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.
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