It’s like 3 in the morning right now, jet lag is officially mauling my life. It just doesn’t seem right to not be woken up at 5 in the morning by an indian man belting a Muslim prayer/song over a city wide PA system. (A speaker being conveniently located right outside our window) There are many many memories to look back on and laugh about from my trip to India. From the 5am prayer calls to the insanity that is public transportation; enough to spend a lifetime telling about. But then there’s something else. Something that feels different inside me. Other things that will also stay with me for my lifetime, but can’t be put into a story to share at parties.
There is more there to tell of than I could possibly share here, but let me begin to stumble through. India is the most contradictory place on earth. It is both beauty and destruction. Spirituality and corruption. I have been away from it for a few days now and it’s as if i have been made into a different shape, and the struggle now is to fill that shape. Not knowing or understanding what exact shape that is or how to fill it. The easy way being to just cram any worthwhile sorta thing into those places instead of feeling through the process of filling it out.
Most of my time was spent at a place and with a group of girls that I have no pictures to remember them with. For their safety, what i’m allowed to say is limited. There’s no YouTube video, no Flickr picture albums. Just memories. Just moments that I won’t forget and a place where my heart will always be.
The air was cleaner out where I was. A change from the city with it’s smoggy pollution that was reminiscent of L.A. but looked mostly like a run down impoverished New York City. I sat next to a girl who had been forced into prostitution. She was rescued out of it at the age of 13, how long she had been in it before that I don’t know. She was wiser and stronger than anyone I’d ever known. She walked around the bit of land a group of them lived on like some sort of grandmother/yoda figure. She was now, at 16, infact one of the oldest there. Always with a song she’d sing to herself. Her voice was very different than any American pop idol voice you’d ever heard, but it was the sound that could rebirth your soul. She sang Hindi songs. For days while we were there she sang for us when we would beg her to. She stood no higher than my shoulder. She sat with me and sang for me her favorite song. Staring out with a calm reflective voice she told me of her past. Her family that is gone and how at night, crying on her pillow, she sings. In that moment, for the first time in so many years I felt something. She gave to me something so unexpected. Sitting there with her I found peace. In all the places broken and torn, for all the years spent restless. One little girl. Braver than a thousand men on the front line. She had no idea that in her she possessed the power to heal the human soul. There is (especially for women) nothing more broken than the world she lived in. The places she survived. I found in her reason. Reason to mend. Reason to leave behind all that entangled me. It wasn’t just about my own pain holding me back anymore, it was injustice to the world to not let go of it. It was impossible to look in her eyes and hold on to those excuses any longer. She was the lowest of the low, the forgotten and unseen. Pain is not about a cast system. It is not about who hurts more or less. The world is broken. As one of the broken I will fight for the others, for those who cannot fight for themselves. For those girls I met in India. Leaving them at that gate was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I told them that I had to go but my heart would always be there. And it is there, that it remains.
There are those who walk around India on vacation in their saris and hippy garb with their greasy hair from not showering for weeks. People with money who want to live like the locals. People who want to pretend like there is no dividing line and after a time go back to their comfortable beds. They are the ones that “have found themselves in India”.
I walked around India, I didn’t wear a sari or sustain from showering (for too long). I was a foreigner. I was an American. I saw the dividing line and it cut to my core. I honestly am not sure what I found in India, maybe it was myself… maybe it was something far better. A song I’ve heard a million times came back to me in my time there. I always wondered about the experience that the song was born out of. How it could feel, what it could mean, to find in the awful a beautiful kind of inspiration, and to feel the same towards a place that truly does change you and leave you with only the deepest sense of gratitude.
“How bout getting off these antibiotics, How bout stopping eating when I’m full up
How bout them transparent dangling carrots, How bout that ever elusive kudo
Thank you India, thank you terror, thank you disillusionment, thank you frailty,
Thank you consequence, thank you, thank you silence
How bout me not blaming you for everything, how bout me enjoying the moment for once
How bout how good it feels to finally forgive you, how bout grieving it all one at a time
Thank you India, thank you terror, thank you disillusionment, thank you frailty,
Thank you consequence, thank you, thank you silence
The moment I let go of it was the moment I got more than I could handle,
The moment I jumped off of it was the moment I touched down
How bout no longer being masochistic, how bout remembering your divinity
How bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out, how bout not equating death with stopping
Thank you india, thank you providence, thank you disillusionment,
Thank you nothingness, thank you clarity, thank you, thank you silence.”
-Alanis Morissette