Thursday, December 3, 2009
This is their home
India was really hard to leave. I had a lump in my throat from the day before we left the Andaman islands, all through Kolkata, and still in the plane on the way to Bangkok. Why?... There are no words that could capture it. (Feeling clumsy again...) The contrasts are so huge, the pushes for self development are so salient, the sadness seeing the country's human condition are so extreme, the spiritual power so limitless, the positive attitude of its people so powerful, the love people have for other people - aaaaaahhh how they love CONTACT, conversation, just being with each other, and you. How to say... No way to say.
It felt almost violent to leave India after only a little more than two months. It had already given me so much and then we were off (after hesitating to change our travel plans EVERY day the last two weeks) (what IS IT about India??).
So much suffering, and then so much happiness...
What we saw, that was different from our youth travels, was (amongst others) less of an illusion towards the "system" playing out in the country. What we glorified as "acceptance" and a "beautiful attitude towards life" was now tainted by more of a critical attitude. What we saw was put less in a perspective of convenient denial - as most of the rest of the world tends to do as well, but with distance... With proximity the denial was always much less "not wanting to see" than us saying : I want to see the beauty that subsides even when horrible life conditions govern lives - I want to see what makes these people cling to life and still want to have children in this world! When someone told me that slum dwellers he knew had refused to move to the new modern settlements the government had built for them because they would "be separated from their dear neighbors and family by cement walls", I found this a confirmation of exactly this (i.e. social proximity as an imperative): In India, love flourishes, wherever it is allowed to flourish -
(I was thinking, at the time, I was challenging my ethnocentricity)
Now I just don't know any more - who decides, what and who defines well-being and quality of life, and who knows in what conditions one is happy?
What is sure is that human living conditions are more extreme than in any other place I have ever seen. And the political dynamics that put people in these life conditions make me way less "accepting" and way more critical than I was in my early travels...
Much better put in words by Arundhati Roy than by me:
"Deep at the heart of the horror of what's going on lies in the caste system: this layered, horizontally divided society with no vertical bolts, no glue, no intermarriage, no social mingling; no human - HUMANE - interaction that holds the layers together. So when the bottom half of society simply shears off and falls away. it happens silently. It doesn't create the torsion, the upheaval, the blowout, the sheer structural damage that it might, had there been the equivalent of vertical bolts."
India... Home to the worst jeans in the world
Mari Ann - jeg tenkte på deg så ofte, hvordan kan et helt folk, som er så flinke til å lage nydelige klaer, virkelig lage slike grusomme designs på jeans?? Du ville ledd: de er ofte mye vaerre enn disse, veldig high waisted, trange til midt på låret, i de mest utrolige stone (eller acid) washed farger, med sydde "tøffe" mønster (noen ganger "gang-style") som jeg hadde så lyst til at du skulle ha opplevd med meg...
Blow Horn
India is amazing, and funny, and irritating, and annoying, and wonderful, and super strong, and challenging, and delightful, and tiring, and powerful, and different, and strange, and warm, and sweet, and bizarre, and difficult, and hilarious, and utterly lovable, in all ways...
They USE their horn. Their horn is communication. It means "watch out! I'm behind you!". It doesn't mean "HHHHEEEEYYY! you're about to make a major car accident!!!" It's simply "hey, I'm here, be careful - and please blow your horn if you're behind me, ok?". Although some Indians really REALLY love their horn - and totally over-use it... Horns are omnipresent in India. Sometimes so loud and so frequent, that when walking in the street you have to choose between protecting your own ears or those of your kids.
Bon, il vient ce bus?
Back in Bangkok....where internet connections are fast and cheap and reliable... time to post some pictures - and get caught up on all the postings we didn't do while we were in India, where connections were neither fast, nor cheap, nor reliable... :)
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