7.25.11. 11:59PM. Day 24. Patti.

This morning we woke up to a house full of people. Mayank, Sunny, and Dr. Paul were all sitting in the living room. I don't think I wrote about him before, because at the time I didn't really know who he was, but Dr. Paul is the doctor in the village of Patti (pronounced p'tti) and he is also the one who took me and Mary to Rishikesh our first week. I didn't find this out until last week, but he is also Sunny's father. Now, I don't know if you remember what I wrote about Sunny last week but having them both in Aunty's living room was both embarrassing and surreal. On top of knowing that I wrote about his son, I was embarrassed because I was walking at a ridiculously slow pace when he took us to Rishi. This was both due to the awkward bulk and heaviness of my bags and that I was walking up hill in my flip flops after a rain. They should be called "slippery-sons-of-accidents-waiting-to-happen-I-can't-believe-I-haven't-fallen-yet-oh-my-God-my-ankles-are-not-going-to-make-it" footwear. I was slipping and sliding the whole time...that and sweating profusely. A great first impression. But he just smiled and asked if I remembered him, I said 'yes' and smiled back. Sunny sat next to Mayank and was his usual silent self. Mayank said that he came to see us off, but really I think he and Sunny were there to show Matt and Rayleen how to get to their clinic sites. It was a sweet gesture though. As we got ready to leave, Mayank told us that he would be visiting us in Patti later in the week. Dr. Paul led the way to the jeep that was waiting for us. We loaded up and were on our way to pick up the other girls who would be joining us: Nikki, Anna, and Lauren.

Apparently there had been drama in their group as well. Anna and Lauren were two of the girls who wanted to switch to Agra at the last minute; Nikki continued on to Dharamsala. Mary and I were not sure how this week would go, we hoped for no cat fights. when we got to their homestay it was a little bit of an ordeal. The girls were not sure, as this was the 4th week of the program, if they would be going back to their homestay after coming back from Patti or if they'd go directly to the train station. Their homestay mother was out in the driveway bawling her eyes out (apparently she does this every time). So the brought ALL of their luggage with them. Anna, in particular, took up a lot of space - she'd bought a sitar, which in itself was bigger than her, but it came in a hard case that was twice its size! This think was huge and took up about as much space as a very stiff-legged, fully grown man. It was bad enough to have 5 people in the back, it was something else entirely to have this much baggage. Also, not to put all of the space blame on Anna, Lauren had a bag the size of a morbidly obese giant sea turtle. But anyway, we'd learned by this point that there is no such thing as personal space in India, so we all happily sat snugly together. Mary and I knew we would be going back to our homestay a day early, for two reasons - Mayank challenged me to a bowling duel for Thursday night and there was a possibility that we would be taking the 5Am Friday train to Delhi. Knowing this, we traveled light.

We started out hour long off-road journey up into the foothills. We climbed and winded our way up and up until everything below looked small. Between the many bumps and dips in the earthen road my mind couldn't help but wonder what Patti would be like. For the past 3 weeks I have heard countless stories from everyone in the other groups about this place. It  was always their favorite. I couldn't wait to see for myself what it was all about. The closer we got, the more excited I got. Well, mostly excited - I'd heard that there would be 5:30AM yoga every morning, and as I knew myself very well...yeaaaaaaah - no. But the rest of it sounded great!

We'd arrived around 11AM, so a lot of the morning stuff would have already happened. We unloaded our stuff into our rooms and then just kind of hung out for awhile until lunch time.

...

I'm not going to lie - today is Thursday, August 11, 2011. I'd not really felt like keeping up with the journal since I came back from Amritsar. So now, two weeks after the fact, writing about my time in Patti is like writing about a dream. It's all here in my head, waiting to be put on paper, but every time I start I quickly find myself lost in memory. It's almost as if I don't want to tell this part - maybe because it was so special that I want to keep it all for myself; maybe I just don't have any arrangement of words that could describe, with any justice, the experience I had here, or maybe like with a dread, I have a secret hope that if I hold it in - it might come true. Or maybe, just maybe, deep down inside I can't  get myself to write about it because I know that once I do, that means that it really did happen already, that it's over; I'm not there, and that my final week in India is over. I'm really back in America, back into reality, and no longer in my dreamland so far across the sea... but I shall try to continue.

...

The first day we went to the clinic right above where we sleep. The living, dining, all-round communal area is on the ground floor, which is at a lower level than the road, and the clinic and little convenience stand are on the second level at road height.. We 5 plus Dr. Paul sat in the clinic office and people started trickling in one by one. Ethically, I'm not allowed to try my hand at medicine on real patients - nor did I have any inclination to do so. But here we were in Patti and the first thing Dr. Paul has The Future Doctors of America do is check lungs and blood pressure.

 This is the most hands-on medical actions these girls have had all month. We've witnessed a lot of things, but didn't actually participate... It was fun to see their levels of comfort at handling people. It was amusing to see Dr. Paul manhandle people's heads to look down their throats which most people did not look at all bothered by, but these girls struggled to get past the whole moving people into necessary positions. Their confidence levels rose as the week progressed. I'm so proud. By the end of the first day the girls thought that I should partake on the action too. When i said 'no thanks' and told them my reasons, most payed no attention and decided that when we had a slow moment in the clinic they would teach me how to take BP and check lungs. I agreed since they volunteered to be my victims and not the innocent villagers of Patti.


Another patient came in, but this one I recognized. Akki, the young yoga master, who I'd barely said a word to the previous week when he and Mayank dropped me off at Dr. Gandhi's, was in the hot seat. He  gave us a weak little smile as Dr. Paul started poking and prodding him, and then he lifted up Akki's shirt (niiice), to show us the 3 or 4 bee stings he got while riding his motorbike in Rishikesh just the day before. He didn't know us, and we didn't know him. Nobody said much more than "oh. ouch...poor guy..." Nobody would have guessed at that moment how we would form our different relationships with him in the next three days. But for now, we all just sat there and watched  Dr. Paul work his magic. After a few minutes he, too, went on his way, and another patient came in...

After clinic we went right downstairs for yoga in the little courtyard. We changed, grabbed mats from the closets and found ourselves face to face with our instructor once again. He looked tired or pained...probably both. I'd hoped the bee stings would have been reason enough to cancel yoga - but no such luck. There was a definite difference in the way Akki taught us yoga than the old man from Rishikesh. Well...Akki is actually from Rishi too, but the point is that their approaches were very different. The old man was obviously old and pushed us as though we too were old men, as is why I liked him so much. "Feeeeeeeeeel your booooodaay....Relax yoooooooooour miiiiiiind..." Akki, on the other hand, is a young yoga stud in his prime, and he pushed us like we ought to be where he is. Not really, but that's what it felt like. My muscles were protesting; I was shaking from my muscles freaking out from having to work. But I didn't complain, I held out and kept going; doing what ever was called for, for as long as it was called for. I knew that my body was going to get its revenge on me the next day, but for the time being i had an ego to protect. I showed no weakness, other than the violent shaking...

We'd finished, and within the hour it was dinnertime. Our cook, Rinku, was an amazing creature in and of himself. He is a small, slender man who is surprisingly crazy-strong and brave. Yet he is the gentlest soul with the purest spirit I have ever had the pleasure of coming across. Right after dinner he saved us all from a rather large scorpion that was right behind Lauren's chair. He quite happily went to the kitchen and brought out some tongs. He picked up the scorpion and put it over the fence, in the rice paddies. He came back singing; that's the other thing about him - he's always singing an old hindi love song from way back when or is playing his little wooden flute or hand drum. He is an amazing human being, and even though it seemed that he only spoke 4ish words of English, "Breakfash's ready," "lunch's ready," and "Dinner's ready" he taught us so much in only 4 days.

By the end of the first day, the tone for the rest of the week was set. Those men: Rinku, Virindir, and especially Dr. Paul loved to pull pranks on us - trying to jump out and scare us at random moments. Akki didn't necessarily try his hand at scaring but he would occasionally act as an attention grabber while the others got ready to strike. After the first day, we girls too got into the groove of retaliation, but also of sabotage to the other girls. We would scare Rinku back into the kitchen and lock him in, jump out at Dr. Paul, but also call to another girl to come out when one of the guys hid behind the door. Once, Dr. Paul was in the bathroom, and Rinku chucked a cup of water through the little open air grate above the door frame. We heard an, "Aaaaargh!" and we all giggled. He came out, grabbed his nearby umbrella and chased Rinku around the courtyard before going back to wash his hands.

After dinner things began to wind down. We'd been playing cards for awhile, teaching Akki how to play Go Fish and BS but after awhile the girls went into the rooms and only Akki and I were left outside at the table. He'd asked me to teach him how to do the bridge thing after a shuffle, and I tried my best but he was a slow learner. We talked for a long time getting to know each other a little more, but eventually he reminded me that there was the 5:30 AM yoga to look forward to. It was around midnight already, so we decided to leave it there, and called it a night.