Train Whistle

Peter, Paul and Mary sang the version I remember best, "...You can hear the whistle blow 100 miles..."
When I got "home" from my trip to India at 2 a.m. and stepped out of the car, I heard the train whistle floating through the night. A few hours earlier we were in the train, leaving Mussoorie -- again. I was in the sleeper car, middle berth, and I could feel the rocking motion in my sleep; the announcer's mechanically pleasant voice drifted through my dreams at each stop. We were woken by the coolies early in the morning surging through the carriage vigorously shaking our feet and asking if we want help with our luggage. Too early even for "CHAI-CHAI".
It's funny how a single note can take me around the world and back. I remember trips with my brothers and sisters on the "Nepal Party" going home from boarding school for the holidays. I can almost taste the mango juice dripping down my chin, and the Kwality ice cream cones. I hear the vendors clamoring for business on the platform. I smell the smoke from cooking fires as we chug through villages. I see images as though looking at photos: people I have met on train trips; tranquil sunrises and boisterous sunsets; a crush of bicycles, motorcycles, rickshaws, bullock carts, buses and lorries waiting at railroad crossings; a red-shirted coolie with a trunk on his head and a shoulder bag over each arm dodging through a crowded station to get to the right train.
In college, I used to ride Amtak's Empire Builder from Minneapolis to the West Coast. I would imagine I was in a covered wagon slowly covering the miles. That train dives into the Columbia River valley at sunrise: the memory of watching the colors change still sends thrills through my senses.
My family and I once went to a family reunion in Minnesota on the train. It's such a relaxed mode of travel, compared to flying. It gives you time to reflect.
When we lived in Upstate New York on the Erie Canal the sound of the train whistle reminded me that there is more to life than just what we can see here. There is cargo to carry from East to West and North to South and back again. There are people going places for different reasons. Progress is happening. (Now the locks on the Canal are mostly used for pleasure cruisers.) At 2 in the morning, the train whistle welcomes me home to Delaware.

Walking in Snow

A late snow made it hard to walk on the sidewalks. Salt from yellow Department of Transportation trucks ate at my boots. Ice hid under new snow making steps treacherous.
Usually when we had to walk out of Jumla to get to school it was because of monsoon. The heavy clouds filled the mountain passes, sometimes for weeks on end, so the little Canadian-made twin engine planes could not see their way through. We would wait till the last possible day to make our connections, then hike out carrying our school stuff in our backpacks. It took 5 days if you kept moving.
A couple of times we had to walk out when the snowfall prevented planes from landing. We didn't own boots; it was hard to keep your footing on the mountain paths with the stiff soles anyway. Our canvas sneakers got pretty wet and our feet got pretty cold after 15 miles. We would come to a "hotel" along the trail: hopefully a space to share with people not animals where we could roll out our sleeping bags, with a fire to dry out our tennies overnight, and a big plate of hot rice and dahl. That was all we needed. Next day, hot "chiya" before starting out. In the winter we had to use the lower pass, which took a little longer, because the snow might catch us in the highest elevations if we used the shorter route.
In the Himalayas people don't just put on an extra layer of polar fleece and pull on their Sorrels. Winter involves a lot of sitting next to the smokey wood fire. The animals live under the kitchen, so they help warm the house and it's not far to take care of them, but you have to go and forage food for them. When you go to school or to market, you wear wool socks your father knit last fall as he walked to work. If father had an especially good job you might be able to buy woolen boots from Tibetan traders on their way to India with a mule train. You also might have been lucky enough for grandmother to have woven you a woolen shawl made from the wool from the sheep you herded all last summer.
I think of the hefty heating bills with our severe winter on the eastern coast. And I think of evenings spent sitting in the kitchen with my family next to the wood stove, reading by the light of a kerosene lantern or a camp light charged by the sun. When the battery wears down, it's time to take your candle up to your cold room and climb under the covers quick.

Morning Again

Someone at the National Weather Service thought up the name "polar vortex". Cute. Well, we're in one, about the fourth one so far this winter halfway along the eastern seaboard of the United States.
BUT, the birds are singing, and the sun is warm when it comes up. Sun triggers memories: falling asleep on the train to the rhythmic clack of the wheels on the tracks; waking up early to crisp, pre-dawn air blowing in the open windows.
After that first cup of tea, I find a spot to watch the morning wake on the plains of India. From the window, I get a front row seat on the proceedings. Before the seething heat overcomes the lowlands, there is a peace at sunrise.
As we chug through the villages, morning exposes residents squatting in their private sections of field with their water bottles, taking care of morning necessities. The Mrs. is already making the first cup of tea to greet the day. I glimpse the fire winking through the low wooden doorway. I see the Mr. hitching the hulking water buffalo to the cart for the first load of the morning--maybe a lot of little kids in their uniforms, hair neatly oiled  and pulled into pigtails with ribbons, going to school.
I peek over the fence at the Daughter sweeping the door yard so the activities of the day can get a fresh start. I see the Younger Brother milking the gentle she-buffalo. If there is some milk left over after deliveries the family might get some in their afternoon tea with their biscuits.
Soon that magic, misty sheen will burn off and the sun will just be up. Horns will blare as we pass lines of traffic. Commuters will join us at each stop and sit on the end of the bunk. Conversations will rise and fall; business will be completed. But for now, there's peace.

Morning Sounds

Right before sun-up, the wind blusters one more icy gust on the commuters at the bus stop. Then it's calm. Not warm -- not any less cold. Just calm. The sunlight, pale and shrouded with clouds, lends a little hope of change. Last week the sun didn't rise until we were almost into the city. It has been a cold winter in Delaware.
In India, the morning begins with the call to prayer from the muezzin (before the last bluster). On the train, the bearers offer the first tea for the early risers. By then I've had enough of trying to rest on the hard berth and I sit on my bedding cross legged; even before I wash my face I savor my tea, and the sound of the wheels clacking as we speed towards our rendezvous with the school party traveling in big noisy groups up the mountain to the hill station school, protected from the crushing heat of the the plains.
In the old days, the first lesson of the day was music, and we had to come to school before everyone else to practice our instruments or rehearse with our ensembles. We called them the cells because that's what they were: three levels of tiny practice rooms built off the side of the hill, guarded by Mrs Biswas who could somehow hear if I wasn't practicing. The cacophony of so many aspiring musicians created our own call to the day. I would steal a minute to listen to the bells on the first mule train bringing milk in to the town dwellers from the farms. Now, a jeep loaded with fresh produce for market roars or sputters or clunks by, noisily shifting gears around the narrow curves.
Music is not the first lesson at school anymore. But in the amphitheater of the hills we can hear all the sounds of the morning: school bells donging to wake boarders, whistles directing early morning exercises, voices of young students in neat rows in neat uniforms intoning the national anthem standing straight and unmoving as required by law, and finally the Hindu prayer service broadcast over loud speakers.

Listening

Haven't we all discussed on some level the existential question: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make any noise?
My question is: If you're walking in the woods and a leaf falls, will you hear it?
When your 17 year old daughter says her friend wants to buy a new car because her bumper's messed up, will you hear she's telling you they had an accident together and you need to ask her about it?
When your husband asks if you want him to read to you while you're making dinner, will you hear he wants to spend time with you -- and he wants you to want him to spend time with you?
Sometimes our teenagers ask if they can go out with friends, then let us know they want us to say "no" so they can tell their friends their parents wouldn't let them.
I'd like to recommend a good book. It's called The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor. Enjoy!

Fashion (continued)

It's funny how people make assumptions about what they see. I have a towel that I bought in South India when the one I brought got left in the hotel. It is not terry cloth, but works great as a travel towel to pull out of your bag at opportune moments. It's checked cotton with tassels. People who see me carrying it think I'm going to pray, another of my basic needs.
When I check out at Kohls twice or three times a year, I can't figure out how people spend enough money to make a frequent shopper card worthwhile. What's the story with the lady dressed up in a suit who comes to collect food at the free pantry? Aren't people who come for free food supposed to wear dirty sweats?
It just goes to show, you can't tell a person's story unless you ask.

Peepal Tree

Japanese Strawberry is the street name for the dogwood (Kousa Dogwood) that's dropping its fall fruit in my neighborhood. The enticingly bright berries look as though people at some place in history may have thought they were a great treat to eat. Now they just make a mess on the sidewalk. Even the squirrels are not interested. They are much more enamored of the huge quantity of acorns in the tree next door. Under that oak tree is not a safe place to wait for your bus this time of year.
The long-stemmed "strawberries" remind me of the Peepal fruits. Featuring in a lot of mythology, the huge Peepal trees are also central to village life in Nepal. The hugest ones often grow at strategic spots along major trading and travel routes--which came first, I wonder, the tree or the road? Often there is a strategic tea shop right across the trail. Called chautara, the raised stone and mud mortar platform built around the trunk is just the right height for traders or shoppers, or relatives carrying a patient to the hospital, to rest their dokus on, bamboo woven baskets used for transporting things in the Himalayas.
They're not just good for resting travelers. The best thing about Peepal is they're great for climbing. I spent many contemplative hours as a child and teenager hidden in the cool, leafy branches. You can also make a whistle out of a Peepal leaf, an art that I never mastered no matter how many friends showed me how easy it is. It was really a boys' craft; maybe they showed me the wrong way on purpose!
Ghosts are known to hang out under Peepal tree trunks and among the hanging roots of their cousins the Banyan trees. That never stopped me -- we Christian kids glibly believed we weren't susceptible to Hindu ghosts. Now, looking back, I know all of us humans (dead AND alive) are a lot more connected than I thought then.
A few squashy berries took me there.