I thought it was going to be just another trip. No, not another backpacking trip. I don’t backpack. I go abroad to live, to make friends to leave and to come back to visit them. More precisely, I thought it was going to be another one of my escape strategies, this time to India, that will once more teach me the boring old lesson that you can’t run away from yourself. Delightfully, I was wrong. Though I didn’t really escape, somehow I managed to change and become happier.
Why I am Happier in India
I found that navigating a non European culture filled with cliches of brightly dressed women, moustached men, tastes of cardamon, cloves and chilies, worming streets and crazy traffic, and the subtler undertones of ideas about family, marriage and decency deeply satisfies my wanderlust. So much so that I feel like I don’t need another destination.
Being able to crack living at a place so different made me realize that I am strong. I have started doing things that I once thought were “not for me”. Breaking myself in million little pieces and realizing the composition was terribly wrong. I shrug as I write this. I really don’t want to sound like a self help book but unfortunately sometimes that’s just how you feel.
I feel loved and warm, and safe here because of the people I’ve met. I know there are people here who think about me and people I can think about. Despite having great friends and family back home, I always felt a bit alienated from my own culture. I didn’t believe that many good things can happen to me. I discovered, they can.
And, fuck it, I will admit, I feel prettier here, but more capable too.
Why I am One Step Closer to Hell
I fought the idea of social classes. I tried becoming friends with the very traditionally upbrought, lower middle class colleagues of the mid sized Indian company I work at. I joked and they took it seriously. I talked about a new movie and they asked me if I had had lunch. This became our daily routine, they smiled and asked, “Have you had lunch?”. I smiled and said, “Not yet,” and closed the office door. Year and a half has passed and I have stopped fighting. I say “they” and feel only mildly guilty about depersonalizing my colleagues. Because we have nothing in common. I am sure my colleagues feel the same way about me and there is nothing to be done. Those charming stories about travelers sharing special moments, sharing food and shelter with people whose language they don’t know on some exotic island under a palm tree — they are a holiday romance. I have experienced plenty of those moments, they are not meant for real life, long lasting friendships based on a common spark in the brain. Too much culture stands between us. This, or course, has nothing to do with nationality — I have amazing Indian friends — but with education and social background. I am really trying hard to put across that I am in no way racist, a horrible human being and an idiot but there are things I have observed and I don’t know how else to explain them yet.
I have lost a lot of empathy. Every time I see a rickshaw driver or a street seller, all I see is greed, greed of a poor person but still greed. They see me and they see a white tourist who is supposed to have a lot of money. Yes, they don’t know I live here and earn as Indians earn but, after being cheated every day for a year and a half, I have very little kindness left. I try to steal back little pieces of it every time I happen to meet someone who is not trying to get money I don’t have out of me but it is becoming harder. The beggars — children, the sick, the old — are a nuisance I try not to see. I tell myself, “I can’t feed the whole India,”. I look them in the eye and tell them, “No,”. I have ‘my beggar’, how I have named him insensitively, an old man with an injured leg near my office to whom I always give a couple of Rupees. Makes me feel less of a bitch, especially because he always smiles and waves when he sees me.
I have lost some of my respect for other cultures. I know change takes time. I can say with 100% certainty that my own grandparents were racist but after being cat called on the street, — “Hey sexy,” or hearing more forward invitations — I have lost respect for the Indian traditional values, so suspicious of foreigners that people end up looking at non Indians like things. Foreigners, especially women, in India for the less educated and the more traditional are girls you catcall on the street and sleep around with before settling down with a nice Indian girl. We, foreigners, have bad morals and hence can be exploited.
I do realize traditional does not always mean less educated but, on the whole, in India it does.
