Namaste Reader,

I am this year’s Child and Adult Literacy Intern. I am an elementary school teacher from Toronto, who happened to come upon this great opportunity to expand my horizons in the field of education with World Literacy of Canada. After learning that I had been selected for this internship I handed in my leave of absence form to my principal in the TDSB, got on a plane to India and now here I am three months into my internship in Varanasi.

And what an incredible three months it has been. It is hard to encapsulate into words what one sees, feels and experiences upon arriving in Varanasi; furthermore, it is even more challenging to convey what it is to live and work in Varanasi and call it one’s home for six months. This blog is an attempt to do these very things reader so please bear with me as I attempt to do justice to this incredible experience.

Daily life in “cultural capital of India”, "the holy city of India", "the religious capital of India", "the city of lights", "the city of learning" etc.

All these great titles suggest that one encounters the profound and experiences the sublime at every corner and turn of the narrow gullies that snake throughout Varanasi. This is hardly true for my self. E.M. Forester wrote in A Passage to India, “Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence”. (I hope this is not the case with my blog) Yes, daily life in Varanasi is an assault on the senses in a multitude of ways: the good, the bad and everything in between and beyond BUT one’s day to day activities are no more monumental or life changing here then they would be anywhere else. However, looking back on my three months there has been a change. It is indescribable, one can’t put a one’s finger on the exact thing nor can one string together the right combination of words to describe it but it has taken place. It is this subtle transformation that is to ME Varanasi. Its ability to change one’s perspective, pace and outlook on the world, a subtle process that happens so slowly that many casual visitors often turn into long term residents, is what makes Varanasi profound for me.

My favorite activity every morning before starting my yoga practice and the rest of my day is to spend a couple of minutes looking out on the Ganga River from the balcony to watch the sunrise and the city awaken.

Work, work and more work…

One of the most challenging aspects of living in India for me has been adapting to the work culture here. In Toronto I worked at an intense pace seven days a week meeting insane deadlines and lived by the code of punctuality and efficiency. In my first week here I realized that things don’t quite work the same way. Things get done but they do so in a very different manner and at a very different pace, meetings are set but they often don’t happen right away and sometimes not at all. Deadlines exist but they are often theoretical in nature. Three months into the internship I feel like I finally have a good grasp of navigating the work culture here and in fact this change has been a healthy one for me.

As the Child and Adult Literacy Intern a large portion of my time is dedicated to the scholarship programs run for children and high school graduates who come from low income families in Varanasi and the surrounding villages. I have the great privilege of visiting all these children in their homes to interview and create am accurate database for the program which is constantly growing. Some of my most memorable experiences and meetings with extraordinary people have occurred while working in the field. The families of the recipients of these scholarships are so humble and grateful for what we are doing for them that it is almost uncomfortable to bear their reverence. On one visit I had an older woman touch my feet (a sign of extreme respect often reserved for older members of society or one’s own parents). It left me stunned and speechless and contemplating how so little given from our end could mean so much for these families who view the opportunity for a good education for their children as the ultimate gift.

Many of the mothers, grandmothers, aunts and older sisters of these children have decided to become literate themselves and have joined WLC’s Adult Literacy Program. It was incredible to see young and old women gathered together with children hanging off them learning to read and write. Not only were they learning the basics of reading and writing they had a place to come together and empower each other through stories, songs and dance, something the women love to do.