Yesterday was my two week marker for leaving Kolkata. I have ridiculously mixed emotions about it. Even now, as I write the words 'leaving Kolkata', I am getting choked up at the thought, while simultaneously longing to be on a plane over the Atlantic towards home. My friend Danny Mac was absolutely correct when he told me during our tea date in Delhi "India will challenge you and change you, it always does, but it will never be in the ways that you expected." India has its own plans, that is certainly true.
In some ways, I expected to be overcome by the extremeness of this country. It is so very different from any place I have been before (ah, Cynthia Lindner's point from the beginning of this whole grant process). The poverty is overwhelming; the language(s) is so insanely complicated for me (due to how very different it is from any of those I have studied); the culture treats women in a bizarrely privileged and simultaneously repressed fashion; I, as a Westerner, am both a welcomed profit margin and a mistrusted imperial representative.
Still, the stares don't bother me anymore; I happily wear my jeans on the street and a salwar kameez to church; I give directions to the cabbies (in Bengali!) and fight for the metered rate when they try to double the fare; I wash my clothes in a bucket, then use it for my bath; I am singing in a Hindi ensemble. I love Kolkata and feel in many ways like it has become another home to me. Perhaps my American homestead-trio (Bville, where I grew up; Indy, where my parents own a house; and Chicago, where I live now) has made "home" a less concrete concept. Still, I feel like the woman that I will be for the rest of my life will be intensely linked with my time in this place. I feel like I need to come home (to the States) in order to even begin to process this summer. In many ways, my scholarly research on CNI has been simple: library books and articles are familiar... it has been reading, interviewing, and attending worship services. And while very little about the Church is easy (particularly one based in Christian unity with diversity as a founding principle, hear that my Disciples family?), everything about being a 24-year old woman traveling alone in India is VERY difficult.
It seems fitting that I would be in India for the Monsoon season; I often feel like there is an internal monsoon brewing as well. On any given day, it is sunny and bright, humid and cloudy, raining and cool. 30 seconds are enough to turn the previous sunshine into a desperate downpour. A monsoon in the city means flooding of ancient and unequipped sewage infrastructure, more common power-outages, the redistribution of waste by newly formed street-side streams, not to mention the increased hardships a season of rain and flooding has on the urban street dwelling community. Yet, the monsoon brings with it the promise of water for a year of crop production (which means food!) and a cleansing of debris left from the previous months. When the first bursts of the monsoon occur all buildings suddenly empty as everyone gathers in the streets to celebrate the coming of the rains. Children splash in the puddles on their way to school, women in vibrantly colored sarees of cotton and even silk dance in the downpour, and men laughingly hug one another as their suits become drenched by the waters falling from the sky. The monsoon means that life will continue; and despite how frightening that may be, everyone in India knows what a blessing it is to live.
In some ways, I expected to be overcome by the extremeness of this country. It is so very different from any place I have been before (ah, Cynthia Lindner's point from the beginning of this whole grant process). The poverty is overwhelming; the language(s) is so insanely complicated for me (due to how very different it is from any of those I have studied); the culture treats women in a bizarrely privileged and simultaneously repressed fashion; I, as a Westerner, am both a welcomed profit margin and a mistrusted imperial representative.
Still, the stares don't bother me anymore; I happily wear my jeans on the street and a salwar kameez to church; I give directions to the cabbies (in Bengali!) and fight for the metered rate when they try to double the fare; I wash my clothes in a bucket, then use it for my bath; I am singing in a Hindi ensemble. I love Kolkata and feel in many ways like it has become another home to me. Perhaps my American homestead-trio (Bville, where I grew up; Indy, where my parents own a house; and Chicago, where I live now) has made "home" a less concrete concept. Still, I feel like the woman that I will be for the rest of my life will be intensely linked with my time in this place. I feel like I need to come home (to the States) in order to even begin to process this summer. In many ways, my scholarly research on CNI has been simple: library books and articles are familiar... it has been reading, interviewing, and attending worship services. And while very little about the Church is easy (particularly one based in Christian unity with diversity as a founding principle, hear that my Disciples family?), everything about being a 24-year old woman traveling alone in India is VERY difficult.
It seems fitting that I would be in India for the Monsoon season; I often feel like there is an internal monsoon brewing as well. On any given day, it is sunny and bright, humid and cloudy, raining and cool. 30 seconds are enough to turn the previous sunshine into a desperate downpour. A monsoon in the city means flooding of ancient and unequipped sewage infrastructure, more common power-outages, the redistribution of waste by newly formed street-side streams, not to mention the increased hardships a season of rain and flooding has on the urban street dwelling community. Yet, the monsoon brings with it the promise of water for a year of crop production (which means food!) and a cleansing of debris left from the previous months. When the first bursts of the monsoon occur all buildings suddenly empty as everyone gathers in the streets to celebrate the coming of the rains. Children splash in the puddles on their way to school, women in vibrantly colored sarees of cotton and even silk dance in the downpour, and men laughingly hug one another as their suits become drenched by the waters falling from the sky. The monsoon means that life will continue; and despite how frightening that may be, everyone in India knows what a blessing it is to live.
1 comment:
Great post, Bethany.
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