flickering pictures

I’ve been posting my notes from India, scribbled and scrawled all around the country last summer, while I get things up and running around here. Now that things are humming nicely, I’m spending less time fixing things, leaving me more time to post tasty content. But although I’m not quite so desperate for filler anymore, some of you actually seem to like these, so I’ll keep posting them sporadically until they’re all up. If you like, you can keep track of them on a brand spanking new dispatches page.

Thanks for reading!
-mark

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7:41am Thursday, Aug 9 (continued)

It’s surreal to think that after five weeks spent getting used to another world, I’m just a few hours away from leaving it. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get used to home again. I wonder too if I’ll still get all worked up about long lines at the grocery store, after seeing skeletal people losing their limbs to leprosy, or sitting in filth to beg for a couple of rupees. I’m wondering what I’m going to say when that first person says quite innocently “so how was India?”

I guess I’ll talk about what I’ve learned — that I get less stares with my gumcha headscarf on, and that between its duties as a sweat rag, headband, sunstroke preventer, towel, breathing filter and handkerchief, it’s just about the most useful thing in the world.

I learned that if I thought I knew nothing before, I actually know even less than that — but that doing things like this will help me change that.

I learned that people can adapt and survive in even the most inhospitable conditions, whether they’re living six to a staircase in a Delhi slum or wading through chest-high feces-ridden floodwater in Bihar — also the only source of drinking water there at the moment.

And I learned that people here — at least those unused to big-spender tourists — are kinder and more sincere than my own society tends to make room for.

I learned that while a dollar’s worth of goodies can bring immeasurable joy to a crowd of small children, this is no wonderful thing, since it’s only true because apart from the clothes on their little bodies and their costume jewelry made from litter, they have absolutely nothing in the world.

I’ve learned that it’s not a big deal to eat around the flies in your food, and that it’s better to neither inspect your meals too closely nor ask culinary questions you don’t want the answers to.

I’ve learned that the only real difference between breakfast at a seven-star restaurant in Bangalore and a meal prepared in a dirt-poor village restaurant are the waiters’ starched shirts, a few drops of sweat in the food and a month or two’s worth of income for many Indians. Both are delicious.

I’ve learned that some of the gentlest, warmest people in the world live in the Himalayan foothills in Himachal Pradesh.

I’ve learned that the lowest thing on the totem pole of India’s free-for-all traffic is the pedestrian, way below buses, rickshaws, scooters and livestock, and somewhere around the level of poultry. If the measure of a driver is his respect for the rules of the road, these are the worst drivers on the planet. But if a driver’s true measure is his knowledge of the exact dimensions of his vehicle, and his ability to weave deftly, nimbly and way too fast through a teeming mass of metal, cattle and fumes without hitting anything, then India’s drivers have got to be the best the world has ever seen.

I’ve learned that personal space doesn’t exist here, but neither does the kind of negative privacy that keeps neighbours from knowing each others’ names. Once you’ve seen a man defecate on the sidewalk in front of you, that illusion of separation is quickly dispelled.

I learned something that I thought I already knew — that at the end of the day, we all want, need, fear, despise and hope for exactly the same things. And after living and comparing notes with Indians and foreigners alike, I learned something else that I never suspected: that with all the love, satisfaction, comfort and sheer enjoyment in my life, at 25 years old I’m already rich beyond my wildest dreams. And let me tell you, it feels damn bloody good.

And now it’s time to ask you all for a favour, you friends and loved ones reading this. If you ever see me griping about some silly thing or other, if I’m ever whining to you about a packed bus or a lazy waiter or a mediocre omelette, please, slap me hard and remind me of India. That’s one of the best things you can do for me.

So I guess that’s it — thanks for reading and letting me share my experiences in some small way with the good people in my life [and now with hundreds or thousands of people I don’t know at all]. I’m glad to have this written record of my time here, and I’ll be even gladder when I look back at it months or years down the road, to refresh my memory when life takes over again and to help me keep those priorities straight. Right now I’m exhausted, dirty and looking forward to my own bed, familiar faces and washing my hair with something other than a bar of soap. It’s been real — nothing could be more real. See you soon.

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