be honored.  Each one involved an offering of tea, then cookies, or cakes. 

At 10ish we arrived in the hall - having passed giggling and beautiful collections of wide eyed college students.  Clustered like bouquets.

There followed a series of presentations including of a Souvenir Program which included pages and pages of abstracts of the papers that were to be read in the afternoon.  And quotes about poetry e.g.”Poetry is a Doctrineless Philosophy.”  Each presentation involved a small hitch in time, a stopping of it as it was photographed.  Hundreds of pictures were taken that day.  Some may come to me and so, to you.  I began to get the hang of the stopping, shaking hands, but looking at the camera, not the gift giver.  Each of us speakers, me and the two men were given books also, wrapped,  Mine is called Good as Gold.

By 11, I think, I was on - giving my first power point presentation.  I’d had a hilarious time creating the powerpoint with Devansh from IIIT-H.  Finding backgrounds for poems, arranging Elizabeth Bishop for instance so she looked out beyond the page.  Placing Kay Ryan’s Blandure, in yellow, on the Grand Canyon.  The poem balances grandure and blandure.  So I was amused and engaged. Meanwhile there was tea served to each of the 80(!!) or so members of the audience.  Tea passed delicately down the aisles as I spoke.  Also, I’d handed out pages with poems on them, so somehow they had to handle the hot little paper cups, the poems, and whatever else was on their laps. Most disconcerting.  But I soldiered on - and felt as if in spite of all the distraction, people seemed engaged.

Here’s a picture that evening at around 6pm at the end of the conference. Sangeetha is the elegant one in green. I think 25 people delivered papers plus the three of us, my keynote and the two other, very interesting papers on Canadian Laureates by Professor Josh of Kunnar University Kerala - on the effect of a Canadian garrison mentality on the poetry there.  And Prof. John Joseph Kennedy of Christ University, Bengaluru, Karnataka on the feisty Carol Ann Duffy Poet Laureate of Great Britain.  His on whether the honor constrained her previously unrepentant flamboyance. So naive I am, I was moved by the many women poets they both knew and loved.

What a greeting!

We were picked at the Bangalore airport up by a car with a peacock on it and off we drove on our adventure to Salem. The car and a million other thoughtful amenities were arranged by Sangetha, aka Dr. V. Sangeetha, Organizing Secretary for the Periyar University Department of English, Salem, Tamil Nadu.  It was not only she who invited me to be the KeyNote Speaker on U. S. Poet Laureates.  But she whose idea the Seminar was.  And she who is the head of the English Department.  And she, and her floating devoted students and exuberant friend, who made every single details, happen. 

One of the details was the welcome flowers.  A lovely bouquet for me, and one for Mr. Charlie when they welcomed us at our hotel.  And it was the perfect hotel also.  The picture of the well bedecked Ganesh which you;’ll see eventually, was honored in his own little shrine at the entrance to the hotel. 

Given her ability to be all places all the time, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t also arrange for the people we just happened to meet that night in the little restaurant. Can’t say we were initially impressed by the AC cold little pink room with it’s two pictures one of Minnie one of Mickey Mouse.  But then that was late afternoon when all we wanted was a cool drink.  By evening the place was lively with a family gathering, We Are Brahmins, they merrily announced.  Celebrating the new job of a young man.  I hope I’ve attached the photo.

Please indulge this little series.  Neither of us can help taking pictures of these enchanting creatures.  This is such a small number, really.  A few from Shantivanam the ashram I hope I will have introduced by the time you see these.  As I keep mentioning, probably unnecessarily, I still can’t figure out how to set out these posts in the order in which they happen.  This attempt will involve me posting from the end of the story of the last few days, and hoping that what happened earlier will come up first for you.

But just in case it doesn’t here is the overview.

We went to Salem to Periyar University on March 22, a day ahead of the KeyNote address I was to give at a National Seminar on Poet Laureates to the Modern World.  (I think it might be worth all our whiles to look up Periyar — who apparently accomplished major caste reform in Tamil Nadu. 

So I hope to start with some arrival pictures in Salem. 

Then the event at Periyar University on March 23.

Then our trip to the Ashram headed for many years by Bede Griffiths - a brilliant monk who has been investigating and writing eloquently about the relationship between East and Western religion. No, not just the relationship - the elucidating of each by the other, the deep enriching, the limitations of each, the enhancements of each.  Many books.  Charlie had a lot in his book shelves in New Hampshire.  We pulled them out.  They pulled us to the Ashram. We were only there one whole day and bits of another.

Then we went to Trichy - where in a slow whirlwind we saw two temples, one to Vishnu, one to Shiva and the Rock Fort with its adoration also of Shiva. 

On Monday morning, we got up early - not so early as to see the elephant parade around the temple at 6am, but early enough to wander the streets of the ancient ascent up to the Rock Fort.  The streets are premedieval.  Layers and layers of time of people living there.

So now you have an overview either before or after, which ever way it works out.!