Reflections on India

Hello. It is March 14th; it has been a while since I posted and I apologize for that. I have been working at being a pile, and harder at enjoying pile time. I have been eating, sleeping, relaxing, and eating some more, with Corinne ably helping me along. I’ve had almost a week outside of India during which I’ve allowed time to pass without much reflection. In fact, even without having slept, stepping onto the Aeroflot plane in Delhi at 5AM put much of India’s challenges out of my mind. As I have mentioned, I have many mixed thoughts about my experience and my decision to leave when I did. I spent six weeks traveling Western and Northen India and saw an amount of the country equivalent to a road trip from LA to Seattle. The clarity will have to come with the telling – no easy answers or lessons drawn quite yet. I will do my best to keep these reflections to two or so posts.

I was told a number of times that visiting India will change me, often with the same thousand yard stare, or the same sense of unspeakability. I was attracted to this country that cannot be captured in words or pictures – something I had to see and feel for myself. I was also well warned before I left, three weeks at least before you can expect to feel settled, that I should expect to feel like I am sticking it out at least for a while – that the richness of India will not reveal itself before a person puts in their time. This I felt prepare for as well – I had three weeks, I had traveled in ‘difficult’ countries, and done so alone and sometimes at some personal hardship. I felt seasoned by Morocco and Egypt, by my previous mistakes and misjudgments. Frankly I felt seasoned by my life – I knew I had persevered through unique psychological and physical hardships unimaginable to a lot of people my age. When forewarned about difficulties, and even when attempting to endure them myself, I would tell myself that I can do anything for a few months, a few weeks, a day. It’s very possible that this attitude contributed to my struggle more than comforted it, but I also credit it for keeping me chugging along when I felt like quitting. So what was so gd hard for me about India?

I considered India relentless (sometimes thinking of it trying to spit me out!) and wished it would ‘back-off’ now and then, that I could find a day or two of respite. This is a silly notion – India was just being India – Delhi was being Delhi, etc. It could no less be it than I could be me. At the same time, what it was proved extremely taxing on me.

I would imagine someone from an Indian culture might visit the west and experience a sort of reverse image – the pounding isolation of western cultures, where one can walk down street after street and walk into shop after shop without interacting with anyone, without anyone approaching to say hello, ask about your relationships or employment or homeland, or invite you into their shop for a tea. Of course for me, these were the items that would pile up - not being able to walk ten feet without being approached, to have strangers asking me about my 'wife' or how much money I made, all talking within about 5 inches of my face. As I have mentioned in previous posts, there are a litany of small annoyances or difficulties that had rapidly piled up for me, so that I could go from a comfortable train ride to being ready to scream or cry in the face of a particularly persistent tuk-tuk driver in a matter of minutes. My patience would wear down more and more quickly, rather than adjusting to the various little struggles that would threaten to overwhelm me. I employed half a dozen evasive maneuvers in attempts to outwit my temper – many more tried and talked about with other travelers: you can respond to a ‘hello’ or ‘what country do you belong’ so long as you don’t break stride; try to bargain with drivers and walk away if it’s not going well; lock luggage on a train but don’t worry about it; book trains, hotels, tours in advance; check the seal on water bottles; and never eat food off the street, or food that includes fresh vegetable, or meat, or (in my case) dairy, anything offered to me on a train, in a shop, or anywhere outside of an established restaurant. I found it extremely difficult to strike a balance between being open to the culture and staying healthy, and I believe this is what ultimately did me in.

I thought of myself as being ‘sick’ for well over half of my time in India (it can be argued that it was that thought that hurt me the most). I was taking antibiotics and/or antiparasitics for most of the time as well. I did not trust my body to handle the Indian bugs I got – of course taking the drugs was a mixed solution, as every course left me less able to handle the bugs, and the antiparasitics left me tired and neaseaus. Making my way from town to town – even trying to rest in towns – became much more difficult to handle when all I wanted was to surrender and leave. Be at HOME.

Perhaps I could have left earlier, considered it prudent and not a retreat. It was difficult to determine how much was manageable for me – I had spent months of my life ably handling difficult circumstances, and I considered it a virtue to bear those struggles – particularly in India where nearly everyone around me was getting by with less. I am used to living comfortably in a society that spends much more than I do. In India, I was uncomfortable while spending considerably more than almost everyone I interacted with. Yes, I could have paid more for fancier hotels (or gone to a more affluent region of the country – apparently there are golf courses in India, and opulent apartments), I could have paid for western meals, taken first class trains, but how would this be different than going home? India means temples, desert forts, Indian food, squat toilets, cold showers, dirty trains, dirty streets, noisy streets, INSANE streets, and smiling, staring, or indifferent Indians. How much of this may I leave before I am no longer there?

I set out from home with the hopes of challenging myself – and as I discussed in my Morocco entries, success there and here. My friend Ellie wrote a book about a year of her life in Uruguay, about vulnerability and brokenness. For a while in India I felt like I had met my match in this country – that the struggles, compounded by my frail immune system, overmatched me. India was winning and I needed to leave. I COULD make it for a few more weeks, another friendly travel buddy was just on the horizon, my belly would be better after this round of drugs – the north would be better, the east would be better, a different hotel would be better. Finally, after having one or two close calls with consciousness, discovering I had dropped 20 lbs, and after feeling alright and still thinking about leaving, I did so. And for a while I felt like I was giving in. I had not risen to the challenge.

Perhaps India was only a more extreme version of what I experience all the time – that the world around us is primarily a reflection of ourselves, masked or unmasked, desired or not, it is all us. That India exposed my inability to function at all. Wherever I go, there I am. This was my fear.

Of course, another more palatable option is that perhaps it is inadvisable for a person with a compromised immune system to travel in India; of course I got sick, of course I left early. And shit, early? I was there for six weeks. I saw quite a lot. On a last leg of my trip I spent some time chatting with a Californian nurse in Dharamsala – we talked ‘shop’ for a while, and I told her about my experiences and fears about my health. Her expression of concern and amazement that I was even there drove home what Corinne and so many of you had expressed to me so often these last six weeks – it is no small thing to have done what I’ve done. As Jhumpa Lahiri (an Indian American author) writes in “The Third and Final Continent,” ‘As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.’

Leaving India feels like the start of my journey home. I will be spending comfortable time with Corinne, with little to focus on other than gaining weight back and reading and wandering Stockholm. I spend 13 days in Italy with my mother, another two weeks traveling with Corinne, then I go home, undoubtedly changed. I am anxious to share stories and photos with all of you (some yet to be taken! the journey is not over yet!). Thanks for reading!