Fibs and Respect for Giraffes

When I first arrived, I was lost in the sights, smells and sounds. I only now am beginning to notice how my senses have been constantly bombarded during the last two months. Why it took me so long to recognize this, I do not know. Each day I experience a moment of serenity in the surreal beauty of India: the sounds of neighboring temples, the smell of green chili plants or a curry being cooked, the reddish hue of dusk.

In September I was also lost in sadness and loneliness. Never before, after two years of life away from home, have I felt such desire for the familiar. I knew India would be an incomparable experience to those I have had. I was not naïve when I flew here. I re-read my journal from the days of training and I am surprised at what difficulty I knew to expect. But writing in my journal, in an air-conditioned conference room in a Chicago seminary, is much different than living the reality. My post-training journal entries almost reflect a sense of regret, of fear that I will not make it through a full year.

I did not miss hot dogs or hot showers, surprisingly. I missed being understood, both verbally and emotionally. I missed the companionship of friends. I found myself writing two or three letters daily, sending them like clockwork on Mondays and Wednesdays. I needed to express myself, to tell stories to someone who could empathize. On my first day at the hostel, I was shown to my room and given the day to relax and unpack. I did not know when the meals would be, where to get drinking water or who spoke English well enough to ask. Like the shocking first day of school after moving from York to Madison when I ate lunch standing because I had no idea where to sit, I felt physically lost.

No longer am I lonely with the same overbearing weight that I experienced in September. I know to whom I can vent. I trust my fellow volunteers, all struggling through a similar experience. We know that we need each other. I still do not miss American food or most American “comforts” (except Western toilets, oh how I miss Western toilets). I find comfort and restful sleep on my wooden-board-of-a-mattress, I can whip through a cold shower faster than a marine, and the animals I find daily in unexpected places in my room are respectfully removed (I usually only kill the ants and mosquitos). It is easy for me, knowing that I will return to Wisconsin in due time, sleeping in my plush bed, taking warm baths in the winter months and hardly every crossing the path of an animal – even in my backyard.

It is now November and I feel lost in India in a new way.

From the very first day of my arrival, like a child, I needed the help of Achen, Ammamma, Kochamma and Prabhaa Miss for rudimentary things. Because of this I immediately began to miss independence. That lack of independence did not end when I learned where to throw my trash, how to get drinking water and how to put on a saree. It continues because I am a woman, a young woman at that. I am an innocent, naïve, unmarried young woman and therefore I will not experience true independence here.

I crave the company of strong, expressive women (though Prabhaa Miss and Kochamma in particular are women of unusual self-assurance from others I have met). I daydream about laughing too loud, telling crass jokes and wearing fitted, show-off-your-curves clothing. I feel repressed by the sexism that surrounds the women in the hostel and I.

These young women, most at least twenty years old, are more protected than I was when I was in my mid-teens (and my mother is what my friends consider “protective”). A curfew of 6:00PM, mandatory prayer each evening (for those of all religious backgrounds), no freedom of movement outside of the walk to the college and the return walk to the hostel, a bell rings signaling each daily activity: a meal, study-time, free-time (2-hours each day), tea time, bedtime.

It is stifling and rigid. Most of these women have more freedom at their homes, but not much more. They go from father to husband, always under the “protection” of a male figure. I fear for the young woman raised under the protection of a loving father, who is married to an aggressive, abusive husband. To whom can she turn?

It is in this world that I am now becoming lost. The world of an Indian woman. I recognize that I am lucky to experience this. How many American women of my age truly understand sexism? I proudly profess that I am a feminist. Many of my male and female friends feel the same way. But I did not understand how lucky I was to read an essay by Bell Hooks and afterwards put on my pants and go to my internship at a law firm, winding my way through the subway with confidence and spending my own money on a coffee. I do not wear pants here. My desire for solitary walks educe confused looks from Ammamma, “Where are you going? What are you doing? How are you getting there? When will you return?” She always asks. In desperation for a false sense of autonomy, I have started to fib. “I am going to the Internet Point by auto-rickshaw,” I say, and instead I walk the long way past the train station, through Buddha Junction and Mitchell Junction, stopping at the fruit stand or the magazine store. I browse through a churidar shop or stop for a tea and pastry (outside food is definitely against Ammamma’s rules). I stop and talk to people. Sometimes I end up at the Internet Point, sometimes I do not.

Those solitary walks provide my only sense of liberty. I feel free from the overbearing sense of womanhood as a powerless, fragile existence that infests itself here. I cannot stop thinking about it; I have lost myself in this frustration. Sometimes I reluctantly put on a churidar in the morning, feeling that I am only giving in to Indian societies wish to cover up “their women.” One of the volunteers laughed at my choice in stitching (I had chosen the new “modern” style of stitching with tight pants and a mock-turtle neck), “It looks like something you could find at The Gap,” he said (he was wearing the typical Indian man’s outfit: khaki pants and a collared, button-up shirt). My Gap churidar is my favorite, as embarrassed as I am by the association of such an American brand name during my time in India. I recognize that in my Gap churidar I am free from the usual loads of fabric and a purposeful separation from tradition – a tiny sense of liberation. Sarees are out of the question for me. How could I run in 9 yards of fabric? I could never dance or jump in a saree. And forget defending myself, I can hardly avoid puddles wearing a saree, let alone give someone a good kick in the knees.

I hear George Michael belting out “freedom!” as I daydream about returning to an apartment of my own after going dancing in the city, realizing that when I return to “the city” I will be daydreaming about eating parota and chicken curry under cinnamon colored skies. As a child I once saw a giraffe in a zoo with all four legs splayed precariously as he stretched his neck to its capacity to munch on a patch of grass on the other side of the fence. Yes, “the grass is always greener,” we laughed. But I respect that giraffe. He saw a good piece of grass on the other side of the fence and though caged he managed to find a way to enjoy it. Maybe my Gap churidar is my way of remaining caged while munching on the greener grass.