
On Comfort
It was hot and the back of my neck was washed with sweat. I wanted the train to start moving so that at least the breeze, dry as it was, would bring some measure of relief. Instead, we were stalled on the track somewhere, sitting in pools of our own sweat. I stared out the iron barred windows. Low farmland stretched out for miles, shimmering in the midday heat. Beyond that rose coconut trees for as far as I could see. It was the hot season now and the clouds were dry and white. There wasn’t even a pretense of rain.
We were en-route from my uncle’s house in Trivandrum to my grandparents’ house in Thrissur. Both cities are in the southernmost tip of India, in the state of Kerala. Kerala has only two seasons: hot and monsoon and I had decided to come to Kerala right at the height of the hot season. Next to me my aunt laid back against the bench and closed her eyes. As if sensing my mounting irritation — with the heat, with the track delay,with the fact that we could have traveled in the AC car- she asked if everything was fine. Determined not to be a spoiled American, I responded, of course I was fine. What’s a little heat and sweat and dirt? ‘Good,’ she replied. She had booked the non-AC car on purpose because she wanted me to see how regular Indians travel. But all I could notice was my own discomfort. Not just with the heat, but with how old and rusted the train was, how the fans overhead blew clouds of dust into the air, how the bathroom looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the train was commissioned , how Indians didn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of personal space. It was at this moment, sweaty and dazed by the unrelenting heat, that I realized the greatest American pursuit was not happiness, but comfort.
Americans demand comfort and convenience in every aspect of their lives. We view attaining more comfort, more ease, more efficiency as the pinnacle of technological advancement. Just look at the banality of the ventures that Silicon Valley investors throw their money behind: a wifi enabled juicer, an app that sends disappearing pictures, a boutique snack delivery service. But thanks to these same investors, I can order takeout, call an Uber, get a date, shop for a new dress, and chat with my best friend, all while sitting in my perfectly temperature controlled living room in my sweatpants. In fact, we’ve come to expect a minimum level of comfort no matter where we go or what we do. We expect our stores and eateries to be open all days of the week, 24 hours a day. We expect our homes and offices and malls to be a pleasant 75 degrees year round. We expect boiling water at the turn of a tap, uninterrupted electricity, and constant wifi. Now, take this creature of comfort and drop them in the midst of India and there’s bound to be friction. Perhaps now you can understand a bit of how I felt, sitting in that unmoving metal box of a train, sweaty and irritated, dreaming of that sweet air conditioning.
Or perhaps I’m just spoiled? Either way, I certainly wasn’t naive about what the ‘third world’ entailed. I was born and raised in India until my family moved to the U.S. when I was five. Since then, I’ve visited India more than a handful of times. Each time I have to mentally brace myself for the small frustrations that are routine there: random power outages, finnicky hot water, squat toilets, limited air conditioning, chaotic traffic, swarms of people, and the worst, a thick, oppressive heat that seems to blanket the country in a haze. And those are just the physical annoyances of life in India. Expecting anything to get done in a timely manner is just asking for disappointment. There’s a reason that Indians have their own unofficial time zone — Indian Standard Time (IST). Indians seem ‘rude’ by American standards. By this I mean, they won’t say ‘Excuse me’ as they push past you in the street or cut in front of you to catch an overflowing bus. The concept of an organized line is non-existent and public streets are fair game for personal trash. Don’t expect cashiers to greet with you a megawatt smile like they do in the U.S. or even to say ‘Have a nice day’ or ‘You’re welcome.’ In fact, don’t expect anything.
Some travelers I meet liken this chaos to enlightenment. They say, ‘India changed my life!’ and I used to dismiss them as comfortable, suburban types unused to the tumult of a developing country. But the thing is, India did change me. One night, sitting in an auto-rickshaw as we rocketed down the narrow alleyways that led to my aunt’s flat, I realized that I was no longer holding the side railing of the rickshaw in a white knuckled grip like I was prone to do when I first arrived. When an evening thunderstorm spread across the sky and the power went out (for the third time that week), I opened the window to watch the clouds roll in instead of trudging upstairs to my cousin’s apartment because they had a generator. I became less irritated by the chaotic traffic and the warm mass of people that flowed through the streets like sticky molasses. I even noticed the prickle of the mid-May heat less and less. Some of this was mere Darwinian adaption, but the larger change was that I had resigned myself to India because that was the only way to exist here. But it didn’t feel like defeat. It felt more like the enlightenment that both the yuppies and the hippies were talking about.
On the flight to India, I struck up conversation with the Italian man next to me. I asked him how he had liked his vacation in the U.S. and what he thought about Americans in general. One thing he found annoying about Americans, he admitted, was that we weren’t flexible. We were friendly and smiled a lot but the minute something doesn’t go our way, we get irritated. ‘Everything’s so controlled here, so uniform’ he said. Three weeks after our conversation, when I landed back in D.C., I felt a cool sense of relief at the organized lines at the airport and the orderly traffic. Even the sluggish mess on I-495 was a welcome sight after weeks of Indian traffic. I even relished the excessive air conditioning that blasted everywhere. Coming from the chaos of India, I felt like I had stepped into a perfect little box. I also felt that my European seat mate was right.
If you travel long enough in the U.S., you start to notice an unsettling uniformity everywhere. The same chain restaurants, the same chain stores, the same chain hotels and motels. From sea to shining sea, there’s a trail of interchangeable McDonalds, Walmarts, and Holiday Inns, all designed to look and feel exactly the same. This uniformity is convenient for sure, but it’s also disorienting. Sometimes, it feels like wandering in an endless, dreary maze. The problem with this maze, aside from the sheer monotony it inflicts, is that it gives us a false sense of control. A desire for comfort is really an expectation that our environment will bend to our will. Comfortable places are comfortable because they let us control our surroundings. They let us block out the uncertainty of the outside world.
I’m not saying that we should abandon all of our little comforts and head to Walden pond. But the thing is, some people do. My grandma, visiting from India, remarked on the strangeness of Americans heading off into the woods to sleep in paper thin tents on the forest floor. She couldn’t understand why they had this urge when they had perfectly comfortable houses to sleep in. What drives these people out into the woods, or to third world countries where they have to wrestle with squat toilets and mosquito nets ? Part of it seems to be a kind of privileged voyeurism, a desire to experience human discomforts so long forgotten that they’ve become novelties again. But I think it’s also a natural reaction to an overly cocooned life. Uncertainty and discomfort make us feel alive in a very visceral way.
They also seem to force us to be more patient; more understanding of the fact that the universe is not primarily concerned with how we feel. This is readily apparent in India, where surviving with your sanity intact means embracing the chaos. In everyday life there, you’re confronted with signs of your inherent powerlessness: power outages, delayed trains, bungled bureaucracy etc. The more you chafe at all the inconveniences, the more it feels like you’re swimming upstream against the whole weight of the indifferent universe. But sooner or later, when you’ve resigned at least a little bit of the overwhelming desire to control things, you’ll find that there’s actually a certain levity in experiencing the world as it unfolds.
Our ever expanding quest for human comfort comes with a price. The most obvious is environmental, because for each one of our luxuries, we stress the environment. But my other worry is that our reliance on comfort, and our insatiable appetite for it, is making us less flexible, more self absorbed, and increasingly cut off from our surroundings. The worst part is, we’re seldom aware of any of this. No one likes to think of themselves as inflexible and high maintenance. I mean, all we expect is everything to get done on time, everyone to be nice, and everywhere we go to be perfectly comfortable.
Going to India was a little jolt to the system, and though I didn’t come back fully enlightened like in Eat, Pray, Love, I understand why people do. For all it’s temples, ashrams, churches, and mosques, the most enlightening experience in India isn’t to be found in any place of worship. No, I think it sneaks up on you when you’re sitting in a dusty, stalled train, tired and sweaty, but somehow, smiling.
