From the Classroom
Blogs Archive
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Smile, you are no longer lost
Sisham is bent over a book nearly black with dense Hindi lettering. I drop my clipboard and sweater on the table and collapse next to him where he leans against the air conditioner, pressing his forehead against the vent and shielding the text with the curve of his body. His reading has a gruesome diagram [...] -
However Long the Night, the Dawn will Break
I reached for him, forgetting to cover my nose, forgetting the corpses behind me or the maggots and flies that surrounded us, forgetting the dirt settled over him, seeing nothing but his empty eyes… -
Caged Bird Singing
Like a powerful metaphor for the stratification of Indian society, the masses below, teeming with life, suffer a harsh reality. Each member of the chaotic crowd gazes with an upturned face at those few gilded cages. Awareness of social inequities in this, as in everything else, is unmitigated by the irrepressible force of human life that glows in the heat of this room. -
Emeralds in the Dust
From my letters home: I met a girl today… with the most startling eyes. I have already grown accustomed to the incredibly expressive Indian irises, I found. The usual slightly russet coloring and a sentiment that is slightly darker in shade than those I remember in the west. Where I teach in the slums, the [...] -
A Tradition of Fire
As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present. -Marcus Aurelius -
Rainbow Fragments
I believe that the most profound experiences of volunteering with a population like this occur when one is given a rare glimpse of clarity, like a ray of sunlight hitting a shard of glass just right, enabling one to see an entire rainbow in that fleeting moment. -
Changing My Little World
“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” — Kahlil Gibran
