Before the first adhan or alarm, you wake. Even the warmest blood cowers from this cold, but Sirius paces the Greater Dog along the horizon, invigorating. Shuffling feet interrupt the December silence until ten settle as statues in AnandJi’s room. He is your mentor and he opens meditation:
“Watch your thoughts.”
Thoughts: they shroud the will, burden concentration. Your mind already strays.
"Sit relaxed, in any comfortable posture. Your body is straight but relaxed."
After meditation, everyone gathers to study and socialize, blanketed and shawled. You will join the bundled litter, comfortable in company, together.
"Feel the weight of your body on the ground. Feel your whole body like a baby sitting in the lap of mother Earth."
Within your closed eyelids, the sun beckons below the eastern peaks as a crackle of kindling lures all to the kitchen. Mansura plucks radish, spinach, and cilantro from the fields; Jyoti bathes them in runoff from the melting snows; Shanti tosses them in a wok; Garima douses them in masala. Children deliver fresh buffalo milk and to boil it, AnandJi hews a trunk that days ago you trekked to fell.
"Sit like a rock, rooted and immovable."
A bell rings hollow—school. Teachers spring down the stone path as students climb from the villages. Everyone races the second bell and the start of mindfulness exercises, first standing outdoors then inside, seated. Rigid, teachers model proper posture, essential against those furtively scanning the room. Teachers join APV to evolve through mindfulness; oxymoronically, their introspection is always displayed for the students. After meditation, the tabla bag unzips launching a frenzy. Singing, swaying, and drumming dominate the assembly before kids run to their classes.
"You can feel your breath. Now see how many parts of the body can you feel at the same time."
Teachers animate an enthusiasm for learning through practical experiences. To study botany students go to the plants. Churning in ascent, toes shed stinging wind, frosted rocks, errant branches. Students, jellybean-capped with mismatched mittens, chatter despite heaving lungs. Atop the ridge lies a grassy field, icy peaks of the Chinese border visible to the east. The life cycle and health benefits of rose hips are today’s lesson. The class submerges beside you in the thicket, thorns bloodying skin and tearing clothes. Curiosity counters pain, and you return bearing both fruit and dialogue. Questions about plant structure, function, and utility will dominate the week.
"Be as effortless as possible. You are just observing what is taking place. The body is sitting effortlessly. You are just a witness."
In the afternoon you observe the longest-tenured teacher, Jaya, direct a classroom of the impoverished, malnourished, at-risk, and orphaned. Colored beads and dramatization engage fractions through sharing; students count, divide, trade, and donate their beads within the framework of a mock village dispute. Attentions lapse but Jaya, with deftness belying the task’s complexity, reclaims them quickly: “Close your eyes, sit, watch your breath.” The students meditate. When eyes reopen the lesson continues, focus regained.
“To live innocently is to live without the boundary of ego; to live without ego is to live in harmony with the whole.”
After school hours begin in the kitchen. To absorb the recipes, you help daily despite a faculty rotation. Less satisfying tasks—chopping onions, peeling garlic—are often yours, but you work faithfully to absorb the atmosphere as well. After a Vedic chant, the scrum called dinner, and the necessary cleaning, everyone scurries to the fire. Insufficient electricity barely ignites the filaments, so tonight your English lesson devolves into candlelit storytelling.
“And now, in the end, let us pray for the well-being of all creatures: May all creatures move from darkness to light.”
You do pray, for the sustenance of the community and the happiness of the children. You pray for growth, both for yourself and the philosophy so that others might too grow. You pray for those surrounding statues, a family whose loves you reciprocate, a family who shares both the brutal trials and exhilarating joys that fall daily in Garhwal.
Another session lost in thoughts, never-ending. Still, they have broken a smile, invisible in the unlit room.
“Open your eyes now.”
Flex the ankles, stretch the legs, roll the neck.
“Turn on the light.”
The statues shudder as shawls unravel and the room empties. You close your eyes, inhale gently, exhale vigorously, and enjoy your first clear moment of the morning. It is 4:30am; a day, already begun, begins.
Charles Iannuzzi works on curriculum and syllabus development at APV School in Anjanisain, Uttarakhand.
