Life without "Luxury"

Luxury is a relative term.

I thought I had settled in to village living. I got comfortable. And then the small luxuries were stolen from me. And I didn't even realize that they were luxuries.

There's some sort of gas shortage. Don't ask me how or why (yes I realize that gas is in shortage world wide but I'm talking actual shortage. As in we only have a certain amount of gas for the rest of the week and after that is gone, we're stuck).

Now, we have a gas stove. This means we use gas for cooking. And, when you live in a village, it's the little things that you look forward to. Such as tea. I have a new tea obsession (to balance my potato and peanut butter fetishes). Tea makes me happy. I'm up to a good 5 cups a day (including delicious amounts of sugar and a spoonful of powdered soy milk). And it was easy. We just popped into the kitchen, filled a pot with filtered water, switched on the gas stove, lit the burner with a match, and let that baby boil.

But there's a gas shortage.

So no more stove tea.

Instead we are to use the wooden stove outside. Even for someone who was a pyromaniac as a child (and still delights in all things fire), this stove is a challenge to my intellect. This is not how we make fires at home. And the amount of smoke inhalation and the scent on my skin.... Well, I will smell and breathe like men in a camp.

It should also be noted that the weather has changed. People wrap their shoulders and heads with blankets and scarves in the morning and evening, while bicycling to the next village or cooking chapatis outside or even, as I witnessed this morning, sitting in the living room typing away at 7 am.

This means that the ice cold showers that provided some relief in the summer now make me second guess the need to wash my body. Because you can feel it in your scalp. It is cold. Too cold. So boiling water for bucket showers it is.

Except that there's not enough gas. So the luxury of being able to boil water on the stove inside for your bucket shower outside is now also gone. This was a luxury I did not realize was a luxury. Running hot water, of course. But being able to boil water in less than 30 minutes to then bathe in? I just never knew.

While I try and (most often) succeed in taking things in stride, this threw me a bit. Because what and when we can cook hot food is limited. Heating water is now limited to the outside smoke-death-dealing stove. And my chai has been ripped from my grasp.

This turned me into a not so easy-going grump yesterday evening. Because, while others leave in the next week, month, and month and a half, I have a good four months of winter ahead. And, while I adore camping, I also enjoy warm showers afterwards and fresh-smelling clothes and clean lungs.

In an effort to "suck it up" and deal with the fact that India is doing crazy things to my body which I cannot control, I am currently sitting at the kitchen table, using my fingers to wipe the very last smears of peanut butter out of the jar in order to cheer myself up.

And, because life always gives a little when it takes, N. (my roommate and sister spirit) and I managed to stumble online at the same time, exactly when I ended it. And while the promises of nutella and peanut butter and trail mix coming my way played a role in bringing laughter back to my eyes, it was really the number game, her listed reminders of the absolute chaos, complexity, and hilarity that is my life that reminded me to smile.

....in spite of the fact that I will be half clean and fully cold for the next quarter of a year.

The Cover's Closing

I finished my diary yesterday.

And have now entered a period of mourning.

It is the journal of my becoming. Its pages are not laced just with gold but with traces, traces of the friend I lost, the first love I let go, the brimming of an adventurous spirit and the agony and growth that accompanied my first return home. It is, without a doubt, my most prized possession. And if, by some unfortunate turn of fate, I die before old age has taken its toll, you will still have the most intimate pieces of my spirit left, scribbled on its pages that have seen me at my most raw. They rest between its brown covers.

When I write I move beyond the rhythm of my breath, beyond conscious awareness to a space where the world becomes clear and I in it. I re-read entries and cannot recall how the words spilled forwards. Sometimes I am struck by their beauty, as if their birth had not been by my own hand.

And in honor of this journal’s finale, of its ending—which seems more like the closing of a chapter in my life more than any death or relationship’s end or birthday’s mark or calendar’s change—in honor of the people whose names and presence and memory grace its pages, only the honest, intimate words of my past self seemed fitting.

April 5, 2009. Los Angeles.

“I don’t need answers. All the best things in my life have been surprises, completely unexpected liked tucked away gifts that, when revealed, remind you that life is often a joy to behold. I don’t need to know what comes after what happens next. I’m just asking for help making the next step, another promise that that step is the right one, the hard one, the challenging one, the one that will allow me to find all these things my heart so desperately years for.

It strikes me that maybe God is reminding me of patience—hold fast to that beating heart but don’t chase it. Follow it. Follow its beating sound and the rhythm of its calling, over the foothills as I call you home.”

August 12^th/13^th, 2009. Plane from Seoul to Delhi

“It struck me in the Seoul airport that I am going to be completely and utterly foreign. I’m white on a plane of Indians. I don’t speak a lick of Punjabi. I’m tall. I’m a woman. Oh G-D what have I done?

But life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. And something that I cannot name calls me beyond the confines of North American borders. And I’m trying desperately to be at peace with that. Be at peace that some things may be no more, be at peace with the fact that we cannot always have what we want---that we are not meant to, be at peace that this is the bravest and best thing I have ever done, be at peace that life passes one day at a time, that this is the time to be young, to be free, to explore the crevices of the world and my own spirit. Have faith in love, in friendship, in the transforming power of time. Life is short, so make it full until it is brimming with passion, overflowing with beautiful encounters with life and love and God.”

"Absurd" Is Not A Word

Seeing as how tomorrow is my two month-aversary in India (We're hosting a wedding celebration tomorrow. Coincidence? I think not. Fate is most certainly throwing me a party.) I thought it would be fitting to recall some of the most absurd (or rather, "normal") moments:

We hit up a wedding celebration yesterday (the big one, because obviously you need multiple celebrations to mark a new life together) dressed in Punjab suits and overwhelmed by the food selection. Eventually, after a large amount of coaxing from various Punjabi men, we get up and dance (only after noticing that some women were finally participating). I turn at one point, just in the middle of the grove, and see that the man next to me is rocking out. With a rifle in hand. Just straight getting down. With a rifle in his hand. No one seems to be the least bit phased by this. Except, of course, ME.

I'm on the bus home from D. along with my friend and another intern, and there is a young woman with a beautiful baby sitting behind me. She decides she wants a photo on her cellphone with the foreigners and the baby, so she simply hands her infant son to M. The baby proceeds to scream (you would too if your mother handed you to some pale looking creature) and the mother, not skipping a beat, tries to get her cell phone to take the photo. M then hands the baby to me (because two photos are necessary) and by some strange fortune I am able to calm him down. The mom takes a photo. And then she turns away from me and her child and goes on to talk to her sister. I am left playing with this baby on my lap until we reach their stop. The mom takes him back, smiles, and leaves, like what has just transpired is anything in the realm of normal.

My roommate is British. Because of our vocabulary gaps she thinks I am constantly going without panties and that constantly I want to wear sexy lingerie around the house. This laughable confusion spreads to the rest of the intern house, so now I have officially reinforced everyone's idea of an "LA Girl."

I meet two adolescent girls at the wedding party. We proceed to bond over Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana. I win them over when I tell them that Michael Jackson died at the hospital at my university. It is at that moment that I realize I have more in common with these two teen-bopping 12 year olds than with the rest of the Punjabi population. But I'm just so juiced to be bonding I don't have time to be ashamed.

Two friends and I are headed back from Mcleod Ganj after a wonderful weekend of food and mountain weather. We're boarding the bus from Kangra back to H., and there are 3 heavily armed policemen that rush at the door and get on (unusual that there are policeman, not unusual that they are pushing to the door and not politely letting us on) followed by another man with a baseball cap. Western notions of etiquette and gentlemanly quality I mind, I think to myself "how rude" and miss the whole "you first, let me open the door for you instead of squashing you with my sweaty body" thing that some American men have mastered. Then I see that this man with the cap has a handcuff around one wrist, which is attached to a metal leash, which the final fourth policeman is holding onto. I decide that big guns trump my desires for Western politeness and quickly move out of the way. We board immediately after them and spend a minute plotting out the best place to sit (if he somehow escapes, which direction will they shoot?). We plant ourselves 2 rows behind the prisoner (who has a policeman on either side) and one row behind the 2 police behind them. And we rode the next four hours on the bus down the mountain, just like that, accidentally part of the whole public transportation prisoner parade.

A Day In The Life Of

I woke up yesterday to electricity, had peanut butter and banana on miniature slabs of white bread, showered with cold water (which is increasingly more difficult to get into as the weather changes), and then proceeded to meet with 19 other interns from every continent (excluding Antarctica and South America) to discuss the progression (or lack thereof) of our different projects. Lunch was, again, peanut butter and white bread and the last banana. During the education meeting I looked up to see through our open compound door that that a horse and wooden cart had brought metal shelves for my bedroom from the next village over and, unfazed, returned to the discussion.

I hopped on a rickety bus to D. at 13:10, opened up the metal doors of the Cluster Center by banging a lone red brick on the lock, read Orphan Polluck alone inside while waiting for students to show, and finally, after twenty minutes of waiting for an entire class of no-shows, decided to close once again. I crossed the highway, dodging buses and motorbikes to the vegetable stand, spent a hundred rupees on cauliflower and ladyfingers, and then made my way to the nearby intern home-stay.

I napped while watching a Lebanese South American from Montreal fold the German intern’s shirts, Coldplay playing in the background, and rose from my slumber an hour later to begin dinner preparations for twenty people. I then made my way back to the highway with a Polish man, selected the two chickens for slaughter simply by starring at them (I was unaware of how the chicken selection process worked), and waited outside the wooden hut while the man cut and plucked the chickens on a log, passing the time by discussing one of my student’s wishes for a white wife.

I then crossed the highway--plastic bag full of chicken bits in hand--to the sketchiest restaurant ever seen, and handed the green plastic bag holding two fresh chickens to the man with dirty hands, who was preoccupied by cutting other meat on his own bloodied log. Contemplating the things we can eat without dying (and without even getting dysentery) I sat and waited on a red plastic chair while the frying process commenced.

I returned back to the intern home-stay with fried chicken wrapped in newspaper, spent two hours in the kitchen preparing dal and boiled vegetables and rice, taking momentary breaks to dance in the cooling night air with a Brit and Vietnamese man and Finish girl. After dinner and beer in a teacup I danced with said Vietnamese man and British girl and Dutch girl to “Church” in front of the entire team as a part of my boss’ attempt at “organized fun” and getting everyone to “freak out,” was told by the Pole that I “move like LA,” and finally returned to my own home hours later in a car with 8 people crammed inside--including the Indian man sitting in the boot, legs dangling downwards, trunk door open, as we made our way through the beautifully cooling Punjab night.

Reconnection! And disconnection

I have been somewhat missing in action from the western world as of late. This is due to a variety of forces beyond my control: sickness, broken internet, and power cuts. Essentially, all the highlights of living in India.

A week of no internet access catapults you out of current world events. I returned to the world wide web to be greeted by three emails of "I'm beginning to worry..." as well as an overwhelming reminder that existences outside of my own rural community twist and turn at a very different pace.

I was eventually able to get extraordinarily slow access at the one internet shop in the next village over, and then again when I ventured up to McLeod Ganj (because I just can't get enough of the Dalai Lama's digs or his village's food.) And to be completely honest, it's sort of tripping me out. I've been able to write a couple of emails, but I feel separated. It now takes more effort, more thought, more energy to communicate with the world outside of my world.

In some ways this week without internet been a good thing. You get creative. In our house this "creativity" translated into playing spin the bottle truth or dare by candlelight when the power when out one night (which was as hot and awkward as you imagine it to be). We had "campfires" outside, eating dinner cooked by candlelight around a lone flashlight, music playing on a laptop as we chatted and swatted mosquitos.

Now that it's back the living room is silent. We each sit in this strange location, suspended between our lives and loves at home and the physical reality of our current home.

But my disconnection is not just on account of the internet. I'm immersed. I LIVE here. I think here. I dream here. I get startled when I see white people I don't know (which only ever occurs when traveling). What are they doing in India? Where have they been? Where are they going? How did they end up here? I'm like the creepy Indian men who stare with serial-killer sexual expressions and constantly ask for a photo. Except that my intrigue is not creepy or sexual or serial-killer-like and I don't awkwardly try to make contact. It's just that now I am, quite simply, caught off guard by foreigners.

Because I live in a village. I get excited about the possibility of chicken. I write home about the possibility of chicken. We talk about the heat. And we sweat. We try and find food. We talk about how impossible it is to find food. We get excited when there are apples in the house. I live in a village. Momma B closes the compound gates at 9 pm but that doesn't really matter because you can't buy beer in this village and the snack shop closed hours ago and there would be nowhere to go even if the gate was open.

So I get on the computer (when the power is on and when the internet is working, which is an increasingly rare occurrence) and contact this outside world where people are studying for big tests and going to bars and eating food (for the love of all that is holy please appreciate the selection of food at your fingertips because I have none) and partying and showing their shoulders in public and not considering whether or not everything they eat and drink will land them in the hospital.

I love my world. I love my village life. I love the constant confusion and challenge and the reality of my life, that I can somehow wind up at a Tibetan college concert with extraordinarily self-conscious performers attempting to get down to "Temperature" and "Right Round" with Buddhist monks cheering in the audience. And I'm embracing the fact that right now, at this very moment, it feels like pieces are shifting underneath my feet and I'm swaying, off balance, in what must appear to be more of an awkward attempt at movement than any exotic dance.

I love my world. But it's a different world. And even my attempts to keep up with textsfromlastnight and drunk American college culture and Jay Sean's "Down" can't bridge this growing disconnect.