The Orphanage

So, the journey continues…in uncharted territory. Today (February 2),
I left Southern India and headed north and east to Orissa, a state
considered to be the second worst off in the country (Bihar is the
first). Flying into Bhubaneswar, the Orissan countryside reminded me
a bit of West Texas—if you've never been, just imagine a wide, flat
expanse of dust. But, Bhubaneswar, Orissa's capital city, was a
pleasant surprise, lacking the congestion of Chennai, and oddly
relaxing. Everyone I've spoken to has warned me to stay away from
Orissa, as it is a backwards place. But, if the cows are any
indication, this place isn't nearly as bad as the rest of India
thinks; they are all quite robust and have a certain smugness about
them that you don't see in South India.

Cuttack, a dustbowl just half an hour from the airport, was my final
destination. It will be my base for visiting a nearby orphanage in
Choudwar called The Servants of India Society, just 8 km away.
Before I ever set foot in India, I jotted down notes on how I imagined
this place would be, just to be able to compare my expectations with
the real thing. The general hypotheses were as follows: "Cuttack and
the orphanage are bare and dusty. The kids are overwhelming and
exuberant. There, you never feel clean, but always feel joy."

I would describe the orphanage as spare, but Cuttack, despite prolific
clouds of dust, is a market town filled with people, small shops, and
busy lanes—anything but bare. Having visited the children at the
orphanage briefly this afternoon, I can attest that they are indeed an
overwhelming lot when they have you surrounded, but their smiles,
their little bellies, make you want to take them home with you.

As the sun went down in Choudwar, a rather smarmy fellow who works at
the orphanage, invited me to join them for prayer. They all sit
together, both the children and the caretakers, in one big room on the
floor. At the front of the hall hang pictures of whichever god you
pray to, be it Krishna, Ganesh, Jesus, or Sai Baba, an Indian man with
copious amounts of facial hair. Incense, which I don't usually enjoy,
burned in a little shrine below the posters, and the wafting scent
seemed to fit the occasion perfectly, blending into the little voices
that soon began changing Om.

Om led to a slow song, which was followed by a faster song, and an
even faster one after that. Before I knew it, my fingers were tapping
my legs to the beat. The sound of one hundred and eight children
singing in Oriya is electric—like all of the stars in the sky
twinkling at the same time, or the feeling you get when a cool breeze
rushes at you from nowhere on a hot night. Their voices entered
through my ears and scurried with little feet into my bones and eyes,
and into my heart, which normally beats as if it is taking stairs one
at a time, but jumped as if I were climbing three in one bound.

I'm not sure if I was supposed to bow my head the entire time, but
like a kid playing hide and go seek, I couldn't help but peek at what
the children were doing. Some sang with their eyes open, but one
little girl closed hers intently, and holding her fingers in two
mudras as if she were meditating, she sang loud and clear. A boy,
with striking blue-hazel eyes, light olive skin, and coal hair, looked
straight ahead at the boy's head in front of his, without expression.
I wanted to bottle this sound and capture these faces forever. I
wanted to put them all into a little book that I could open on any
given day and see and hear it all over again.