I’ve been thinking I needed to somehow bring closure, to at least this phase of the Maggamouse Blog for a few weeks now, certainly since I returned to the UK from India, probably a week or two before that even. After all, the dates would have lined up quite nicely if I could have published some kind of departing summary on the day I left. Job done. Case closed. Box ticked. Moving on. Next, please! I decided not to write about my last couple of weeks in Nagpur while still there though. In the few remaining days I had left, it seemed rather wasteful not to spend as many of those hours as possible actually being with eople, rather than in front of a laptop writing about being with them.

In theory, there’d have been nothing stopping me from writing this in the days immediately after my arrival in England of course. I could have done it a lot sooner than nearly 5 weeks later. The henna stains on my nails have grown a good half centimetre closer to the clippers since then and the tan line between my toes from my recently spurned flip-flops is barely visible anymore. I’ve distributed all the homecoming presents, I’ve served all the Indian meals I’ve learned to prepare. More than once. I’ve shared the biggest, most obvious titbits of ‘and then this happened!’ or ‘but of course it’s different in India!’, and I’ve almost stopped saying ‘ha’ instead of ‘yes’. The affirmative sideways head wiggle I realised I’d begun to subconsciously mimic, appears to have faded and yesterday, I took the plug socket adaptor out of the bottom of my bag. Later, I might even fish the old Indora to Bhilgaon bus tickets out of my wallet, though if I’m honest, it’s not due to a reluctance to litter that I keep stuffing the Nagpur INOX cinema ticket back in my coat pocket when if falls out with my hanky. An older version of normality is slowly reasserting itself, as if I was uninstalling updates to my operating system, one at a time. Writing about an increasingly distant experience was indeed becoming ever harder to find the motivation for, like a shore line becomes less photogenic as the boat sails on.

It was just as well his advice resonated with me. What with Hardware and Networking revision classes, the exams themselves, Tally practice and exams, MS-CIT resits, and even educationally unrelated things such as random centre closures for city elections, there was far less formal classroom time available than I had anticipated, even when taking ‘the unexpected’ in to account. It would have been very easy to worry about this and feel I was not providing what I had been asked to deliver, but, with Mark’s words in my mind and a few reassuring emails from Shakyajata, I was able to relax, let go a bit and respond flexibly to the reality, rather than agonise over the unrealised planning. We did, in the end, do enough. We did some work on CVs and we wrote, reviewed and typed some personal statements. We talked about how to find and apply for a job, we filled in some practice application forms, talked about black ink and ‘block caps’ and what N/A means. We chatted about how to prepare for and give a good interview, we briefly role played answering some daft questions. And then, around those shreds of ‘teaching’, we had fun. We enjoyed spending time together, and I finally, finally, eased off my expectations of what people might expect of me (which they probably didn’t anyway) and gently let go of the ‘professional’ conditioning that says you don’t socialise or share things with students. I then began a concerted effort to wring every last drop of these things out of the rapidly evaporating hours.

I went to market to buy groceries with the girls. I asked them to alter a sari for me and teach me how to wear it, as in actually get dressed myself. I was finally brave enough to sample their strange deep-fried biscuits and I let them paint my feet, Bihar style with pink alta. They painted my nails and drew ornate designs up my arms with henna. I didn’t get to run the ‘positive body image’ tutorial work shop I had started to plan, but I did have dinner with them and when I established that the conversation had run into areas such as ‘but you are fat and she is skinny’, I adlibbed a rather poetic series of rhetorical questions about whether a tiny, delicate jasmine flower was more beautiful or valuable than a soft, voluptuous rose, (and anyway didn’t they both smell just as fine?), before standing, hooking my rice-and-chapatti replete belly out of my salwar and pinching my gut up and down to make my belly button mouth along to my loud exclamation ‘I’m proud to be me!’ “Good example, Ma’am!” Hemlata commented, when the company had finished dissolving into fits of giggles. I realised I didn’t know, until I actually spent time with her, that her English had got so good. Of course it wasn’t all about the pleasure of receiving their hospitality. I devised, sourced and prepared an ‘English Style’ picnic, with cucumber sandwiches (crusts off!), peanut butter (on brown) and strawberry jam tarts. I don’t think I’ve ever put so much effort in to planning a ‘cultural awareness tutorial’ as I did into working out how to cook jam tarts without an oven. I introduced them to Marmite, but no one really thanked me for that. After about 15 minutes of trying to persuade Madhu that yes, I really had made all this ‘gourmet cuisine’ myself, I finally asked why she was in such disbelief. “Because she didn’t believe anyone would go to so much trouble for them” was Sheetal’s translation of her sadly moving reply. Half choked with pathos, half cresting the wave of appreciation, the next day I spent 3 hours scouring various supermarkets and ‘expat shelves’ and on our final night together, I cooked them a pasta party with spaghetti Bolognese, tomato penne, a pasta-bow salad, garlic bread (read garlic toast, I did my best), a green salad and a summer pudding. Sort of. As much as you can prepare a summer pudding without summer fruits. I probably spent about six times as much cash on that feast than I spent on an entire 5 months of photocopying and printing class resources. I lived in the same house as the girls of course, so it was easier to spend more time with them and the boys drifted off in dribs and drabs as they returned one here, two there to their home villages to sit the government exams required of them in their own states. There was time for those who remained; however, and it was thanks to the men, not the women (no stereotype enforcement here!), that I now know how to cook poha (flattened rice flakes cooked with potato, tomato and chilli) for breakfast and can just about prepare a batch of chapattis (I’ve stopped setting fire to them now). We chatted a lot about the Dharma. I bought them expensive coffee. I took them to Pizza Hut (Hey, my dad used to work for Pizza Hut, it’s practically in my genes!). We walked round town and went on the swings (who can get the highest!?) and visited the science museum to sit through a ‘planetarium show’ that turned out to be a very poor computer animation of some under the sea scenes in a rundown theatre of a battered, ancient exhibition centre that still had displays heralding the arrival of the internet.

When the students had all finally departed, I then spent time with the family I’d lived with that whole time. Sheetal and I went shopping, bumping up and down on the back of her scooter for the last few times. We visited the Deekshabhoomi to say ‘goodbye’ to Babasaheb’s stupa. We splashed around at a water park that resembled an aquatic version of those photos you see of the abandoned fun fair in Chernobyl. We went for more expensive coffee. I tried to make cookies on the hob; I made flat scones. Everyone agreed the jam tarts were better. I made a ‘Chinese’ that ended up having too much chilli in it even for Aryaketu and Ojas. I thought it was fine. I finally tried to make bread in a pressure cooker with the yeast we bought about a week after I arrived. The cows enjoyed a rather stodgy breakfast. What I learned (as well as just thoroughly enjoying my final fortnight) was that you can’t formalise real sharing. You can’t prescribe or manipulate a genuine connection. It is not possible to ‘plan and deliver’ that ‘content’, you just have to be. You simply have to be content to be you, with others; as interested and accepting of their version of the mundane as you are willing to spend time demonstrating and exemplifying yours. It’s not in the heights of academic discourse that we exhaust the limits of our commonality. We bond over the hilarity of the failed bread and we forge friendships in a dripping heap at the bottom of rickety old water slides as we share stories about summers long gone, before we learned to be scared of the foreigners. So much of that flies in the face of what I’ve been trained to do. It took me five and a half months to unlearn that when a student is crying, they must under no circumstances be hugged. It took me nearly my whole stay to remember that the best teachers are the ones who are confident enough to say ‘I don’t know the answer to that question. But I’ll show you how we can both find out.’ I still feel like a slightly suspicious and potentially untrustworthy liability when I accept a student’s friend request on Facebook. But why? We are, after all, friends. It strikes me as somewhat significant that I am gradually letting go of all this interventionist and ultimately well-meaning but fundamentally dehumanising policy against a background of heightened awareness of the need for safeguarding in the Triratna community. The movement has recently been re-engaging with a history of controversy, allegations of abuse and openly admitted failings in the backstory of a (very young) order that are now resulting in discussions around how to protect the vulnerable and challenge those who would manipulate them. Yet again I find myself realising that in this, as in all things, it is a question of balance. We must accept and address our human potential to fail, to mess up, to hurt each other, but please, never let this be at the cost of the genuine expression of honest, wholesome, friendship and affection.

So that, as they say, was that. That’s a potted summary of the final fortnight of my twenty two weeks in India. But can I give a meaningful summary of my key experiences? Can I provide an insightful reflection from the perspective of my homecoming? Honestly? I don’t know where to start. Nothing’s scared me more in recent weeks than the enthusiasm of friends who ‘can’t wait to hear all about it!’

Finally (you’ll be pleased to know), and with some surprise, since coming home, I’ve learned that sometimes the little personal or domestic ‘duties’, the changes we can make close to home are every bit as revolutionary as the stuff we do that stretches over continents and demands answers from global superpowers. Before I left for India, I had been staying with my (almost 84 year old) bachelor great uncle, indeed, I published a poem and a new series of photos of his home shortly before I went. He supported me with a couple of rent free months and a place to store all the junk I couldn’t quite bring myself to give away or chuck in a charity shop while I was gone. Two weeks before I flew back, he was taken into hospital and so what I had anticipated as a rather roomy period of time to vaguely drift about the country visiting all the friends I’ve been promising to drop in on for years as I tried to postpone a sense of obligation to ‘settle back down’, instead became a short, sharp return straight to his house, where I have been ever since. My time has been concerned with helping him keep track of his medication, and assisting him with liaising between the different agencies that are tasked with supporting his independent recovery in his own home. I’ve been helping, in return for somewhere to live, of course, with basic domestic needs and I’ve taken responsibility for trying to coax a severely diminished appetite back into existence with creative applications of mayonnaise, strategically placed digestives and deliberately timed Cup-a-Soups. The ‘get a cheap tent and walk round the UK because I can’t afford the travel’ plan was probably never a very good one anyway, though in hindsight, it probably wasn’t one of my craziest. Sure, helping round the home of someone with the frayed temper of one in constant pain for whom I normally have to repeat sentences at least 3 times, isn’t always reminiscent of a Butlins Holiday Camp, but I’m very, very happy to be doing it and I’ve been somewhat saddened by the surprised response of those who seem to view it as some kind of martyrdom or heroism on my part. Here is a human being, whom I happen to love and care for, who has helped and supported me, who now needs my help and support. I do not have any commitments or responsibilities that I cannot flex around meeting these needs. Why wouldn’t I do all I can to facilitate this? Perhaps it’s because I’m fresh from a country where this would never be a problem because families literally live three generations to a roof that it seems strange to question it, but I think it’s a sad symptom of a society increasingly fractured into selfish and insular units that value the hedonistic ‘me, me, me’ quick-fix, excite-and-move-on fast track, disposable gratification lifestyle, that so many people consider caring for your elderly relative to be something even worth remarking upon. So I am being the change I want to see in the world and I am quietly getting on with a private revolution in what might appear to be a conservative but has apparently now become an alternative lifestyle.

And so that was the end of the course. The increasingly distant completion of my time trying to teach English in India and my reflections upon it. It wasn’t a fixture in a diary, it wasn’t a note on a calendar. It came like the fading out of a ballad or a short film fogging away into the mist of a blank screen. It didn’t really happen, it just gradually drifted from future tense, to present perfect progressive, to future perfect progressive and then, simply past. See, I did learn some grammar. (Nah, I lied, I had to look that up.) I was sort of aware of this process, of course, and aware that I should be feeling emotional about it all somehow, this slow, slipping away. In India, people generally live much more up against their own emotions, or at least there’s an expectation that one should be quite clear about demonstrating these in certain contexts. My Stiff British Upper Lip didn’t quite get with all the weepy-wailing on several occasions and left me feeling as though I was somewhat cold or lacking. When I waved goodbye to Shakyajata for example, unlike all the students waving her off, I didn’t cry. When I said goodbye to Mark and left him at his farewell dinner with the rest of the young men he’d been living with, I certainly didn’t cry. Actually, I think I punched him on the arm before shouting ‘you smell anyway!’ and running out of the crowded restaurant only to emerge through a bush moments later on the other side of the window where he was sitting and treating him to my finest piggy nose on the glass. Well, I never pretended my expressions of affection were particularly ‘normal’. Sure, I felt a little uncomfortable saying goodbye to our young women’s community and since they all left on the same day, their absence left a palpable vacuum, but I didn’t cry. I wished the departing members of the men’s community good luck for the future with firm handshakes all round, but I didn’t cry. The morning I left the family home, the moment I waved goodbye at the airport, I felt a tug of detachment. But I didn’t cry.

24 hours later, I landed in Manchester on a cold, grey, Saturday dawn and stood on the ‘UK border’. How you can have a border in the middle of a suburban airport, I have no idea but still, I stood under the signs for it with my passport in hand and I didn’t cry. Later, I met my friends, I went to the Manchester Buddhist Centre, I found and hugged (broadly speaking) my ‘original’ Sangha; I didn’t cry. Still later that day, another farewell, to Manchester for London, on a Virgin train. I didn’t cry.

Neha is the youngest of three sisters but also has a younger brother. This is significant and the family stops here for a reason. As with many traditional Indian families, her father, if not her mother, was waiting for a boy. What might in other circumstances have been a joyous occasion therefore lacked celebration, in fact ‘Papa’ was so disappointed to have yet another daughter that he became angry with her ‘Mama’ and refused to even see Neha for a month after her birth, professing hate for the new arrival. It’s of no surprise that Neha goes on to reflect on her childhood as ‘not very happy’.
Despite the controversy of her gender, she says she did feel loved at home, though I personally think this is little more

At the end of 6th standard, Neha was ill at the time of her exams and she failed. Papa was very angry and decided she would spend the summer going to work with him as a punishment for poor studies. The cycle rickshaw he used was heavy and he was weakened by drinking. Neha’s job was, therefore, to walk behind the cart and push. This was not a passenger vehicle, as he now operates, but a goods service and unfortunately, his main occupation was delivering alcohol to bars, perhaps not how he developed an alcohol addiction in the first place, but certainly not helping him recover from it. Mama found work as a cleaner, going door to

By this time, Papa had not just allowed his discovery of Buddhism to improve his own life, he’d shared it with his whole family, who were now all practicing. Neha didn’t take long to fully embrace the opportunity to become more involved in the Dhamma either and became a Mitra of the Triratna order in 2010. She requested ordination in 2016. In 2011, her hard work finally paid off. She heard from her brother in law of a vacancy for a graphic designer at Lord Buddha TV, an alternative news channel based in Nagpur that broadcasts across the whole of India. After taking her show reel to interview, she was offered the job, a role she still more than fills, frequently spilling over into a myriad of peripheral duties with her multiple talents. It’s hard to imagine someone more dedicated to their employment, especially when the small organisation does not always have a smooth cash flow to enable timely payment of salaries. This is more than a job to Neha though; it’s not just an opportunity to engage in her creative passions either. Far more importantly than that, it is a way of helping to spread the word of the Dhamma and help others find ways to ease their own suffering. After all, such teachings affected a great deal of positive change in her own life and to share this potential is a key motivator for her.

Thinking back to our conversation as a write this, a snatched hour round the back of the stupa at Bordheran during a busy schedule filming the talks by Subhuti at the NNBY 10th Annual Convention, I realise that I have, in some ways set myself an impossible task. I can’t write Neha’s story yet, for despite the rich material in her first two decades, her story is far from complete, a fact she is all too aware of herself; this is not a fairy tale ending. ‘Is there anything else you think I should mention?’ I ask, half exhausted already from recording the details of so many trials and tribulations. ‘Yes!’ she responds, ‘My struggle is not finished!’ Every day at work is challenging, with more tasks than she can complete. She’s working on big stories too, broadcasting the talks and activities of some of the most senior order members, so there’s a lot of pressure to do so successfully, pressure that she doesn’t always even get paid for, when a key advertising client has not paid their fees, or the tiny channel has simply run out of cash.

She’s had problems with colleagues as well, and recently encountered difficulties with bullying and blame, causing her to return home in tears every nights for a long spell. Her mum supported her through these problems though, and with this help she found the strength to stick it out, not reacting to or fuelling such unpleasant behaviour. Her skills and good will have also been stretched professionally; she was originally employed as an animator but when her manager left after just one month, her future was uncertain. At this time, she only knew how to work in 2D and animation software but the channel director liked her work and asked her to stay on in a different role, as an editor. For this, she taught herself how to work in entirely new editing software because no one else at the company would teach her. It was a similar story when she was invited to run her own programme.

 lifestyles and cultures. This in itself has been something of an issue for the couple; interstate marriages are not common and it took some time for Neha to ease the concerns of her family and achieve their blessings. Not that I suspect it would have stopped her if they’d maintained their disapproval. Aware of the imminent wedding, and as a somewhat excited guest, I was pleased for the opportunity to grill Neha on a happier issue; how did you meet? How do you think your life will be different after the wedding? What are your plans for your future as a couple? At this, she wrinkles her nose and asks ‘It is important?’ She tells me, after a joke dismissal of the question, that whatever happens, she plans to spend at least the next two years spreading the Dhamma through her work at LBTV. There will certainly be no children in the short term. In the long term, who knows? She remains uncommitted beyond her drive to become ordained, and this is something she feels they will be working for together, as Dhamma practitioners. ‘Maitri tells me we will be a team’ she says, ‘there will not be “your work” and “my work” in the home; we both have jobs, we will share the house work.’

There were other concerns too, of course; any young person about to enter into a lifetime commitment may be expected to feel somewhat anxious about such things and, I realised, when talking as a friend, not as an interviewer, that what from a Western perspective is a distinct lack of relationship experience was adding to these worries. I found that particular conversation very difficult at times and really got the sense that though Neha was indeed happy with the idea of getting married to Maitri, this was perhaps still in the context of feeling that she didn’t have much choice about whether or not she got married at all. ‘It’s not too late!’ I felt like saying, ‘run away with me!’ but knowing that would not be helpful, I contented myself with simply listening to her concerns and making it clear that I was willing to continue to do so at any time. If I can trust anyone to have made the right choice for themselves, I feel sure it’s Neha. She had at one time, she tells me, entertained the idea of leaving India entirely and becoming a nun, in order to fully commit to her practice and avoid marriage entirely. This, she feels is a more sensible and balanced approach that will allow her to stay connected with her family and probably to do more meaningful Dhamma work.

Any fears I, or indeed she may have had, have happily melted since the wedding and Maitri’s promise at least with regards to housework certainly seems to stand true; the wedding was in January, and I received an invitation to dinner shortly after the couple returned from some time away with Neha’s new family. Sure enough, alongside Neha in the kitchen, Maitri was chopping, cooking and washing up too. We had a fine meal, with Maharashtrian specialties cooked up by Neha, (including her first, very successful, attempt at pakora!) and some home treats prepared by Maitri. They seemed happy and relaxed together too, a relief to me, with my cultural preconceptions about equality and gender roles in marriage. Neha is glowing, smiling, as busy as ever at work, but still capable of telling me that she is very happy. Not yet quite a fairy tale ending perhaps, but a very joyful pit stop if nothing else, and it’s certainly a union that’s blessed from the start. There are not many weddings, I think, to which Subhuti, a very busy and senior order member, would fly all the way from Pune and back in the same day to officiate.

Neha is clear that she never would have believed it to be possible for her to be living as she does now. This isn’t a matter of luck though, it’s sheer hard work, raw belief and pure determination that has achieved it. Yes, certain opportunities have arisen for her, but none that would have occurred without her own drive and motivation to realise the fruits of them. ‘If you had a message, for people in the UK who might read your story, if they are Buddhist, or if they are not, what would it be?’ I ask as a concluding thought, unsure that I will be able to articulate her experiences well enough myself to communicate the lesson that I know so many could learn from her example. She looks a little taken back at a difficult question and is thoughtful for a moment.

I’ve met many people in India, many of them have told me impressive tales of triumph over adversity, many of them I now feel honoured to count among my friends. I am sure, too, that I shall return when possible, to continue what I’ve left and that I shall meet many of them again. I don’t think, however, that there is anyone else I’ve met in my time here in whom I recognise that spark of deeper connection, a truly common perspective on the world and of our places in it, the kind of friendship you have where you almost instinctively realise a complete trust that this person will be around for the rest of your life, regardless of the circumstances you find yourselves in or the distances between you. If I think hard about it, I can actually only say I’ve met 3 or maybe 4 other people in my entire life with whom I feel such a connection, who I would call my ‘best friends’ and funnily enough, they all live in completely different countries.

It is perhaps for this reason that I have felt it important to reflect on some of these things now, before writing about my experiences in Bodhgaya last week. It certainly isn’t because I have nothing to say about that, I can assure you!

The first factor that changed the dynamics of our teaching machine was the departure of Shakyajata as she returned to the UK. Every year for the past 8 or so, she has spent which months she can in India, teaching and running the programme, then living in the UK to fund-raise, recover and plan her return as soon as the hot Indian summer has abated. Not only is she the principle fund raiser for the project and an important anchor of consistency for the teachers and the staff, she is also the most experienced English teacher at Aryaloka and it’s her syllabus and approach to delivery that Mark and I have followed. While she has encouraged us to add personal elements and use our own skills where appropriate (my classes utilised a heavy application of illustration for example!), there was never any doubt whose course it was.

As a Dhammacharini (Triratna Order member), she also took the reins in Dharma classes and teaching meditation, often leading puja twice a day with the women’s community and with the men at least once a week. It’s easy, then to see, that when it becomes time for her annual migration back to England, there’s a significant shift in the daily running. Of course, Mark and I are both more than capable of teaching and even continuing the spiritual content but it was perhaps the first event that marking the approach of the end of the academic year, and with it a reminder to our young people that they will soon be leaving the safety of their communities and be back out in the harsh reality of a very flooded and heavily biased jobs market.

Far from the ‘stiff upper lip’ for which we Brits are so famous, my experience is that Indians live far more emotionally on the surface of themselves (at least in responding to the issues which are not socially taboo) and so the tears flowed and the weeping was wailed when it was finally time to wave Shakyajata off to the airport. Less of a personal wrench from my own perspective as one who will be hot on her heels in the coming weeks, the main difference it made to me was a sense of moving a step closer to the firing line with respect to responsibility for the course. Still, with everything left so well organised there was little to practically concern me and it was good that I could present a strong front to support the girls, especially. I did wonder though, if one or two of them looked at me slightly askance; surely I should be weepy wailing too!?

I was also aware that it might seem quite patronising for me to suddenly swan in and start telling them how to do their jobs so I was quite sensitive to couching the classes in flexible terms that allowed me to respond to their experience as and when it became apparent. Thankfully, I quickly realised I had nothing to fear and my colleagues were receptive as well as vocally grateful for a new perspective on both the software and the delivery of content. Education style in India is very teacher centred so it was a new idea to them to engage in a group discussion for example, in which one elicits the answers from the students rather than telling them the ‘facts’. I also soon found that there were many new skills and applications within the programme that I could share. It is all too easy to take one’s own abilities and experiences for granted, so it was a relief to find they were genuinely learning new things at the same time as receiving a new structure for teaching it themselves. Institute director Aryaketu was very vocal about how important he felt the classes were. For me to teach the students to use Photoshop would be one thing but to teach the teachers is equivalent to teaching the same number again for each member of staff trained and as I’d written an entire 12 class course with lesson plans and materials provided, I hoped to ensure that this would be practical with as little drain on their already busy schedules as possible. This was especially the case for Sanjaya; she teaches at the Raipur branch in Chhattisgarh, so her new skills would be spreading out even beyond Maharashtra. For not the first time I reflected upon how impossible it is to really appreciate the extent of your influence as a teacher. I don’t suppose those members of staff who first introduced me to Adobe software in a London suburb 20 years ago thought for a moment that they’d be indirectly facilitating the improvement of employment prospects and therefore living conditions for young people and their families on the other side of the planet two decades hence. That’s the wonderful thing about knowledge. You never really possess it, you just borrow it for a while and then pass it on. I just can’t believe anyone who’d try and keep it to themselves really derives any benefit from it at all.

Anyway, I knew the classes were going well right across the centre when I arrived in the classroom after 10pm one night to prepare for a 7am Photoshop class and found all our community women diligently plugging away at their screens in practice for their upcoming exams. They sit exams in accountancy software called Tally, general IT skills (MSC-IT) and Hardware and Networking (physically setting up PCs). These exams took place off site at the beginning of the month and most passed first time. One or two fell just a few marks short but all is not lost. Each entrant has up to three attempts but I’m confident that no one will require a third.

I have ideas of discussions I’d like to have with the young women (and possibly young men if that’s not considered inappropriate) on body image, I have plans for things I’d like to discuss with all of them about assumed hierarchy (why do you call me ‘ma’am??). I am still hoping to organise further work with NNBY before I leave and I suppose it speaks volumes about my overall feelings about being here that I have already started fund-raising for my return to India.

Going alone would have been better than nothing and I knew some young people could still benefit from my contribution, but I also knew how valuable our students would find it and was absolutely determined not to back down. Still, not to dwell on adversity, it’s enough to say that thankfully, it was eventually possible to navigate the challenges and find solutions to the very valid concerns presented by my colleagues. It was agreed that two students, one representative from the young men’s and one from the young women’s communities, would accompany me with the responsibility of reporting back to their peers on the experience. I’d already delivered a presentation to both groups about my time at the National Convention but better by far for young Indians to hear about the work of NNBY from other young Indians, not a rapidly aging English lady. I had to concede, that though this wasn’t half as many students as I’d thought we could take (I’d decided I could afford to pay retreat fees for up to six) it did solve some problems with regards to travel and would be significantly less stressful than being personally responsible for quite that many! It made the whole thing a little cheaper too and I could then afford to pay their travel costs as well, which ended up being no more than contributions to petrol as we’d received the very kind offer of a lift all the way from Nagpur to Bihali from Chetan, a main NNBY organiser and very committed youth worker. Aryaketu chose who should attend based on considerations such as academic progress and exam dates so there should be no worries around apparent favouritism (which had been a concern) and we would even have a spare seat for Mark, who was keen to come to find out more about NNBY and offer a workshop on Climate Change, one of his key passions outside of English teaching!

Needless to say, after all that, there was no way I was going to be too unwell to go. Fortunately, I was indeed feeling genuinely better, with energy levels once again approaching normality by the time a rather excited car full departed Nagpur just after lunch on January the 19th!

My main aim for our mission was for Bharti and Akhilesh to have meaningful experiences that fully demonstrated the potential benefit of their future involvement in NNBY, and that they felt able to communicate this to the others upon returning to Nagpur, but I did of course have some other focuses as well. In Bordharan I had planned (at the last minute, but planned none the less) to give a version of the ‘Why I am a Buddhist’ talk that I delivered at Vajrasana in September. This had ended up being condensed on the spot (you can actually find a video of it here) into only about 7 minutes (including interpretation), so I was very happy to have the opportunity to give a fuller version in Bihali as I’d spent quite some time thinking about the content and how to make it relevant to a new audience. Hearing from others on their experience with the Dharma is always useful but still, there would be very different things to say to make it relevant to a group of Indian Youth in the Maharashtrian Jungle as opposed to a group of Europeans at a rather civilised Beginners Retreat in Suffolk. I knew they’d be keen to hear something of an autobiography; you don’t get far at a gathering of Indian youth without multiple questions about your origins, I have discovered! I felt there was something more important than that though and I wanted to explain why I was there. I’d been instinctively aware, as well as confirming from some conversation at Bordharan, that the reason for my attendance could be easily misconstrued and reduced to mere tourism. I felt a strong need to demonstrate that this wasn’t the case. I also wanted to explain why my Buddhist practice was so important to me in the hope that it might help support that of others. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I felt it was really critical to demonstrate commonality. I can only guess what assumptions a mind from an Indian cultural background is conditioned to make about individuals from the West but I know that at least some of them are completely unfounded and really quite damaging to genuine racial cohesion. My approach to these areas in my talk was mostly couched in spiritual terms but there was a key socio-political link too, with reference to the work of Dr Ambedkar and why it might be that a 35 year old Brit can find his words as inspiring as an 18 year old Indian. My basic point was that though we come from very different backgrounds (as demonstrated by the autobiographical introduction), we are certainly following the same path into the future as we work for a common goal of global unity as described by the Buddhist teachings presented by Babasaheb Ambedkar. Some of the questions I’ve had since do make me wonder how much of what I said was lost in translation, as I’m sure I covered some of the answers to those in the talk itself. I tend to use quite subtle turns of phrase and rely heavily on analogy to communicate some of my more creative ideas so I just can’t tell how well much of that came across, but still I must have been doing something right to sustain the apparently rapt attention of the group for over an hour. I didn’t feel it flowed quite as well as my original talk but I think this is as much down to the practice of speaking with an interpreter as anything else. Hopefully this is a skill I can develop. I feel confident I got the gist of what I wanted to share across, anyway.

On the second day, I delivered a creative workshop aiming to use visual communication to stimulate a discussion of the things that feature prominently in the lives of the participants and could be seen as formative elements in the concept of self. The purpose of this was to help people establish where they are currently at in their life, with the view to identifying opportunities for positive change and development, particularly in the very Buddhist terms of a non-fixed self. We know we can change, we know we will change, but how can we realise the sense of deliberate focus that we need to achieve this in the most positive way? I’d planned to use an almost diagrammatic form to deliver this and had pre-prepared some blank mandala-style pages for participants to draw on. Though I’ve plenty of experience delivering various arts workshops, I’d devised this one specifically for the convention and had never run it before so I was grateful to Maitriveer who made time to go over it with me before I started and ask me a couple of pointed questions that helped me refocus my objective. I was fairly confident but still felt relieved that it was well received and everyone who came along seemed genuinely pleased with their outcomes.

At the same time that I was delivering this, Mark ran his workshop on Climate Change. I was very glad of his presence and support at the weekend on level of simple friendship, but I was particularly pleased for practical reasons that there was an alternative provision for participants and so I didn’t have to try and contend with fifty in my session! Chetan also ran a seminar on a personal development technique called SWOT Analysis. I can’t pretend I’d ever heard of it but Akhilesh found it very useful!

‘Why,’ she wanted to know, ‘do the organisers call you by your name when they introduce you?’ I was completely baffled by this question and felt sure I’d misunderstood. What else should they call me? After some further discussion it became clear that she was asking why they had not used a formal term of respect when inviting me to speak. I was pleased to have the opportunity to explain that it was because we were following the key Buddhist principle of equality that Babasaheb himself had been so active to promote. After receiving a mildly blank look I went further to state ‘because I am not better than them. I am not better than you.’ I may as well have stated that grass grew in the sky and we had clouds gathering under our feet. ‘Yes you are!’ was her instinctive and wholehearted reply. As I come to write this I find an uncharacteristic inability to articulate quite how that made me feel and realise that such was the importance of the exchange, I still feel quite emotional about it even now. It cut absolutely right to the heart of me that this sparklingly bright human being, simply bursting with manifest talent and clear potential, had been so conditioned by her upbringing in a society of deeply entrenched hierarchy that it was completely beyond her perspective of the world to believe that I was anything other than some kind of superior being. As a teenager, I certainly respected my teachers and those I met in mentoring or leadership roles. I understood that they’d had more experience than me, that they’d had more years of learning and education, that their thoughts and statements were the culmination of their deliberate efforts and that careful consideration was due. I wanted to listen and to learn from them. I wanted to demonstrate my appreciation of the time and teaching that they gave me and I even hoped to follow the example of one or two of them in my own life; but I never, for one moment, supposed that they were better than me. More skilled than me at certain things, yes, more practiced than me in many areas, of course, but not quantifiably better. Suddenly, I felt a little window had been opened for me into the world of caste discrimination and I realised just how much work we have to do. It’s not enough to say we believe in equality. It’s not enough to say we reject parts of a religion that attributes fixed and unchanging birth privilege to divine whim. It’s not even enough to renounce the entire religion that preaches this and convert to a new one if the bedrock of our cultural experience, the foundation for all our interactions and the way we place ourselves and others in the world is formed from the sediment of oppression and erroneous discrimination that has accumulated over centuries. Legislation is not enough. It’s not even a start. It’s simply a signpost, a practical suggestion for a direction to move in but nothing like the change in attitude, the change in minds that will make a real difference. How, then, can we possibly break through such barriers and why does it matter? What difference does it make to my life, when I return to the UK in a few weeks, or to the lives of my English friends who have perhaps never even left the UK? Why should it trouble them if a community on the other side of the planet is living in such conditions of social inequality? We can donate money to feed people. Even better, we can donate money to educate them and empower them to feed themselves, but if they choose to follow a dogma of division what is it to us? Compassion isn’t just about financial poverty though, and anyway what good are these employability skills really, if you can’t utilise them because you’ve not got the social liberty to follow certain careers without prejudice, even if the legal framework theoretically supports you? Still these issues are closer to home than the cultivation of philanthropy from a distance. If we want to be equal, if we want to live and operate in harmony and with the respect due to us from other humans, then we need them to know, to see and to feel that they too are our equals. Different, yes, and delightfully so, but always free and above all, equal. If I want to be truly valued as an individual with my own unique skills and talents that I have invested time in developing, then the last thing I want is for someone to elevate me to a pseudo superior status based upon factors beyond my control such as age and skin colour. This does not afford me any more equality than it affords her, and that, after all, is what equality means. Without wanting to get too Orwellian, if some are more equal than others then no one is equal at all. This is a contradiction in terms. It is quite simply then that if you wish equality for yourself, you need it for others. And it’s not enough to stop at the boundaries of your town, your county, your country or your continent. The world is bigger than that and so, I believe, is our potential as members of the only kind of society that can possibly support any kind of human progress. I hope I managed to communicate to this young woman that the only difference between us was based purely in our life experiences.  I hope I managed to make my point that I’d simply benefitted from a few more years’ to learn from my many mistakes and had been born, randomly, in a different set of circumstances. Even if she didn’t get quite the same clarity of insight as I did then I at least hope I planted a seed. The conversation certainly got me thinking along new lines and I began to consider how appropriate it is for the students at Aryaloka to address me as ‘ma’am’. Is this apparently harmless pleasantry actually reinforcing the very hierarchical systems we are trying to demolish? Should I encourage them to stop saying it? From this I mused; why erode respect? Perhaps it’s better, rather than removing such terms, to demonstrate mutual respect by reciprocating. I don’t always remember but I’m trying to do so now when addressing the students I work with.
Of course, following this, there was an obvious person who sprung to mind when wondering who to ask for help with translating the audio recordings of Bharti and Akhilesh’s presentations and I have to say she’s done a great job, responding both enthusiastically and promptly. I only hope she’s benefited as much from the English practice as I have from learning the content of the talks and it is in part thanks to her that I’m able to carry on into the most important section of my writing with such detail on my students’ responses to the convention. Vishakha ma’am, thank you. I hope this paragraph provides you with yet more English practice and let it be known that I am not only no better than you but have in fact learned a great deal from you. Just like many of the young people I have had the fortune to meet since I came to India, I am quite confident that you will do very well indeed.

a short meditation (lead by Akhilesh). We’d then move on to their main presentations before splitting into discussion groups and reconvening for a Q&A session, where groups could put any questions they had to the pair. We’d finish with a puja.

That was all fairly straight forward but of course the hard work was still to do; we still had to write the presentations! I suggested using PowerPoint to help them keep track of what they wanted to say and as a method of displaying some of the many photos that they’d both enjoyed taking, either on Mark’s mobile camera or my SLR. Easy enough and good practice in using those programmes too. This only left the content to decide upon! I knew they’d been taking notes over the weekend (I’d bought them each a brand new notebook to encourage it!) but that’s a long way from having a prepared presentation, and my experience of working with young people is that they need a significant amount of help in recognising the most important things to say. This can be a challenge in itself but it’s even tougher with a language barrier. Sure enough, to begin with, they needed a little prompting but I could tell even without Hindi that Joydeep was himself doing a very good job of coaxing out the key points without interference from me. I listened to him interpret Bharti’s account of how she’d found the conditions very supportive to deepening her meditation practice and how she’d enjoyed learning a new approach to the Metta Bhavana. I listened to him explain that she felt she’d learned a lot more about the teachings of Babasaheb, about why he’d taught his people to follow Buddhism, about the significance of questioning the superstitious spiritual practices that she’d been so used to at home. I heard her thoughts on gender roles and how she now realised she had the same potential to achieve excellence as anyone else, that she believed girls should be encouraged to go on retreat to develop confidence and gain clarity around their identities. I heard her state quite deliberately and without any prompting, that she wanted to maintain her involvement in NNBY to support her own continued development and to take friends so they too could benefit as well as to challenge to the restrictions on travelling away from home that are currently placed on girls in many villages. I felt a lump rise in my throat as the reality sunk in to my mind that the combined efforts of all my friends and colleagues who’d gone out of their way to indulge my stubborn insistence that we should attend had not just been ‘worth it’. Those efforts had been our absolute obligation as teachers, as mentors and as dharma practitioners. Akhilesh recounted a similarly positive experience and explained that attending the convention had clarified a lot of his previous confusion around the purpose of following a Buddhist practice. He felt that the main benefit he’d gained was in seeing equality exemplified. He’s not from Maharashtra and was concerned that he would encounter coldness or discrimination from the regional participants but recognised that this had been very far from his experience, which, he told us was the first time in his life he’d realised such genuine equality could exist. He’d in fact felt so included that at times he’d had to take himself away from the group in order to make time to write his notes! He too had a clear idea of what he planned to discuss in the presentation and hoped to give his own perspectives on the main talk given by Maitreveer Nagarjuna on human evolution and how this related to social, political and spiritual factors. For the second time in one update, I find I’m at a bit of a loss for words to describe quite how I felt upon hearing all this. Proud, certainly, and delighted that they’d both responded so hungrily to an opportunity that hadn’t been smooth to arrange. Joyful, definitely, to see how fired up and motivated they both were, how eager to share their experiences that others might benefit. Most of all, the best word to describe how I felt is moved. Moved in the emotional sense, as the reality of the real difference we’d made to their lives came home to me but also moved in a dynamic sense and ever more determined to drive forward in whatever way I can to keep supporting these young people in their developmental leaps and bounds.

It’s very rare to be able to say that anything in India has gone to plan, in fact I’ve come to see plans as a rough guide that give me an idea of what is probably not going to happen, but it’s entirely to the credit of Bharti and Akhilesh’s enthusiasm that the presentation afternoon went like a dream. There were unplanned factors, of course, including the arrival and subsequent attendance of Aryaloka’s main benefactors, the additional pressure of whose sudden presence gave even me an unexpected dose of performance anxiety. Bharti and Akhilesh; however, more than rose to the occasion and appeared to actually relish the additional audience members. We’d decided that it would be good practice for them to write their PowerPoint presentations in English and deliver the introductory sentences in the same, but that to foster a genuine degree of communication, they could give the main talk and answer questions in Hindi. As such, although I had a rough idea of what they were discussing, most of it went right over my head. In my formal teaching history, this would have caused me some anxiety as I would worry that I’d not be able to support and direct the content if needed. How would I know they were on topic? How would I know they weren’t accidentally misleading their peers with confused interpretations of complex concepts? How would I know they weren’t just chatting about what they fancied getting up to at the weekend? Actually though, I found their confidence gave me some structure to relax against and when I opened up to trusting them with the job of communicating their own thoughts, I found that not being overly focused on the language gave me some space to notice other key indicators that all was well. Aside from the occasional words I did recognise to show we were on track (‘NNBY’, ‘Dhamma’, ‘Babasaheb’ for example), I could gauge from the engaged body language of both speakers and audience, as well as from the enthusiastic pace of the discussion, that there was a good deal of focused and genuine communication taking place. Group discussions can be tough to get going and Question and Answer sessions flat and dead in the water with even experienced adult participants but there were no awkward silences or confused pauses, in fact we had a queue of people wanting to ask their questions first. Again, with thanks to Vishakha for her translation of the transcripts, I can now tell I was right not to be overly meddlesome in the flow of interactions and it seems the content was a mature and respectful debate that would put most Question Time

Actually, I’m not sure what ‘glown’ means. I can’t decide from the context if it should be ‘known’ or ‘glowing’ but either seems quite appropriate and I rather like the idea of a word that means both simultaneously so I shall leave that one open to interpretation. Maybe it means something else entirely. Regardless of possibly vague moments in translation, I think it’s quite apparent from just that brief excerpt that Bharti and Akhilesh did us proud, both in terms of how they responded and participated with the content of the convention itself and in terms of how well they took on the task of sharing their learning and new perspectives so enthusiastically with their communities. Of course, I needn’t have worried too much about what was being said as my Hindi speaking colleagues were also present. Sheetal, Vaishali, Saccadhamma and Aryaketu all attended and were clearly as impressed as I was by the maturity and depth of the presentations. Such was her engagement that Bharti even ended the Q&A session by questioning her peers, asking if they felt they would like to go to an NNBY event in the future. Their replies were an almost unanimous ‘yes!’

So that’s a tale of optimism and positivity for the future of many of the community students at Aryaloka but what of my own responses?

By proving that nobody could look as ridiculous as us, hopefully everybody would feel a bit more relaxed about having a boogie themselves. I started my set with the instinctive moves of one who grew up in mosh pits and happily launched into a sequence of head banging. After some time, I allowed this to blend, seamlessly I’m sure, into the kind of lolloping pogo as performed by your average unwashed, summer festival living, dreadlocked tree hugger before realising I should branch out to include a wider audience and regressing into the kind of shoulder slinking, hip swinging sashay best demonstrated by an 80’s starlet on Top of the Pops. Miming, thankfully, was not required as there was very little Hindi on the track that had been selected for us. Which went on. And on. And on. You think the Duracell Bunny has moves? It’s got nothing on a pair of desperate foreign  teachers who are trying to work out which form of stem verb plus ‘ing’ they could tease out of some dodgy dancing for a quick revision class on Monday morning. Finally, it ended and we flopped into sweaty heaps at the side of the classroom, like one of those old toys where you push the base up and make the little wooden animal collapse. After a breather, we reconvened and surveyed the wider effects of our grooves. There was certainly more dancing, however, I couldn’t help notice that this was completely gender segregated and so I decided to introduce the concept of the conga in the hope that I might generate a current of movement and mix things up a bit. After no more than about three minutes of mild confusion, the line broke up and sure enough like oil and water, boys magnetised to the side of the room nearest the door (for a quick escape?!) and the girls to the end near the drinks table (possibly for an equally quick opportunity to be doing something other than dancing?). After a quick confluence, we decided to bring out the big guns and loaded the Locomotion onto Youtube. How, reasoned the Annabeth Brain, can a group of young girls fail to go giddy for a bit of Kylie?! Ah yes. The generation gap. The language barrier. The cultural gulf. Well, I had fun anyway. Mark then led a round of YMCA, which this was tolerated politely with much the same air of befuddled humouring before we conceded, gratefully, to the perimeter, safe in the knowledge that we had done our duty. Thankfully, from this point on, the real stars took over, and finally, though I had to accept that the centuries old tide of cultural gender separation were not going to be turned back in a single party, the embarrassment and awkwardness had given way to genuine fun.

This was attended by our students, the teachers and several local Triratna Order Members, with a dedication ceremony conducted by Shakyajata and Khemadhamma, from Australia, both of whom have been supporting Aryaloka in various ways since the conception. They each gave talks after the puja, describing their experience of the history and aspirations for the future of the institute. Mark and I were then called up. Going last is never an easy trick; your audience is feeling evermore fidgety and the previous speakers have probably made all the salient points but I fell back on my love of analogy and muttered something about people being like buildings. That’s not as bad as it sounds, the point I was trying to make was that we are built ourselves

With only about 12 hours turnaround between returning from the NNBY convention and heading out of Nagpur once more, the fact that it was New Year’s Eve seemed pretty academic, and actually, if it hadn’t been for the hearty cries of ‘Happy New Year’ at midnight, I think I would have been completely unaware that it was even happening. We were heading to Raipur on an 06:30 train out of Kamptee (the stop after Nagpur and a little closer to the education centre in Bhilgaon) and this would be my first experience of a different state (Raipur is in Chhattisgarh) as well as on an Indian train. The purpose of our trip was to visit the branch of Aryaloka Computer Education run by ex-Nagpurian students Satish and Sanjaya; to give them a little support and meet the students benefitting from their tuition. We were only scheduled to be there for one night; a fact I queried given the extent of the five hour train journey.  Since we were going all that way, I wondered if it would not be better to have at least two nights, maybe spend a bit more time with the students, even run a workshop or two. I was greeted with nonplussed indifference by Aryaketu who couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Five hours, he informed me patiently, is not a long train journey.

I had been told to expect delays; Indian trains, a bit like Indian everything else, do not run on time. At least, they run in their own time, a unique temporal framework that most Indians seem to tick along quite happily in synch with, but would drive most Europeans to distraction. I can’t remember if our train was due at 06:00 and arrived at 06:30 or was due at 06:30 and arrived at 07:00, which probably goes to show I am making some headway with regards to accepting a more relaxed schedule. Either way, it was only half an hour difference between the roughly predicted arrival time and the reality, which isn’t bad at all, even by British standards. I’ve certainly been delayed longer by trains in England.
I found the experience of train travel was equally a lot more pleasant than I had thought might be the case, though I expect this had a lot to do with the fact that we had bought quite expensive tickets to ride in ‘Three Tier AC’. This means the bunks stack three on top of one another (trains seem to be furnished as sleeper carriages by standard, probably due to the sheer distances involved) and the carriage has air conditioning. So, our travel wasn’t quite as swanky as ‘Two Tier AC’, but was a good deal more comfortable than ‘second class’, or even ‘general’ carriages; but then they probably

don’t really need air-conditioning since there’s not usually any glass in the windows. All in all, I really quite enjoyed the train. Once I’d clambered into my drop down bunk (I’d thought I might sit up in it but this wasn’t really an option so I reclined instead), the only thing disturbing the gentle rocking of the train was the calls of various vendors passing up and down the carriage selling ‘CHAI!’, ‘DOSA!’ or, intriguingly ‘CHIPSY BISCUITS!’ Now, I’ve felt desperate for a cup of tea once in a while but I’ve never realised it could be such an urgent business as to require quite so much volume, but never mind. As for the ‘chipsy biscuits’… I’m afraid I unadventurously left those to the imagination.
Despite the minor ‘reality shift’ in terms of our departure time, we arrived in Raipur reasonably on schedule and were met by Satish, who had organised a car to take us a local order member’s home. Here, we were greeted with a far more sedate cup of chai before being served lunch. The food was very similar to what I’d been told was standard Maharashtrian fare and I enquired about the difference with Chhattisgarhi dishes. Actually, it turned out the family were Maharashtrians which explained the familiarity!

After lunch, we had a little rest before meeting a large group of students in the family’s very impressive shrine room. The young people who had come to meet with us on the first day were all ex-students and had completed their studies with Aryaloka in the previous year. We were keen to meet with them to establish how successful they had been in their post-study ambitions; had they found employment? Were they continuing in study? Had they stayed in Raipur or returned to their villages? A great many of them were still studying, either in the equivalent of English 6th Form and Further Education, still working through their 11th or 12th Standard classes, or in first, second or even third years of BA or BSc courses.

There is not currently any provision for full time study as enjoyed by our men’s and women’s communities in Nagpur, however the courses offered by Aryaloka can frequently be fitted in around other commitments. Many of the young people we spoke to on the first day had been able to find employment following the course, often in accounting departments owing to their new skills in the programme Tally, and thanks to this were able to pay their course fees and support themselves whilst studying, or in many cases, pay their course fees, support themselves and financially assist their families, also while studying. It certainly set a contrast against the British system of support during study, despite the changes and controversy in recent years. There is absolutely no expectation or assumed right to education here; there’s no doubt in any mind that it is a privilege to be valued and paid for. The other outstanding observation I made and found very touching was the readiness with which most students expressed their gratitude, not just to the institute that is Aryaloka, but personally to Shakyajata. They were quite open in sharing an awareness that without her support and tuition, they would not be enjoying the benefits of their studies, nor feeling even half as optimistic about the future.

Another heart-warming discovery was the perceived role that the Dharma study had played in their development; a majority of the group were quite clear that this was an important element in their studies that had equipped them to deal successfully with many of life’s trials and tribulations in a balanced and trouble-free way. Two groups of young women had even set up their own communities since leaving and were supporting each other in their practice. They told us that this had been a unique benefit of the Aryaloka course, which they would not have found at another education provider.

Our schedule for the second day involved saying a grateful farewell to our hosts and their beautiful home. I was most impressed by the gardens; a roof terrace, watered by hand for at least an hour before breakfast and an equally well kept front garden with the first lawn I’ve seen since leaving England! Chhattisgarh seems wetter than Nagpur and is famous for particularly vicious mosquitoes as a result! We then took a car journey into the centre of Raipur to visit the Computer Centre and meet some current students. Sanjay and Satish again welcomed us and we were shown into a building that made me really appreciate the facilities in Nagpur. A tiny little building with not more than 6 or 7 computers and an even smaller general classroom that I think is probably used for English, when a teacher is available. We met with two groups that day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon and just as well too that it was split as we struggled to fit even half the group into the room. It was adequate though, for us to hear their stories, which sounded so very similar to many I have heard since my arrival. It struck me that it was probably not very common for anyone to ask these young people about their lives and regardless of any learning that they may or may not have received, even showing an interest in them was a

Our Raipur trip ended with a meal at the station before another, slightly delayed but generally comfortable journey home to Nagpur. The station fare may not have been the highest quality sustenance I have enjoyed in my time here, but I was left with enough food for thought to see me through. I found it genuinely impressive to see how Aryaloka operates in Raipur; it may be a smaller centre and not yet developed to the same degree but already the positive results of the work being carried out there are palpable and those who have benefitted are more than capable of voicing their genuine gratitude for the meaningful opportunities they have been given. That the Raipur centre is run by two ex-students from the residential courses in Nagpur also demonstrates just how far reaching the work of Young Indian Futures continues to be. It’s often easy to forget the scope of ones’ actions, it’s easy to miss taking into account anything that doesn’t happen directly in front of you and as a teacher it is common to end up wondering really just how much difference you’re making. This trip was a wonderful opportunity to realise though, just how far even small acts of positivity can spread, how a single seed of learning can germinate into fruit that not only benefits the student, but also improves the lives of those around them in so many ways.

That’s not to trivialise her other roles though and I was fortunate to realise the opportunity afforded us by the optician’s waiting room to begin hearing and taking eager notes on Sheetal’s Story. Sheetal is Aryaketu’s wife and mother to 15 year old Ojas. She admirably fulfils all the functions expected of her in this role, preparing three meals a day for both the men in her life as well as us, the visiting teaching team, often cleaning up after us as well as undertaking the housework required to keep her home functioning. She supports Aryaketu unquestioningly in his work for the order, even when this brings him home late or takes him right out of the country for many weeks a year. She gently, yet persistently encourages Ojas to make the most of his studies, patiently bringing him back on track when really, like many other 15 year old boys the world over, he’d rather be playing Assassin’s Creed. Her life is by no means limited to the domesticity ascribed to her by Indian society; however. She is also fully committed to Dhamma herself and attends weekly chapter meetings on Tuesdays with study classes on Saturdays in her own progression towards ordination into the movement. This process often takes far longer for women than for men in India as it is much harder for them to secure time away from domestic duties to study, attend retreats and deepen their practice sufficiently. Still undeterred, she carries on. If this doesn’t already sound like a full schedule, Sheetal is also Centre Manager for the Bhilgaon Campus, responsible for not just teaching important parts of the critical MSCIT (Maharashtra State Certificate in Information Technology; a government recognised qualification that is a basic requirement for any individual wishing to obtain good employment in a wide range of sectors beyond physical labouring) but also for the pastoral care of the young women, their spiritual development and harmony in their community, as well as a myriad of administration tasks that come with the job such as managing course fees from the non-residential students and making sure the registrations with the exams office are regularly maintained.

Sheetal was born in Nagpur on the 2nd of September 1975, the first daughter of three, into a very full house. There were four uncles, three aunties and three of her grandparents as well as her mum and dad, all living together when she arrived into the family. The house was noisy but not just because there were so many people in it; situated on the Kamptee Road, one of the main routes to and from the city centre, there was constant traffic rumbling past and even more, she tells me, during her childhood than there is now. The Kamptee Road is the ‘main drag’ from Aryaloka Bhilgaon to Aryaloka Indora, where the other half of our teaching takes place and a trip up it is a challenging experience full of dust, fumes, noise, trucks, mopeds, blaring horns, auto rickshaws, coaches, cows, people, bicycles, vans, you get the idea. One needs to allow a certain amount of energy just for the journey before teaching has even begun and so it is hard to imagine living right next to it when it was even busier. Thankfully, it was only the backdrop for the first three years of her life and when her father was successful in applying for a transfer in his government job as auditor for the railway, she moved with her parents and her 18 month old sister to a rented house in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. These were happy times and she describes this part of her childhood with a buoyant vigour as though somewhere a curtain has opened to let a ray of morning sun play across her face. She shines as she speaks of it, despite the gloom of the eye hospital waiting room. After her second sister was born, her mother’s mum came to help the family and she enjoyed the walks to school, sometimes with her grandmother, sometimes with her dad. When she was five, her father was successful in applying for a government house and this looked out onto a big playground, which was the scene of many a joyful evening, playing with friends after school. They were happy and healthy here, very well looked after by a mother who took the wellbeing of her family very seriously. She left nothing to chance in meeting their needs, researching nutrition to ensure they were well fed, attending school for regular updates, helping with homework. Yet there is no sense that this was in anyway strictly enforced and it seems she was able to balance this with equanimity, taking care also to provide the love, freedom and emotional strength her family needed to flourish. Sheetal describes her mother with so much love and admiration that she really does sound like a model parent and it is perhaps no surprise to learn that when Sheetal’s aunt and uncle ran in to marital strife and began quarrelling, two of her cousins moved in! Preferring the warm, loving environment to their own home, this irritated her mother’s sister intensely.

Such a significant disadvantage combined with a lack of tuition would surely result in disaster, they were adamant. But they underestimated Sheetal. She studied hard, just as she said she would, and this seed of determination fertilised by the love and support of a remarkable mum, blossomed in to Passes with Distinction for Marathi, Science and Social Science. This may have surprised and impressed her detractors, but success following hours of home study was hardly a new experience for Sheetal; her mum had spent the summer holiday of 1984 coaching her to a good standard of English before she even began studying it formally at the age of eight. Academic success, just like the formulation of an adequate diet, was never taken for granted or left to the chance of received wisdom, she had been raised to beat her own path to her goals.

After her exam success, she took admission to the famous local Sindhu Mahavidyalaya College for 11th and 12th Standard (sixth form or college equivalent). This fame was mixed; the college had a reputation for excellent teaching but also for troublesome and disorderly pupils, especially among the male cohort. This couldn’t have been further from Sheetal’s own temperament but she resolved to put her education ahead of her own sense of personal security; a significant risk following her provincial girl’s school background. Of course, mum was as supportive as ever, coming along to see her off at the gate on her first day. Concerned to avoid unwanted and inappropriate attention from the opposite sex, Sheetal went out of her way to be as unattractive as possible and deliberately dressed in unflattering clothes. ‘I oiled my hair!’ she tells me, demonstrating by dragging her hands down the sides of her head, flattening her now henna-enhanced tresses.

Despite her academic success, these years were not easy for Sheetal’s family. Having moved closer again to the conflicted home of her aunt when returning to Nagpur, the impact of the rift that had driven her cousins to live with them in the first place became ever more apparent. Sheetal’s aunt came to their home to argue with her sister several times and this affected the whole family with unpleasant rumours spreading around a very difficult situation. Her mum’s health began to suffer and she became very ill, experiencing chest pains and other symptoms of anxiety in the wake of constant harassment. Sheetal’s sister, equally academic, was studying a pharmaceutical course and contacted a doctor she knew for advice. With this treatment and a lot reciprocal love and support from the immediate family, her mum rallied physically but still she was suffering with mental illness. One family member who saw through much of the gossip and regularly visited to support the family was Sheetal’s maternal grandfather. He lived in an area of Nagpur called Mahendra Nagur and suggested his daughter try attending meditation classes with him on Thursdays at a centre just a one minute walk from his home. It would help, he assured her and asked her several times to come with him, but Sheetal’s mum refused, saying that she had done nothing wrong and it was her spiteful brothers and sisters who should go and learn to live a better life! One night, which was coincidentally a Thursday, Sheetal’s parents were invited to her father’s house for dinner. They were asked to arrive at half past five; too early for a meal but with plenty of time to chat and to go for an evening stroll around the neighbourhood before eating. Lo and behold, their local stroll ‘just happened’ to take them into a local Triratna centre. Despite her misgivings, when she saw the shrine in the open space, the flowers and the Buddha rupa, she felt immediately impressed and enjoyed the meditation and puja that occurred that night. From that day on, says Sheetal, her mother never stopped her Dhamma work. This was in the March of 1998, Sheetal’s final BSc year, and in April she finished her exams. With her time now freed from study, she went along to a Dhamma class with her mum. She was unimpressed when she walked in and saw a young man in a kesa on the stage. ‘I thought, this is the wrong man! How can he teach? He’s too young! I thought, young people go to the cinema and enjoy themselves, they know nothing about spirituality!’ This man; however, gave a talk that impressed her so much with relevant examples that seemed to come from her own life and experiences that she felt he knew her already even before her mum introduced them, post talk.

One day, after teaching at the hostel, she came home to an animated reception from her sister who told her that a very exciting thing had happened and that she should try and guess who had visited! Jija, Aryaketu’s mother and also a Dhamma Mitra, had come for chai, along with another mutual friend from the order. It is with some amusement that Sheetal continues the clearly oft-recounted tale; apparently Jija had actually left the room to use the bathroom when the family friend formally suggested that Sheetal and Aryaketu made a good match for marriage! Sheetal was already well known to Aryaketu’s family; she’d attended Dhamma classes run by his father, dancing classes and retreats with his sister. She was pretty, educated to a good level and dedicated to Triratna. There weren’t many more boxes left to tick. Aryaketu was certainly happy for them to suggest the union, though was apparently unconvinced that such a standard of young woman would be interested in a man who did not have a government job or family house. Sheetal’s wider family were certainly not impressed, but when she heard the news, Sheetal was every bit as delighted as her mum and dad. She had always dreaded the day when she believed she would inevitably have no choice but to marry a man with money and status; not something she wanted, fearing that such a husband would be free with his money, his affections and possibly, his fists. Having been brought up by a family who encouraged her to have her own opinions, stand on her own feet and make her own way in life, the thought of winding up in a housewife’s role with little else to occupy her but a demanding husband, filled her with fear. She felt she could trust Aryaketu however; he would not be a philanderer or a wife beater with a commitment to the Dhamma as strong as demonstrated in his talks. As someone so well known in the order, he was unlikely to have any hidden motives or distressing personal secrets.

In 2012, the Bhilgaon branch opened and she then became centre coordinator and teacher. Sheetal seems surprised as her narrative catches up with her present life, that she has so much to share. ‘I thought I had no story!’ she tells me again, having dismissed my request to write it in the first instance by saying there was nothing to say. She never imagined, she tells me, that she would live as she does now, in such a big house, with a car, a television, all the symptoms of wealth. Of all three sisters, she was always the one least interested in professional or material gains, in possessions or status, and yet, she tells me, she believes herself to be the happiest of all of them. Her sisters are not unhappy, she explains further, and have good jobs, good husbands, houses, in many respects the lives they always wanted; but they are not as happy as her. She is pleased, she mentions too, to know her parents do not have to worry about her. ‘Oh, Annabeth, I am really very happy!’ she announces, with an air of grateful surprise. She seems mildly taken aback too when I reply ‘Good! You deserve to be!’ But I do not believe for a moment that it is because of the house and the car, the status of being married to an order member or being the coordinator of a school that she is happy, nor do I think does she. Sheetal is an eminently kind woman, a thoughtful and sensitive person who takes the happiness of those around her seriously. She works hard, unceasingly in fact, to maintain this happiness and wellbeing, just as she describes of her own mother. In the short time I’ve known her, I have come to professionally and spiritually respect and personally very much like her. She is now, and I hope will always be even when the miles separate us, a trusted friend. Her faith in her practice of Buddhism goes far beyond the flowery rhetoric of devotional text, or acts of kindness for the sake of fulfilling a precept.

Pushpa told us that shortly before coming to study here, she had started feeling a burning pain in her eyes and that they were watering a lot. She first noticed it at home, when she was sewing, and her family had arranged for her to see an optician, who had prescribed glasses. Unfortunately, her family had not been able to afford these and so there was nothing further that they could do.

The nature of the work with the residential students at Aryaloka as funded by Young Indian Futures has a history of stretching beyond the classroom into health needs and it was not the first time Shakyajata had arranged a medical appointment for a student, hoping to then fund the required treatment from the charitable donations to the charity. Sheetal was optimistic that an eye appointment and glasses for Pushpa would not cost more than two thousand rupees (that’s about twenty five pounds at the current exchange rate) and so, on Monday morning, I set off on the bus with them both to support as much as I could. I’d spoken with my mum at the weekend and she’d mentioned that she would transfer some cash to my account for Christmas, so while I’m having to be very careful with my pennies during my time not earning here, I felt I could stretch to this cost myself without dipping into the charity pot. It seems, from a western perspective, like a small thing, just a basic need, but something that can make such a big difference to daily quality of life.

I’ll be honest; my reasons for going weren’t purely altruistic. Yes, I did want to support Pushpa and yes, I wanted to help free up time for Shakyajata (she’s had a very busy week conducting interviews and filming a documentary), but I was also very interested to get a nosey into an Indian eye hospital! I’m not so curious about the Indian healthcare system I fancy trying it out for myself, but if the opportunity arises... well, why not? It wasn’t far, just a little further up Dr Ambedkar Road from one of our favourite restaurants and it seemed clean, welcoming and professional, if a little old fashioned. I hadn’t been too sure what to expect but I was pleasantly relieved. Sheetal told me that this would be a far better standard of care centre than the one Pushpa would have attended before coming to Nagpur. We registered and waited in the foyer, Pushpa looking nervous, Sheetal fielding questions about us (and I think mostly about me) from the other patients. I guess they were curious due to my attendance but at least it gave Sheetal (from what I could gather) an opportunity to promote the work of the institute and generally spread awareness of Aryaloka. I had tried to make Pushpa feel better by saying ‘at least you get the morning out of the classroom!’ but I’m not sure that did much to ease her nerves, especially when she was called up to read letters from a familiar looking chart, publically, in the waiting room! She was then handed a slip of paper with some details about her performance and we settled down to wait again. It didn’t seem that we had to wait long. I’d like to think we waited the standard length of time but I’ve been aware of a couple of times when the presence of a white face has facilitated a queue jump, so maybe we got lucky!

The optician was a kind man, with good English who told me he’d visited London twice, as a tourist. I guess an eye doctor must be a pretty well paid job! Perhaps not as well paid as some would like however; he examined Pushpa’s eyes and told us there was nothing wrong with her vision at all, it was actually very good. He said it was common for people to be given very weak and unnecessary prescriptions in order for the practitioner to receive some commission but that in this case, he did not feel poor eyesight was the cause of the pain. His diagnosis was sensitivity to airborne pollutants and instead prescribed eye drops! No need for any expense! The consultation only cost two hundred rupees (I tried to pay but they could not take my card or change my 2000 note, so Sheetal stepped up!) and the drops themselves, which we collected from a chemist on the way home, were less still than that!

A very good outcome indeed! No expensive glasses (and I imagine Pushpa is relieved not to be wearing them!) and no further messing about with fitting frames and lenses or going back to collect them the next day. We were even home in time for lunch! So far so good for Pushpa too; I asked her on Tuesday evening if the drops were helping. “Yes!” she said, her eyes were much better. Hopefully this will help her study, but if nothing else it’s enough that she’s simply more comfortable. So why have I felt the need to share this publically? Partly, it’s interesting, as I said, to see inside the machinations of healthcare systems in other countries but mostly for another far more important reason. I actually feel really grateful. I’m verging towards the proud but I’ll try and curb that one, mostly I’m feeling grateful to have this opportunity to work alongside such compassionate people. People who notice another’s suffering and take time to find and then provide what they need.

For the first few weeks, it was uncommon to be in the classroom alone and we were doing a lot of team teaching. This phase is starting to recede a bit now as we each make time for lesson preparation or other tasks and errands, but it was a wonderful rediscovery and hopefully won’t stop all together. In my first year in the classroom (academic year 2002/03), classes were actively timetabled to feature team-taught periods and it was a real joy to support each other, share delivery, improvise off unexpected moments of inspiration (or disaster!), almost like actors might and have the ‘so, how did that go!?’ conversation afterwards. A robust course, whatever the subject, should have input from various brains, I think. Not just for a greater breath of subject knowledge, but the different life experiences and personalities of different practitioners is bound to make a difference too. One of the factors that eroded my love of teaching in the UK was this gradual drift from genuine teams delivering substantial content to more than one year where it ended up being just me. Course leader, course tutor, only subject teacher. Just the one brain-full to go round the class.

I’ve always thought that course content is essentially greater than the sum of its parts and felt sorry for any group who only ever had me (or any other individual teacher for that matter) teaching them. It never seemed adequate.

With a good team, if nothing else, you can play to each other’s strengths whilst planning and we’ve certainly been doing plenty of that! Shakyajata is by far the most experienced among us, not just in terms of having taught in India for many years but also in her experiences as a Teacher of English before coming here. She’s been fronting a lot of the planning decisions as well as much of the more technical grammar points in active teaching. Mark is, a little like me, making a shift from his main subject, Science, to English teaching but before leaving the UK he attended an intensive TEFL course which sounded like a very useful, if slightly stressful, experience.

It’s not as if the cessation of my UK teaching career was exactly pleasant either (you can read the details here if you don’t already know them!) and before I arrived, I’d been out of the classroom for over a year, so I’ve not been feeling very confident with planning or delivery. Thankfully, one thing I’ve never lost any confidence in is drawing and I’ve been making the most of the generous preparation time that is comes with living on site to do lots of that! He’s been getting really stuck into his new direction, with lots of impressive ideas and confidence, happily taking on extra classes for non-residential students at the Indora campus in the evenings and even spending a lot of his ‘down’ time helping the young men’s community practise. And then there’s been me! I’ve not shared in Mark’s confidence with the language teaching. My TEFL was conducted entirely online and whilst there were bits I breezed through pertaining to general classroom management, delivery theory and assessment processes, there was also a lot that I sort of managed to limp through off the back of a lot of note taking and hope for the best in the multiple choice tests. There were more in depth written assignments but no actual teaching practice. I tried to arrange some experience by volunteering as an assistant at my local FE college but it never transpired.

As a visual learner myself, whilst I recognise the need to present information in a variety of ways, I definitely feel more fired up about lessons with a strong visual content. The students do seem to enjoy it too. There’s something very reassuring about going into a classroom with a couple of hours preparation under your belt. I never was one who liked to ‘wing’ it and I think I was one of the few teachers in my last team who did actually have filed lesson plans for each lesson, much to the apparent disgust of some more ‘natural’ colleagues! Through being able to produce lots of visual content, I’ve felt like I’ve managed to chisel out a tiny nook of comfort zone in an otherwise entirely new suite of (occasionally hostile) experiences. Being aware of my learning style bias has been important, but given the breath of backgrounds in our team, I don’t feel too worried and have thought how much I’d enjoy having three different teaching approaches myself; a visual artist, a singer/English professional and a scientist!

One benefit of team teaching is that even when you are taking a less active role, you are still in a really strong position to observe your colleagues and I’ve been learning a lot, not just about how to teach English but about the subject itself. Did you know that the difference between when you use ‘a’ or ‘an’ is in whether or not the next word starts with a vowel?! It seems so obvious when someone says it (a mouse, an elephant) and I’d have known if someone had got it wrong; but I’d not have been able to pin down why. Ahhh, bring back the relative certainties of red plus blue equals purple any day! Nevertheless, I’m badgering on, nibbling away at new titbits of knowledge as they present themselves and, slowly, I suppose, I must be making some progress! I’ve had some positive feedback from those who have seen my classes anyway, and the students are always smiling.

Aside from mild feelings of inadequacy alongside my more experienced or more confident colleagues, there have been many discoveries I have been enjoying about my unusual teaching renaissance and though there may be things about my Indian experience that leave me wanting (Oh, for the joys of a simple baked potato!), I feel my time in the classroom has been feeding a deep thirst that has been building for some months (or even years). The feeling that I am able to provide some assistance to others, meaningfully and in a way that empowers them to improve their own experiences of life is unparalleled in the sense of satisfaction it brings me. Feeling not just that I am part of a team delivering a much needed service but that the recipients are genuinely appreciative and understand the difference education can make to them is a rare luxury. I have found of my teaching in the UK that an almost resentful belligerence to receiving it is a sad symptom of the way we approach free, equal access to education. Many young people see school and college as a necessary evil to endure, a bit like a reluctant gym member; something one must be seen to be doing but with no real sense of purpose or faith in the outcome.

As well as the aforementioned team teaching, one refreshing difference here is that because we are not following a set qualification, it is entirely up to us to decide how to pace the content. Yes, we must make sure our learners receive the basis in the English language they need, but the freedom from deadlines and minimum unit content has been like taking a giant weight from my shoulders. Shakyajata is wise enough to recognise that, at least in this instance, less is most definitely more and as such we are planning for small amounts of  easily digestible content that stretch enough, but never too much.

Maybe then, it’s simply that given the freedom to operate as professionals, the time and space and trust to assess what our learners need and then respond to that thoughtfully and meaningfully, we are able to deliver a quality educational experience which facilitates genuine learning and meaningful progression, not just the ability to meet hollow criteria that doesn’t actually demonstrate anything beyond a bureaucratic dependency that never really benefits anyone. Maybe our learners are actually learning. And maybe they know that. Maybe that’s what they are grateful for. Maybe that’s (at least partly) why they invite us to dinner and want to play football with us at the weekend!

I have been here for six weeks now and it’s always about this time in a course where you really begin to see personalities emerge as you get to know a group. The naturally compromised nature of verbal communication to form a rapport might have had something of an impact on this but it’s funny the things you notice. Still, despite language barriers, personalities shine through. Hidden depths are revealed, life stories are told and I find myself become increasingly fond of every little idiosyncrasy I encounter. It’s always hard to say good bye to a tutor group you’ve really enjoyed teaching and though I don’t think for a moment that we’ll be able to discuss our deepest feelings in any detail by the time the date of my departure arrives, I somehow already know that these groups are not going to be among the easiest to have to say good bye to.

The experience of waking up at the weekend and realising I’m actually a little sorry to not be in the classroom is something I’ve not felt for a long, long time and it’s good that this is happening despite being in very new territory with my teaching. It seems like the good old days of teaching visual language may not be too far away anyway.

If home is where the heart is, this domestic story is no exception and I shall start with sharing the story of Saccadhamma; Triratna Order Member and father of the director of Aryaloka, Aryaketu.

I first realised how important Saccadhamma’s story was when he invited me to sit and talk with him a couple of days ago. As an order member, he was interested in my background and intentions within Triratna, but also in me personally as a new teacher for the young people to whom he opens his home and shares his life. I was both moved and intrigued when he said to me that I should forget thinking of the house as ‘his’, but should view it instead as ‘ours’. This was, he said, because ‘Bhante gave it to us.’ (Bhante is a term used in a respectfully affectionate way to refer to Sangharakshita, the founder of Triratna). At that time, I had to go and teach so I could not enquire further, but I knew there was more to hear and I was fortunate to sit down with him again today in the shade of the mango tree outside the front door, as he kindly indulged my questions to draw out a more remarkable story than even I had expected. I am very honoured to be able to recount that story here as what I hope to be the first of a few individual tales that I imagine will bring life to the background of daily experiences I’ll also be relating.

Saccadhamma did indeed break his bad habits and began to question his lifestyle. He gave up drinking, smoking and eating meat, realising that these products were bad for his whole family if he was unnecessarily spending money on them. “How could I care for my family?” he asks, “if my money was spent on watching movies and fighting?” He began saving the money that he had once spent on pleasures and luxuries and after two to three years of this he was able to buy the plot of land upon which the house now stands “because of my spiritual practice”. 1994 was an important year; not only did the purchase of the land take place, he was also formally ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order. Still, practical progress was slow and he was only able to pay for the materials in instalments so building did not start until 2002. The first work to take place was the well sinking, followed by construction of an outhouse. He references Jija suddenly, mindful of her contribution and support. She worked as a labourer to bring in extra funds just like his mother, but he says she never complained about his lifestyle choices or expensive habits and helped when work towards building began. From 2002 until 2005, the family lived in Indora, a central district of Nagpur and saved every month to pay for the construction. In 2005, the foundations were finally laid and they moved into the (still incomplete) residence in 2006; but to his mind there is still work to do.

His story is one of complete self-sacrifice; he has not only given himself and his energy unconditionally to the spiritual community of the Triratna Sangha but has also poured his working years and monetary income into crafting a vastly improved quality of life for his wife and children, extended family of daughters in law and grandchildren and the hundreds of students who come to receive free food, accommodation and education every year. I find myself unable to fully articulate the awe his story inspires in me as he sets an example I feel I can only aspire to follow but what I have learned is that while a house may be built from bricks and held together by mortar, this home is built from love and cemented with blood, sweat and tears. I fully understand now why he says this house has been ‘given’ to him by Bhante; it is as a direct result of the lifestyle changes he made after finding and following the Buddhist spiritual path as taught by Sangharakshita that he has been able to realise such an ambitious project. And so I am doubly honoured to be not only invited to share this precious place as my own home, but also to have been trusted with such a story. I only hope I have done it some justice in this account and would like to extend my heartfelt thanks and admiration to Dhammachari Saccadhamma for his time, his story and his warmest hospitality.