Return, part two

It's been a full week but it hasn't yet set in. I've never been able to get my head around India existing on the other side of the planet. Nextdoor to Pakistan? Got it. Proxal to Thailand, check. A quarter-globe from England - roger. Opposite Wisconsin? Does not compute.

Yet here I am, in India again. Maybe the geography doesn't add up because the concept of slipping into an alternative dimension seems like a more straightforward explanation. Like everything's fundamentally the same, but bent and reordered (or disordered as the case may be, but aré, let's keep on task). In every aspect of space and time, India, she's worlds away to me.

Can I be frank? I spent the last six months so entirely doubting that any of this would actually manifest that even now that it's come, my mind disbelieves. And as an aside, I wonder if one of my yatras to India will ever one day be preceded by anything other than chaos and disorder. But again, would the shanti be half as striking without some madness beforehand? The storm makes the calm oh-so-quieting.

Despite my many doubts (to employ the Hingrish favorite once more), I am steeped in Mother Bharat: Hindi chatter, hot chai; smoking sadhus, steamy samosas; "Hello, my friend?", "Is no problem." All signs that I have crossed over, slipped into the stream like a weary pilgrim into the Ganga and oh, how I'm ready to let it take me away and wash me clean. Maybe that's when the realization comes - when I let go and float along, buoyed by the joyful moments of "I am really here ; this is really happening," contrary to Thom Yorke's emphatic wail.

Note to self: I'm here, you're here, you made it. I'll chant it like a wish until it comes true (or like a mantra until I realize its truth). Both times I've come to India, I come on fumes, tank empty, waving my barren meal plate, begging for sustenance. Admitting I'm out of fuel has taken some days each time, and comes only after I'm sure the whole scene won't evaporate like a mirage following my concession. But oh, I thirst. And God, I'm waxing philosophical for what feels like the first time in a year. This massive inner tide of wonder and introspection has been delayed by a year of "not now" and "get this done first." Now, I realize how desperate I've been to be here again, to reclaim my shanti.

Now here I sit and as I type, I realize it's here within reach. If I were typing this outside under floral canopy and dimming sunlight, oh, the tide would come forth. Four weeks ahead for meditation and mindfulness. Four weeks to learn how people are everyday coming forth from the dirt and rubble of addiction bright and smiling, miraculously remade.

What have I learned in a week? I've learned that yoga is saving lives over here. Not independently of other contributions -- I'd be a yoga-fanatic and a right crummy scientist to go that far -- but helping save them all the same. I've visited four prominent Indian rehab centers to meet with more than twice that many directors and staff workers, many of them ex-addicts themselves, to learn how yoga is changing lives. I've learned how it appears to ease the experience of the negative emotions which frequently cause the knee-jerk urge to use drugs. I've learned how it helps people reassess their internal and external experiences to make good decisions and not succumb to their cravings. I've learned how people are using these practices to reshape their minds and reclaim their lives. The stories I've heard in a week could make you weep for a lifetime - for the sorrow of loss, the beauty of hope, the glory of triumph.

A week -- somehow, just a week. I made the offhand comment to someone, somewhere recently that I could go home tomorrow and feel my work is done. But that wasn't quite true: by outside perspectives it would seem enough but from my own sense for what lies beneath, my own suspicions of how deep this rabbit-hole runs, my God -- I've only begun to dig. So far, this experience has offered wondrous validation for my own beliefs of the power these practices hold. It's done miracles to assuage my own doubts and uncertainty of whether these questions are worth asking, whether this trail is worth blazing. But in the heart of these conversations, just as in the depth of my own meditations, my hesitations disappear. I sit with myself and I look and I know. That this is dharma, to ask these questions and find their answers. These truths are my truth; to pursue them undauntedly is to realize my nature. "Tiger gotta hunt, bird gotta fly, man gotta sit and wonder why, why, why."

And if I'm going to quote Vonnegut, I'm going to do it twice: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." I won't preemptively apologize for my growing certainty that people are coming into my path a hair too serendipitously for me to chalk it all up to chance and happenstance. Besides the ones I've sought out myself, I have seemingly randomly bumped into an increasingly bizarre number of people who practice yoga and meditation and have shared their (often incredible) experiences with me. I've received nothing but encouragement in the path I'm choosing to take, to try and peer into the brain and watch the mind dance its weaving, mystic dance. If you know me or have ever asked me "So how was India?", I don't need to tell you the dance these conversations bring about in myself. I am loving this; little has ever felt so right.

More to come soon, but necessarily after dinner. There's much to tell of just what all I've done and now that I'm here in Mumbai, I finally have the means and the wherewithal to tell it. Photos to boot - precious Karnatakan children and luscious Indian foliage lay just around the corner, I swear. Now to eat, phir milenge to all. Dearest blog, I give you new life, new form for your undying spirit.

Return

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.