Happy Freakin Diwali and Eid!!!

I can't even begin to explain how much is going through my mind right now.... overload. Sensory and otherwise. Diwali is inexplicably beautiful though. Rows of lit divas along every street. The work and design efforts put into rangoli despite it's inherently temporary-ness... new year rituals that finally make sense to me... (did I mention I can put a sari on by myself?!?!... meeeeep) I am all out of words... so I'll write about this crazy vivid dream I had a few nights ago (I get really excited when I dream in color)....

I am in Anytown, India, hitch hiking a ride home. I get a ride in a jeep; one of the men sitting next to me starts getting fresh, I make a scene, the driver kicks said guy off the jeep. Later, I end up at this guy (freshmaster funk)’s house because, apparently, I am really good friends with his daughter, who’s maybe 12. She is beautiful, despite her wild, tangled hair and her ragged clothing. She has an easy smile despite how shy she seems. Her mom has passed away long back, so it’s her, her father and her grandparents. I start talking to her about why she doesn’t go to school, and her father rushes her into the bathroom to take a bath. Then he comes up to me and asks me if I understand Urdu (the family is apparently Muslim). I tell him, yes, I understand it.... and that I also understand Hindi, Arabic and any other language he tries to use to tell his daughter that she can’t go to school because it is against their samaj (community). He says, ‘good, then we understand one another.’

(this is when it starts to get weird)

So then I am sitting silently in the main room with her grandparents. Her older cousin walks into the room and she starts doing somersaults in the air. I am wondering what in the world is going on; the grandparents don’t even look up. Then this girl, my friend, walks in, bathed and clean, but still in the same ragged clothes and the same tangled hair. The grandparents say, ‘Aren’t you going to school?’ Suddenly the girl starts spinning, hair flying all crazy (not scary; it looks a lot like a scene from Fantasia). When she finally stops spinning, she’s wearing thick, black lawyer glasses, hair pinned up, nicely dressed and ready, evidently, to leave for school. The cousin (somersaulter) is dressed and ready to go with her. Then the father walks in, and this same 'force' (who I assume is the girl’s mom) beats up the guy, similar to the last scene of Ghost, but not that bad- b/c I don’t like violent dreams…the grandparents don’t even look up.

Weird.

Then, in the space between asleep and awake, I have this thought: No matter how much work I do, in the end I’m only laying groundwork. The real changes are going to come from the people in the community themselves.

And I woke up. (I’m dreaming about my work. I’m in trouble.)