Ramblings

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August 31, 2008

I was reading the Ramayana for class today and came across this:

‘You cannot count on the physical proximity of someone you love all the time. A seed that sprouts at the foot of its parent tree remains stunted until it is transplanted…Every human being, when the time comes, has to depart and seek his fulfillment in his own way”

I’ve been trying to revel in my current situation—a situation for which I’ve worked very hard and one that is beyond amazing—and how, despite my excitement, I still have that Midwest ache in my bones. I still am jealous of the approaching fall weather and rituals that a lot of you will be enjoying soon, and I think about my favorite brews of coffee, running routes, npr news shows, cuties to babysit, and partners in conversation and academic lecture that were once immediately accessible to me. I miss all of this stuff—I’m dreaming about apple cider form Robinette’s and wearing jeans and being cozy—and find myself dedicating lots of email space to everyone begging for details of home.
I hope this isn’t being confused for me having a miserable time in India. I’m pretty much having the time of my life, but my flight to India and my time here working and learning was not an escape. I’m not here to try to change the world or save India—the world will change anyway and India will save itself. I’m here because of this cultivated motivation that was initially fertilized by my upbringing and the close and safe proximity that I lived under my parental tree—and it is a very broad parental tree, extending between my mom and dad and Dave and also the countless relatives and mentors who’ve in their own ways displayed different aspects of true maturity. I guess I am in India to seek my fulfillment, and this process has been one that has ripped me apart and sewn me back together in just the month I’ve lived here. I’m sure, in the course of the next three months I’ll be destroyed and repaired several more times. In living here, I’m trying to not fight with my yearn for my local, but try and incorporate my old and my new into a dichotomous and fruitful philosophy that can grow with me in my life. The illustration of that skill illustrates itself most when I juxtapose the activity of sweating in my bed, or sweating and reading ancient Bramin texts, or sweating and cleaning up human shit with my bare hands and listening (or having stuck in my head) Joni Mitchell or Gram Parsons or a groovy bluegrass tune.
Being here makes me think a lot about what I will do with the last year and a third of my college education, and what I’ll do for my SIP, and what I’ll do after graduation. At service I have a lot of time to spend doing monotonous things like laundry, or having one sided conversations with old ladies who only speak Bengali (the one side is their side, not mine—my Bengali sucks) and start trying to make mental to do lists and plans. For instance, right now I have all of these ideas for my three months off before Spring Quarter. I want to read up about the LSATs (why, I have no idea) and I want to paint some epic artwork, and I want to visit dad in Texas and do some field work at Mega-Churches, and I want to plan a huge vegetable garden for the summer and intern with Habitat for Humanity, and I want to read all of the Harry Potter series. Mostly I get caught up on graduate work and career beginnings and whether or not my sporadic interests have legitimacy enough to make a financially successful and socially acceptable life of myself. I am not sure why that’s my focus—If anything, serving in Kolkata has bluntly slapped me in the face with the notion of unconditional and detached compassion and love over anything else in the world.

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Comments

[Lynn]

To Do...
Lisa, so looking at your list of "to do's", I think you need to add "write a book." I am truly impressed by your courage to study/work in India of all places and avoid the comfort of the provincial life. I'm hooked--keep writing.