a few thoughts

India always does this to me. Turns everything upside-down and makes me wonder if my world is really the real world or if there even is a “real world.” But it also reassures me that there is a reality here that I don’t see when I’m at home, surrounded by comforting things and a bubble of privilege and capabilities. It makes me more aware; more aware that I am a part of this place just as much as I am apart from it. That people do not live the way that I have lived in a lot of ways, but that in a lot of other ways, we’re all just the same. It makes me furious that there is so much hatred and loss and inequality and injustice. And my inability to do anything about it makes me so frustrated and sad that I could scream. It makes me love even stronger, and appreciate every amazing and not-so-amazing part of my life, because I am so fucking lucky it’s ridiculous. It makes me stand in awe. Because for just as much hatred there is in the world there is infinitely more love. There is acceptance and generosity and laughter and people being kind without even a second thought.

There are beautiful people in not-so-beautiful places and there are moments in the middle of all the chaos that make me stand still. I can feel this place in my skin, in my blood, in the very pit of my stomach and I know that I belong here in some small way, even though the balance tips to tell me otherwise. It makes me think so hard I’m surprised my brain can manage so many thoughts coming at once. Then, in the exact same moment, everything fades away because it’s shocking me once again. It’s dirty and smelly and people pee on the streets and men give you very inappropriate looks and cows try to eat your hair and you feel so uncomfortable all you want to do is run away and find a Starbucks but then, right away you catch the scent of jasmine in the air and you pass an old chai-walla with a sweet smile and there are endless colors and sights and so much craziness happening all around you and you can’t move because its all so beautiful and confusing and terrifying all at the same time. It’s contradiction incarnate, right in front of you; not hidden, not hiding, but put on display, tugging on your sleeve, smacking you in the face and making you look and making sure you can’t look away. There’s an honesty here that I can’t run away from or wave away or ignore. There’s a discomfort that makes me remember exactly who I am and what I have and makes me feel like more of an outsider than the Swedish lady trying to pull off a kurti and men’s pajamas. Because I realize that as much as this place is a part of me, I am only one very very very small part of it, and that puts everything into perspective.

And on another level, or really the same one but in a different and not-so-different way, India is about understanding myself. Challenging myself, pushing myself to see how far I can go and settling into another side of myself that maybe, also, is not-so-different after all. The side that isn’t so scared all the time, or that is but I make myself do the things I'm scared of anyways. The side that just pins it as inevitable that I will get lost, I will have to ask for help and I will (probably) look pretty dumb while I wander back and forth down the same street talking to myself while I try to figure out which tree looks most like the one I walked by an hour ago. The side that takes the fear and the nervousness and the frustration and swallows it and I just take it right along with me rather than letting it hold me down. Well, at least most of the time. India is all of the things I’m afraid of and all of the things I want to be, wrapped up into the crazy, chaotic, amazing mess that is me and is this place. It’s a training ground for the rest of the world and my gradual attempts to grasp some sort of understanding of it and maybe, one day, a place in it.