here i will tell you the sights i see, the things i do, the adventures i have. it would not be the place for more.
in the morning, the early morning when it is still dark, you can see the most stars. it is cold beyond expectation, it is cold in a way we could not have prepared for. i wear socks on my hands and struggle to keep my grip on the handbrake. my bike crashes over each pothole, and i feel it reverberate through my body. ringing. i hate this ride. it makes me feel unstable inside - a 5am loneliness and creeping fear in central indian darkness. the kind of feeling of 5am anywhere.
i brought stacks of books but i will not read them. it feels like freshman year in more ways i would like to admit. i write only ever surrounded by people. can you hear the interruptions in this text? here speaking to rachel, to ayeesha, to megan, here to the others who slide in and out of my room when my mouth is dry and tired from talking.
for the first time in a long time i have my own room. it gives me fantasies of scholarly solitude, of early mornings and spiritual discipline, of meditating for long hours till the lines of my body bleed into the air. my room has red curtains and a hard bed and walls that i have kept bare. the floor is cold grey tile. this room makes me want to write things, read deeply and nod in understanding; this room demands a novel. i have not fully unpacked.
the men leer at all of us with long hard eyes and it feels uncomfortable and it feels cold. never before have my bare arms seemed so troublesome. i wear scarves on the hottest days.
today i lost the necklace frances gave me, the silver chain with four rings that chronicle each explosive summer i spent with her. Love. Honor. Spirit. Freedom. i feel worse than naked without these rings, and i cried when i finally biked the three kilometers back to my room in the fresh bright dawn.
my sweater is missing too. i should not attach so much meaning to these things, but i feel weaker without them. as if somewhere i am being forgotten.
i am wearing now kate's big balloon pants, and socks that were once left in my room by someone i wished would stay longer. i kept them on purpose, secretly, to remember. another worthless keepsake; i'm a sucker for sentimentals.
india is lovely and more and more it feels like another place on earth, not a fantasy, not a movie, not an illusion. it is a place where my left foot hurts in the same spot it does back home; a place where i still have troubles saying no. on the balcony, under the eucalyptus, it could be any place in the world. today there was a bandh, and the whole city shut down in fear of riots from the Telangana movement. today we stayed on campus, safe and clean in our fresh white skin while the rest of the country had to care about what was going on. a strange feeling; not a part of history while still walking alongside it.
it is beautiful here and horrible too. more and more i recognize that i will never be able to fully belong, that my ability to pick and choose the good from the bad - the bangles from the dalits, the air conditioned restaurants from the domestic abuse (a paint-by-numbers india, courtesy of my white skin and american passport) - keeps me safe and keeps me separate.
i am learning, i hope.
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