It's always surprising how long the simplest task can take to accomplish in India – and the orphanage rebuilding project is not the simplest task! Everyone had hoped that the first spade would be put into the ground this spring but when faced with a structural engineer who took twice as long as anticipated to complete his input and then with estimates that seemed far too high, the process has ground slowly on.
And now the weather is the major hurdle. In winter the cold winds blow down from the high Tibetan plateau and give cold hard skies but in summer the wind turns in direction and Darjeeling is affected by major weather systems which come up to the mountains bearing lots of moisture from the Bay of Bengal. This results in pre-monsoon rains from early May onwards with frequent downpours and days when the mist encompasses everything and all your possessions become gradually damper – which to the visitor seem like monsoon conditions – but these are in turn replaced in June by days of incessant rain which drives people mad as it drums on tin roofs. In these conditions building works are impossible.
Nevertheless work on fund raising is carrying on here in the UK and in India, where it is led by Pema Bhante, the monk in charge of both the girls’ and boys’ homes. Pema Bhante was himself an orphanage boy who went on to go to university and then entered the banking profession. He feels though that his calling is to look after the children in Darjeeling and has refused other job offers, turning down a request to become second in command at the Bhuddist temple in London and also to lecture at a major Indian university. He is unmarried – Bhuddist monks may belong to a number of different sects, some of which are celibate and some where the monks marry and have children – and lives a fairly spartan life at the boys’ orphanage.
Looking after the children is a fairly stressful life. Pema Bhante has been in dialogue with the West Bengal government which is based hundreds of miles away in Kolkata for the last two to three years, trying to get them to pay him the right level of grant for the number of children and young people he houses. The funds he is given have only covered about two thirds of the number he has in his care. Recently he has managed to enlist the help of a government minister so he hopes that gradually the matter will be resolved. The money he raises for the rebuilding project are kept separate and protected for this purpose. In the short recording of him in his office he describes the need for the new buildings. Describing the girls’ accommodation as cozee (an Indian euphemism for over-crowded) makes things sound so much better than they really are. The link to the short film is
