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Uphill Both Ways

By Rupal Soni '04

The power is out again. I am writing in a dark room, reflecting on how unbelievable today was, with no fan, no wind circulating. The crickets chirping outside make me inadvertently romanticize this moment. I am in India. On a yearlong camping trip. A sabbatical. From running toward the next goal. From needing to know the next step. A year to just be. I don’t question it. It is the reality that exists simply because it needed to exist. The decision to come, the circumstances that aligned to bring me here… these are things I choose not to question. The same way I choose not to question water, air or the ground on which I stand.
No air circulating, no fan, no power. My skin smells like sandalwood, the soap in the bathroom, and my hair is still wet. From the bath I just took, the cupfuls of cold water I spilled over my head out of a bucket, while listening to classical Hindi ballads on Rishi’s
new transistor radio. New transistor radio. An oxymoron? Maybe. But, like I said, I don’t question it.

Being here just feels right. As though my breath somehow reaches deeper inside me. I have a year in a desert to figure out why. Why I had to step off the path of least resistance unfolding before me in order to find the quiet within me. Why I chose to replant roots in the place my ancestors came from. Why I chose to return to the place country that raised my parents to understand the things that did not make sense in the country that raised me. Ideally, the answers I find will be something I can carry with me out of this desert, like a tranquility packed tightly inside myself, something I may even choose not to declare at the airport.

Today was a barefoot-in-the-snow, uphill-both-ways kind of day. A based-on-the-truestory-yet no-one-believes-it-actually-happened kind of day. This story begins with an alarm whose only dream is to be reincarnated as a boot camp general. An alarm that cracks my dreams wide open and plunges into my sleep like an ice fisherman. Baiting me. With yesterday’s promise as a hook. Up at 5 am, out by 6. I keep my promise; I pry myself loose from the blankets. Ten minutes later. The same wooden column that supports the roof supports my back as I have breakfast with the stars in the sky. Before living here in Kutch, I never knew how many stars actually called the sky home. The desert sat me down for a quick lesson. “Rupal, you fool,” he said, “there is a lot of the world that you have left to see. You have to leave behind what you think you know in order to see it.”

Up by 5 am, out by 6. Rishi, Chowdabhai and I set out by 6:20. The :20 is my fault (I decided to wash my hair). We make a pact: only English there, only Kutchi back. Two language lessons in a day. The sun does not begin to light the sky until the next village. The road bends to the right. We bend with it. A tractor comes up behind us. We inch to the left, against the grain. Being raised in the states, my intuition weights me toward the right.

We come up to fields. A village. Farmed. Ripe. Green. A parallel universe from our chapped village. Yet only a hill separates the two. There is water here; a statement and a revelation. A dam. Groundwater, unsalted and confidentially tucked away. Crops burst out of the soil, unable to keep the secret. Tall. Proud. Successfully surviving the desert. Wells spot the fields like deep pores. Awe is inspired, jealousy unmasked. Their farms were successful this year, while our village depended on tourism to make ends meet. Only a hill separates the two. Some of the puzzle falls into place. The subtitles to a foreign film.

The man sitting at a well notices the sign that Rishi and I are wearing on our foreheads. ‘We are not from around here’ it reads. He reads it aloud, to make sure we know we are foreign to him. (We know.) He is visibly surprised that we understand him; that we learned his language on the planet from which we came. (He is not the first. He will not be the last.) We greet him with a smile and follow the predictable give and take, yes, Indian, no, born there, Gujarati, yes, we speak it at home, a year, seva. This scene sometimes becomes a challenge to not sound rehearsed. We have put on this play before, trading the same lines; we are used to being dealt this same hand.
Yet this is only the beginning.

Deep life lines mark the landscape. The land is charged. A woman. Like a current of intuition. Ready. Waiting to fulfill fate and purpose. Knowing where to channel the rains. Waiting. Anxious. Serene.

The road leading the way begins to lose its shape, spilling into sand dunes, fields, sand dune fields. The sand in one field mats down and keeps footprints like a catalogue, a hobby. A history of every traveler to venture across. Our feet leave their mark on the past namelessly, silently, unnoticed. We push on.

We come across a thatched round hut that looks like the hobbit holes I used to read about. Born in Tolkien’s imagination with distant relatives in the Kutchi desert. I stand in awe. Letting reality settle into the grooves around me. I face a hobbit hole. In the middle of a sand dune. In the Kutchi desert. The desert I live in. In India. Next to two goat herders. Next to their respective goats. On a 6 hour hike. To a temple. On a mountain. I cannot believe this is my life!

Every hour undresses a landscape more amazing than the last. A striptease. Making me long for my camera. My backup memory to remind me of the moments my mind lets go. To share views like this one. To prove I was here. No one will believe me. Like the one guy who actually did walk barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways.

I silently begin a game. I tell my steps to fall in Chowdabhai’s footsteps. Our strides are close cousins. We have rhythm. Left to right and back, repeat. I do not tell him. Instead I smile, still looking down, still in step. I am winning. Too cocky. I lose my place. I chase the rhythm and skiphop until I find it again. The CD pause after a speedbump. A thought ignites. Like striking an unsuspecting match. Why am I following his footsteps? Literally. Figuratively. I question why I am so proud of my precision in not making a mark. In not making an impression. In not carving a road for others. I am not making my own path. The reasons for which I came to India come rushing back to me. I end the game.

I win.

Rishi and I are archeologists. Social scientists. Development enablers. Two kids just trying to figure it out, two kids that became adults somewhere along the way. Altruists. Believers. Idealists. Geologists. The rocks I balance on, step over, and trip on are a spectrum of matte rock colors. I give them Crayola names in my head: sun bleach, soil fire, tooth cavity. It is a desert rainbow, a Benneton ad.

Some of the larger rocks are striped. Time hardened into eras, color coded. Tumeric yellow, Moguls. Chalkboard grey, Aryans. Teekwood brown, British. Rust red, post partition. The veins of the earth still pulse here. Afterbirth. The same faultlines that shook the desert and cracked the mogul palaces. The same faultlines that brought up the mountains that separate ample groundwater from thirsty crops. Wealth from desperation. Hard honest work from stealing (to feed the children).

We climb up sand dunes where the peaks offer us an endless horizon and undiluted wind. We climb down vertical sand dunes as though they are waterslides. The landscape changes characters often, like an actor in a low budget film. We keep moving. We do not have time to notice such things: the afternoon sun threatens to press us harder. We are not armed with enough water for the battle. We keep going; the quickness of our steps admits the forfeit.

My mind has a civil war with my feet. My mind wants me to look around, memorize the horizon and file it away for when I forget how much I have lived. My feet want my eyes to watch where I am going, because there are rocks to watch out for. The winning argument is thrown onto the table: self preservation. My feet win, one nothing. I watch the ground go by, as time would, or age. The rocks begin to shift shapes like clouds. A spearhead. Lips. The pride triangle. A Rubik’s cube. A heart. A sandwich. Boulders, sand, our clothes get caught on the thorn bushes. An uprooted tree, goats and twenty minutes go by. We see the world from up here. The world I see stops at a white salt horizon. An arbitrary line drawn in the dirt, Sky and Earth marking their territory... ‘You stay on your side of the line and I will do the same.’

Approaching noon. The sun flexes his muscle. Suddenly, the heavens part, the gods smile, angels sing: we spot the Karu Dungar, our destination. I am desperate for water. Even a half a cup of tea from a Guru with two thumbs at the temple would be a godsend. How little I know of how this story will go. How very little I know. But like I said, this is one of those uphill barefoot both ways kind of stories. No one will believe it. No one has to. As for me, I don’t question it.

And sometimes, that is enough.

Did You know?

Indicorps offers a variety of programs and opportunities that encourage leadership and civic engagement. While the fellowship focuses on empowering people willing to do whatever it takes to affect change, we also have local volunteer programs in India, an established internship program, an emerging domestic program, an effort to engage late-careers seniors in development, an online volunteer opportunity site, and more....

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