Imminent Departure
I can't believe it but my flight from Mumbai to Amsterdam leaves tonight. When this dawned on me at breakfast this morning, a small tear fell in my chai. Yesterday I was very world-weary and tired and took a needed day of relaxation, museum-going, and eating. But today I'm ready to go back to the India of insanity, the one I've grown to love (and sometimes hate), the one filled with millions of people and cows and goverened by laws I can't even pretend to understand.
One month ago when I arrived in this country I was able to tell you many facts about India and its peoples. I thought I knew more than the average bear. But today as I am leaving I realize that I know far less about India then I did a month ago. Sure I can tell you some stories about my adventures and the places I've seen but somewhere along the line I gave up trying to understand this country and accepted that understanding isn't possible as a tourist. Despite the sickness, crowding, bugs, cow shit, confusion, occasional loneliness, searing heat, destructive monsoon, and overall weirdness, I just wish I had more time.
A very large part of me--not the part that went to graduate school for a million years or the part that holds jobs and is usually reliable, or the part that cares about what other people think about or expect from me--wishes that I the type of person brave and crazy enough to have bought only a one-way ticket. But sadly, this is not the part of me that generally rules my actions and not the part that will rule me tonight when I board my plane to AMS.
As my parting with India, today I will see Elephanta Island, the Ghandi museum, and eat as much bhel puri as I possibly can.
One month ago when I arrived in this country I was able to tell you many facts about India and its peoples. I thought I knew more than the average bear. But today as I am leaving I realize that I know far less about India then I did a month ago. Sure I can tell you some stories about my adventures and the places I've seen but somewhere along the line I gave up trying to understand this country and accepted that understanding isn't possible as a tourist. Despite the sickness, crowding, bugs, cow shit, confusion, occasional loneliness, searing heat, destructive monsoon, and overall weirdness, I just wish I had more time.
A very large part of me--not the part that went to graduate school for a million years or the part that holds jobs and is usually reliable, or the part that cares about what other people think about or expect from me--wishes that I the type of person brave and crazy enough to have bought only a one-way ticket. But sadly, this is not the part of me that generally rules my actions and not the part that will rule me tonight when I board my plane to AMS.
As my parting with India, today I will see Elephanta Island, the Ghandi museum, and eat as much bhel puri as I possibly can.
posted by Julep | 9:19 PM
3 Comments:
"And then, I repeat, I was going home- to the home distant enough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends- those whom we obey, and those who we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,- even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields in its water and its trees- a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience.
All this may seem shear sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendship, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remain that must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think it is lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal and unchanging spirit- it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience.
Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it through, and I say all without exception, because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life."
Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim"
I eagerly anticipate your posts and worry when days go by without one. I worried about bombing and infection in your cut foot. That's what mothers do.
Are there elephants on Elephanta Island? How was the GandHi Museum? What is blal puri?
Wow... fucking eh! I'm reading Lord Jim right now while in exile from Hurricane Ike.
I love it and Liz is happy with my summaries.
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