india...
India is a land of contradictions, barreling forward into modernity, yet buried under the weight of its 4,500 years of urban civilization. A few specifics might help here:
- India’s population has crossed the ‘billion’ threshold in the last few years.
- No fewer than 17 major regional languages and hundreds of
local dialects conspire to confuse the traveler who hoped that a few phrases of Hindi were enough. Most Indians speak at least a smattering of English. The English or “Hinglish” found on signs presents an endless source of entertainment. Take, for example, this shop sign:
- Four major world religions were born here: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. In addition, India holds the world’s third-largest Muslim population, behind Indonesia and Pakistan. Even Christianity has roots in India. The Marthoma Church in South India traces its genesis back to St. Thomas, who was martyred there.
Minority groups of almost every religion can be found in India. One of the major landmarks in Delhi is the B’hai temple, shaped like a lotus. It’s an architectural marvel, which I didn’t realize when I was in kindergarten with the architect’s son, Shamim. Shamim was forever telling me about the huge building his father was designing. I wasn’t nearly as impressed then as I am now.
I apologize for the poor quality of this photo, but I took it through a pane of glass on a pillar in Delhi's Connaught Circle (a major shopping district). The words express the Hindu pantheism well.
- While civilization emerged on the subcontinent around 2500 B.C., in the Indus River Valley, ‘India’ is a relative newcomer on the global stage, having won independence from Britain in 1947, when the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan. Tension was high enough that the leaders of the two countries refused to occupy the same time zone, with the result that they’re half an hour apart from each other. A great deal of acrimony persists between these countries, and like any Indian, some part of my consciousness is always tuned to the rise and fall of Indo-Pakistani relations.
- Speaking of Britain, India was ruled by the British East India Company from 1757 to 1857, when the Indian soldiers who worked for ‘John Company’ rebelled (Indians refer to this as the First War of Independence; the British refer to this as the Great Mutiny).
The last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who briefly enjoyed a resurgence of power during the 1857 conflict. This photo was taken after he had been deposed by the British and exiled to Rangoon.
Here’s a poster from the recent film about Mangal Pandey, the Indian sepoy (soldier) whose hanging sparked the rebellion. After 1857, the Crown took control of India, which it retained until 1947, when Gandhi and a host of other 
freedom fighters won independence for India and established a secular democracy. Here’s Gandhi with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, on August 15, 1947, India’s first Independence Day:
India’s the largest democracy in the world, and possibly the unlikeliest. Given the host of languages and ethnic groups and cultures that crowd every corner of the country, it’s like there’s always a 50% chance of a rebellion or a coup or that the country will fragment somehow. 
The two major moments of instability that mark my childhood came in 1984, with the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and in 1992, when a crazed mob dismantled a 15th century mosque with their bare hands. Both of these events were succeeded by weeks of religious/ethnic violence. Here is a photo of the 1992 riots.
- Miraculously, India has held together and is now storming into the 21st century. The signs of the vast changes are everywhere. Just to illustrate, when I was a child, the government owned and operated the only two TV stations. Programming began in the early evening and consisted of Indian classical music, Indian film music, Hindi news, English news, and one English program: He Man and the Masters of the Universe.
When a cricket match was on, you’d see clusters of people craning their necks to see a tiny black and white screen through a neighbour’s window. You still see versions of the same scenario. Everyone finds a way to follow the cricket matches. Now, satellite dishes crown every home, even way back in the mountains, on the slate roofs of local shepherds and farmers.
- Simply, India assaults your senses. The color and diversity (ethnic, religious, linguistic, even geological) continue to astound me. I’m amazed that I can walk out of an Internet café now, and purchase a pair of sandals from the cobbler who made them by hand, beginning with snipping at a camel skin. At some point during our conversation, the cobbler’s cellphone will likely ring, no doubt playing a current Bollywood film song. The collision of worlds is what makes India endlessly intriguing.
mussoorie...where i will be living...
Located in the foothills of the Himalayas, Mussoorie has affectionately been named “The Queen of the Hills,” supposedly because the city stretches across several ridges like a necklace of jewels on a beautiful woman. I suspect that the title sprang from the minds of 
employees of the Tourist Department, eager for revenue. It worked. In the last ten years, Mussoorie has become a major destination for vacationers, a development which has severely overloaded the city’s infrastructure. Providing power for all residents has proved almost impossible, though everyone figures out a way to tap into the line. Here is a photo of a typical Mussoorie telephone pole.
A city of about 26,000, full of steep and narrow streets designed for walking and horses, certainly not for cars, has not found itself equipped to handle the sudden onslaught of traffic from the plains. What I remembered as a sleepy mountain town has transformed into a crowded, bustling mess of tourist traps and honking horns. All the old-timers walk around shaking their heads. Here is a sample of the steep roads.
The town of Mussoorie got its start in 1829, when a young British captain decided to build a hunting lodge on the main ridge. Soon, Mussoorie became one of the ‘hill stations’ where British women and children would come to escape the searing heat of summer on the Indian plains. As a child, I remember hearing stories from Mussoorie residents who remembered signs on “the Mall” where the British would go to “promenade” that read, “No Indians or Dogs Allowed.” Independence arrived, of course, and brought an end to these practices, but like so many parts of India, Mussoorie is still figuring out how to maneuver beyond its colonial past.
woodstock school...where i will be working...
Woodstock was founded in 1854 by a group of Presbyterians, as a normal school for young ladies. The sprawling campus sits (thankfully) a few kilometers outside of the now-noisy town. Over the last 154 years, the school has morphed through several incarnations, always preserving its unique Christian and international identity. I attended Woodstock from 1986 to 1993, living in boarding for most of those years, like the bulk of the student population. I have many fond and not-so-fond memories of boarding life. Saturday breakfasts were my favorite. It was often so cold that we’d hop down to the dining room in our sleeping bags. There we held toast-eating and tea-drinking contests.
Woodstock students come from more than 50 countries, and I’m excited at the thought of my classroom as a micro-U.N. In addition, the school involves itself in many of the social development and environmental programs in the area. The opportunity to obtain a college-preparatory education in the Himalayas, with community service as a natural and significant component of the education seems priceless to me. Even more priceless for me to be part of offering that education.
Plus, every afternoon, the entire school community observes “tea time.” I miss this. I’m ready to get back into the habit.
my family in india...
I’m planning to keep including family anecdotes in my newsletters, as my time in India continues, and I thought it might be helpful for you to know and see the ‘players.’
Ezra and Elizabeth, in India from 1913 till their death in the 1950s. After ten years in central India, they lived and worked up near the border of India, Tibet, and Nepal. As a nurse, Elizabeth established a clinic that served the general area. Patients sometimes walked in from Tibet to receive treatment. Ezra preached, established a church, and built a school. Ezra and Elizabeth had two children, Bradford and Anita. Ezra’s grave in Mussoorie. The lettering is almost illegible now, but the epitaph at the bottom includes I John 3: 16 and then reads, “In giving light to others, he himself has burned out.”
- Charlie and Anita, in India from 1947 to 1986. They worked with Ezra and Elizabeth until 1954, when the Chinese invaded Tibet and they were forced out of the border zone. Resettling in Mussoorie, Charlie served as the pastor of Union Church there, until the mid-1970s. Mussoorie was where the Tibetan government-in-exile was first established. In 1977, Charlie and Anita moved to New Delhi to plant a church there. In 1986, they left India and retired in Bluffton, Ohio. My grandmother, Anita, passed away in 2002. One of their children was Ruth, my mother.
- Ralph and Nellann, from upstate New York, also moved to India, in 1948, and stayed until 1987, when they retired to South Glens Falls, New York. The first block of their time was spent in a rural area of Kumaon, up in the mountains. They moved between three different stations, keeping up clinics and doing development work. My grandfather had a degree in animal husbandry and my grandmother a degree in nutrition. Both skills proved valuable to the communities they served. Their later years in India were spent in Mussoorie, at a house called Ellengowan (where I spent my summers as a child, and where my parents have lived since 1992). They worked a good deal with the Tibetan community in Mussoorie. I remember reading through notebooks of English essays that my grandfather had assigned, to help the refugees learn this foreign language.
- Dale and Ruth have worked in India since 1977. Dale spent the first 20 years of his time in India as a linguist, completing a new translation of the Hindi Bible with a team of Indian workers. He has hundreds of stories about the frustrations of working with printing presses before computer typesetting. After the completion of that project, Dale and Ruth moved to Mussoorie to work at Woodstock School. Now, my Dad teaches Hindi, ESL, and religion there, while my Mom works with homesick and ill children at the school’s Health Center.
