An Excerpt
from Harper Ganick’s Blog
There
and Back Again: A Ginger’s Tale
A MC Study Abroad Student's Adventures in India
Tuesday
October 2, 2012
Today is Gandhi's birthday and the
very beginning of October, which means that I've been living in India for
nearly three months now! And when I say "living in India" I very much
mean that I'm "living" here. As in I have a residential permit with
the Andra Pradesh government, which, personally, I think is petty damn cool.
However, when I say that I'm
"living" in India, it could also be taken that I'm "living life
to the fullest" and "living new experiences" and "finding
the meaning of life." As of yet, not all of those things
are particularly true. I'm still not sure what the meaning of life
is... sorry. But I do feel like I'm becoming an Indian, or at least as Indian
as a pale American ginger can.
I no longer have to psych myself up
about leaving campus and going out into the Indian world. When I first got
here, going out into India was an all day commitment. It was, and still can be,
exhausting and completely over stimulating. We'd come back to Tagore dirty and
irritable from being stared at all day. There would be some weekends where we
just weren't up for India, so we'd stay around campus and if we went out it'd
be to the more Western parts of the city.
Now I'm finding that I no longer
need to be in the "right mood" to face India. I can just pop into the
city or Lingampoli (the neighborhood close to campus) to run to the store or
for the afternoon, and when I get back I don't feel like I'm totally drained
and wiped out. Yeah, I'm still dirty and it's always annoying as fuck when
people stare at me, but I've learned to deal with it. While it still bothers
me, I've definitely learned to ignore it and go on my way.
In the first couple of days when we
first got here one of the women at orientation told us that to properly
navigate the Indian streets we needed a third "Indian eye," which
Indians were born with but foreigners had to develop. While my Indian eye may
not be fully developed, I think it's definitely there. I went to the
grocery store in Lingampoli by myself the other day and I was effortlessly,
consciencely aware of everything around me. I know how many people were walking
behind me, I knew what type of vehicle was coming my way and how fast, but
knowing that didn't seem to extol any extra energy. It was all just something I
was aware of, as part of my environment.