Journey to India by Peter A. Luckey

Me and Saranya, India, October 2008

The soft rocking motion of the rails underneath my bunk cradled my body but could not calm my mind: What if I miss my stop? What if Saranya takes one look at me and runs?

In the fall of 2008, I traveled on an overnight train across India to an orphanage called the Family Village Farm outside of Vellore, Tamil Nadu, to see our family’s sponsored child, Saranya.

When our sons, Chris and Daniel were little we signed up to be child sponsors. Child sponsorship is a means by which Global Ministries, a collaborative ministry of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) invites church members in the United States to make a financial commitment to help clothe, educate, and feed children in vulnerable and economically depressed situations. In return, the sponsoring family receives a “pen pal” from the other side of the world.

The child assigned to us was 7-year-old Saranya. The boys looked forward to getting her letters and learning what growing up in India was like. We attached a photo of her dressed in her blue school uniform to our fridge door. I never imagined seeing her in person.

Now on the train I tried to picture her as a teenager. Halogen lights interrupted my thoughts and the inky blackness of the Indian night, illuminating a throng of human bodies–women in saris, men in dhotis–a thimbleful of this nation’s 1.4 billion. A cacophony commenced: the opening of hydraulic doors, the scooching of luggage, the shouts of voices hawking tea.

“Chai! Chai! Chai!”        

Someone’s arm from the platform handed off a hot beverage through the open window, and a traveler’s rupee-filled hand reached back in payment.

I watched the recently disembarked passengers walk away. Overhead lights clipped above me. As we neared the platform edge, I took one more look and held my breath. Families slept on the concrete, children snuggled up against each other on the unforgiving surface.

Could this have been Saranya’s fate if we had not chosen to sponsor her?

Bodily rumblings interrupted my ruminating. I had to go. I got up from the bunk, slipped on shoes, squeezed through a gauntlet of legs–mothers wrapped in saris holding their babies, teenagers, and bearded men with their hair tied up in a turban. The scent of humanity wafted through the car. I turned on the door handle. The stench overpowered. No toilet. Only a hole. I stared down to the railroad ties below as they flashed past. I unbuckled my trousers. I squatted. I clutched my passport.

What if the ticket that will get me home falls out of my pants, slips through the hole, and onto the tracks below?

“What if” butterflies hatched in my stomach.

Inhale. Exhale. Deep breaths.

I pulled my pants up. As I threaded the corridor back to my bunk, I steadied my legs against the train’s shifting movements.

Settling back into my bed, I thought about comfort. Was being comfortable a privilege? Back at home, I had been made aware of the comforts granted to me in my life, long before I had ever stepped foot on South Asian soil: Potable water at the turn of the tap. Crosswalks when you need them. Living in a safe neighborhood.

The steel rails carried me deeper into my reflections on this. In place of “ what if? “I began to ask the “why?” question. Why am I  here? Why do I feel compelled to see our sponsored child?

I wrestled with this even after my visit to India. The train ride, the desire to see her, to cross economic and cultural barriers to make a human connection was powerful in my mind and still is. I wanted her to know that she meant something to us. Yet, on the heels of this desire came the next question: What specifically was my intention in wanting to convey what she meant to my family?

By going to see her, had I unwittingly implied that we might adopt her? Had I wanted her to come home with me and become a part of our family?

Truthfully, yes.

As I sat on the train, I could see it:  “Saranya: Our Luckey girl!”  I imagined her sitting on the floor, next to my sons, her hands cradling a video game controller. My face lights up with a proud Dad smile. I watch Dan, my youngest, reach over and say, “Saranya, here, let me help you get Super Mario safely across the hot lava.”

Even in my vision, I saw that we were the helpers, and she, the helpee. No sooner had I entertained the thought I squashed it. Was my assumption that Saranya’s life would be better off in America, even as she would be uprooted from her Tamil life?

None of this sat well with me. What message was I sending her by coming all this way? How would it be greeting her in front of a large group of children, when every child huddled around Saranya and her foreign sponsor would know that she was the one who’d been considered special enough for her sponsor to come visit?

The very word “sponsor” suggests a lop-sided power dynamic in the relationship–giver and receiver, guarantor and guarantee, rescuer and the rescued. What obligation, spoken or unspoken, weighs on the child to “please” the sponsor, keeping them happy by writing letters and thank you notes, so the dollars keep flowing to pay for the orphanage that clothes, feeds, and educates her?

Shari Prestemon, Co-Executive of Global Ministries, which runs child sponsorship programs for partners like the Family Village farm, is keenly aware of these dynamics. She said, “we need to help ‘sponsors’ (itself a problematic concept/word) understand that ministry and their role less as ‘what a good feeling to help those poor people have a better life’ and more something like ‘this is a way I can use my privilege to empower others and support the good work of Global Ministries partners.’

How is Global Ministries addressing the most problematic aspects of sponsorship? Shari Prestemon says that Global Ministries “determined that potential sponsors — individuals and congregations— needed a more thorough orientation before becoming sponsors to ensure a healthy understanding of the program’s purposes and the sponsor-child relationship.” In addition, “GM is  committed to developing resources that help sponsors learn more about the country that is home to the child, hoping to nurture an appreciation for culture and context that enriches the experience.”

  A haze filled dawn sent the darkness packing, along with my thoughts. I stared out the window at Tamil Nadu’s craggy hillsides, plowed fields, workers; humanity getting on with the new day.

I was still consumed with anxiety over what would happen if I missed my stop. It felt as if this was the Universe’s way of  breaking down my confidence, opening my heart. Leonard Cohen says, “there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

 Truthfully, I’d felt overwhelmed since I walked out of the international airport in Mumbai and into a night teeming with the residue of humanity hanging over the city like a heavy drape. As I left the airport, my cabbie lifted my suitcase to his car’s roof, then tied it down with twine. I scooted into the passenger’s seat. With my right arm, I reached through the open window, my fingers fumbling for the rope. I held onto my possessions for dear life. The driver weaved and bobbed through trucks and auto rickshaws. He called out to pedestrians asking for directions. At 4 am the driver pulled over to a gas station. I waited while he filled the tank.

What if something were to happen to me? Who in this megacity of twenty million would I turn to for help?

Breathe!

This became my mantra, now waiting for the express train to pull into my stop, a place called Katpadi Junction. I stepped out of this steel cocoon and into the unknown.

Minutes later I let myself breathe. Held aloft in English a cardboard sign, my name: PETER LUCKEY. I threw my possessions into the back of a Land Rover. I climbed into the passenger’s side.

Once I arrived at the orphanage, Family Village Farm, my hosts draped my neck with a gold-colored medallion, and I wondered, did I deserve the royal treatment?

Hospitality is a norm deeply embedded in Indian culture. The welcome I received went above and beyond. On an earlier occasion before I traveled to meet Saranya, a family in the parish, Church of South India, invited me to their home for breakfast. To my surprise the table was set for only one: me. I ate while the whole family stood around the room, ready to wait on me.

 The deference I was shown was not due to anything I earned, or merited, but only what I represented: a White spiritual leader from the West. I felt myself set apart. To be frank, part of me loved the attention.

          And yet, the truth is that this Hindu majority nation is resistant to accept Christian pastors who come to India from the West—I was advised not to disclose my clergy status in my visa application. Why the hostility? First, Dalits, at the lowest rung of the Hindu caste hierarchy have been converted to Christianity by the thousands thus threatening the Hindu hegemony of the country. Second, Christianity is perceived as a vestige of Western colonial power.

Immediately after my preliminary welcome, I collapsed on a guest bed. A couple of hours later, the sound of roosters crowing, birds squawking, and children playing woke me from sleep. My guest room’s screen door filled with the faces of little people pressed up against it.

“Aren’t you Saranya’s sponsor?” a child asked.

“Yes” I said, “where is she?”

School girls escorted me to her, like attendants taking me to their queen. I could not believe what was happening; this child whom we brought into our family I would now see in person. My heart pounded.

Countless times, I wondered what our first meeting would be like. I wasn’t prepared for what it actually was.

I turned. And there she was: olive-colored eyes and a generous smile. In perfect English she said, “I heard that you were coming. I could not believe that my sponsor would be here! I could not sleep. Tell me about my brothers, Chris and Dan, and my Auntie Linda.”

Hearing the names of the people most precious to me spoken on her lips, bowled me over.

She knew our names! She knew all about us! She had read every single letter!

I spent the next two days with her as my host. The following morning my first sight through the screen door was her beaming face. She carried a cup of chai with her. She was the giver. I was the receiver.

Saranya took me on a tour of her home. “Uncle Peter, this is the cottage where I live. This is the dining hall. Everywhere we went, she was at  my side. Viju, from the staff, pointed to Saranya, and said to me, “Your child!” I wanted this to be so. And yet, reflecting later, I have come to realize how important it is for me to examine my own motives, to discern the difference between my desires and what’s best for the child. From a Christian standpoint, love seeks the good of the other.

After supper, Saranya invited me into a time of fellowship in the cottage she shared with twenty-seven other students. It was a simple building with bare walls, and I joined them on the floor. We sang the familiar words, Give thanks with a grateful heart/Give thanks to the Holy One.

Saranya nestled into my side. Her warmth tugged at my father's heart. Our voices reverberated off the cinder block walls. Saranya’s nearness gave me my breath back. I let loose. I sang off key with gusto.

A story about atheists advertising their skepticism of God’s existence came to me unbidden that night. Mentally, I swatted it away. “Come to this orphanage and see,” I wanted to say to the doubters, “for I am being melted down, poured out like wax into a puddle of grace.”

A light shone through the cracks of my soul.

I have been giving thanks for that moment ever since. I know there is no escaping my privilege. However, my experience in India taught me how important it is for me to own it, and then, with humility and in prayer, use my gifts to empower others.

After years of reflection once I was back home in the U.S., I began to see the only one in need of saving was me. Saved not from something but for something, and that something was receiving the gift of seeing everyone as my brother and sister.

Sixteen and a half years later, Saranya has a job, a husband, two adorable daughters and a strong faith. I know this because we stay in touch on WhatsApp. She is fine. She does not need to be rescued or saved.

Two weeks after I sat with Saranya on the floor of her cottage singing, “give thanks with a grateful heart,” I walked the neon-lit corridors of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, killing time before my connecting flight. I luxuriated in the familiar: sipping a drink filled with ice cubes, the sound of flat Chicago accents, and ubiquitous Chicago Bears football jerseys  , when a voice brought me back to India.

“Sir, can you tell me how to find the train to take me downtown?” the man asked, speaking in English with a South Asian lilt.

I wanted to hug him, thank him. Take him by the hand and show him how to find the Chicago-bound El-train. I wanted to tell him, “Of course, I will show you, just as so many people of India helped me.” A salty stream rolled down my cheeks.

This man is me! I am the foreigner. I am an orphan.

We are all foreigners, orphans. The comfort privilege affords only temporarily satisfies our heart’s deepest longings. Only love does that,   cradled as I was by it, that night on the floor, as Saranya snuggled up to my side, an incarnation of the love beyond all love that saves us all.