When I get back to the US, and get back to all my friends, family, and dogs, the question I most expect to be asked is: How was India? (okay, maybe not from the dogs...) In anticipating that, I'm attempting, fruitlessly, to formulate my answer. The best I'm coming up with is "vast." There is so much beauty, and so much horror. So much kindness, and so much inhumanity. To be exposed to that for a year, is simply vast in your mind, there is no connection, no center point, just a vast cloud of everything that is my experience in India.
However thats not to say I'm incapable of describing, to a degree, what I've learned, how I've changed, what I've liked, what I've disliked, what I'd do over again, and what I appreciate. I do though believe myself incapable of answering all these sufficiently. But as the blog is drawing to a close in a week to three weeks (depending on my discipline and my mom's reminders to blog once she is here), I will try to write a few posts, somewhat articulately, about some aspects of my experience in India.
This is the first: Bad things I've learned
(click "read more" for complete blog post)
I've learned to be rude. I place a high premium on kindness, patience, and empathy, and so it is with a little horror, I realize that I have learned how to be rude. I am much more likely to wear my dissatisfaction on my sleeve, with a face, or a tone of my voice. Part of this may be legitimate, when getting off a bus and shooing away a swarm of men asking to take me to their friend's hotel, that mine is closed, full, or does not exist. In situations like this, and others, people can be rather persistent, well surpassing rudeness. Often rudeness, sternness, or shutdown of one form or another will make them go away. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily contained to these situations, and I have regretted being rude to people who, while perhaps annoying, were only trying to honestly help me.
Similarly, I have developed the unfortunate ability to be aware of someone's presence without acknowledging their existence. It is a defense mechanism, to avoid counting how many leering stares I get when I walk anywhere. It is an Indian skill, everyone seems to have it. Before coming to India I found it too socially awkward not to make eye contact or nod with strangers walking in the opposite directions. I now have the ability to glide past them as if they don't exist. And I'm not proud of it. But its a skill all the Westerners here seemed to have learned. While some of the kindest most interesting people I've met socially, ex-pats in India are no less abrasive than any Indian, not acknowledging your presence with a sympathy nod or smile. I used to think it was a prideful "I can make it in India, I don't need to console with you," but now I believe it is more a matter of this defensive skill, which one has to learn in order to comfortably operate in public.
When I go back to the US I realize I'm going to have to make a conscious effort to control these two rudnesses from slipping out, lest I be a bitch. But without blatant watching (see part 2!) or constant efforts to con me, I think it will be a bit easier to be nice all the time.
However thats not to say I'm incapable of describing, to a degree, what I've learned, how I've changed, what I've liked, what I've disliked, what I'd do over again, and what I appreciate. I do though believe myself incapable of answering all these sufficiently. But as the blog is drawing to a close in a week to three weeks (depending on my discipline and my mom's reminders to blog once she is here), I will try to write a few posts, somewhat articulately, about some aspects of my experience in India.
This is the first: Bad things I've learned
(click "read more" for complete blog post)
I've learned to be rude. I place a high premium on kindness, patience, and empathy, and so it is with a little horror, I realize that I have learned how to be rude. I am much more likely to wear my dissatisfaction on my sleeve, with a face, or a tone of my voice. Part of this may be legitimate, when getting off a bus and shooing away a swarm of men asking to take me to their friend's hotel, that mine is closed, full, or does not exist. In situations like this, and others, people can be rather persistent, well surpassing rudeness. Often rudeness, sternness, or shutdown of one form or another will make them go away. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily contained to these situations, and I have regretted being rude to people who, while perhaps annoying, were only trying to honestly help me.
Similarly, I have developed the unfortunate ability to be aware of someone's presence without acknowledging their existence. It is a defense mechanism, to avoid counting how many leering stares I get when I walk anywhere. It is an Indian skill, everyone seems to have it. Before coming to India I found it too socially awkward not to make eye contact or nod with strangers walking in the opposite directions. I now have the ability to glide past them as if they don't exist. And I'm not proud of it. But its a skill all the Westerners here seemed to have learned. While some of the kindest most interesting people I've met socially, ex-pats in India are no less abrasive than any Indian, not acknowledging your presence with a sympathy nod or smile. I used to think it was a prideful "I can make it in India, I don't need to console with you," but now I believe it is more a matter of this defensive skill, which one has to learn in order to comfortably operate in public.
When I go back to the US I realize I'm going to have to make a conscious effort to control these two rudnesses from slipping out, lest I be a bitch. But without blatant watching (see part 2!) or constant efforts to con me, I think it will be a bit easier to be nice all the time.
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