who is my mother?

the first thing i did when i got home last night was wash the urine off my face.

there was urine in my hair, too.

i could smell it as i walked down the street and as i sat in the auto rickshaw. there was a trace of urine in my hair, too. could other two passengers, squished on either side of me on the back seat, smell it, i wondered? or had it faded? did i just imagine that i smelled it because i knew it was there?

first thing in the door, i headed to the sink. the hair would have to wait until shower time.

are you my mother?

did you ever read the disconcerting children’s book, are you my mother? it was the first book that made me cry. i was quite young at the time and unsuspectingly pulled it from a stack of dr seuss books, and so i was expecting something like hop on pop — “hop pop, we like to hop. we like to hop on top of pop!” — not the heart-rending story of a little tiny bird who has lost his mother and can’t find her anywhere.

back when i first read that book, my own sweet and kind mother was just a few feet away. what a comfort. and today is mother’s day. i miss my mom; she passed away seven years ago. even more i miss my dear dad, who passed away just last october.

but because this is mother’s day weekend, somehow it seems necessary to sit down and tell you about the woman i encountered last night.

the mickey mouse sheet

you see, last night i was in garia bazaar. i had an important errand to run, and having accomplished that errand, i had a few minutes for an ice cream cone. this was not my first ice cream from the little shop, and the young fellow who scooped it for me smiled at me and complimented me on my bengali language skills and then insisted on giving me his blue plastic stool. he set it out on the sidewalk and commanded me to sit, and then he stepped a few feet away and lit up a bidi cigarette.

garia bazaar is a wild and noisy place. pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, busses, taxis, and private cars all rushing somewhere and competing for space on the crowded street. i sat and ate and watched kolkata go by. and then a woman trudged into view. she was oldish, but not ancient. her hair still dark and pulled back. and she was wearing — not a sari or a shawl but instead — a child sized mickey mouse bed sheet. and this mickey mouse bed sheet was filthy. a special kind of filthy. not fell-in-the-mud filthy, but a grimy sweat and oil and stink and dirtiness that requires a lengthy span of time of eking out and sleeping in the basest level of existence kind of filthy.

i told myself i would run after that woman

i took a bite of my yummy chocolate ice cream cone. it was melting fast. the woman stopped for a moment, she was just fifteen feet away and had something in her right hand. and as i sat there and looked at the woman wrapped up in the filthy mickey mouse sheet, i told myself i would run after that woman and find her and give her some money.

she shuffled down the street, i finished my cone, paid for it. pulled a hundred rupee note out of my wallet, and took off after the woman. she hadn’t gone far. the man who sells padlocks and lengths of rope scolded her and told her to shove off.

the young man in the next stall was repairing an umbrella as its owner waited. the umbrella repairman, too, angrily told her to move along and his customer scowled. and when she turned around, she saw me. i noticed she had a very small cup of chai in her right hand — a paper cup barely bigger than a thimble — and the milky tea sloshed over her fingers, and she reeked of urine.

who is my mother?

i held out the hundred. her left hand found its way from under the filthy mickey mouse sheet and took the money. in a loud voice she began to speak to me in bengali. she had very few teeth and her eyes were hard and soft and desperate and grateful. she transferred the tiny sloshing cup of chai to her left hand, and with her right hand she wetly stroked first my right cheek and then my left cheek and then my hair in a blessing that i didn’t understand. and then she said something in bengali i did understand.

she said, “you are my daughter.”

when i walked away, i wanted to cry. i have so much.

who is my mother?

thank you thank you thank you everyone who supports me in this endeavor. you pray for me. you encourage me, you put money in my hand so that i can do this project, and i am grateful.

the big fight

“survivor girl ukulele band 2017 — back to kolkata again!!” is my third six-month stint teaching ukulele in a shelter home for rescued girls in kolkata, india, and i’m trying to pick up more of the language here, which is bengali. the beautiful bengali script looks like this:

আপনি কেমন আছেন? আমার নাম লরি. আমি বুঝতে পারিনি.

translation: how are you? my name is laurie. i have no idea what you just said.

doraemon in bengali

one of my new language learning tools is an episode of the japanese doraemon cartoon show. not only has the episode been dubbed into bengali, it also has english subtitles — which is super useful. now at my disposal are these lovely phrases:

khub maja! — very delicious!

eta ashambhab! — that’s impossible!

deka hobe! — see ya!

tears fell and two girls quit the band

monday started off not well. after sunday’s successful survivor girl ukulele band performance for the swedish ambassador at large for combatting human trafficking, something changed for the worse. there was a disturbance in the band.

at first i tried to keep calm and carry on, ignore the drama and hope that the few unhappy girls would soon snap out of it. that didn’t work.

“what’s going on?”  i said in bengali.

“nothing.”

“what happened?”

“nothing.”

no one was ready to talk, but hot tears fell and two girls quit the band.

classes continued throughout the week; so did the drama.

friday morning those two girls quietly came into the room, sat on the floor, and joined the class. and when the class was over, those two girls remained. sami*, a senior student from last year and kalini*, a relative newcomer.

sami* has maybe a fifth standard education. kalini* recently graduated the tenth standard. sami works at her ukulele skills, but she’s an average player who struggles to stay on a beat while kalini focuses her practice and perfects her ukulele skills and has a great sense of timing. she picks up new things so quickly that she has surpassed everyone else in the room with her prowess. oh, and she sings, dances, and writes poetry. i’m not kidding.

kalini apologized to sami and wanted to be friends again, but sami wasn’t ready to forgive.

then one day we had a big fight

and as i sat there, i traveled back in time to my own teenage years, to the many times that i fought with my twin sister. we were skilled in the art of fighting and could fight to the finish about anything.

then one day we had a big fight. a huge fight. it was the hugest fight ever.

and the strangest thing happened. after eighteen years of fighting and competing, we both realized that at the bottom of our troubles was the fact that we each felt lesser than the other. my sister was prettier, smarter, funnier, more talented, more popular, more creative, more tan, more lovable than me. more worthy than me. and she had better hair.

twin sisters — summer of ’84

you’re probably looking at this picture and saying, they’re almost exactly alike! how silly!! but it wasn’t silly at the time. and so i told sami and kalini about my sister and me. and told them that even now i find myself comparing myself to others.

i try to stay off that path, but when i do go down it, i think: who am i to do this survivor girl ukulele band? who am i to come all the way to india and try to do this ukulele thing?

i told her that she had a choice. to travel down the path of negative thoughts and anger and fighting or to choose another way. choose to look at the gifts that she has, which are many, choose a path of joy and friendship, and forgive herself for not being the best.

but what to do when you are stuck in that dark place? i told her sometimes you just have to ask for help. and i already knew the bengali words for that because we say it every day in our meditation:

i am intelligent.

i am brave.

i can do this.

lord, please help me.

and so we said those words again together in bengali, repeating the last line:

prabu, amake sahajo korun!! 

sami and kalini are back to being friends. and my sister and i have been best friends ever since that big huge fight.

this is a wild job. some days i fail spectacularly, but in that failure and weakness, there is always enough grace to find an opportunity for forgiveness and growth.

and thank goodness i don’t have to have it all figured out. that’s part of the adventure! plus lots of people have joined survivor girl ukulele band. they let me stay at their house, they give me money to meet my expenses, they give me ukuleles, they like my facebook posts, and they play benefit concerts and they uke it forward™ for me — family, friends, and people i haven’t even met from all over the world.

dhanyabad, dhanyabad, dhanyabad! — thank you thank you thank you!

for joining the band.

*names have been changed.

from kala brand music studios in petaluma california!!!

laurie kallevig talks about survivor girl ukulele band — click here for the video!!

this was taped summer 2015. i’m headed back to kolkata december 30th. stay tuned!!

upcoming benefit concert — november 15th!!! see you there!!

this year’s survivor girl ukulele band benefit concert is going to be the best ever!!

what a lineup! brad colerick, tom corbett, bliss bowen john o’kennedy with eric kufs, and heidi swedberg with daniel ward. surprise guests and a special performance by pastor briant cuffy.

and a free yummy dinner hosted by bethany church of sierra madre and post-concert reception. wowowow!!

and i’ll give a short update about my most recent six months at sanlaap shelter home in kolkata india.

to rsvp for the dinner please contact sharon hannah at sharonhan@earthlink.net.

see you there!!

living in kolkata — city of joy!! part one

have you ever tried to imagine what it is like living in kolkata? this post is long overdue, especially for those who have yet to travel in a developing country. so finally, here goes!

let’s start with the weather. because the weather is a major player in my life here in kolkata. a very small portion of my time is in air that is conditioned.

kolkata weather

the photo pretty much tells it all:

97 degrees and feels like 119 degrees. (and for my celsius friends: 36 degrees and feels like 48 degrees).

when i arrived in kolkata in january, the mornings and evenings were lovely sweater weather. but that ended long ago, and now the hot and humid has come to stay. that is until the monsoon arrives. there’s no air conditioning here at sanlaap, but there are ceiling fans, which help a lot, and i deal with the weather just like everyone else. when the sun starts to dip toward the west, a little haze eases the scorch, and the temperature drops a degree or two. i made it through another day in kolkata … sweaty and sticky all day and then a bucket shower before bed.

“tomorrow is forecast to be warmer than today”? bring it on!!

my digs at sanlaap shelter home

i have a room at sanlaap india’s shelter home in outskirts of kolkata. here’s the working girls’s hostel, which houses girls who are reintegrating into society and have jobs. my room is on the ground floor.

home sweet home

here’s my room before:

and after.

i like what i’ve done with the place, don’t you?

screens on the windows are rare here, so the mosquito net not only looks cool, it’s super handy for getting a good night’s sleep and keeping the mozzies at bay.

the working girls’ hostel is one of the newest buildings on the campus, and thus i have one of the newest bathrooms. in this photo you can see the bucket water heater that was lovely to have in january. it is collecting dust nowadays. the kitchen doesn’t have much in it, but that’s ok, as i get my meals from the main kitchen in another building.

a long cobra snake

the sanlaap campus is swept clean every morning, occasionally a long cobra snake is seen crossing yonder in front of my building. yikes.

saw a huge bengal monitor lizard and nearly jumped out of my skin

the grounds even have a cement pond. not the kind you would go swimming in, but it is lovely to look at, especially at sunset. i have yet to see the bengal monitor lizard that frequents the pond, but i’ve seen others in my neighborhood.

the first time i saw one — a huge bengal monitor lizard!! — i was on a bicycle rickshaw and nearly jumped out of my skin. i said, “ohh!” and my rickshaw wallah said, “ohh!”

my hand was still on my thumping heart, and again i said, “ohh!” and the wallah said, “ohh!” this continued until i calmed down.

on my way to the city

i teach ukulele five days a week, and i live quite far from the center of kolkata. when i first arrived here, i wondered if i would ever learn my way even out to the main street. my first forays to the city had a steep learning curve. but now that i know my way, why not come along for the adventure and see what i see.

the first leg of the trip is a fifteen minute walk. when the sun starts going down is when people come out of their homes and enjoy the few degree drop in temperature.

this couple has a little sundries business not far from sanlaap. aren’t they cute?!

and sometimes they open up the neighboring shack for his clothing repair business.

on the banks of the same pond, these lovely ladies sit out every evening.

next along the way these boys sometimes play caroms. caroms is huge in india, and these guys are amazing shots.

 transport

if i’m lucky, after fifteen minutes on the dusty trail, there’s a bicycle rickshaw available to take me the rest of the way to the main road. its a bumpy and spine-tingling ride.

sidewalks are rare in this neck of the woods.

when i get to the main road, very often an auto-rickshaw is waiting for one or more additional passengers. the autos here are all shared, with three or more people squished in the back, and two passengers riding in the front, snuggled close to the driver. then its a chicken-playing, swerving and braking hair-raising close-shaving life-before-your-eyes-flashing wild ride to garia bazaar.

from garia bazaar i can catch another auto-rickshaw or the metro train or a taxi. (but more about all that in part two!)

 food and drink in kolkata

weekend trips to the city include a stop for a cold coca-cola at raj’s in garia bazaar. the cooks are often shirtless, and were very good sports about getting their photo taken with me.

the street food is delicious.

this tea stand has been here a while. who needs starbucks?!

these little roadside shops look so great at night, don’t they? i often stop at this one on my way home for a little snack to bring back to my room.

i love living in kolkata! it’s hot and sweaty and wild and frizzy — and one day i got color all over my face, but it’s such a privilege to work with the girls at sanlaap, teaching them ukulele and sharing your love that i rarely miss the luxuries of being back home in the usa.

i hope from these photos you can get a little sense of what it’s like to live in kolkata. lots of bad things happen in this city, but lots of good things happen too — and i like to think of one of them is survivor girl ukulele band! thank you thank you thank you for supporting this project financially, through your love and friendship, and through telling a friend about survivor girl ukulele band.