Power goes out, life goes on

Things could’ve been worse. I was sitting in the dark 12^th grade classroom during Wednesday evening prep (study hall), attempting to read a biology text book with a flashlight. The power was out again, and it had no plans of returning anytime soon. An hour later, I stumbled through the pitch-black campus with the rest of the teachers, staff, and students in a dim, candle-lit cafeteria for dinner. The water supply had also cut out. This would soon be the least of my worries.

In the middle of the night, I was awoken by something nibbling on my finger. Hoping it was a dream, I turned over in my bed and started falling back asleep. Until a small animal scurried across my feet, over my blanket. My blood froze. Scrambling for my flashlight, I bolted out of my bed and scanned the premises. I found nothing. After shaking out my sheets half a dozen times, I crawled back into my bed. It was 3:11 a.m. For a short while, I lay awake, shuddering at the sounds of the rodent moving around under my bed. Positive thoughts, I told myself. At least it wasn’t a snake. I fell back asleep.

Since I first arrived at Shanti Bhavan, my outlook on various things has changed drastically. Gone are the days when I would run away shrieking at the sight of an insect. I no longer find it strange to run outside wearing pants when it’s 80⁰F. The traffic jams, cows, and naked small children on the roads cease to faze me. Waking up to a rat gnawing my hand in the middle of the night is irritating and revolting, yes, but not truly shocking. A temporary lack of running water and electricity is merely a nuisance. My concerns now lie primarily with teaching the students; I find myself painstakingly taking notes for biology lesson plans and choreographing for my dance classes. Over the past two months, I have unwittingly learned to adapt to circumstances that I initially found unfamiliar, inconvenient, and challenging.

The manner in which people behave and live at Shanti Bhavan, and in the surrounding villages, is quite unlike life anywhere else I have been. This came to my attention when a new volunteer pointed out the difference between a power outage here, and one in the States. “If power were to go out in the U.S., everything comes to a halt,” he mused. “Power goes out here, life goes on.” Such is life in rural India.