One Billion Guiding Forces

We've now got wireless at the hostel, which will make the process of updating my blog and uploading photos much easier, along with checking email, news, etc. I've gone ahead and uploaded a number of pictures to Picasa, catching me up, more or less. That said, I've found the recent lack of internet something of a relief, and I'm determined not to get caught up wasting time online now that I have it again. That's never been much of a problem for me, though I have spent decidedly more time doing "productive things" and it's a habit I'd like to maintain. I find there to be fewer distractions here, in general (that is, things which distract me from spending time the way I'd ideally like to), confirming my suspicions that I'd find a simpler life preferable to one muddled with haphazard excess. Honestly, I feel more free here than I have in a long time. There's a lot of room here, room for dreams and reflections, room to sort out the hows and whys of what's been and what lies ahead. It's good to stretch out here, out of the current for a spell, and consider these things.

I was thinking about what I write here, how I write it and why I'm writing at all. There's been a tension in my writing between an "x then y happened" sterile sort of recording and a more genuine account of what occupies my thoughts and the meaning I've gleamed. To be honest, I have a hard time making sense of what all these changes signify; I feel like an infant with some multi-levered, flashing-buttoned, chirping, whirling machine who can't make heads or tails of what he's even seeing, let alone how it works, let alone what to do with it. There is so much to take in, so many alterations to my environment that I'm still simply trying to put it all together. But when faced with the incomprehensible before, writing's often served me in connecting the sporadic, too often seemingly random dots of experience to form some sparse outline, a template for life and my place within it. So I think that will be this journal's purpose: a place to unload the jumbled days and sort the wheat from the chaffe.

That philosophy established, I may not not make a point of recounting each day's events or each new exploration in painstaking detail; I think the photos I take along the way will tell those stories instead. I should like to delve deeper than description and honestly, it should be a hell of a lot less boring to read. So, off we go - cheers.

I've never believed too strongly in fate, in some invisible guiding hand which intelligently directs the goings-on of this corner of the universe. Perhaps it's the scale, perhaps it's a belief in evolution, perhaps it's the atrocities of man which make life and existence seem so ostensibly absurd. Whatever the reason, I know existentialism struck a brilliant chord with me, in AP English, and has held a persistent tone for three years and counting. The individual's power to define and thereby create his or her identity and then affect the surrounding world is the stuff of legend to me, vibrant and inspiring, and it is one of those fundamental beliefs which accounts for much of my perspective on human affairs and my own life-vision.

Yet, it seems equally clear to me that beyond our capacity (and I reiterate - there is so, so much room) there are forces which define this place over which we have very little control: time marches on, seasons cycle and life ebbs, flows. Taoism's teachings of release and adjustment to these forces rang another bell in my heart, singing an equally beautiful song. Though ideas of peacefulness through nonaction seem at first opposed to the establishment of identity through the exercise of will, I would suggest that deliberate nonaction is itself an assertion of humanity and actually fits quite well with existential thought, generating a more complete picture of how we can be the people we decide to be through manipulation of perception and (non)action.

But while I can get quite carried away on our abilities and human power, I am reluctant to concede those powers beyond our grasp. For that reason, my enthusiasm for Taoism or any philosophy of release and surrender has never approached that I experienced when reading Sartre's "Existentialism as a Humanism." Yet, it's remained a truth I've known but determinedly ignored, preferring to soar on endless possibility.

And India is challenging that, bringing this fact to the forefront of daily life in a way that affords little wiggle room. The poverty cannot be ignored and taunts me with its prevalence. It's a miserable, undeinable truth over which I (alone, here, now) have precious little control. It's humbling and deflating, tempering my leaping spirits with clear, stubborn reality.

Between these ideals, I'm sure a balancing point exists. With a degree of release, there is calm, peaceful being and freedom from hopelessly massive, crushing expectation. But this release demands a constriction of personal ability and power of will. The answer to this riddle is lost on me, but the serenity prayer often fills my thoughts. Clearly the best one can do is to do one's best - and that seems to be the easy part. Understanding how much weight and responsibility to allot oneself for the world and its conditions is a much more difficult art, one I hope to make strides in during my time abroad. I do feel that I am learning to foster an inner peacefulness through acceptance of my place in this new world and relieving myself of the need to struggle beyond that. Stunned by this dramatically altered reality, I am recalling that understanding must precede action if any good is to come of it. So I am learning to be calm, quiet and attentive before trying to manipulate anything at all. It is an ancient lesson, born in this land thousands of years ago, and it is one I hope to learn through it's very practice.

From the ground up

Pardon the lack of updates - we moved into our new hostel where there's no internet yet and I've been too busy with orientation and the like to make it over to the library. Expect some lengthy posts to come, concerning my first time in the city outskirts, the Indian fusion concert, getting new duds at Fab India, New Year's Eve, and our jam-packed day of Hyderabad exploration, including a palace, mosque, series of tombs and ancient fort. Also, I saw my first Indian movie yesterday, Ganjini (a Bollywood take on Memento), at a local theater.

Everything is going spectacularly well. There are lots of adjustments, some superficial and some less so. The poverty is very hard to understand, let alone accept as another fact of life. I don't think I'll ever get used to the pleading eyes of a malnourished, hobbling child tugging at my pantleg - I don't think I'd like to.

This world challenges the boundaries of life and humanity as I've known it so far; I've seen more intense joy and sorrow than I recall having ever seen before. It's constantly said that India is a place of extremes, but what they don't tell you, is that it is a place of constant, simultaneous, seemingly irreconcilable extremes. Towering new office buildings grow out of roughshod huts, made of tarps and bamboo, until the work is done and another sprouts up by the same workers' hands. Women smiling brilliantly in shining saris pass the starving people, in their ragged nests. Chaos rules the streets through insistent merchants and motions, waves of people from all sides in all directions, while ten feet away, pigeons congregate outside a tranquil mosque.

That such extremes could exist comes as no surprise; that they could do so tangled up with one another, distinct and apart yet wholly integrated (each essential to the other), stuns and humbles me. It is overwhelming to feel my mental framework reworking itself anew to try and account for these paradoxical inconsistencies, like a toddler making sense of a language's ins and outs, learning an incredible lot in a very, very short time.

I came to India for a challenge, for a fresh start and to redefine my world, my life and in turn, myself. I didn't realize this wasn't about expansion - it's about reconstruction.