A Breath of India

Part of reflection paper on our two week Cornell class trip through Southern India.

"It has already been over half a week since we got back and I am still on India time. The previous two weeks in South India feels like a dream that I am refusing to wake up from, groping evanescing moments together in the hopes that I could dive right back in again. Before I could fully give in to the nascent love within me for this wonderfully bejeweled country and its people, I find myself once again half a world away. I am left unsatisfied, yearning for more. Only when I flew back to the states did I become sick…sick for a country and all its unknown, simple beauties that I had only barely begun to appreciate and wholeheartedly embrace. Like the kites that Adam B. and I tried to fly but never made it above the trees, we were only barely exposed to the livelihoods of the people that we have met and seen. Until we learn how to appreciate and utilize what we have got for the greater good, we can only dream of the potential, theirs and ours, in our hearts for a better world.

1.2 billion people, 1.2 billion dreams. Their souls and collective love for their families, country, and each other more ornate than any temple elephant or bulls on Pongal. There is something so emotionally raw in the simple lives of the rural people that we have met. They laughed despite the hardships etched on their faces. They danced barefoot over the hard, unyielding soils. They served us platters of coconut cookies and rosemary tea with smiles and wags of their heads. I felt like we were lionized, despite our humble intentions to learn about them. If the people were economically poor, they certainly made up for it with their rich personalities and hospitalities. I admired their endurance, their oneness so to speak, with everything and everyone as they struggle for survival. Though every human being has suffered, their kind of suffering was harder than I could ever experience, plaguing me with a childish shame that I admit feeling as their gimlet eyes crossed mine.

Yet down the dusty and littered road, India’s largest cities are developing rapidly. Indeed, it seems as if the Indian government is so intent on reaching the sky with their scrapers that the city planners have forgotten to pave sidewalks and paint zebra crossings for the people. As my colleagues have pointed out, the slums, held together by broken dreams and overshadowed by shiny buildings, are developing just as fast as people migrate from the villages to seek better opportunities only to find more hardships. To me, it is a fearful imbalance between an India speeding towards modernity and the Indian people’s knowledge and opportunity to develop but at the same time hold onto their traditions. As a result, entire families are left begging on the streets of India’s most shining cities. At night, they seek shelter made from debris in the empty pits gouged out of the earth for future buildings to come. The disparity is truly heartbreaking.

The potential for a more equal India is in the face of every child, man, and woman. The villages and schools that we have visited are full of bright and eager minds. The technology and help is also out there but if only it was as simple as connecting the right dots together. The kite I bought in celebration of Pongal hangs on my wall, acting as a reminder of the wonderful people in a country far away. Don’t think I’m crazy but at times I can still hear the soft jingles of the ankle bells, the melodious clangs of bangles, the car horns that foreigners associate with obnoxiousness but to the Indian people solely a matter of life or death. And I hope that in the future I will touch people’s lives just as much as they have touched mine."



Electric Feel - MGMT