The Lifetime Journey

I. WAS. NOT. PREPARED. 

-For how amazing this was. For the first time, I feel like I might fit in, just a little bit, here. Like I’ve stopped being a guest. It felt almost like a rite of passage. I can carry a Saree! 

I do still need to learn to dance like an Indian. At all. 

Today, my motto was “Firangi Nahi!” (read: Not a foreigner). I so do not want this day to end. I feel like I belong here, even though I never will, fully.

I am like a child, trying to learn the intricate do’s and don’ts of a culture, language and tradition, all in an estuary of globalization and history. 

I LOVE IT.

I’m basically on my way to being pseudo-adopted by my best friend’s family, The Sridharan’s are such an amazing group of people. I already feel a sense of… duty to them all. If luck or circumstance would have my life to be full of bounty, I would instantly make sure to share it with them. 

I am here to learn what it means to be Indian, right here, right now. So far, it’s … fascinating and so rewarding. I don’t want this to end. 

This experience has already been so rewarding. I know I have made life-long friends here. Even if everything else were terrible, they would have made it all worth it. 

I’m trying to work on making certain that people in my life are ends unto themselves. Not a means to any end (shout out to Dr. Story and Camus). Including myself. This has really changed the way I view my relationships with others. 

I am to your friend because of what you can do for me, or what I can do for you. I am beside you for this stretch of Life’s journey because simply your company is pleasing to my very spirit. There is no duty, no prerequisite, no obligation. We are here because we want to be, and it gives me insurmountable joy to see you happy. Nothing more is required. 

I accept you, I love you, I challenge you. I accept myself, love myself, challenge myself. 

I seek to experience. My answer to most propositions was, “why not?”. Now, that does make for a very interesting time, but it is in fact incomplete.

I wish to be a s a child in this new world. To keep my eyes wide open, with mouth always asking, ‘why’. Learning to live this different life is such a physical adventure, words fail me. It starts by opening yourself to these experiences, and to simply let them wash over you. India is not an intellectual experience. India is not an emotional experience. It is an ancient, powerful, everlasting physical experience. India is what is human. What is raw, what is real. Highlighted and accepted as all part of the same flowing, rhythm of life and death. India is a feeling, a smell, a sound, all jumbled together and magnified. It is color, all colors. Spices, dyes, trash, smog, and neon lights. 

I’ve written far less in this blog than I thought I would. Probably because all my words fall far too short. 

I want to share with you everything. Because India is everything.

That hint of what life is, blowing past you in the breeze? Magnify that and you have the powerful, the very life-breath of this place. That small feeling of insight and clarity? Here, it drowns you every moment it is alive here. 

I can only describe to you what is physical and base. You can’t know what it means, how it moves you, changes you. I am just beginning to come to terms with it I feel rubbed raw, and can feel a new flesh begin to prickle its way into being. 

I breathe in deeply, this same collection of atoms we all share. I can taste the rich history, the terrifying future, the technology, the ancient, the rich, the poor. I can taste the life that has and always will flourish here. 

I am but a child, and it makes all the difference.