I look French in India
I look French in India. I was dressed all in black — black, long skirt — my hair up and holding a red notebook. He wanted to practice speaking French to me. I had to disappoint him. I often feel ‘European’ here -delicate, ‘superior’, open minded, smart, deserving of things. I like the ruthless speed of cities, it excites me but here it is not the organized and polite rush of London, it is ‘I care for no one’ rush of India. More than once I have tried to stop myself from crying in the middle of the city because I can’t cross a street, because I hate the lack of rules, the garbage, people staring, it’s a 40 degree heat, I am dressed in business wear and look like I should have my own car with a driver and I don’t.
There is a boy that sells vegetables pushing around a cart and attracting attention by screaming like a wounded animal. I hate him because he is so poor and uneducated. I want him to never speak again, so I would never have to hear another sound coming out of his mouth. I fear like nothing on Earth that I would have to swap places with him. And then I hate myself for that, for standing on the other side of the world and thinking I know better how life should be, how life can be, and for being weak and self-centered.
Once briefly I liked a boy and I dreamed about him driving a golden car and meeting his mother. That’s what you dream in India, golden cars and mothers. Even in my dreams I know this is no reality I could sustain myself in. Even if we fell madly in love I would not wear his mother’s aprons at his mother’s house and his golden car would make me feel trapped because I would be. Status means a lot here.
In Mumbai street market German tourists asked the bookseller if he had read a book they wanted to buy and had he liked it. The man said he doesn’t read. Most likely can’t read. They left feeling cheated, leaving without the charming discussion about literature with a passionate book lover living with no money just so that he could live and love in the world of books. The conversation they would have told about to their friends at home over a glass of red wine.
I love India. I want to get lost in Asia. I want to forget who I ever was and who I thought I was. Immerse myself in customs I don’t understand, people I don’t understand, spices, sweet tea, hordes of stray dogs roaming the streets I don’t recognize, see the North, South, East and West, go beyond and within India, let the exotic become mundane, the people I never thought I would meet become my best friends, fold myself deep in the strange of the world, have a love story, smoke cigarettes and watch the sun of inhuman brightness set, create a small library of books I know are too heavy to ever bring back home, wonder if I ever leave and maybe don’t.
Tomorrow morning I will make myself a coffee that tastes of cardamon or some other strange spice that gets added to the coffee beans here, consider wearing tights and decide it’s too hot, wear heels and trip on the uneven pavements, think about e-mails to be written, give a few rupees to a toothless man always begging near to my office, not give money to a young woman carrying a small child dressed in rags and be content with how familiar this city is becoming to me yet how unfamiliar its culture still is. I like that because I always thought that I am not meant for living. Life and I kept colliding, I didn’t, I don’t understand it. But here everything is new, life is new. I know new doesn’t last. But I am excited because maybe here, maybe somewhere else in the world I can find a my kind of life.
By
Liva Paudere
livapaudere@gmail.com