Aside from the hurry and scurry of life at home, I haven't yet written from here because I haven't really known what to say. Like arriving in Hyderabad, there's been this span of time where I find it difficult to think about all the differences from a macro-level as I'm struggling just to take them all in. But now, it's been nearly a month and I'm home, not just in Wisconsin, but in the bedroom of the house I grew up in, able to pause and reflect on what's changed and what's stayed the same.
It's actually quite hard to believe it happened. Fleeting like a dream, I have to talk about India with people constantly, to assure myself of it's occurrence and crystallize it in memories and stories. It's most assuaging with the people who were there with me, the ones who are also struggling to make sense of this strangely new yet static, unchanged place we call home.
None of us are entirely sure what to do with ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I'm having the time of my life playing games with kids at a summer camp and teaching them yoga, training capoeira again and seeing everyone I missed. But there's still this sense that one's going through the motions and isn't always entirely there. It's hard to just drop everything and fall back into the routine of life at home. The terrible thing would be if it wasn't, if one could just come back and seamlessly fall into place. Things have been in many ways, very, very good here. But I don't feel like I fit anymore.
In a sense, returning to Madison carried the same self-indulgence of going home - a regression to an infantile state in an environment where everything is taken care of for me. It's lovely, comfortable and convenient, but I feel restlessness a-brewin'. For that reason, my mind's been somewhat trained to the future, preparing for my senior thesis and thinking about my plans for post-graduation (taking a post-bac research position somewhere for a year or two, possibly in DC), even as I make a point of living in the present. While I find many of my friends and peers fearful of post-graduation life, it's something I'm massively ready for, just as I was ready for college life come senior year of high school. After India, it's hard to find life without adventure and environmental challenge satisfying, hence why I've been keeping myself challenged and busy in other ways since leaving. But I'm excited to be somewhere new again and slowly transform it into a home, running it over with memories like ivy.
But how is it being home?...It's good. Spending so much time with American kids (who are far more like Indians than American adults) has made it easier, and practicing yoga daily has kept be connected. The latter reminds me that India really did happen, and assures me that it really did change me. The most terrifying thing about being home is the prospect of getting run over by the current, and forgetting all the quiet truths I learned abroad. Like mantras, I've repeated the jarring differences between here and there in conversation to anyone who asks, the ones that had me reeling my first week home.
And what of these? First, it was the environment. Like any animal removed from his native environment and simply dropped into a foreign one, I was initially stupefied. My brain wasn't sure how to process all the wide open spaces of my home town, sterile like a hospital, as bursting with personality as a loaf of Wonderbread. The scarcity, whiteness, and indifference of everyone made me feel uneasy as well, drawing such a sharp contrast to the constant circus of grinning, colorful Indians tumbling one-over-another of which I'd grown so fond. Not to mention the indulgence of expensive, air-conditioned cars and orderly, $3.75-a-drink coffee shops lining the wide, open roads.
And secondly, hitting harder and deeper, were the social norms. Cynicism, sarcasm and the act of complaint had become altogether absent, something I failed to realize but now miss terribly. Adjusting to these and their near-constant presence in most any conversation I found myself in has been a generally unpleasant experience. Truly, I miss the laughing optimism of people in India, the acceptance of life as a rigged lottery and heartfelt gratitude for it's happier moments. American Entitlement does not resonate with me and I have a hard time relating to the shallow woes of others (not that deeper pains do not exist here as well - more on that in a bit) which I cannot help but place in newfound perspective alongside street children and begging, child-bearing mothers. Thankfully, disgust does not arise in me in response to these whinings, as I easily remember making them myself many times in the past. An understanding of how luxuriously the vast majority of Americans live cannot, I think, arise without having had the opportunity to experience a place where people live in far harsher conditions. So I do not resent them; I just wish they could see outside their time and place.
But as I said, this is not to discount the pains of people here. Rather, I was stunned by the air of sadness that hung over people at a show in Madison, the night after I got home, which I left with the uncomfortable, unavoidable feeling that people here are simply not as happy as they were in India. Paradoxical as this seems, given our affluence, it's something I've been made constantly aware of over the last month. I'm floating all kinds of theories as to why, coming up primarily with a) the alienated, disconnected nature of life in a place where you can exist without interacting with or relying upon others, b) SES-isolation which prevents people from seeing how well they live and how much worse many people are forced to and c) the spiritual vapidity of most religious life in the States. I realize these are rather bold claims to make without walking the reader through my reasoning, but doing so would take a long, long time, so I'll suggest simply asking me if you're curious.
Getting back to social norms, it's been an odd readjustment. We keep ourselves so separate here, I sometimes feel lonely at the lack of interaction with others. While one cannot help constantly bumping into, tripping over and being squished up against others in India, I find people here apologizing for invading my personal space without having even made contact. Similarly, while strangers in India would frequently ask what I was doing there, whether I was married and why I wasn't married, strangers are strangers in the States and you generally don't interact with people you don't know if you're hoping to avoid strange looks. Switching from a country which wears it's collective heart on its sleeve to one which is guarded and frequently fearful has been unnerving. I miss the openness of people, the implicit trust and goodwill that peppered the most mundane of daily happenings. Really, nothing in India was mundane. Every day felt like an adventure and the sheer personality of the country made buying a cup of chai an opportunity to meet and learn from another.
These are the sharp contrasts that threw me off-kilter, to which I've been slowly, steadily adjusting this last month. Though I'm getting used to them, I refuse to forget that things could be different and that our way is not the inherently best way. In many ways, our way is no longer my way, and that deliberate resistance and rejection of societal norms which turn people into strangers has become a part of me. Through simply living my life one way and not another, I hope to Indianize America in the ways she could use it. Comfort is not the highest good. This is something we've forgotten.
And yes, I am most certainly going back. I've begun a lifelong affair with India, and realized I'd love to one day own a house there, in which I could live for several month stretches when the feeling grabs me. Happy as I am, being there, there's no good reason not to. In the short term, I'm planning to take my parents on a two or three-month tour some time in the next couple years, as I'd love to share the subcontinent with them and simply show them everything I've recounted.
I've transferred the pictures from my post-semester travels from my camera to my hard drive, but have yet to get them online with explanatory blurbs. I'm planning to finally take care of that next weekend, and I'll post something here once I do. For now, I'm going to go enjoy my family and practice my morning yoga. Much as I love sharing it with my kids (many of whom have taken to it like fish to water, much to my delight), it never affords the same, serene shanti I enjoy when practicing at my leisure. Take care, readers.
