C2C Chronicles 2 – I’m here, now what?

The immigration officer gave small hint as to what was to come. After being told that the weird looking guy in front of him was there to do the Coast to Coast, he immediately broke into a broad smile that was a cross between ‘Wow, he came all the here to do the race’ and ‘This guy must be mental or something’. He then went on to inform me that the weather’s been pretty warm and wished me luck with the race. As I picked up my passport to go, he remarked, ‘Hey it’s nice and warm to us but might not be so for you guys from the tropics eh?’ The parting shot hit me like a gust of strong wind when I stepped out the door of the airport. If this is warm, I thought, I’d hate to see what cold is. After all, it was supposed to be summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Cold notwithstanding, we arrived Christchurch in one piece, got our car and proceeded to load it with everything but the kitchen sink in preparation for the race. The only reason why the kitchen sink was not included in our packing list was that the kayak took up too much space and my support crew (bless them) decided at the last minute that bringing me along was marginally better than the sink. I bet they regretted that at the end of day 1.

Support car, fully laden. Race ready. Competitor on the other hand, wasn’t.

Put a couple of sleep-deprived, recently stressed educators together, mix in a logistics plan rivalling the Normandy landings and you’ll get a recipe for, not disaster, but utter and complete mayhem. It took all four of us almost a day to pack, repack and stuff the poor station wagon with enough gear and food to feed a small army. Of four. Allow me to explain that number too. While I was on the course, I needed a team of highly efficient, specialised individuals to get my gear and other race essentials from one point of the course to another. These three (Jean, Lishan and Michael) were essential to my completion of the race and words cannot express my gratitude for their help. Or perhaps they can. Thanks guys!

But then one does need to put things into perspective – most of it was necessary and we were glad to have had the extra clothes (cold!), good sleeping bags (cold!) and sleeping pads (cold!) when camping out on the two nights before and during the race. All the gear was necessary too as I had to run-cycle-run-cycle-paddle-cycle my way from the East coast of the South Island to the West (more on the race route here). That justified my large gear bag and five pieces of footwear that earned me the name of ‘princess’ from Lishan, one of my overly kind support crew. In her words, who else but a princess would travel with so many pairs of shoes? Sigh, such are the slings and arrows of outrageous support crews that the hapless adventure racer has to deal with.

And so after 2 days of harried errand running, shopping and gear pickups, we were ready to roll 240 kilometres towards Kumara, the town nearest the start of the race. And roll we did in the driving rain to reach a slightly soggy campsite that was mercifully sans rain when we arrived. Things were looking up as we prepped for the race and tried to sleep.

We were a camping. Note silly smile of person who doesn’t realise what’s to come…

C2C Chronicles 1 – Getting there

So begins the Coast to Coast Chronicles (C2C Chronicles for short), a series of posts detailing my latest adventure – participating in the Coast to Coast, the iconic multisport race in New Zealand.

Great ideas are often born out of banal situations – harebrained ones are no different. My ultimate decision to bite the bullet and start working towards a long-held dream of participating in the Coast to Coast seemed to walk the very fine line between great and downright silly. There I was, in Bangalore working on an extremely fulfilling project with the local community, dreaming about flying halfway round the world to attempt to complete one of the iconic events of adventure racing and multisport. The fact that it was much tougher than any other race I’ve ever done before and that I would not have raced for an entire year didn’t seem to faze me. The email was sent and as they say on the banks of rivers near Rome, alea jacta est.

When I started on my journey in triathlon and multisport some years ago, there were a couple of races that I could count as inspirations to my not-quite-so athletic self. In triathlon, it was the Laguna Phuket Triathlon that set me on the path to multisport. Ever since I first saw it on TV, I knew I wanted to be a part of that event. That came true in 2007. I began getting interested in adventure racing while in university and two races caught my attention – the then popular Eco-Challenge and the Coast to Coast. Of the two, the former race isn’t organised any longer while the latter celebrated its 27th anniversary race this year. The Coast to Coast in New Zealand is often hailed as one of the icons of multisport and a precursor to what we know as adventure races now. Having actually done several adventure races in the region, I felt a pilgrimage to the land of adventure sports and being part of an iconic race was due. 2009 was the year.

The email acknowledging my entry to the race jolted me out of my indolent slumber. It was September 2008, barely 5 months out from the longest and toughest physical challenge I somehow willingly signed up for and I didn’t feel like I was even near ready to start training for it. Suffice to say the kids in the villages of the Sarjapur had much reason to laugh for the next couple of months as a strange short-haired, yellow-skinned foreigner began wobbling through their villages quite regularly. The unpaved roads are good training for the mountain run I thought. I’m training well. Right.

After a trip up to Malaysia to rearrange river rocks with my head and kayak paddle, I was grudgingly packed off with a piece of paper that stated that I was a competent whitewater paddler. The scar from my chance meeting with a rock while kayaking upside down hides behind one of my eyebrows – a somewhat manly testament to my commitment to the race and a reminder of the need to stay upright.

And so the pattern began – I began training in earnest with long runs, longer bike rides and vain attempts to get as much kayaking as I could in the placid reservoirs of Singapore. Little did I realise that all the training that I could get in our sunny tropical isle would not prepare me for what New Zealand had to offer. But like the eternal optimist that I was, I thought my preparations were almost adequate.

Cue ominous tune, heavy on the horns and cellos.

Here I come!

On journeys and journeys

I do realise that it’s been almost three months since this was last updated and contrary to popular belief, the brush is very much alive and kicking though increasingly buried beneath occupational bits and pieces. In other words, work’s been keeping me busy and less inclined to wax lyrical about things in general. That’s not to say that the homecoming wasn’t good – it was great to be back with family and friends and to be in a place that’s familiar but at the same time, reaching the end of one journey reminds one of the many more that are to come. Just as Odysseus would have heaved a sigh of relief at reaching Ithaca, I did too when I arrived home but the mind continues to wander and look out towards far distant lands again.

And so I’ll spend the next couple of posts writing about another journey that was taken recently – a journey that’s been over five years in the making and has been at the back of my mind for even longer. While it’s not one that’s particularly noble or edifying, it was a journey that required a fair amount of commitment to prepare for and was certainly no walk in the park. I’m talking about my short jaunt in the Southern Hemisphere – tackling the Coast to Coast Multisport Race in New Zealand. It was a journey in the true sense of the word and I’ll allow myself to ramble on in subsequent posts about it.

So there. The journeys continue, the posts continue. Tis good to be back.

The brush returns and…somewhat

It’s been a while. Excuses for tardiness abound but there’s nothing much that can explain my lack of posts here and the absence of my normally long and meandering descriptions of the mundane. I’m home and that’s distracted me quite a bit. Been off the computer and offline much more of late – am just soaking up the atmosphere (and humidity) of home and catching up with family and friends. That makes for a fairly distracted person one does admit.

More later in the week. This just to reassure you of my (and this blog’s) continuing existence and to whet your appetite for more that is to come.

Of normalcy and normalcy

The idea of what’s considered normal is quite relative. I’ve learned this the hard way through countless discussions and arguments with people who try to define normalcy in a single objective manner. This post is not about what’s normal and what’s not but a couple of quick thoughts about how normalcy for me is going to be turned upside down in a space of 2 days. Yes, this is another one of those ‘going home’ posts but I think it will probably be the last one before I actually get home.

What’s normal now is living on a beautiful campus, waking up to the sounds of birds chirping and (sometimes if I’m tardy) soft rays of sunlight streaming through my open window. Normal consists of walking all of 3 minutes to get to the office where I do much of my work and walking the same 3 minutes back at the end of the day. Normalcy now is all about meeting students from the local community and conducting classes and activities for them. It’s normal to be gawked and laughed at during my jogs along the dusty village roads.

This is all going to change as I head home and try to adjust to life in Singapore before starting work in around 2 weeks. I’ll be waking up to the sounds of the expressway and MRT trains trundling along the track one block away. I’ll have to endure the hour-long commute to and from school but will be rewarded with nice evening chats with family and home-cooked meals. I’ll have to get used to a little more cynicism and temper the idealism that’s been bubbling up over the past months. The human crowds are gone only to be replaced by the crowding out of one’s own space to think and explore.

As I start the transition from one sense of normalcy to another, some things that used to make sense might no longer be so and vice versa. One cannot quite prepare for this except brace oneself for the inevitable feeling of being a stranger in a strange place even though one has lived there for almost one’s whole life. I’m bracing myself for that but I also realise that the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy ones so hope that the inevitable running around doing things will allow me to adapt and become normal. Though one wonders if I was ever normal to begin with.

Beyond tolerance

Will take a break from the inevitable posts about leaving, departures and farewells to write about something that’s been on my mind for a long time – the idea of toleration. We’re constantly being exhorted in this time of unease and uncertainty to be tolerant of others’ beliefs but do we really stop to think about what being tolerant actually entails?

In his famous Letter concerning Toleration (full text here), John Locke wrote about the need for religious authority to tolerate other religions as that would reduce the amount of strife that would result from non-toleration. This may seem old-hat now but it was fairly radical at the time – the big thing in 17th Century Europe was the struggle between Catholics and Protestants and suggesting that the two could coexist in an atmosphere of mutual toleration was unheard of. Still, revisiting his ideas about what it means to tolerate and how we should do so can teach us much in these trying times in which we live in.

Now to get on to my point – with due respect to Mr Locke, I’d say that toleration is good but toleration alone is not enough. This is better explained with an example – I may not like my neighbours for their behaviour but I tolerate them anyway. This toleration does not in any way point to my agreement or condoning of their actions but merely me putting some of my own preferences on a backburner to avoid disagreement or conflict. Toleration by no means entails acceptance or understanding – at best it’s characterised by a grudging willingness to keep to one’s side of the fence and an avoidance of confrontation.

One quickly realises that the more one has to tolerate others, the more one has to temper one’s actions and thoughts in favour of others. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, doing this too much for too long can lead to resentment – which is a natural reaction to having to defer to others too much. Critics (you know who you are) may say that I’m taking a highly negative form of toleration and more often than not, toleration is much easier than what I’m describing here. Be that as it may, when done too much and too often, toleration can become quite intolerable.

While I cannot claim to have a solution for this problem, I can offer one suggestion. Instead of tolerating our wayward neighbours, I’d say that being able to accept and understand them would lead to a much more fruitful relationship. Aha, you might say, one smells equivocation here. Before one is dragged to the dungeons of the logic police, allow me to explain. Acceptance and understanding seem to be the missing ingredients to Locke’s brew in his quest for peace in troubled times. While one can only tolerate so much, being able to accept and understand the reasons behind the actions and thoughts of those we have to live with can lead to more harmony.

While the birds may not always sing and the flowers may not always bloom the way we want them to, we can seek to understand others better and in so doing accept them for what they are. The very act of trying to know more about others shows an interest in them – a sign of approachment and acceptance. Increasing one’s knowledge of the whys and hows of others’ thoughts and behaviour can make one realise that we’re not all that different after all and what we used to merely tolerate can be something that we accept. We recognise the differences that exist between us and others and choose to look at things from someone else’s shoes. That’s understanding and that’s what leads to acceptance.

Rosy as this picture might seem, it does beat having to swallow one’s pride and tolerate others. Coming back to my favourite topic of education and being an educator, I recognise the need to get the students to accept and understand as toleration is not enough. The route to doing this is through inquiry – having students schooled in the art of inquiry would mean that they would be constantly questioning things around and begin to question why others think or behave differently from them and in so doing build bridges of understanding and acceptance.

I do realise that I am oversimplifying hugely complex relationships that occur between people and groups of people but if we just stopped for a while, asked a few questions and made the effort to understand why people are the way they are we won’t have to do that much toleration. Now that’s not intolerable isn’t it?

A wordle interpretation of Locke’s famous letter

Five

Five days out from when I step on the plane back home. Five short days before the stint in India draws to a close.

It’s begun. Exactly 9 extremely short months ago, I posted this about saying farewell before one goes on one’s way – the same thing’s happening to me now as work winds up here and I prepare to go on my way again, though this time back home to family and friends. But therein lies the little paradox – I came as a stranger to a strange place but now I’m leaving a familiar place that I’ve called ‘home’ for the past months. I struck me a couple of months back while walking along the dusty road back to Indus from the local bus stop how I consider this place home and how it brings me comfort after the long journeys that one takes. I’m now leaving a place that I consider home to a place that actually is. Strange feeling.

My departure from India looms and part of me is excited to be returning to familiar surroundings, to family, to old routines. The other part of me doesn’t quite want to think about what one is leaving behind – great friends, nice colleagues and most of all, the lovely, lively, energetic students that I’ve grown to know and love. But for everything there is a season and this is the start of the season of partings. At least for us.

As I look back at my time here, I realise that though I’ve done what I came to do on paper, there’s still much more to do. I did manage to light a couple of candles but one also sees the huge number of wicks still waiting for the touch of the flame. I realise that coming on a volunteer stint here is more than just about the work that one does – it’s about the people that we meet and what we do with such opportunities. I’ve been blessed with the opportunities to celebrate weddings, birthdays and all manner of festivals as an Indian would. I’ve been blessed with friends who accept me as part of their families and who I’m very sad to have to leave.

My time here is up and the job that I was sent here to do is done. Though more projects have started in the meantime that I’d love to be here to grow, there are other things that need be done both at home and beyond. Just as I looked forward towards my coming here, so do I look towards my return home as a new chapter in my life there. I return invigorated by my experience here and ready light the candles back home.

Just a sample of who and what I’ll miss here

Getting away

Took some days out over the past week to go on holiday – started exploring the state of Karnataka and its environs a little more and got almost everything I bargained for. The Indian tourism tagline of ‘Incredible India’ certainly rings true as the natural beauty of the land coupled with its rich history along with the warm and friendly people does make for quite a superb holiday destination. I experienced this first hand during my jaunt up north in July and realised how diverse this country actually is. That India is sometimes referred to as a sub-continent is quite apt – the diversity and difference between the states can sometimes make one feel as if one is travelling to a completely different country altogether.

Managed to get myself stuck (intentionally) in a jungle for 2 days last week and being that close to nature reminded me of the world that I often forget and ignore. Imagine falling asleep to the sound of cicadas and crickets singing and waking up to the gurgle of the nearby stream. Look out and all one sees are the greens of the jungle and the deep azure of the sky. Sit out on a nearby rock and one sees the monkeys and the resident giant squirrel (a huge cat-sized rodent with a luxurious bushy tail) playfully frolicking in the trees. It’s a pity my wildlife photography skills aren’t quite up to scratch as the only things I can get are the trees, rocks and water.

Sitting near the jungle and trying to be part of nature often reminds one of how much we forget and ignore the natural world around us. Moving from the urban concreteness that is home to the semi-rural Sarjapur in Bangalore was one step towards nature but urban sprawl is rearing its ugly head out here too. Housing developments are springing up between croplands and farms and the small rural houses are fast giving way to condominiums. Getting one further removed from human development and living near nature was an experience in itself. You don’t realise how much you miss being in nature until you’re in it.

See? No wildlife apart from the one behind camera

Celebrating lights

Realise that this is a slightly belated piece on Diwali (or Deepavali depending on who asks and who responds) but it’s been stewing for a bit while I was away traipsing round the South of India in a desperate attempt to see as much of the country as I can. More on those journeys in a later post. This first.

We don’t realise how much we rely on light – it’s something that’s taken for granted and just accepted as ‘there’ until we don’t have it or are made to think a little more about what it means to us. The latter occurred recently during the Diwali celebrations. Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights and is a commemoration of King Rama’s return to his native city of Ayodhya after defeating Ravana, the demon of Lanka, rescuing his wife and ending 14 years of exile. Quite a momentous occasion for the citizens of Ayodhya who loved their exiled king and so the entire city was lit up with lamps, lanterns, candles and anything that glittered in the night to welcome their beloved king.

Diwali also has a deeper significance, one that cuts across religious and ethnic boundaries. Light is symbolic of all that is good – it dispels fear-inducing darkness, allows us to see and work and is the source of all that we have on this earth. It’s no wonder that lights are venerated and used in so many forms of worship in many religions across the world. It’s through this that we realise how important light is and our dependence on it for all that we do.

The symbolism of light pervades many religions and cultures too – Christ told us that he is the light to the world and we should be too; lights and lanterns are used by the Chinese celebrate mid-autumn festival too. We look to light as things that are good and are glad that it’s there. I’ve used light in two separate posts here too (here on lighting candles and here on being a lamp to others) and it’s no coincidence that I’m writing about it again.

So after the lamps die out and the fireworks are expended, we still remember that we can and should be lights to others. We can make that difference by sharing the light that we have and shedding that little bit more light for others to get on their way. After all, are we not but little lampposts to the others we meet?

Diwali celebrations big and small

A miss is still a miss

I’ve just returned from a trip round the state of Karnataka with my parents and two aunts who gamely decided to pop over to visit and do a short jaunt around the South of India with the one who still has a head like a brush. I enjoyed the trip immensely – partly because of the majestic palaces (Mysore), amazing temples (Belur and Halibidu) and the brush with nature in a hill-station (Coorg) but mainly because I spent it with family. I’ve been out here for so long that I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to have the warmth of one’s own family with you as you travel and what it was like to just kick back and chat over dinner with those who you know and who know you best.

I don’t think I was putting up a brave front when I started out here almost 9 months ago thinking that in getting used to India and my missing things from home would lessen. I did realise that the less I hankered for things from home, the more I eased into life here and got used to everything fairly quickly. I guess what happened was more of a shelving of the things that I hold dear and like from home and moving on quickly to get used to things that matter at the particular time.

Meeting my parents and aunts brought many things back and spending the past 5 days with them was great and something that I’ll always treasure. I’ve made great friends here and there’s no lack of love and friendship but there’s something to be said for spending time with one’s own family, especially after such a long time away. I also cherished the opportunity to share my life for the past months with them and to show them the country that I’ve grown to love. It was only when I met and spent time with my parents that I realised how much I really missed them.

And so one sits here with a funny feeling – missing the presence of my parents and aunts but at the same time looking forward to my return home in a couple of weeks. That does take the edge off the missing but I guess the months of shelving those emotions do take their toll. What complicates matters is the fact that I’m also going to miss all the friends and colleagues that I’ve gotten to know over the months. It’s going to be quite an interesting couple of weeks and one sighs as one realises that interesting times might not be the most restful for both mind and spirit.

Dad, Mum and me in front of Mysore Palace

Me, parents, Aunt Lucy and Aunt Hong with Mysore in background