so, here we are. Back in Delhi.
I don't know where to start or what to say.
We've been having many thoughts and talks about our impending homecoming.
Around Thanksgiving especially, maybe, I was thinking a lot about home. Realizing this time of year-- that there is snow on the ground, and falling from the sky in the pretty light way where it's still new and beautiful and exciting. And hot chocolate and fireplaces and blankets to snuggle and read under (oooh I'm so looking forward to holing myself up and making very good friends with the library in the next two months..). And it's weird to be missing these seasons, to remove myself from the weather which has always been constant in its yearly cyclical change.
Missing my family, too. Looking forward to seeing everyone when I get home. I wrote in an email a few weeks ago, about how I can't wait to get home to Massachusetts, even though it's full of cold and slush and suck: it's My suck.
But then, just the other day, I just got this thought like, Man. I miss Ladakh. I miss Namgial and Dorjee. I miss trek. I miss Nyima-la in Dharamsala. And I haven't really noticed it as I've been going along, caught up in defining myself by my life and friends and world at home, but I've created the same fervor of memory and place and community here. And I can only anticipate looking back in one or two months and sighing, huh. I miss Varanasi.
Varanasi was great, speaking of. We saw a lot, but the pace was laid back and chill. We saw the ghats, and spent an afternoon in this twisty, windy alley way section of the old city known as the Gulleys, where we were led to a henna place. We sat for a while, some of us dyed ourselves orange, the son of the owners came into the living room and played us tabla for a little while, and it was all around just pretty cool, to expierience and explore the city, without specific intention or goal or itinerary to stick to, because that let our eyes be open to the little side-street opportunities that present themselves, the little tucked away nook and cranny worlds that we wouldn't have noticed or stopped to sit in if we were focused forward on the future and certain plans. It was really refreshing, to just sort of dive forth into the Gulleys, and see where the current washed us.
I've been thinking a lot about faith recently, too. I sort of mused a little bit about it in my last blog post, but since then the concept has kind of been cooking in the crockpot I keep in one of those cortexes or lobes stuffed up in my head.
We went the other day with Ranaji on a pilgrimage around Varanasi. It took us through some villages and areas out in the country side. At a couple of the stops, we were followed around and watched by groups of local, village kids. There was one instance in particular: the kids were pretty nice. They weren't asking for money, or getting up in our faces, or being obnoxious, just... watching, and gathering. Really curious at these obvious foreigners wandering through their wheat fields. I had kind of smiled at them, and tried to look nice and friendly from afar. But then I saw Peter and Justin: both really engaged, and interacting with them. Smiling and poking and playing. And I saw myself, really sticking to the pack, and not making that real genuine effort to reach and branch out. What? And I remembered myself three months ago, right at the start of this trip, and thought about how I would have and was acting then: I remebered that one night in Delhi, before we went to Amritsar, when I started playing pattycake with this girl on the street, and wound up teaching croco-dilly-oh-mie to at least a dozen kids who had gathered around and were watching. I remember how energized I felt leaving, and waving goodbye to this herd of children running down the side of the street while we walked back to the Gypsy.
I realized, I think I've become more closed off since then: more cautious, more reserved, more hardened and callused over. I get frustrated and fed up walking down the street, and having rickshaw drivers stop to ask us if we need a ride to Connaught Place. And keep asking. And keep asking. And not leaving us alone. And when every other guy comes up and wants to know "Are you American?" "Where you from?" It's just fatiguing.
I talked more to them at the begining of this: politely declining rickshaws on my left and right, and answering their inquiries with relatively short responses until they lost interest. But now it's just a flick of the hand to shoo rickshaws away, a quick Yes to the questions without slowing my pace to really answer. Or I will just walk forth, not acknowledging or answering at all, frustrated at the attention.
But I realized, that sort of quick-to-dismiss, closed-off, frustrated energy has sort of started to pervade. I automatically write everyone off, giving people less of a chance because of my own assumptions about how Indian men act, for example, or what they're thinking. I become generally terse in conversation with new people, constantly suspicious of motives, or for instance, reserved in my interaction with the big group of children watching us have lunch, because I project onto them the image of other groups of kids, crowding us and asking for money. Upset at and frustrated by the assumptions some people make about me, I group and generailze and make assumptions constantly as I walk down the street, looking straight ahead and not acknowledging the greetings and rickshaw inquiries.
And as I watched Peter and Justin interact with this group of kids, and watched myself shy away and close off and project past experiences onto them, I realized how much that suspicion and judgement rob me of: the chance at these kinds of interactions, the ability to make connections, and the faith required to do so.
Varanasi is the city of light. The city of Shiva. But also, I believe, a city of faith.
At orientation in New Jersey, we sat in a circle and read through this salmon colored piece of paper, chronicling our itinerary for the next three months. I can look back now, with actual images and faces to attach to each place. I know what Domkhar looks like. I know what SECMOL is. I know what McLeod Ganj means... which is cool.
And I remember talking about the possibility to see Varanasi on student led. We gawked together at how dirty we'd heard the Ganges was. Tracy told us, then, how many people make pilgrimages there to bathe in it. "But don't they get sick?" we wanted to know, awed. She told us how despite all the accumulated pollution, dead bodies, and fecal matter, they still see the river as completely pure, perfectly clean. "And that brings up the question of faith," she mused, "and what that means, and what power it carries. It's an interesting discussion to have on the banks of the Ganges." I can't claim this conversation verbatum, but amidst other notes I'd jotted down on that paper (buy Indian clothes, need clothespins, get lotion) I penciled in a jotting about that concept... "faith... Varanasi..?" something like that.
And that early morning boatride, when we rose before the city and climbed in the dark and the mist aboard our simple wooden vessel, I watched people not just bathing in the river, but doing their laundry on its banks. I realized how I'd thought about "hmm, I could swim in the Ganga, but when would I wash my clothes? How would I clean myself afterwards? Wash it out?" It sort of surprised me when I realzied that dipping their clothes in the river Was a means of cleaning them.
Faith. Belief. Trust in the world. Just letting yourself be carried by the current.
-It's important to be cautious. It's important to question, and be aware, and make good choices. But I realized also that it is so important to trust-- because if I don't, I'd miss the chance to have so many experiences. I'd close myself off to the world, and harm myself by doing so. You can't die or suffer or hurt if you never take a chance, on whatever scale that may be: by interacting with people, engaging, opening up and investing. But in not doing so, I think you simultaneously pass up any opportunity to live. (lame metaphor alert): You can't fall (or fail) if you never leap. But you also cannot fly. And you just have trust that the rest of the people, who are also nothing but more yourself's, will be there to catch and support you.
Slow as the process is--like effecting change through nonviolent resistance instead of more quickly effective violent outbursts--I think people as a whole will and can behave only however you expect them to, give them the opportunity to.
It's sort of like love your enemy:
Bbelieve in the unknown, the uninsured. The untrustworthy.
And I realized the ways in which I've been pre-judging people, and closing myself off. I've been thinking about it, and realizing I don't wat to judge soley by past experiences, and tint everybody with the projection of my assumptions that 'oh, this is just another rickshaw driver that's going to inquire about my marital status on the way to Masarovar,' or 'these kids only want my money.' Because there's good to see too.
Instead of noticing the frustrating times, I can assume the best in people- sort of like innocent until proven guilty. When herds of people came up to talk to us outside the temple we visited last night, it was easy to get frustrated at the crowd of teenage boys who Tracy quickly brushed away. But then when another little kid came over, or a couple of girls in school uniform shyly approached, I just tried to reapply that lens: to think "this kid means well. These people mean well." and not taint them by my own assumptions and frustrations.
People can only behave how you give them the chance to, and let yourself see them-- the world is how you give it the platform to be. So I guess here's my 'turn the other cheek:' to not assume, or label, or judge: second chances, and belief.
...I don't think I'm really explaining it well. It's just sort of something I've been thinking of. That you can never know how things will work out... but the world is better when you assume good will, when you see the good in it instead of being stricken by the bad. When you don't blame or assume. And you can't know what's coming, but you can just trust that things are okay either way. It is what it is. And all you can do is chose how you behave and percieve and are.
All of that stuff--the fresh eyes, trusting the universe to carry you and just know things are all okay--it's sort of my dip in the Ganges.
something like that.
So... we're going home tomorrow. I can't tell you exactly how I've changed over the last three months. Really, it feels like I haven't: we haven't gone anywhere, haven't done particularly much. I haven't learned anything specific, or grown in any way I can tell you. I'm just like I was yesterday, right?
But then I look back to Ladakh: to trek, to Domkhar, to those people I lived in a room with at SECMOL. To those people I met at retreat in New Jersey (or the airport)... and it seems like LIFETIMES ago. Quite literally.
I've been so caught up and busy and distracted in the day-by-day: focusing on being here, on moving through events in Jaipur, on organizing events in Varanasi, on learning Hindi, gettign to ISPs on time-- I haven't noticed time passing in any substantial quantity around me. And I haven't noticed us coming so far [cue Matchbox Twenty here... for serious]: but Leh is in a whole nother universe. And I haven't noticed myself growing, when I'm so zoomed in, seeing today and tomorrow and yesterday. I haven't changed since yesterday..? But when you step back, and hold today up next to those first days in Delhi or Domkhar, I can't believe those are from this same trip. That those strangers are these same people I feel like I've been uprooted together with since the dawn of time. And so, I couldn't tell you how I've changed since September, but I'm sure I have, in ways and dimensions I won't even notice or know until I see myself in action some weeks or months or years down the road, and think 'huh... that's because of India.'
I can't anticipate when or how, but I'll keep you posted.
So, that's all I can think for now.
I miss snow and candycanes and gingerbread
It'll be weird to only get home a tad before christmas (mom and dad and billy----- SAVE ME SOME!... christmas). Weird also that we're all splitting up tomorrow, and that I'm going to see my dad, and I won't be here... but I won't be home either (I'm meeting him for a week in Hyderabad, and then returning the 23rd at 7:something in the morning).
Yeah... hours to go.
culture shock is going to eat me alive, I'm quite certain.....
I can't form it into words any way beyond that.
I just feel.. weird. and sort of in Limbo.
maybe how like in Harry Potter, when they talk about the transporting through the fireplace thing (flu powder? ari, help me out..) but they're like 'do it right! or else you might wind up half way in between, and some in some fireplace, but you forget your thumb' ... or something like that. it's been a while since I read it.
yeah, that's how I sort of feel. Like I've got thumbs and elbows in a bunch of different fireplaces
<3 sandy
