What Next?

It’s been four weeks since I’ve said goodbye to sunrises on the Ganges and hello to streetcar rides to work and early morning coffees (of the non Nescafe variety). At one point I actually thought we would never make it back. It was a bit of a journey getting back from India. We had issues with baggage on our domestic flight to Delhi, had to leave our nice Delhi hotel because it was full and move to small shack while we waited for our flight. When we got to the airport we almost didn’t get on the flight because one of us had visa issues and when we were finally settled in on our flight we found ourselves surrounded by five very small and very angry children for the full 16 hours of our flight (thank god for Gravol).

Being back in Toronto has been great. I continue to marvel at how easy it has been to jump back into the busy routines of daily life. Even the cold hasn’t been that bad. These last weeks have been a blissful enjoyment of the simple, but often taken for granted, pleasures of life in Canada: clean air (relatively of course), smooth roads with sidewalks, fresh produce, ice cubes, walking down the street without the fear of getting run over by a five hundred pound water buffalo and best of all, rinsing my toothbrush under the tap after brushing my teeth. The last month of the IYIP internship entails a month of work in World Literacy’s Canada office. Working at WLC for the last month has exposed me to the vast range of experiences from hanging out with the office dog, Abra, in WLC’s beautiful loft style office to meeting Adrienne Clarkson at this year’s Kama Reading series. There have been challenges along the way off course such as wrestling with the office Mac computers to get through the day (team PC all the way) and getting used to a desk job that entails sitting in front of the computer (sometimes all day). Despite these 9-5 draw backs, working at WLC has opened my eyes to a whole new world.

The experience has been so great that I have agreed to sign on for another five months. This entailed some drastic last minute changes to my life. I had initially been planning to go right back to teaching at the end of my internship but when the possibility of working at WLC presented itself I quickly jumped on it. I had to do some fumbling to try to get an extension on my leave of absence, for which I had already missed the deadline, with the school board that I work for and it also meant I would be taking a big pay cut. It all worked out in the end because I knew this was an opportunity of a life time. So far this internship has given me the chance to accomplish some personal and professional goals that I thought I would really never get to (such as going to Tibet) in this lifetime. Not only did it allow me to physically travel, it opened my mind to the possibilities that such dreams can be made possible. I can only imagine what other possibilities await me in the next five months and beyond.

Slumdog Millionaire at IP Mall

Just a few days prior to our departure from Banaras, the other interns and I decided to take the high school kids that we tutor to see a movie as a goodbye outing. We assumed that the kids would want to see a Bollywood movie, which we thought might be a fun way to test our Hindi after having studied it for six months. Instead, the kids were all very interested in seeing Slumdog Millionaire, since it was drawing a lot of attention the world over. "Because, didi," my student Pooja said to me, "this is very famous movie about India."

On the day of the movie, the eight of us (five students and three didis) crammed into a couple of autorickshaws and headed to IP Mall. The movie was playing in one of Varanasi's only air-conditioned theatres, equipped with deliciously comfortable reclining chairs. Our students were extremely excited to be there; none of them had every been to the mall or to that theatre before, and seeing a movie was clearly considered a very special treat. I don't think that it would be flattering our vanity too much to say that the opportunity to socialize with their three Canadian didis made the outing all the more special for the kids.


Like all movies that play in Banaras, the movie was in Hindi. That meant that the English parts of the movie were dubbed over, and the subtitles during the Hindi parts of the movie were taken out. But between our minimal Hindi knowledge, our ability to read visual cues, and the opportunity to ask questions of our students, we were able to get the gist of the story.


I think it's fair to say that we all enjoyed the movie. The kids were excited to see an artful and critically-acclaimed movie that drew the world's attention to their own country. I was delighted by the experience of seeing a movie set in the country that had finally begun to feel familiar--just as I was getting ready to leave it. Perhaps the most thrilling aspect of the whole experience was the opportunity to compare the kids who accompanied us with the kids being portrayed in the film. Our students, in addition to many other kids on WLC scholarships, come from very poor homes. Many of them live with their families in one-room houses in slums, many of them have already had to work, often selling candles and postcards to tourists, but the difference is that they're all being educated at good schools thanks to unfamiliar donors across the world.

After the movie, we all headed over to McDonald's for lunch--something of novelty in Banaras. Then we hung around the mall eating ice cream, playing video games, and people-watching.



All in all, the outing felt like the perfect way to end our tutoring sessions. Our students are a group of tremendously bright, respectful, compassionate, and hardworking young people, and I already miss them dearly. I only hope that our goodbye outing was as memorable for them as it was for me.