India, India...Diaries of a Volunteer

When she was a new university graduate, Patricia Little had in mind to do voluntary service in India. She applied for a place and instead was offered a chance to work in Ghana, in Africa. She took that up, and the idea of  India went on the back burner as she pursued a career as an educator and started a family. Her life took her to Sierra Leone, France, England, and Ireland, but, not to India. Upon retiring from her work as an educator, she found the call to travel to the sub continent had returned. She knew, however, that she wanted more than just a casual journey. “I make a very bad tourist,” Little writes in the introduction to India India, explaining that she balks at the artificial nature of observing others’ lives which often goes along with that approach, and also pointing out that she has a tendency to mix up directions, so travel becomes more of an adventure than it might be when she gets lost!

Not that Little is afraid of adventure. Thanks to a listing in Lonely Planet India, she made contact with people at Sadhana Village, near Pune in west central India. It’s a residential center for adults with mental and emotional challenges, one of the few such in India. Little found herself spending two months there, working with the residents, who are called special friends, as well as getting to know the staff  and other volunteers, and having her first taste of what day to day life is like in India -- all this without knowing any of the Hindi language.

The experience sat well with her, and whetted her appetite for learning more about the vast country. On a return visit, Little volunteered with a groundbreaking organization called Vatsalya, which addresses the needs of Indian children who find themselves, for varied reasons, living in the streets. Little worked with children of various ages at the children's village of Udayan in Jaipur, southwest of Delhi. On her second trip she also traveled to the mountains in the northeast of the country, to Gangtok, in Sikkim, spending time at a retreat center.

India, India, is material drawn from the journals and e mails Little kept while on these journeys, including her descriptions of day to day events, the questions which arise to her, and her reflections on all she’s learning and experiencing. It’s a small scale way to experience both the vastness and the intimacy of the country, through the people Little comes to know, those she meets casually, and the landscapes she takes in.  Traveling with keen observation and a sense of humor, Little takes readers along on the journey. Recently, she took a few moments to reflect on the book, and her travels.
“The book evolved quite naturally out of a series of e mails I sent home to family and friends while I was actually there in India. I kept a journal, written longhand in spare moments in a school copybook, and typed up and sent off as and when I got to an internet café,” Little  says, pointing out that internet cafes in India are not as easily come by as in other parts of the world, and come with their own challenges, such as power outages and limited hours. That’s a situation she describes with humor in the section of the book on her time in Sikkim.

“There wasn’t in fact enough material after the first trip to make a full-length book, but after my second trip it was clear that there was a volume in it all,” she continues  “It was the suggestion of several friends that I should publish it. I did very little editing on the text, when once it was typed up, as I wanted it to stay fresh and immediate. It makes it sound rather naïve at times, but I still think it’s better like that. It was just my day-to-day life: what I was seeing and trying to understand. This approach explains the rather disjointed nature of the text: I pass from ‘telling a story’, the action of the moment, to a reflection on that action. It’s not a travelogue, nor a guide for tourists – I’m not too good on facts! And there are very few dates: there’s something timeless about India, and hence of my experience of it. But it’s my India – or rather, my Indias!”

Asked to consider what most stands out to her as something she’s learned from her  time in India, Little says, “India has become real for me in a most rewarding way. But I’m conscious of the multiplicity of cultures and landscapes that make up this amazing country. If you come from a tiny island with a population of some four million, which is the case of Ireland [where she lives now], India seems unimaginably huge and diverse. I’m very aware that I’ve done no more than sample tiny fragments of it. I’m just very lucky that those fragments have on the whole been so positive, so coherent, so welcoming.

“What I’ve taken home with me is in some senses the opposite of this sense of diversity. By that I mean that I have an even stronger sense of the unity of the human race. Beyond this multiplicity of culture the heart beats in exactly the same way: we all have the same fundamental needs, each social group is made up of individuals with their weaknesses and their strengths, their need for self-definition as well as their curiosity to cross boundaries.”

coming up: part two of our interview with Patricia Little, in which she gives advice for making a trip to India, suggestions for books to read, and ideas for learning about and supporting volunteer programs as well .

to learn more of the places Little visited
http://www.sadhana-village.org
http://www.vatsalya.org
http://www.bodhicharya.org

to purchase the book

Patricia Little
Om Productions Unlimited
An Tinteán Eile
Plattinstown
Arklow
Co. Wicklow
Republic of Ireland

Email:   jplittle at eircom  dot net

Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9561920-0-4
price €20, GB £20, US $27; India 400 Rs (including p. & p.)
p. & p. Ireland €4.35; rest of world €5.35 (GB£4.55; US$7.45)

Please make cheques out to Patricia Little

Kerry Dexter is the Music Editor for Wandering Educators.
Kerry's credits include VH1, CMT, the folk music magazine Dirty Linen, Songwriter’s Market, Strings, and Ireland and the Americas. She also writes about the arts and creative practice at http://www.musicroad.blogspot.com Music Road. You may reach her at music at wanderingeducators dot com.