Risk, Possibility, Beauty, and Meaning: An Absent End of the Week. (Friday, May 29th)

I felt much better when I woke up in the morning. However, the second I started moving around, showered, ate a cliff bar, and drank water, I started feeling sick again. It was too hard to predict what my body was going to do, so Mai told me to take it easy and rest for the day. Mai an Erin offered to take each of my classes, since all the kids were painting murals. I heard later that it was the most challenging day of the week. I was really disappointed because it was the last day of classes, but I guess its better than throwing up in front of the kids while trying to teach, right? (Sorry for the visual). Anyways, a few minutes later Mai came in with a strand of orange flowers, apparently one of the girls had brought it for me that morning. I melted a little inside. Apparently she was bragging to Mr. Ananthar about it all morning.

In-between classes, Akilla and Gayathri (two of the 10 year olds from my class) came to my room to see how I was doing after hearing I wasn’t feeling good. They told me they were sad I wasn’t in class today. Akilla saw that I had my necklace and flowers on the counter, and she told me to get them. She had me kneel down on the ground, and she took out my hair band, and all the bobby pins in my hair. She then pulled my hair into a pony tail, pinned the flowers around it, and pinned up loose strands of hair around my face. She clasped the necklace around my neck, then took the bindi off her forehead and placed it on mine. It matched perfectly with my orange flowers. They finished it off with a “beautiful” and “super.” I teared up a little. At that moment I wished I could bring them home with me. Little swelling hearts. One of the memories that stuck out the most.

I still wasn’t feeling good so I told them they had to go so I could lay down, but that didn’t stop them from visiting 5 or 6 additional times within 2 hours, bringing a larger group each and every time. They kept tugging on my arms to urge me outside, and I felt bad but I just didn’t feel well enough. At one point I made the mistake of showing them my new saree, and they pulled it out of the plastic and started wrapping it around me. Afterwards they called over a huge group of their friends to show. The heat was way too much too handle, and I was starting to feel woozy, so I took it off and headed into my room. The crew followed and begged me to let them inside (which was against the rules). After a lot of promises to find them later, I convinced them to go play outside.

I ventured back out at 5:00pm. Nick had a special meditation for the children, and I went to watch. Afterwards we handed out thank you’s to all the students. They were perfect. I wish I had a scanned version to put online. Maybe ill take a picture and post it later. Afterwards, we watched a film about modern art in Tamilnadu; it was really interesting. My favorite part was talking with Lakshmi Venkatraman, a gallery owner, artist, and art critic. I wish I could’ve spoken with her longer. It was one of those moments where I knew I was in the company of a powerful individual.