The Non-Normal

Sometimes I forget that I'm in India. I forget to stand still and really, truly be surprised by where I am and what I'm doing.
I forget that what I see here day after day isn't, or wasn't, a part of my life a few months ago. In those moments that I remember, I see the rocky brown mountains occasionally interspersed with the dark green of trees. I see the craters left by development in the mountainsides, as if God was a three year old with a sledgehammer and a mission. I smell the dust kicked up by tires, hooves, and feet, the scent of deep earth and ash that permeates my clothes, hair, and lungs.

I remember that at home, I wear flannel and that I listen to my iPhone when I run. In the States, I didn't even wear a watch. Now, I don't leave my room without a kurta, mala beads, and my 10-rupee gold-foiled Ambedkar ring. I keep thinking that I've stayed the same throughout this trip, stayed "normal." Then I remember what normal was and how far from it I've gone.

Three months ago to the day, I was learning to read Devanagari script. The lines upon lines of scratched letters are still in my notebook, incontestable evidence that once upon a time, I knew nothing. My first word that I taught myself in Hindi was "phal," or "fruit." Although I'm still a few lifetimes from fluent, I can tell the difference between a street sign and a cave painting--and I call that a step up.

So, as all reflections must go, what does this mean for me, for my "normal"? What am I going back to, and who am I going back as? Those are big questions that might take more than a car ride to find out. But what I do know, or might know, is that there is no such thing as normal. When I go back to the land of flannel and fox squirrels, I will have at the very least an awareness of an Other. I will know that across the street and across the world, there are billions of equally valid and equally illusory "normals" that can change with a plane ticket and a pair of pyjamas. I left to see the world only to find out that there isn't one world to see. Yeah, I've been to India. But Thailand? Burma? the Congo? Europe? How many millions of experiences have I not had? How many normals have I never known as my own?

There is a giant looming mass of the Unknown that my visa doesn't cover, but it's not unknowable. At least, not completely. And maybe the knowledge that things can be different, that things already are different, is enough for now.

A Bollywood Recap

(I got exhausted while typing this. Heads up.)
I saw a Bollywood movie last night in downtown (?) Nagpur with Erin and Hanna, the two girls traveling with me. Now quickly think of all stereotypes attached to Bollywood and how ridiculous they would all be crammed in a three-hour movie. I saw it. And I had a movie-theater samosa to top it off.

Title: Jab Tak Hai Jaan (loosely translated: Best Movie Ever!)

Plot summary: Rich Indian girl in London is fated to marry a white dude, but falls in love with an Indian musician/waiter. But then he is hit by a truck, and she prays that if he lives, she promises leave him for the white guy. He lives, and she leaves. Super emotional. Really, though.

So he joins the Indian army as part of the bomb squad. Why the bomb squad? Rule one of Bollywood: don't ask questions.
Ten years later, a super hot, young journalist starts to report on the unit that he joined. By the end of her report, she falls in love. But he can't love her because he loves someone else far away from long ago. She returns to London to produce her piece, but her boss says that the man must come to London to corroborate the story. After begging him to return to London despite his history there, he comes. Day one: he gets hit by another car... yeah, it happened.

Naturally, he experiences retrograde amnesia, so he can't remember anything that happened between the two accidents, including the first woman leaving, him joining the army, and the news reporter that he came to London for. Oh my God!

Wanting to help, the reporter tracks down the first woman, finding her at her daughter's birthday party. But for the man, she agrees to meet him and pretend that they were never separated over the ten years. She brings him home, and they "live" together. But she, unable to live with the lie, calls it quits. Enter the reporter.
Pretending to do a report on his condition, she walks him through his life up until the first accident. But it didn't do much until there was a bomb threat on one of the trains. Suddenly, his past overcomes him and he enters 007 mode, disarming the bomb before it explodes.

Realizing that he had been lied to, he leaves the first woman (who had since revealed her undying love for him and that she had divorced her husband years ago). But it is too late for the reporter also, who had let him go for reasons I'm still not sure about. He returns to the army, but we are told that this bomb, his 108th, is his last. He is not scared to die, he is not backing down, but he wants to finally have a chance to live the life he's always wanted. In the last scene, he turns around and sees the first woman dressed all in white. He walks over and gives her a ring.
This is not a story about a hero. This is not a story about bravery. It's a story about love.

*Throw in a lot of music, montages, and sexually objectified women, and you've seen India at it's best.

From Jab Tak Hai Jaan: "Jiya Re"

Namaste from Nagpur

So this post will probably take me ten minutes, and it'll probably show. Be forewarned.

I'm sorry for not posting for the last few weeks. Life at the vihar was crazy with classes finishing, finals, and getting ready for ISP (Independent Study Period). As a testament to that, I stayed up until midnight and beyond...twice. Leave it to finals to make life in India feel like the good ol' American college days.

But now, I've officially said "bye" to Bodh Gaya, and after a four-hour delay and a 25-hour train ride, I'm in the wild, wild Western India. For the next three weeks, I'm going to be bouncing throughout Maharashtra, from Nagpur to Pune and finally, Mumbai.

But, first, here's a little context: the program funds each of us for a month of research on whatever topic we pick, anywhere in India. As long as it somehow relates to Buddhism and we aren't moving in with a drug lord, it's pretty much a green light. A lot of my friends went North to Sikkim, Darjeeling, Dharmsala, and in short, the Himalayas. For a while, I was going to kick back, study some Lecha folklore, and do the same thing. Needless to say, I didn't.

Part of me still wonders what it would be like to look out my window and see snow-covered mountains, wrapping my Tibetan shawl just a little tighter to keep the bite of winter at bay. What would it be like to switch out an endless river of daal and chapati with a plate of hot momos and a steaming cup of butter tea? Maybe I'll never know, but that was, and is, my choice to live with.

So why? Why hit up the cities of the South (really, West) instead of the breezy and beautiful North? Long story short: because I came to study Buddhism, and I wanted to do that in India.

This is by no means a knock on those who went North. I love them, miss them, and wish them the best. But when I close my eyes and picture India, I don't see the crisp peaks of the Himalayas. I see a street full of saris, slicked hair, and rickshaws in a constant dance of stopping and going, always fitting, always flowing as one. I smell a warm, buttery garlic naan roasting in a tandoori oven, and I taste the first burst of juice from a fresh orange. I hear Hindi broken up by broken English. That, to me, is the India I came to see, and years from now, it's the India I want to remember. So here I am.

Now, I'm studying the progression of Dalit literature and its representation of Ambedkarite, and thus Buddhist, ideals. I'm looking into the deep, dark, and dirty past of Hindu oppression and listening as those captive give rise to a new voice, one that hasn't been heard in centuries. These are stories, poems, and plays inherently angry, filled with pain and suffering that I couldn't begin to imagine. But they are also full of hope. Underlying each, there is a lingering potential for change, freedom, and expression. For generations, these people were "untouchable," branded by their society for sins from their past lives. No one would walk in their shadow, let alone touch them. They lived on the brink of civilization, always kept at a distance, always sick, always starving. But 60 years ago under the leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, they revoked karma, fate, and God(s). They found their humanity.