I'm back in Mumbai again after doing the overnight
train. I'm a bit tired today. I didn't sleep so
great on the overnight train, and my shoulder is
hurting.
I've been reading Jumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, which
is very moving (and so far better than the movie, a
movie I really liked). It's about the immigrant
experience for an Indian family in America,
specifically a Bengali family. Reading it has helped
crystalize some thoughts I've been having about my own
experience here in India, and I think also has put
into focus some other thoughts about my experience as
an American.
1) America can be isolating.
Ashima, the woman who emigrates in the 60's to be with
her husband, goes through a profound shock coming
here. America seems to her cold, lonely, and
isolating. When she gives birth to their child she
tries to get her husband to move back to India because
whe would never want to raise her child in such a
lonely place. I've noticed this here. Indian
families are, as a general rule, very tight. Old old
traditions bind families together. Plus, living
spaces are generally smaller (there are so many people
here), so families are used to being all in a room, or
sharing a small flat. Even Ashima's family, educated
and fairly well off, would all be together all the
time. So it's hard for her to understand this need
for space that Americans seem to have.
2) Isolation can be difficult to give up once you are
used to it.
One of my observations here as a foreign tourist is
that, especially when I am on the tourist trail, I get
very exhausted very quickly trying to "read" people.
I'm approached on the street all the time, literally,
every 5 minutes. It's exhausting. They want to know
my name, what country I'm from, etc, etc. Usually
it's a set up for a sale (taxi services, a shop, a
postcard, whatever...). Often there is an inherent
lie in their story... "oh that hotel is full, that
museum is closed today, that train is full" meant to
get me to choose something else. Sometimes people are
just genuinely curious. It's hard to tell the
difference. And as a Westerner I can find it
particularly difficult. I find myself wanting space.
3) There is a connection between wealth and the
ability to be isolated.
Then, it becomes clear how one gets space in India.
Money. The minute you step into that domestic airport
terminal, past the armed guard, or onto that luxury
tourist bus that no working class Indian can afford,
this sense of quiet comes. It's a totally different
experience. As tourists we get all this different
treatment. Special lines to buy train tickets and
quotas, special buses, and then on the flip side we
pay usually about 25 times more than the locals to see
museums, monuments, etc. It's like that Eddie Murphy
skit when he wears white make-up and becomes white for
a day, and finds that they serve cocktails on the
public buses and everything is free... So I've found
that I need to play with that line a bit. Sometimes
take that slow local train so I can meet the 5 cool
Tamil students, and sometimes I need to be in that
"2AC" train with air-conditioning, sheets on my bunk,
and foreign tourists and Indian businessmen and middle
class families riding with me. I've more or less come
to peace with it, but it is interesting to me how much
money dictates being able to make those choices. And
it makes me wonder what things would be like had I not
those choices, those options. I don't think it's
actually fathomable for me to know what that would be
like.
4) Americans, kind of left on our own in some ways to
find meaning in our lives, sometimes can't really
understand why it's so hard for immigrants to do the
same. WE did it, didn't we?
I think when I was taught and/or learned about India,
we always leaned towards judgement. We heard about
violations of civil rights, we heard about abuses
against women (suttee, wife burning - a separate thing
where a woman is burned by her husband's family
"accidentally" so that they can either get rid of her
or get her to leave usually for financial reasons),
poverty,etc. These things all happen, and life can be
very difficult for Indians, and Indian women in
particular. But I think we also judged things because
they seemed foreign or different. More importantly
I'm realizing the level of ignorance I've been
carrying around when dealing with Indians I come
across in the US. It's not like it's one country,
there are 30-some languages, more ethnic groups, etc.
There are fierce rivalries (as I wrote about earlier).
And I think we have a tendency not to see the
complexity behind the people we meet. In the book
Ashima is talking to her neighbor about how sad she is
to be going back to India 6 weeks after Divali, trying
to get some support. She tells her neighbor "It's
like going 6 weeks after your Christmas." The
neighbor replies, "oh, well Alan and I are Buddhists,
so...".
5) The grass is always greener... or Americans have
lots of choices, perhaps more choices than we are
ready to handle.
This is another thing I've been thinking about. This
idea here for us that we can completely jump out of
our cultural identity, that somehow we can choose it.
It just doesn't ring true for me. And I think,
because of the prevalence of this idea, we think that
other people who come here (to the US) should be able
to do that as well. Apparently the Dalai Lama has
said that he thinks it's OK for westerners to take up
Buddhism, but he thinks also that it is a more
complicated path for us, and that it might be easier
and more beneficial if we were able to find the truth
inherent in our own cultural traditions (given that he
thinks there is truth in all religions, and that they
are basically talking about the same thing). Or,
another example, I would chat alot with a friend from
Israel at the Ashram about religion. She came to
India to search in a way, but part of what she was
finding was that she had what she wanted right there
in Israel, right in front of her nose. For her it
wasn't necessarily strict Judaism, but it was a
community of spiritual minded people coming from the
Jewish tradition.
OK, OK, I'll stop now. And don't get me wrong. I
love Americans, I miss my country, my country is GOOD,
Americans are good. I mean, who else could have come
up with Sesame Street? But for me this has been an
eye-opener. Or a re-eye-opener. And food for
thought.
I also was a tourist today. I took the hour long
ferry out to Elephanta island. This is yet another
rock-cut temple complex, from the early first
millenium. Again lots of cool Shiva stuff. Three
lingams, a nataraj Shiva, a cool half male/half female
Shiva (to show the unity in everything, or the union
between worshipper and god depending on your
interpretation). And of course, my other favorite
Ganesha, Shiva's son. One thing I should mention
about the lingam. It's not just a phallus. It's a
phallus set into a yoni, which is a female symbol.
People often just mention the lingam, but in fact it
is almost always portrayed as a phallus set in a yoni.
Thus the creation. Just wanted to make sure that you
didn't think it was all phallus all the time.
Also, I had another nice dinner in Aurangabad last
night with this guy Jerry and his daughter (she lives
in NYC). He was interesting because he is an old
hippy who has lived on one of the oldest communes
since the 60's in Tennessee, called the Farm. I was
asking him alot about it, and his daughter about what
it was like to grow up on the Farm. They were both
really nice. The farm, it seems, moved slightly away
from communality (one bank account, 25 people in a
house) towards something more privatized (many bank
accounts, one family per house). But they still do
lots of interesting stuff. A press, a mail-order
business, etc. And it was nice to see a father and
daughter travelling together and getting along so
nicely, and to have HER be the one who had commitments
to get back to (he was travelling for 6 months, she
had to leave in April).
Ok, that's it. I may try to see a movie tonight,
Mumbai, as I said, is a bit overwhelming... Tomorrow
I want to see some temples in a quieter part of town
before I head up for my last week or so to be spent in
Rajasthan. Very exciting!
Love,
John
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