Shanti Dan

Shanti Daan

On Monday morning, we commandeered one of the many rickshaw wallas outside of our hotel to take us to the Mother House for breakfast and to meet up with our fellow volunteers. While I was not too comfortable with the idea of this thin, barefoot Indian man having to pull us through the streets of Calcutta, I also did not want to walk around lost all morning being constantly asked if I wanted a ride by the innumerable rickshaw wallas on the way. It seemed the easiest way to avoid them all, was to take one up on his offer. So we did.

The Mother House was only a few blocks over on the next main thoroughfare, but instead of walking all the way around as we had the previous week, our 'driver,' obviously well used to the route from Sutter Street to the Mother House, took a route that twisted and turned through nameless narrow streets teeming with early morning life. As he pulled us through the streets, I tried to suppress the cognitive dissonance that arose from being pulled along in a cart by another human being, by thinking about how I would ever be able to describe the scenes around us in mere words. Since taking pictures would be even more appalling behavior than the riding alone, I began taking mental notes of things as we past them by - the rutted streets littered with the thin orange pieces of pottery left from discarded tea cups, big, yellow 50's era taxi's jostling for a position on the road between rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians; chai Walla's setting out their cups for the morning rush; mothers in brightly colored sari’s leading small uniformed children by the hand; men in traditional Indian cloth wraps performing their morning toilet around public fountains in full view of all passersby; goats tethered to posts stretching their necks to make a morning meal of whatever had been left out on windowsills overnight. Everywhere you looked there was something to see, as if the walls had come down, allowing you a view of family life from the streets.

We arrived shortly at the Mother House where we found about 40 to 50 other volunteers in a courtyard sitting in small groups or lined up for their morning tea and bananas. After our brief breakfast, I found the group going to Shanti Dan and headed off with them to catch a bus across the street The other volunteers were a girl in her early 20’s from England and two women in their early thirties from Spain. We joined a throng of people waiting at the bus stop and I watched the sea of traffic around us until one of the girls announced the arrival of our bus.

Because Indian woman do not go out alone or, presumably, often take public transportation, the percentage of men on the bus far outweighed the female. It appeared that there were seats set aside for women and we joined the few women on the bus on a bench facing the other side of the bus. As the bus made its way to Shanti Dann, I watched as the streets of Calcutta whizzed by in a blur, punctuated by stops as the old bus slowed to allow passengers to jump and off on before taking off again. My stomach began to balk at the jerky motion of the bus, I found that if I stared at the sunlight coming up through the cracks in the wooden planks that made up the floor of the bus, I could ease my queasy stomach.

That morning, my intense gaze at the floor was interrupted by the emergence of a man who began motioning to one of the other volunteers in a way that struck me as somewhat peculiar. She turned and introduced me to the man, who, it turned out, was a mute and was quite well known by all the local volunteers. I wound up having a brief ‘conversation’ with the man and running into him various times throughout our week in Calcutta. His presence and cheerful wordless expression of joy at our meetings added an interesting feeling of familiarity to the city.

When we got off the bus, we walked about a mile down the road to Shanti Dan, which is housed in a multi-building compound behind a high concrete wall. The main building was a two-story building with an open-air sidewalk surrounding an inner courtyard about an eighth of an acre. We walked in the door and were immediately greeted by woman of upper middle age shouting, “Auntie, Auntie.” The more outgoing of the bunch came up and grabbed our hands and smiled up at us repeating, “Auntie, Auntie;” Others carefully ventured an English greeting and wished us a “Good Morning;” while still others sat where they were and made no indication that they were even aware that we had arrived.

During the first morning, I tried to make myself useful and wound up, instead, wandering around feeling quite helpless. Only one of the 30 or so women spoke English, the majority of them being native Bengali speakers, the language of Bangladesh and some of southeastern India, so it was difficult for me to gauge their mental capacities. When they spoke to me, I didn’t know if they were actually asking me a legitimate question or if they were simply speaking to speak not knowing I couldn’t understand. I soon found myself a job helping to change the sheets on the beds and kept busy for a little while.

After changing the sheets, I took a walk around the courtyard looking for another task. Many of the women were simply lying on the cement ground curled up in the fetal position or splayed out in the sun. Others were seated along the benches staring out into space or simply looking around without much to do. It did not seem like a very enjoyable existence, but it may have been much better than had they been out on the streets. Finally, feeling completely useless, I went up to one of the other volunteers and asked her if there was anything she could suggest for me to do. She told me that a lot of the woman enjoyed having their nails painted and showed me where I could find an old bottle of lavender nail polish.

As soon, as I walked out with the nail polish in my hands, I had a line of customers wanting their nails done. After the first few women, it was obvious that nail painting was a common occurrence at Shanti Daan. Each woman would sit down next to me and hold out a work-worn hand with nails covered with multiple layers of chipped polish. Not having any polish remover, I simply painted over the old polish. After I was finished with their hands, a few of the women asked me to paint their toenails. I bent down at their feet, and taking their often twisted and bent feet in my hands, did my best to give them colorful nails. I am not a religious person, but in those moments, I thought about what I had learned about Jesus washing people’s feet and realized just how important that must have been to show that he was no better than anyone else and that he valued each person equally. Of course I may be remembering this wrong, but it was still a powerful experience for me.

The following day, I returned, having bought bright red nail polish and nail polish remover. My lines were even longer and I often found myself removing the lavender polish I had applied the day before to paint newly cleaned nails with bright red polish. Although I didn’t feel that I was being of any real help, I did enjoy spending time with the ladies and they seemed to enjoy the attention as well.

The following day, my last at Shanti Daan, we arrived to find the women all dressed up in identical dresses and laden with jewelry. We inquired of the nuns of the house and learned that it was the anniversary of Mother’s Theresa’s establishment of her charities in Calcutta and that all the women had gone to mass. That day, one of the other volunteers gave me a tube of henna, and having just had my hands done the previous day, I set about drawing henna designs on any willing hand. Again, I had a long line of customers.

Although I only spent three days at Shanti Daan and don’t feel that I was of much help one way or another, I am grateful for the experience.