Pooja's Eyes.

Her wide syrupy brown eyes stare up at me, surrounded by impossibly long black lashes that spring up from all around her top and bottom eyelids. Her eyes are sundor, the Bengali word that means beautiful.

Her name is Pooja. And she is my bondhu. Bondhu is the Bengali word for friend. I do my service every morning in the female ward at Prem Dan, which is one of the Missionaries of Charity homes, and which is specifically for women who are sick, diseased, and dying, and/or mentally and/or physically disabled. Pooja is one of those women, and the one who I hold dearest to my heart. I am quite attached to many of the women, and especially fond of a few in particular, but all of us who work at Prem Dan have our own designated “Bondhus,” or friends, and my best Bondhu, my bff so to speak, is Pooja.

She’s probably about my age, 22. Maybe a year or two younger. She has beautiful brown skin, a round face, a buzz cut, and those beautiful brown eyes. She is completely immobile. She cannot move any of her limbs, and she can’t even sit up straight. She spends all day sitting upright in a chair, leaning slightly to her left side against the wall. Her head tilts, and rests on a large pillow. Pooja can’t speak. The only thing that she can really do on her own is chewing and swallowing her food.

Since my third day at Prem Dan I have fed Pooja her chai and bread at chai time, and her lunch at lunch time. Ever since that day, I make sure that no one else feeds my Pooja. I mush up her rice and potatoes, and feed it to her in careful spoonfuls, and watch her with pure adoration as she slowly but surely chews her food and swallows it. After she swallows, she eagerly opens her mouth up wide, like a baby bird waiting to be fed.

Pooja has stolen my heart. But she also breaks my heart. She is so young, and so clearly full of life-I see it all in her eyes when she looks at me. And boy, does she look at me; Pooja definitely knows the meaning of eye contact. When I feed her, when I talk to her, when I walk by her, Pooja stares deeply into my eyes, and holds her gaze.

Today, I was standing a few feet away from Pooja, and goofing around with one of my other favorite ladies at Prem Dan- one of my “home girls,” as we like to call them. We were laughing and smiling-she was speaking in Bengali, and I was speaking in English, but we were talking nonetheless. Then I looked up, and saw that another volunteer was sitting next to Pooja, and holding her hand. It was sweet, and warmed my heart to see my favorite girl getting attention from someone else. But I was also a little bit jealous, I will admit. We all tend to get a bit possessive of our bondhus at Prem Dan. So I looked at her, and dramatically acted out that I was jealous. “Are you flirting with another woman?” I asked. The tone and volume of my voice, and my body language made it obvious that I was being facetious, and I had a huge smile on my face, and Pooja totally got it. She got my joke, and she responded in the most beautiful way.

Her black pupils lock onto mine, hold, and didn’t let go. Pooja always blinks incessantly, but even with each blink she never loses that focus that she has on my eyes. There we were staring into each other’s eyes, and then, suddenly, a huge smile spread across her face; a smile full of crooked teeth that are definitely rotting, but in far better condition when compared to the teeth of the older women who surround her. Pooja could be the Crest model of Prem Dan-her teeth are still fairly white, and they are all there. The same can’t be said of the rest of the women; many of whom are toothless, or only have about half their teeth still intact. She smiled bigger than I have ever seen her smile before, (and the number of times that I have seen her smile previous to this time is a whopping one).

I stared back at her, not letting go of the eye contact, and smiled so hard that I thought my face would break. I swallowed hard and for a moment I didn’t breathe. Then I cracked. I took at a deep breath, and I could feel the tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. All of the blood in my body rushed to my heart in that moment, and I knew I was about to cry. I just couldn’t do it. So I broke eye contact. I looked away from those big brown eyes. But I felt warm, so warm. I couldn’t believe that she smiled at me like that. There was so much joy, so much love behind that smile. And that is why I am here in Kolkata.

Call me melodramatic; call me overly sensitive; call me far too attached to this young woman whom I’ve only known for 2 weeks. Call me crazy, but I love my bondhu Pooja, and I will always remember her. She has made a lasting impact on my heart, my soul, and my mind; looking into those wide brown eyes shook me to the core, and I will never be able to pretend that I didn’t see what I saw in Pooja’s eyes.

I know what other people may see when they look into Pooja’s eyes. They see emptiness; a blank stare, a deer in the headlights, someone with a mentally disability, a person who isn’t “all there.” But I see so much more. I see life, so much life! I see memories, pain, sadness, and hardship. But I also see joy. And that is what I cherish most; Pooja’s joy.

I’ve started singing to Pooja. I sing her my favorite songs from my favorite Neil Young album, “Harvest.” I hold her hands, and even though she can’t move them, and even though she is weak, I feel the slightest pressure coming from her skinny fingers, and I know that for Pooja, that slight pressure is really a sqeeze, it’s a grip, it’s the equivalent of a healthy person holding on for dear life and never letting go. She can't say it, but I know that Pooja loves me too. And I know that I make her just as happy as she makes me. I live for the moments when I can see Pooja’s happiness-like the time that I made her laugh last week-she smiled slightly, and the tiniest high pitched sound came out of her mouth-the first sound that she ever uttered to me other than when she chokes a little on her food, and coughs. But I knew that the funny high pitched sound that she was making was a laugh; Pooja’s laugh. And it was the equivalent to a healthy person absolutely cracking up, laughing hysterically. Pooja just expresses herself differently.

Kolkata makes me feel human in every sense of the word. Connecting to Pooja, and my other bondhus, and all of the women at Prem Dan has been an incredible experience that I never anticipated. I wasn’t prepared for how much love I was going to feel for all of these women, and there is nothing that could have prepared me for it even if I had been warned. My experience here has been a whirlwind; a beautiful experience that I will never forget.
Thanks for reading. Namaskaar,
Alicia