Relativity in all things.

Posted by theglevin on August 5, 2013 · 2 Comments 

Up at 4:30. Out the door at 5. On the train at 6. Off it at 9:30. Everything is moving like clockwork. On the road by 10. Guna by 1:30. Some crazy potholes slowed us down, but we should be at JV’s in 45 minutes, until, in a flash, traffic has stopped.  The rains have caused a jam the likes of which I’ve never seen, anywhere, ever. We’re on a two lane “national highway” road that’s at a complete stand still. It’s a parking lot. I’ve done my time in LA and Joburg, I’ve seen ‘parking lots’ before, but this is literally thousands of trucks at a standstill, though I don’t know the extent of that yet. In between evasive maneuvers – driving off the road until he runs out of frontage on either side, and then miraculously slicing back through to the other – our driver asks one stranded trucker on the opposite side of the road how far the jam goes back on his side. He claims he’s been inching along for 150km. I can’t buy that and don’t, and fitfully fall asleep.

I wake up, and can’t be sure that we’ve moved. My stomach hurts. I’ve only had a few snacks today and that street food in Delhi last night was probably a mistake. I fall asleep again. The next time I wake up, we’re close, which makes sense, since the last ’45 minutes’ have now taken 4 hours. “The last mile is always the toughest in Development”, Swami says with a laugh. His ability to stay positive and lighthearted throughout this summer’s challenges has been impressive, and has helped me cope on more than one occasion. I should thank him. “Screw you Swami”.

We finally arrive at the fort, but our host will take another four hours to arrive. He’s out in the rain surveying the damage to his constituency caused by the storms of the last few days. He’ll inform us later that this is the worst flooding in the area in 55 years, and that 200 homes have been washed away. A thousand people who had homes three days ago don’t today.

While we wait for him, we reacquaint with his staff. We wave hello, and they immediately start bringing us food. Mac and cheese was a favorite last visit, so I attribute my stomach pain to hunger and dig in. Shortly thereafter I excuse myself to the toilet. Within a half hour of that trip, I’m vomiting. I don’t like vomiting, and don’t do it often. I’m troubled and feeling bad for myself. Meanwhile, a thousand people who had roofs to sit under three days ago must find shelter elsewhere tonight.

JV finally arrives, his traditional all white attire covered in mud, and knowing the villages, excrement as well.  He catches us up on the plight of his people, and we commiserate, or Swami does, until my shivering gets the best of me, I wrap myself in blankets and excuse myself for an uninterrupted, comfortable twelve hours of sleep. I don’t think twice about where those thousand people will sleep tonight.

When I wake Swami and JV are ready to get on the road, and I stay behind, feeling too weak to do much. They’ll visit some of the devastation today, and I’ll be left to eat toast, drink tea, and try to get some decent research done on a solar lighting initiative for school children that we’ve been working on. Hard to see it as a priority for the area at the moment, but it is what it is. I watch the Indian news, all Delhi and Bombay centric, no mention of the floods in Ragogarh. I flip through the copy of ‘India Today’ on the table. JV is on the cover.

As I type this, I’m sitting on a couch in JV’s sitting room, working on our proposal, and it’s surreal. There’s a man here with me, literally waiting on me hand and foot. He speaks no English and me no Hindi, which makes this all the more awkward. I left my shoes at the door, when he came in he brought them to my feet. The room was getting a little dark, so he turned on the light. I poured myself a cup of tea. Once I’d taken the tea bag out of the paper wrapper, he immediately took the trash. He is now sitting in the corner waiting for my next move. I’ve tried to let him know he can go, but it’s not working. He stays in my peripheral vision, sitting cross legged, patiently.

My ADD is in full effect, and I can only read so many stale Ngo reports at a time. I check facebook and get a message from a good friend that a nice guy I used to play basketball with, who’s been partially paralyzed for the past six or seven years, has just unexpectedly died. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in years, since we had a charity game for him in Phoenix, until he messaged me two months ago out of the blue, just saying hey. He was a nice kid, with a big smile, and now he’s gone. This calls for further distraction, I’m in no mood for reality.

After reading an article about a boom town in North Dakota from the prospective of a traveling stripper, I tried again to tell the man in the room that he was free to go. This ended with him massaging my legs, literally as I type this. Meanwhile, I’ll learn later, Swami and JV are surrounded by a few hundred devastated people, looking for consolation and answers. Swami will tell me tonight that this was one of those days that make you want to either give up on all of this entirely and call it a lost cause, or devote yourself completely as though there is no other option but to do it. Neither of us are sure where we stand.

Life is a strange, strange trip, and some days it feels like I understand less of it the more of it I live.

My summer was supposed to be spent contributing to the expansion of a small company that has been lauded for its innovative ‘pay as you go’ approach to solar power for the rural poor. Myself, Swami and Nancy were supposed to be a great fit for the company’s needs, and experience with a group that was making real strides with a market based approach to development was exactly what we were looking for. It should come as no surprise then that the first two months of the summer were somewhere between an unmitigated, and only slightly mitigated, disaster. Nothing went as it was supposed to go. Man plans and Gd laughs, and so and so forth. Did we learn from the experience? Absolutely, there’s no doubt that we did. But when the opportunity presented itself to leave 3 weeks early, we took it without a second thought. We knew that we could come back to Ragogarh and make things happen with JV’s org. We had a great solar idea for his school, and some other thoughts in the pipeline. And man plans, and Gd laughs, and a thousand people who had homes three days ago are left to start from scratch.

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