Uh, what?

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September 7, 2008

I don't even know where to begin. I am sitting at this coffee shop near my house at which my IPSL friends and I spend way too much time, trying to stay awake until dinner, and trying to scrape together a blog entry or a journal entry for class. I feel like the past week or so has been nearing the bottoming out point for a lot of us. I won’t be hasty and say that I am officially bottoming out, but I am approaching the 6-week mark…

Right ok, so I started this blog three days ago and then couldn’t think of anything to continue with. Now, it is three days later and I am still in this euro-trash coffee shop, a probably corrosive product of globalization in this Kolkata neighborhood, the same kind of global sharing that has made my trip here possible, where I have spent too much time and too many rupees (hardly anything compared to coffee in the US), and where I still don’t know where to begin. It is actually “week 6”, to put it in K terms, and I think that all of us here are starting to feel the bottom of this W Curve. We’re all pretty exhausted, and our adrenalin has caught up with us, confused about service, and trying to decipher lectures and classes with professors who teach in a way we aren’t used to.

I guess I could talk about service, instead of venting about how my helicopter host dad is beginning to annoy me at the end of a long day- for instance, the other day I was showing him pictures of my family on m lap top. At a shot of my mom and Dave and I this summer he said “this girl,” pointing to me, “looks much more prettier here”. Yeah, thanks, Uncle Roy. Probably because I am not sweating constantly, wearing funny clothes, dirty, and exhausted. Thank you. Anyway, service has turned into kind of a crazy, busy, and overwhelming job. I feel like I define myself in India more by my time at service than I do by my time in class or at home. Maybe it’s because I like being at service better because I don’t have to take notes on a confusing lecture or make awkward small talk and try not to be visibly annoyed with Uncle Roy. I think I like it right now because it’s so crazy and busy that I don’t have time to think about what is going on—I am just doing what needs to be done. I don't want to make myself seem mechanical and robotic—it’s a pretty human and emotional experience too. I’ve been getting kind of attached to certain patients, and I feel like we’ve established some bizarre friendships/relationships, that is, as established as they can be. I am starting to have my favorites, which is beautiful but also adds to the crazy cycle of guilt, confusion, and attachment that comes with this job.

In one of our classes on Buddhism, we were talking about the paradoxical, at least to Westerners influenced by a culture that is heavily influenced by Christianity, notion of unattachment and simultaneous compassion. Initially, in my bleeding heart syndrome, I had no idea how a compassionate person could be, in any way, not attached to what they were doing whether it be service, education, child rearing, or being in a relationship. In this case, as pointed out by one of my IPSL mates, eliminating attachment can add to the genuine quality of the act. With attachment is a personal connection; the work I am doing is somewhat selfish in nature, that if a patient died I would feel sad for my loss, and myself defeating the purpose of my work in the service department. I am not making sense I don't think… I need to reorient the way I think of attachment—it isn’t the outpour of goodness or right deeds or loving acts, it's the underlying, sneaky and usually unintentional selfishness behind the compassion. I feel like this doesn't make sense and random people in blog-world who read my entries will be confused, but I wanted to plop this out in cyber space before I leave for a trip tomorrow.

I guess mostly I am getting to the point of going through the motions. When I think too hard or intently about what I am doing and why I am doing it and what I am seeing and the reasons for these realities in this society, it freaks me out. I am not sure if the reasons freak me out, or the thought process does. I wish this program had some kind of debriefing component, the way all the other service-learning classes I’ve taken had. We all talk all the time about what we’re seeing, but I need a structure of a class to prevent all of us from just competing with one another for experience. When I have time to think about what is going on, my thoughts run wild and I can’t lasso them back into something tangible that I can work with until I have the right kind of setting to interpret them. I guess life doesn’t usually give you that perfect setting, now does it.

Um, logistical updates: we had our first lice outbreak. Hopefully I’ll be in the clear. We leave with Arnab tomorrow for a trip to Bolpur and Shantiniketan (sorry to those of you from India for my spelling murder) to see Tagore’s institution and homes and this village and this crazy musical group and some nature…. I hear there is a forest. Exciting. Maybe I’ll gain some composure and grasp again of the English language to be able to write when I get home on Monday.

Cheers!

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