For Sujal

They taught us in school how to see it.

Danger, hidden as it may be
Within ourselves, or around the corner.
That’s how you knew danger lies
Not in romantic places, where one thinks of it:
Rocky cliffs, or deep in the waves, or the sudden flame of an explosion.

You saw danger hiding in our everyday
Apathy, the same apathy that leaves cancer to run reckless
Through a body. It’s in our hearts, and you told us
Not to wait, that momentum is the only cure.

So I know that if I said, “don’t go—
It’s dangerous.” You would have laughed.
The danger is here and now, in the simple ways
We expect it, still catching us unprepared.
That’s why I’m not surprised death came for you that way,
Prosaically, the death we see daily on the streets,
Walking languidly between the wheels and the curb.
The part I can’t accept is- I know
When pushed into the air, you wouldn’t fall,
You would only rise. To fall isn’t in your nature.
When the force of your convictions struck
Against those more mundane forces of gravity or attraction,
I know reality could never stop a dream in motion.

(c) 2010 Alison Hayward

Remembering

My friend Sujal was in a serious car accident a few days ago in Uganda. He was on a motorcycle taxi struck by another vehicle and sustained severe injuries. As it turns out, he was never stable enough to transfer out of the country. He passed away last night in Uganda, and a large community of friends is mourning his loss today.

I would like to tell you a little bit about Sujal and my memories of him. I first encountered Sujal in early 2005, when he applied for a position on one of the UVP summer teams. After acceptance, I noticed that he was always the first to respond when I sent e-mails to the team members, and that he asked many insightful questions about the trip. Although he was only 18 years old, the minimum age for participants in our program, I knew that he had the potential to be a great team leader, and I asked him if he would be willing to lead a team. Sujal was not one to take commitments lightly, and he asked if we could have a phone conversation so he could learn more about what was involved. I clearly remember calling Sujal while I was on a ski vacation, describing Uganda and our teams to him, impressed by his maturity which was beyond many other participants despite being much younger. He agreed to become a team leader, and went on to lead a successful team effort working in the village of Ibulanku with our partners at People and Development Initiatives clinic. He turned in an excellent report of the summer's work, and I ended up entreating him to join our executive board. I wanted to harness his energy, intelligence, and care for those living in poverty. Again, he carefully considered the decision, asking me for copies of many pages worth of documents he wanted to read about the organization before deciding. He read them all, and UVP was in luck - he decided to join the board as treasurer.

He attended our annual board meeting and consistently arose as a voice of reason and insight into what would be most helpful for our communities. Although he was new to the experience of working in a developing country, he had an innate sense of what was right. After an excellent performance as treasurer, he continued to be one of our most involved alumni, year after year requesting to remain on our board of trustees. He attended in person meetings, online meetings, and he responded to innumerable e-mails. I have worked with many people interested in global health, but Sujal was one of the rare people who put his convictions, truly, into practice. (how difficult it is to write that he "was"! Instead I would like to change that to 'will always be'...)

Just in the past few months, Sujal had become involved in a number of initiatives with Uganda Village Project - pushing us to become more involved with researching our programs and presenting that research to others. He practically single-handedly spearheaded an effort that resulted in our presenting of 4 different research abstracts at a national conference in Kampala last month. Not only that, he was the sort of person who joined in on conversations about how to improve our organizational technological capacity, and other such details that others might consider minutiae. He would become really involved in the conversation, giving real consideration to the options and weighing them. Those who work with organizations that function online know what a rarity this is, and how hard it is to find the people who always respond to questions and concerns immediately. The people like Sujal, who really care about what they do, even though it is not for school, not for credit, not for work - just for making the world a better place, in their spare time.

That is what I loved about Sujal, and why I knew that he was going to have a huge impact on global health and human rights. He wasn't in it for prestige or for power, he was becoming a leader so that he could create positive change in the lives of others.

The strange thing about the way our lives intersect in the age of the internet is that I am able to have very close relationships with people whose faces I hardly ever see, whose voices I hardly ever hear, but yet I feel that we are good friends. There are a number of people, through the nature of how Uganda Village Project works, who I correspond with on a near-daily basis, sharing ideas, thoughts, jokes, and conversations with, and yet- we are many miles apart. My friendship with Sujal was like that. I had a very small wedding, and I invited him, even though we hadn't seen one another in person more than a handful of times. And now, I feel like there is an empty hole in my life, even though it's hard to explain how a person who you had a relationship with over the internet can leave a hole like that.

Here is how I heard the news about Sujal. He had given me a great deal of advice, because I was nervous about traveling to India for the first time. He had also given me the contact information for his aunt and uncle and urged me to meet them and have dinner with them. I could tell they were as kind as Sujal, because sight unseen, they offered me a place to stay while I was in Baroda. The day before I was scheduled for dinner with them, he called to ensure everything was all set. I showed up at their house and they were incredibly welcoming, and set out a veritable feast of delicious Gujarati food for me. I was afraid I might not like it, being a picky eater, but it was all so good that I had seconds and thirds. And even after I ate the seconds and thirds, his auntie and uncle kept giving me more, until I had eaten fifths and sixths. I ate until I thought that I might actually explode, and I had to stop because I couldn't swallow another bite.

At that point, we moved back to the living room, and his auntie showed me a magazine featuring Sujal's cousin, a vascular interventionalist, on the cover. After I read the article and commented on how proud they must be, they said how they loved to hear about the successes of their nephews. And then his auntie said to me "We were going to take you to the Navratri festival tonight, but we cannot go now. We have had some very bad news." "What's wrong?" I asked. "We have had some very bad news." She repeated, as if she couldn't bring herself to get to the news, pausing a moment. "Sujal has been in a terrible car accident. He is in a coma in the hospital." I just looked at them, and my mouth was opening and closing, and nothing was really coming out. They had known since before I arrived, but didn't tell me so that it would not ruin the dinner. Even though a terrible tragedy had befallen someone who was like a son to them, they were thinking of my wellbeing, and cooking food for me to enjoy. I felt like an intruder into their grief. And I had to steel myself so that they would not see me falling apart - I did not want them to think that I suspected the worst, even though I did, because a coma plus an accident equals a traumatic brain injury. The rickshaw man looked at me strangely as I cried in his backseat, all the way to our destination, watching the motorcycle taxis dodge in and out of the chaotic nighttime traffic.

missing you, Sujal.

Worrying.

I heard yesterday that my good friend in Uganda had a serious accident. I am terribly worried about him and waiting for a call from his family to find out how he is doing. It is hard to think about anything else. Please, let him be all right.

Day 9: Champaner/Pavadgarh

The sessions of the conference running today were about leadership, and I had to decide whether to attend or to go touring in the Gujarati countryside. I suppose some would say you can always learn more about leadership, but I wasn’t inspired for today to be the day for me to do that. I enthusiastically took off to tour a World Heritage site called Pavadgarh, about a 1 hour drive from Vadodara.

The part of Gujarat where we are is very flat and basically looks sort of like marshlands or jungle floodplains. But oddly enough, as you approach Pavadgarh, there is this giant cliff that rises up from the plains, and we were headed for its peak. You can hire a rickety old SUV to bring you up the steep cliffside most of the way through a series of hair-raising switchbacks, but many intrepid pilgrims are hiking all the way up this thing. The most entertaining thing about those traveling on foot was that they were organized into small bands of people, typically the majority of them wearing matching red, pink, or orange headscarves, or even matching T-shirts too. Each ‘team’ usually carried a flag or a banner, basically just homemade from scraps of bright fabric and metallic bric-a-brac. Some of the most elaborate teams even had these musical carts with them, that had drums attached and a bullhorn so that their music was amplified around them. The teams would be singing and cheering as they hiked their way up, and would wave and cheer harder as we passed by.

When we reached the top of Pavadgarh, there were further crowds of people and a meandering walkway through an old bazaar where people were selling trinkets for the pilgrimage like headbands and pictures of gods and goddesses. This place was full of oddities and points of interest, for example, as we turned a corner, a herd of donkeys decorated with orange paint stampeded by. Yes, you heard me right, they were donkeys painted orange, although later my fellow traveler joked that perhaps they were tigers in disguise. You can either hike up the stairs, a lengthy climb, or take something called “The Ropeway of the Gods”, which is a cable car to the peak. I can testify that only the most serious of hikers should undertake the stair pathway. It is lined with kilometers worth of further hawkers and souvenir stands, which is sort of impressive. We hopped on the cable car and were treated to lovely views across the Gujarati countryside of lakes and fields. The cliffs of the mountain were lined with ruins in various stages of decay, even ruins that looked basically new. There were also mini-altars and shrines all the way up. I was blissfully happy as we climbed to find that no one on this mountain seemed to speak any English whatsoever, so if they were trying to harass me, sell to me, beg from me, I don’t know, because we couldn’t understand each other. It was wonderful. I did notice that the few English words I heard came from beggars, such as ‘look!’ (pointing at stump where leg should be) and ‘hello!!’ (thrusting bowl into tourist’s chest).

Most of the shops sold Hindu trinkets and offerings to bring to the temple such as coconuts, small loaves and bags of sweets. My favorite shops, though, were these funny little ‘photo booth’ shops. The photo booth shops were just empty rooms with wall coverings made to look like mountainous scenery, with representations of people and gods on them as well, and you would get your photo taken in front of these backgrounds. Most of these shops also had large props you could put in the photos, specifically large stuffed tigers and toy motorcycles you could sit on. I was dying to get my photo taken with the giant stuffed tiger (preferably with both of us astride a toy motorcycle), but was too shy to do so and settled for taking a surreptitious photo of the booth. One of the booths had a life-sized stuffed llama.

We eventually processed up to nearly the top of the mountain, where a very steep stone staircase led to the temple itself. There was a pile of shoes by the base of the stairs, which gave my less-traveled companions pause. I was wearing a junk pair of flip flops that I kicked off, but some were wearing expensive shoes like Tevas and Merrells. They continued on. We climbed the staircase, sweating and puffing, past little carvings of gods that each had red ink on their foreheads. We finally reached the temple and queued to reach the altar. As we waited in the queue, banshee screams started coming from inside the temple. For a moment, I almost sprang ahead shouting  ‘do you need a doctor?!’ but I didn’t, based on two things, #1, no one else was moving or looked concerned, clueing me in that this might be some cultural phenomenon. #2, I realized that to some extent, I’ve heard enough screaming in the ER that I can tell a hysterical scream from a true scream of pain or distress, and this sounded like a hysterical scream. My suspicion was confirmed when a woman lurched out of the temple and pretended to faint into a policeman’s arms, waving her arms wildly. There was a 13 year old girl next to me from our group, who looked scared and said ‘did that woman just pass out?’ I said ‘no, she is just being dramatic. Don’t worry.’ And surely enough, the woman picked herself up and walked out, having been dispossessed of the spirit.

A few minutes later, more screams came from behind me. I looked in their direction, and realized the screams were being made at members of our group. “Shoes!! No shoes!! No shoes!!” Angry pointing and gesturing by the crowd accompanied the screams. Luckily, I had a little cloth reusable bag inside my handbag, and we hid all the shoes inside this, although much glaring continued to ensue.  As we processed through, a girl approached and said in surprisingly good English: “I am sorry, it is not my place to say things to you, but please do not ever bring shoes into a holy temple again.” We had become very unpopular visitors.

Inside the temple was an altar where two men were busily collecting offerings. They would touch some of the items, like the small loaves, to the temple wall. The strangest aspect of this little white stone temple was that just above the altar was a large digital clock face that was meant to display the time and date. The time was mildly incorrect, but the date read “1, 1, 2000”. Curiouser and curiouser…

As you exited the temple, the actual external walls of the stone building were thick with red, pink, and orange powdery vegetable dye, like the dye was actually seeping out from the walls. Some women had small jars or pieces of paper that they were collecting this powder into and taking it with them. Others, like me, just pressed their finger into it and touched our neighbor on the forehead. It’s good luck, or so I am told. I noticed that as you passed down the stairs, there was a little cave in the rock you could peek into, and inside the crevice, a pair of eyes were painted onto the back wall, and several small offerings had been pushed into the cave. These eyes were apparent in a number of locations in and around the temple, and prompted offerings wherever they were found. I assumed that the message was something like, god is watching you, so you’d better be good. But that may be just my wacky Western Christianized viewpoint of it.

We drove home and my companions joked most of the way back about how the temple visit was a hot, tiring ordeal and not worth seeing, but I found myself quite enamored of this strange place and happy with the journey.

Day 7/8: Vadodara

I’ve arrived in Gujarat, a coastal state in northwestern India that borders Pakistan. I spent my first day at the conference yesterday, which was nice – but somehow it is hard for a medical conference to measure up after you’re used to the excitement of traveling the countryside, seeing ancient marvels and World Wonders. 

This medical conference is very similar to medical conferences in the USA, except that it has a leisurely tea break of delicious chai with cookies in the afternoon, and the conferencegoers seem to have a different standard of etiquette with technology than what we are used to in the States. Every few minutes, some ringtone will peal out from part of the conference hall, which is not unlike conferences in the USA, except that here, people actually answer the phones and start having a conversation with whoever is calling them, during the conference, whereas at home people usually either try to clandestinely sneak out the door or just slouch in their seat looking heavily embarrassed.

Last night, we were taken out to a ‘faculty dinner’ that was held at some princely estate in the farmlands around Vadodara. We had been driving for about 45 minutes on the way to this place when some canny person noticed that we were driving through nothing but trees and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, and asked the driver if he knew where we were going. He admitted that he did not, and what better time to learn that than 45 minutes down the road?

 We eventually were able to end up at the right place, and it turned out that we would be eating outside in a grassy courtyard, or, more precisely, that the mosquitoes would be dining on us there. The evening began with a Hindu prayer ceremony, in which several elderly women in saris sat on an altar and lit candles and chanted loudly and wailingly for a very long time. It was charming but strange. We sat in a circle around the altar, and waiters brought us small appetizers. As they came by with the appetizers, they would tell us if the dish was vegetarian or not, only with their accents, it sounded like they were either saying ‘wedge’ or ‘non-wedge’. I was very excited every time a ‘wedge’ appetizer came by – they included chilly paneer, cheese omelet, cheese naan, and also something that the waiters called ‘Mexican dish’, which was like a miniature pizza topped with corn, except instead of a miniature pizza crust it had a miniature crunchy pie crust. I cannot do it justice with words. It looked sketchy and sounds even worse, but it was actually tasty.

After the lengthy prayers ended, a magic show began. Yes, a magic show with a real live magician wearing a top hat and suit. He had a table stacked with all sorts of props, and kept performing this lame trick where you pull a feather duster type thing through another object (like a hollow cylinder) and it changes color. He had numerous other tricks that were of equally dubious impressiveness, like throwing regular size cards into a box and pulling out big cards. My favorite trick was that he put this rabbit hand puppet on, and pretended the rabbit puppet was his baby, and made it pretend to drink a bottle of milk. Only it was one of those trick bottles, so that after it appears to be empty, you can turn it back rightside up and it appears full again. It was such a silly, bizarre trick. I kept applauding because I felt bad for the magician. Then one of the lights for the outside garden went out, and the magician was left in semi-darkness, and he stomped off with the air of: “I cannot work under these conditions!”

Dinner itself was fine and even included ice cream, and this very odd drink made of lychees and milk. We were out at dinner until extremely late.

Day 6: Back in Delhi

When I woke up back in Delhi I felt more relaxed and determined to enjoy what was left of my tour and stop fixating on money.



I first visited an interesting Hindu temple with extensive gardens around it. I decided not to enter the temple at all so that people would leave me alone. The gardens were a fascinating area that was partially overgrown by bushes and vines, and partially immaculately groomed. There were scattered statues of all sorts of animals with cartoonish expressions on their faces, brightly painted. For example, there was a fountain made of four cobras, with a little white statue of Shiva standing on top. There were also mini-temples or tiny altars hidden throughout these gardens, littered with flowers and coins. The strangest thing I found was a machine next to one of the imposing stone statues of a god, with neon flickering lights flashing in circles on its face. This machine turned out to be like a little carnival machine where you put in 2 rupees and it tells you your weight. I remain baffled as to how this fits into a temple garden. Do Hindus have particular obsession with weight? I actually found 2 more of these machines tucked into corners of the garden. “Check your weight!” They said. Very odd.


Next I visited “Gandhi Smriti”, which is the house in which Gandhi lived for the last days of his life. There are several large statues of Gandhi around the gardens, draped in flowers. In fact, the entire property was dripping with flower chains. The rear garden had been basically made into a temple for Gandhi, featuring a little monument where he was killed, and a raised pathway of stone footprints representing the steps he took in his last 5 minutes on earth. I found this monument very moving, and stood around on the verge of tears for a while until I tore myself away to see more of the sights.


The major event of the afternoon was that I decided to spend some rupees on an Ayurvedic massage. The price was too high, and their brochure about how Ayurvedic massage could cure diabetes and Alzheimer’s definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but I decided to purchase the massage anyway because my back was sore from the hard Indian mattresses I’ve been frequenting, and I decided that this would be a good way to release some of my ‘alone vacation’ stress. In the spa office, I was brought back into a small room with a bed and a little gas stove with a pot on it in the corner and asked to undress. I have a great fear of being burned, so this terrified me. I nervously hovered around the room staring at the hot stove and feeling like a prude, and the massage therapist had to tell me three times, laughing “take off everything! Everything!” This massage was in fact, quite similar to the massage I received a few years ago in Uganda, except in slightly classier surroundings. The massage therapist put on a little flowered apron and started cooking up a small bucket of oil. I ended up getting covered in oil from the top of my head to each toe. Aside from wanting to yell “hey, stop cracking my toes! I’ll crack them myself if it ever becomes necessary!” I enjoyed the massage fully. There was also a strange interlude involving giving a hard tug on each one of my joints as if the therapist was trying to dislodge them, and I got a sound smacking from neck to feet with a bag full of Ayurvedic spices soaked in oil. Between the stove, apron, and being slathered in sweet-smelling oil, I felt like a cross between a lounging massage recipient and a slab of maple bacon.


After the massage, I felt much more ready to go on and face the rest of the day. What I should have done is skipped lunch and demanded to be taken to the Jain Bird Hospital, which I know I would have loved. It’s the only thing I regret not seeing on my Golden Triangle tour. I was dropped at Delhi Airport and started on my way to the next adventure, in Gujarat state on the northwest coast of India.

Agra/Back to Delhi

They say that the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful building in the world. And yet it is built in this dirty little city named Agra, which is really not a very pleasant place to spend time. We woke up very early in the morning to go see the Taj at sunrise, which is the thing to do. I had a guided tour around the Taj and its surrounding gardens, which truly were beautiful. I think the problem was, I had been daydreaming and looking longingly at this gorgeous photo of the Taj in my guidebook, and it turns out that in my humble opinion, it actually looks better in the photo. Everyone says it is far bigger than they expected, and this made me think it must be enormous, but it is not. I know this is heresy. Anyway, it was certainly worth seeing. These rajas certainly had an obsession with symmetry. Everything on the entire property of the Taj is symmetrical, and Shah Jahan, who built it, was going to make a mirror image black Taj on the other side of the river as his own mausoleum. Unfortunately for him, his son thought that constructing giant multi-billion dollar marble mausoleums was a waste of money and locked him into a closet for the rest of his life to stop him, so there is no black Taj. But it is interesting to think of the mirror Taj and how far the symmetric revolution would have gone and gone with nothing to get in its way…



After visiting the Taj, I was taken to a marble shop, where people who are supposedly descendants of the workers who built the Taj carve semi-precious stones into marble just like the decorations on the Taj itself. These items were truly lovely, but once I started asking about the prices, I was just shocked at how expensive everything was. It was way out of my price range, and I kept asking to see cheaper and cheaper stuff until it became apparent that nothing in this store except ugly Taj Mahal magnets was within my price range. I also think I was suffering from the effect of being asked my profession (which I am still having difficulty lying about), because at least twice the salesman said “you are doctor. This not much for you.”


I must have refused this guy a million times (in case this point hasn’t gotten across, I am a failure at refusing things), and finally the boss of the shop came in and got me to agree to a deal. Then when I had half signed the receipt and gotten the thing wrapped up in a box, it turned out that he put in his last price offer, not mine, even though he had made it sound like he agreed to my price. This was simply the last straw for me and this dark black cloud came across my face that looked like it actually scared the salesman. He started apologizing frantically and saying “You be happy. Take this free gift! Here, free gift for you. You smile now.” Only the free gift was something that I absolutely didn’t want, and I almost threw it in his face, but decided there was nothing else to do but take it and get out. It is sad to admit but after this incident, I started feeling like I could not take this sales/begging rubbish anymore, and I nearly started to cry, even though I was telling myself how completely stupid it was to let something like that ruin my vacation.


After this we visited Agra Fort and then I started on my journey back to Delhi, after an accusation from my guide of the day that I had stiffed him with my tip. This tipping culture makes you feel like you’re being nickel and dimed all day long. Maybe if you grow up with it, it doesn’t seem bothersome, but to me it is exhausting. I think it is not just the fact that everyone expects a tip, but the fact that they really NEED the tip and are desperate for the tip to be big, and this makes them behave in very irritating and ingratiating ways that have the opposite effect on me.