I'm here in Hyderabad and I cannot cannot believe it. Not just Hyderabad, but the Tagore International Students Hostel at HCU, i.e. my home from January until June of 2009. My facebook status reads "words cannot describe; brain cannot compute" and that's really the best I can put it. It is just surreal to be here again, in this space where I grew and changed from who I was to who I became. Every inch is laden with memories which surge and swirl until I realize I've been standing on the balcony, staring into space for the last ten minutes. It's truly otherworldly.
Backtracking a bit, Bangalore was great. SVYASA was marvelous respite from the noise, pollution and utter chaos I've been enduring in the cities the last several weeks. Thanks to the tranquility of the forest, the friendliness of the scientists and the omnipresent calm of everything and everyone, I felt weeks and months of stress start to wash away, tightly bound knots beginning to let loose. I realized that I never really got a chance to relax even after finals and graduation, so swiftly was I scampering off to India. And even since I arrived here, I was rushing so much to either complete my research or get on to the next place that I really didn't get a chance to just stop and look around. Granted that had a lot to do with the heat and the pressures of time. But it was also a matter of mindset, the "hurry up and go - the sky's falling for Christ's sake" kind of mentality Madison well-conditioned me into.
But now, now it is done. My research, school, and hopefully that mentality. As I hope I've made clear in the past, living in India is not always easy. It can be quite stressful and frustrating at times. But what I love about India is what it teaches me, what it makes me to remember. Something about the lack of control you have over any given situation forces you to let go. That or lose your mind. This letting-go isn't easy - as far as I can tell, letting-go almost never is. But when India pushes me to let go and I begrudgingly submit, I discover something wonderful: there's more to life than rushing around from one place to the next. There's more to life than whatever single aspect you're currently fretting over. And things really do tend to work out, regardless of how much you worry and wonder. So why bother at all? Why not just be here now?
These are the hard but necessary lessons India's taught me once before. And this crash-course in non-Western living has again reminded me with a not-so-unheavy hand.
But I'm here again. I'm worn and weary but I remember now. And I hope to meditate on these truths during these next three-ish weeks. I hope Hyderabad can remind me of the life I made here, the way I decided I wanted to live when my life belonged to me again (and not UW-Madison, love it though I do). Slowly, this sense of urgency, of calamity around the corner is leaving me. It's something I'll need to work at - I haven't been as regular in my yoga and meditation as I'd like. But as Gandhi says, we must be the change we wish to see in the world. If I hope to make this world mindful and get the people meditating, then I'd best lead by example. After all, the only people we can truly change are in the end ourselves. The rest, what's seen in the world or others, is just an extension of those small, original adjustments.
More stories soon and yes, pictures too. I've finally got a sufficiently reliable internet connection and, more importantly, the time to make good on those promises. But for now I'm going to go and meditate. Then we'll see what I can do.
No comments:
Post a Comment