MARCH 5, 2007

Before lunch, we jeep from the fort to two remarkably different schools. The first is a magnet school, private, and geared specifically for untouchables, who in most communities would drop out of school due to the social stigma of their caste. There are learning tools, pristine classrooms, landscaped flowerbeds, fresh paint, and a very upscale feeling to the place with very dedicated teachers and great kids.

The second school we visit is an all-Muslim school. We arrive unannounced so there is a bit of explaining to be done as a few of us take over the principal’s office to stuff pencil boxes. A few older boys, teenagers, are sent to help and they are genuinely helpful and curious, with great English. I stick around in the office talking with them as we have enough people to do the worming and handing out tasks. After we distribute supplies to the student body and are leaving, I am hugged by several of the older boys who were helpers, and they ask if I can stay and talk. I wish I could, but don’t know how to get back to the fort from here. There is some quiet conversation among our group that I overhear that distresses me and is reflective of our American misunderstanding of the Muslim community. After we get back for lunch, someone in the group talks about how rewarding it was to look every Muslim child in the face so that they would know that these supplies came from America and that all Americans aren’t evil. This attitude pisses me off, having spent one of my most enlightening days in Delhi for several hours in the very intense Muslim quarter of the city. It just seems so naive to project fear or hatred onto these kids who are definitely NOT feeling it…it clearly comes from our own fear and hatred, though I know the comments came from a genuinely grateful place and the day served as a revelation to some.

The Mark Twain quote that is so overused is apt, “Travel is fatal to prejudice and bigotry.” I wasn’t aware I had a lot of prejudice and bigotry to burn off. It turns out mine is more a reverse prejudice against my own type…affluent white tourists. My patience is in the gutter for ugly Americans (not really anyone in our group, just the arrogance of tourists in general)…for the locals I have nothing but fascination and sometimes envy. When I was growing up, the most offensive thing you could call me was “faggot.” Now I think it is “Tourist.” It chaps my hide much more. Always when I travel I have an obsessive searching need for “off the beaten path” experiences, I flee obvious tourist spots like the plague. Just saying the word tourist, my lip curls into an Elvis-like, inadvertent sneer. Perhaps it is connected to and a logical continuation of my earlier passion for acting…Wanting to be completely immersed to see what another existence is like. What’s it like over there in your head? How does all of this look through your eyes? What does it sound, taste, smell, feel like? How did you grow up to get here, now? What makes you happy or harried or hurt?
Unless you are an arrogant S.O.B. demanding someone “Talk English, Damnit”…in which case I don’t want to know a thing about you, except how soon you are leaving.

After a great lunch at the fort, we walk to a Sanskrit school. It is a school holiday for these students, so many of the kids are at home, but there are still some here. We leave supplies and medicine for those who are absent.

In the late afternoon we go for a short ride, maybe three hours. It is our last ride, and I am incredibly sad. We stick together as a large group and do some cantering—more than the Zen group had managed before, and less than the Impatient Ones, no doubt—it feels great to have a ride with all of us together, and I think everyone had a good time. My back has been killing me lately, and on this ride it is excruciating (I learn when I get home that I have a herniated disc) but wish we could go on and on for many more days. It kills me to say goodbye to Ujju, and I will think of her and of Manisha so often, feeling so lucky to have had these amazing partners for this journey.

We get back to the fortress, and I am feeling lousy. As the sun sets and we are drinking chai, I am achy and sore. I begin to shiver uncontrollably though I don’t feel particularly cold. Then the chills set in and I shake even more, teeth chattering. I excuse myself and go to my room, having trouble making it up the ramps to the second floor and opening the padlock on my door with the tremors that are manifesting. I take a hot shower and lie down for a bit. At dinner time I go down to the interior courtyard and just order water from the bar—this signals everyone something is clearly wrong if Andrew isn’t having a drink! I ask Rebecca to convey my regrets for dinner, and tell her I won’t lock the big wooden doors to my room in case anyone needs to get in, but I have to go to bed.

I get back to the room and put on more layers of clothes, sweats over pants and more shirts, and climb under the covers. My body hurts everywhere and I cannot get warm. I don’t remember a time I’ve felt so painfully feverish in my life. I actually take one of the thin mattresses off of the two single beds pushed together to make a King, and pull it over me as another thick layer. Barry checks in and Alexander brings Salim up to my room to see if he can bring me food. I am incredibly touched if not incredibly hungry. I ask for just white rice. Barry and Salim return with rice and some other food that I pick at. They head down to the group and I begin one of the longest nights of my life. I sleep fitfully, tossing and turning, impossible to get comfortable—it feels like I am sleeping on boulders, freezing cold boulders. Evidently I drift off, for when I wake it is getting light out, and I have soaked sweat through the many layers of clothes and the blankets. I am drenched, but feel remarkably better. It feels a bit like a miracle to me as in some of my feverish dreams, I was convinced it was all over. I had malaria or typhoid or god knows what. In my fever dreams I thought about getting up to write a note to Bob to leave behind since I figured I may not ever make it home, but couldn’t find the headlamp/flashlight that I had dropped and kicked under the bed as I reached around in the dark with one frozen arm out from under the blankets. Drama, drama, drama.