India: Conclusions

“Why?!”

    It was the question I heard every time I told aunts, uncles and most of all my mother when I said that I wanted to go to India.

    “Go on exchange,” she said, “but please go somewhere else. It’s dangerous. It’s dirty.”

    It was many years ago that my mother left war torn Eritrea; fleeing the magical East for the modern West, and consoled by the thought that it would bring her children a far better education.

    I understood where she was coming from, because now here was her youngest, running into the arms of another developing country, and for an education, no less.

    “Your aunt says it’s crazy over there,” she told me.

    I would be lying if I said that that wasn’t part of the attraction.

    “Why do you want to go?”

Because a sixth of the world lives there and I want to take part in their chaos.
Because I am fascinated by Indian traditions and my curiousity is insatiable.
Because I want to shock my system.
Because I want to feel Indian summers and monsoons on my skin.
Because I don’t entirely know why and that makes the draw more irresistible.

    Now that I have stayed in India for sixth months, I am still not sure I have a better idea of why I wanted to be there. But I think I got what I was looking for because it was the most intense 6 months of my life.

As I wrote for and subsequently quit a paper that I couldn’t believe in.
As I rented a room from the most psychotic woman I have ever met before taking up a new flat next door to a Bollywood star.
As I became a freelance photographer published in Time Out Magazine, The MiDDay, and Mumbai Boss, and secretly only part-way know what I am doing.
As I became a fixture on the morning train whose elbows found a home in my ribcage and whose smells and yells would test my every nerve, and who on my very first Mumbai morning made me think, “Well, Mom was right.”
As I spent evenings yelling English lessons over chatty teenagers with huge hearts, who couldn’t understand my accent and I theirs.
As I met and played with children who had absolutely nothing, but the biggest smiles I have ever seen, and realized that although my mother raised me without a cent, but with hugs and a boundless selflessness that I still struggle to comprehend, I am completely and utterly spoiled.
As I had my heart filled and broken and the most frustrating days in my life  set alongside the happiest ones.
As I learned that in my college there are no real schedules, and professors often didn’t show up, but it was okay because India, well, she was teaching me a lot.

Like how my temper is often out of control and I need to tap into the patience I once had.
How I am not sure that I have it in me to teach 14 year-olds.
How some strangers, even the ones who seem completely bizarre, are the warmest people you’ll ever meet if you give them the chance, and how some strangers will unhesitatingly take you for all that you’re worth.
How it is impossible to call anyone one thing or another, because everyone is everything at once.
How home is just a feeling that you find in people you navigate towards.
How I don’t suspect that I will ever stay in one place for very long.
And how I want nothing but to write, write, write, and see every corner of the world, while helping people as much as I can along the way.

Calcutta

Mother and daughter: Ladakh

Jagdish Temple, Udaipur