Reflections on India

  New York City, New York, United States
Thursday, October 16, 2008

Hi Mom,

As with all my travels, I've never traveled for the purpose of
relaxation with the exception of whenever I return home to Hawaii for
the holidays. Raised in a kind of heavenly culture, people and climate
of relaxation, beach resorts and tropical getaways are the last places
that enter your mind as ultimate destinations.
.
.

Palace Women

You'd wonder how I would want to return to India after some of the things i've written.
Part of me wonders the same and yet, there's something to India that attracts me there just as
it has to New York. (the Degree of Difficulty? or the grit of its natural character?...)
Maybe Sandeep is right when he said that India has a bit of mystery to it. Life in India isn't easy
and being a first time solo traveler hasn't made my "seeing" India much rosier or romantic. Yet,
perhaps due to my solo travel, I feel I got to experience it on a stronger and deeper level than I
would have if I had been traveling with others. My goal was to step inside its skin  a bit more than
through my eyes, in the hope of understanding it better. Even now, after my return, i've still no claim
to knowing it better or having an accurate assessment of India, its people, religion and culture.  At
best,  I can only approach my observations through the naivete (and ignorance) of a traveler who's spent a mere blink of an eye getting to know a country, a people and their culture.

India Mystery

Love, Me


.

Hey Em,

I get how you feel about our jobs and what we put out there or cover in broadcast content and public consumption. People are so fixated upon drama, defeat, crisis and negative things to make them feel good about their own lives- for once, i'd like to work on a show where it focuses on inspiring others through others' success or humanitarian efforts. I've been revolted with the culture, the spoiled values and mentality of the United States for a while but somehow you tolerate it. You excuse people their excessives and grotesque extremes b/c you think "Oh,, how unfortunate you are that way! Poor thing- must come from poor upbringings".

AND THEN...
you see a world where people live so raw, untrained, basic, doing massively hard work for meager
wages and children can't go to school because they must work to help support the family. They know no other life other than to live by what they !NEED! There's mountains of noise, pollution, corruption, haggling, real dirt, real fear, streamfulls of piss & cow manure. Amidst this,
you find a small handful of hidden flowers w/ a bit of fresh scent to revive you. You can't shield
yourself from the ugly things- they surround you 24/7 & you can't help feeling a geniune and deep compassion for it while you're also fighting to protect your wallet from being stolen! Faces I find "ugly" there,  I also strangely find "beautiful and warm" b/c they have no choice but to be the way they are...raw
& honest, a pure product of an environment which offers limited choices and limited freedom.

Today I see our personality excesses as just waste-full expenditures...frivolous really! A spoiled culture
where we've gotten to tolerating peoples' excesses, not their livelihoods and certainly NOT their survival.

What to do? I feel like my eyes have changed and i'd like to affect the world and its children in a positive way.  Where to go from this return?

Until,
Christine