letter from madurai - 3 nov 2006

Letter to S:

"India is an interesting place. I've gathered from responses to my blog that i may have left the impression that i'm having a hard time, or something. Hmm. Well, there have definitely been some difficult moments, and as far as a place to just up and move to, it could be the most challenging i've seen. It's just so darn complicated, and the culture, especially in the conservative southern city in which i live, is very different. I think it could be a much easier thing to immerse oneself in the intl backpacker culture and just float along the surface, seeing sights and smoking dope, though i know that even those folks have their share of peculiar difficulties.

At present, i seem to have settled in some. The basic things no longer feel like great challenges (or else i have started to learn when to be patient and when to be pushy). And i'm not getting sick as often (i probably shouldn't write those words, or they'll come back to haunt me). The next challenge I think may be to learn how to find pleasure here. On the one hand, it's difficult because I sit in front of a computer working a desk job in an office all day -- and i think I had some notion that I could escape that sort of life by moving to india. joke was on me there, i suppose. On the other hand, Madurai is kind of a boring place (at least in a certain respect), and also doesn't have many public spaces to just sit in peace and watch the world go by.

I've been trying to travel and see sights and get out of town as much as possible. Recently I've gone to a lot of local temples, a forested hill station, a former french protectorate on the bay of bengal (pondicherry), the beach, and to visit an international utopian community (slash cult to "the mother") where they have a gigantic gold-plated, golf-ball shaped temple (think epcot center). Also, there are a handful of american students in madurai, many of whom have a lot more experience here than I. So I hang out with them some, to eat and chat and pass the time, and attempt to glean the secret of enjoying life this strange place.

I do imagine that I am learning a ton by being here, though I don't have the perspective to say what that is yet. And often i feel frustrated, especially by work (a whole other topic of conversation), and wonder what the hell i'm doing here, why i'm here, whether i'm just wasting my time, and why i can't choose easier and more idyllic spots to sort out my life and my neuroses. (My wonderful friend, who spent the harvest season picking apples in VT, just told me that she's moving to a Caribbean island for the winter).

I suppose these mental gymnastics aren't what you were looking to hear about India, though. Foreigners (myself included before i came, and probably still) think of bright colors and dirt and overwhelming spirituality and opulent weath, poverty, too many people, disease, etc. That stuff is all here I guess. But maybe i've seen it all before in other places, or maybe it's too much so i block it out, or, i dont know. What strikes me most are the little things:

-sitting on a little plastic chair beside the rutted dirt lane outside my apartment building in the early morning, while the ancient, diminutive and always-smiling iron-walla lady irons my clothes. sari-clad women fill bright plastic water jugs from a shared spigot; men in plaid dhoties stroll to the little shops for small purchases; young children laugh and play in the street and go to buy candies from the same little shops. The older children set off on their way to school. bicycles and motorbikes and the occasional car or auto-rickshaw glides past. The pace is still mellow. The early morning is a special time here--before the heat and the bustle kicks in--and this is one of my favorite moments.

-a new bakery opens today in my neighborhood. It is neon-lit, large and open, and will sell all sorts of too-sweet cakes and sweets. Personally, I hope they also sell good bread and some sort of salty sandwiches - why bother opening a new sweet shop if you don't increase the variety of things to be purchased-- there are already several on the same stretch of road. I imagine there will be a great crowd there this evening. It is the most new/modern/developed looking establishment for blocks. It has been under construction and shuttered since i arrived here, and so i forgot about it. But then last night i rode by on my bicycle, and saw the lights on and the construction almost complete. And my heart leapt a little bit to see it.

Maybe i have become more jaded by seeing some of the things one sees here, but it also seems that a few layers of cynicism and seen-it-all exterior have been stripped away. I seem to have become a lot more sentimental. And so an early morning and a new bakery and breakfast with Oprah (this last is actually my current most embarrassing secret -- I find myself repeatedly moved by Oprah's over-the-top morality and doo-gooderness -- fixing families and relationships and making dreams come true) -- these things stand out, illuminated.

I'd like to say that there's something wrong with me. Or that it's just that this town is really dull. Both of these things are probably true. But the process is quite interesting, and i think it's something more. It hadn't occurred to me that I would be subjecting myself to a guinea-pig experience by coming here -- and i really don't want to glorify culturally challenging situations. I would much rather have things be easy and comfortable that difficult and miserable.

Something about life before made me restless, though, and i had a notion that i could find my way out by coming here. Or that if i came here, my desired future would find me. Re-reading the beginning of Life of Pi last weekend I came across this observation: "a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature." So perhaps my presence here makes sense.

I actually wrote a long post about my reasons for coming here last week -- i'd spent an afternoon and an evening with food poisoning and came out the other end with a need to figure out and write down exactly why i was putting up with all this crap. I saved it on my laptop and the next day my C: drive died. Utterly and completely. As in, my old hard drive is now a paperweight on my desk. So i lost what i'd written about why i'm here, which i took as some cosmic sign -- as i do most ironic and difficult things here -- because there doesn't seem to be any other sensible way of taking it.

I'll be here at least until next summer, btw. Possibly longer. My NGO placement ends early june, then i have a fellowship event to attend, followed by travel/trekking in the north. I have a return ticket at the end of july, but no specific plans to return.

Anyway, again, thanks for the email, and the prodding to write you back. As you may have gathered if you've read this far, i've used this letter as an opportunity to put down a bunch of stuff that needed to get out. So apologies if i've run on and on, or if the thoughts here seem only half-formed. The short end of it is that things here are good and bad, difficult and sublime, lonely and crowded and terribly un-peaceful, but almost always fascinating. Over all, i'd say i'm doing quite well, even if my writing focuses disproportionately on some of the more challenging particulars."