Bittersweet, Unrefined

Well...my sojourn into India is over, at least in this shape--

  I have finished my 1.5 year contract, and, after much prayer, mental deliberation, consultations with friends and family, and a variety of reasons both emotional and pragmatic, have decided not to return for another year of teaching.

I've been back in the U.S. now for two weeks, and am reflecting on my time in India (not yet sentimentally, mind you) and what it's like for me right now.  Whenever anyone asks me about India and what it is like, I respond with, "it's a trip!"  This is a vague yet concise way of saying what I am about to say now.

 I sat here this morning after finishing a good book, contemplating whether to eat some morning chocolate.  For reasons unknown to me, my neighbors gave me two giant Cadbury gourmet chocolate bars before I left India, my mom gave me two organic, fair-trade bars to welcome me on arrival, my boyfriend gave me an 85% dark of the Lindt variety at the airport, and my grandpa (with whom I'm staying) continually stocks me with every variety of chocolate known to man.  I am blissfully and terrifyingly inundated.

As I was saying, I finished this book, a particularly poignant read, and decided not to go for the sweet milk chocolate, but to break into the 85% Lindt bar my boyfriend Stephen gave me.  Yesterday was our 11-month dating anniversary (we celebrated by my introducing him to sushi, which he bravely fared well on), and it seemed appropriate.  While savoring that, I thought about the fact that 85% chocolate is barely sweet at all; it mixes smooth, but untainted bitter cacao with some sugar for sweetness, creating an experience that can best be described as "healthy yet satisfying."  I was reflecting that this is not unlike relationship--when you sign up, you are in for a bittersweet experience--moments of pure perfection, moments of the mundane, moments of angst, moments of bliss and pleasure--you partake of them all.  I symbolically ate the chocolate, which was rather good, in a gesture of acceptance of our relationship.

In thinking about how to wrap up my time in India, I would also liken it to my chocolate experience.  India was not a stress-free, blissful experience with loads of sugary highs--If anything, I struggled; I struggled every single God-given day.  Just walking to the bus pick-up point in the mornings was a danger-fraught and mixed-emotion trek.  First off, I had to avoid eye contact with all members of the male race, as they would see eye contact as a come-on.  Then, I had to cross the street with the raw, open garbage dump filled with stray dogs and sacred cows stolidly chomping away on non-organic post-consumer waste.  On the other side of the street, I'd wave to my favorite little Indian girl in her cute pig-tails and uniform waiting with her daddy for her school van.  I was always glad for the marked height differential between her and her daddy, so that there was no mistaking the direction of my smiles and non-suggestive waving for anyone other than her.  She waved back at me, waved at cows, hung on her daddy's arm, and generally made my day.

Moving on, I'd cross a blind corner underneath a massive, umbrella-like tree and dodge the motorbikes and rickshaws that always popped out unexpectedly.  I would avoid a deep gully in lieu of a sidewalk, dodging from one side of the street to the other to pass and outpace the pedestrians walking in the standard Indian infinitesimally slow crawl that makes everyone late for life.  I'd always get hung up at the "convenience" store, as my daily traverse always coincided with this huge milk truck's delivery of crates and crates of little milk baggies to the tiny store, clogging the already-narrow one-lane road.  Directly on the other side of the road would be a maid hunched over, bent out into the street, laying down intricate rice-flour mosaics in front of her employer's gate.  These rice designs are fantastically geometrical and interesting, but squeezing between a milk truck and a maid's bum, the herd of cows that would inevitably take that moment to lope by swinging snotty drool and bristly tails, and the speed-demon motorbikes that would weave around the whole lot of us made me appreciate the mosaic's beauty for only nanoseconds.  It was always tempting for me to think pragmatically and irritably about how darn impractical the timing was of this maid's beautiful ritual.  Still, when I'd later walk home and see the then-faded tracings of design, I'd have time to pause and appreciate this beauty that was washed away or driven over yet renewed again each day.

Carrying on, I'd breathe a sigh of relief after escaping the bulge of congestion and would pass a blooming Jasmine bush that, if the wind was blowing just right, would waft through my senses like a girl in a flowery pink dress in the middle of  a haggler's market.  I'd appreciate it with a smile, then would come a blasting horn from a school van chugging up the road, and I'd climb onto the one stretch that had "sidewalk", built about 10 inches off the ground only in front of actual residences then abruptly ending so that you're intermittently climbing on and off the sidewalk like an urban hiker.  Following that I'd wave a friendly hello to my sweet Christian Indian friends on the corner then dodge a daily pile of grass, garbage and dung sweepings pushed to the side of the road right in my path.  The last residence would always leave a plate of some type of food for every wandering cow, who would then block my path again to lumber over and accept their daily offerings.

Once I reached the edge of the crazy main road my bus would stop at, I'd have to then cross the street-- no mean proposition, considering it was prime traffic hour in one of the most clogged arteries of Bangalore.  Here, the last few months, there was no sidewalk--the locals literally dug it all up and pulled out the accumulated garbage and refuse, heaping huge piles of it in front of the now broken, gaping black maw that was the walkway.  (This was done all over the city in anticipation of the upcoming political elections in which would-be elected leaders promised to clear away all debris and to restore the sidewalks to their "rightful" conditions.)

Anyway, after doing the typical faith-filled jaywalk/skirting dance into traffic to get to the other side, I'd then have a few minutes' wait for my bus to come, which often seemed like an hour.  Reason being, I was stared at unmercifully like I was a painted performing mime in a subway station.   Considering the color of my beyond-pale skin in comparison to the general population, this was an apt description.  Old men in dhotis (a long, cotton garment worn by men like a wrap skirt in southern India) took especial moments to pause, stare at me like a pariah, and slowly move on.  Men on motorbikes would literally crane their heads backwards in the middle of oncoming traffic to see if they'd seen me right before nearly causing a wreck and buzzing away.  Rickshaw drivers would inevitably slow down with the "Yes, madam?" expression readily on their lips, hoping to make a quick buck off a rich white foreigner.  Then, the chicken men would drive by in their crazy, clucking truck stuffed full of fowl in wire cages piled floor to top in the deep truck bed with two handlers hanging onto the back of the overfull truck like trapeze escapees from a circus show.  If I accidentally glanced at the macabre entourage, the chicken men would yell out things like, "Hi Lady!!  You and me!!" and whistle at me before surging into the melee.

To distract myself I'd often watch two young sisters in plaid uniform, one older, the other just a little, spunky thing.  They'd clamber around waiting for their own bus, with the bigger trying to keep tabs on the younger.  One time after the ignoble sidewalk deconstruction, the older sister started acting in typical fashion to all older sisters, attempting to shove her younger sibling into the black sidewalk crevasse, dangling her legs over the edge to her sister's accompanied shrieks.  It was all in good fun.  Finally, my bus would pull up, I'd quickly hoist up myself and my school bags, and off we'd go.

My daily trek to the bus stop was all in a day's work.  It was only one example of the mixture between the sacred, the profane, the ugly and the beautiful I encountered all over Bangalore.  Sometimes I hated it; other times I thanked the Lord for where I was as I marveled at flaming red-blossomed trees or gaped at the beautiful saris worn by the women.  In India I have found myself laughing in disbelief one minute and furious the next.

As I adjust back to American life with my own reverse culture shock, I am struck by how different it is here. We compartmentalize everything--cars go in parking lots, not parked illegally on narrow roads.  Fat is separated from milk, and flowers come pre-wrapped in neat, organized sheaths with a packet of plant food. Garbage goes in garbage bins, recycling goes to a center, and "happy cows come from California." It is our wealth as a nation that allows us to do all this.

As I reflect on my time in India, I have to think that life in the raw is more unrefined, more messy than we give it credit for.  I think, I hope, that I am coming to realize that perfection belongs to God alone, and that I will have an easier time in life and living if I adjust my expectations of what life should be and just live it.  I will have a lot more fun, anyway.  So, I am thankful for bittersweet dark chocolate, relationships, Target grocery stores, my own country, and yes, India.  In the words of India Arie, one of my "soul sisters," I'm

Thankful for relaxation
Complication, hibernation and irritation
Seclusion, confusion, all my impurity and insecurity
'Cause I know it's God just perfecting me
That's why
Today I take life as it comes.