Week Three (Mentality)

Having now been here for three weeks, a time that subjectively has felt much more akin to an eternity, I'm coming to some kind of psychological compromise with this place. Quite possibly, over the course of this year I won't really find anyone I can really relate to, and save for the couple of other people who will be here for the year, in addition to a fiance of one, might not really come to really know anyone in this city. I'll still continue to get out, looking for inlets through art, academia, and (still, hopefully) ngo work, but I think in a strange way I'm becoming receptive to the idea of a relatively quiet year, visiting and receiving the occasional friend living elsewhere in northern India (at least there will be a handful of these starting in the fall) and spending a lot of time living simply, learning a language and paying attention to existing, sometimes interpreting my surroundings and sometimes letting their cacophony numb me into mere reception rather than analytical interpretation. Wandering through the Maidan yesterday, the central park that is much more wild, twisty, and vacant than the equivalent in New York City, I realized I was really contented. This funny sort of middle-ground of emotionality - contentment - has been popping up lately between constant horn-honking, packs of howling street dogs, and the whooping calls of trash-pickers and broom sellers.

Last night I heard a stick thumping the ground in a classic sort of rhythm I hadn't hear since I had left Chandigarh - the call of a herdsman to his cows/buffalo (I'm still not sure what to call them). Kolkata has banned cows from the majority of the city proper, pushing any herds out to the most peripheral suburbs, so the classic Indian cow rarely makes an appearance around these parts. However, upon hearing the regular strikes of this lathi stick I went out to my terrace and saw a massive cow standing alone in the intersection by my house, not really heeding to his master's call and instead preferring to strut forward slowly, moving its head from side to side, not really seeming to care about its unexpectedness, its misplaced context. And while this is surely a cheesy comparison to draw, this mentality seemed to be like that which I had been experiencing in pockets as of late: A contentedness to exist errant to the surrounding culture and its expectations, out of place but uncaring about such stark difference. The rude calls from primarily teenage boys in packs effect me less and less while the moments of kindness from strangers and acquaintances, like the civility and simple friendliness that has been developing between myself and people like my sobji wallah and dudh (milk) wallah, the funny conversations with strangers in doctor's waiting rooms and smelly subway cars, leave a much stronger psychological impression. I'm ok - albeit just ok - but for lack of a better word, I'm ok with being ok.

I definitely miss the hubbub of Manhattan, the eloquent grunge and amazing conviviality of Brooklyn, the comforting rhythms of Philadelphia. I miss the US in a lot of ways, its multiple trajectories of modernity all clashing and fighting their way forward creating a stupendous, brusque, and occasionally banal culture in its wake, its political and personal openness. I miss being relatively close to my family and surrounded by a pretty amazing circle of friends stretched across two cities. I miss being able to be myself rather than a symbol of the West given little leeway to actually exist as myself, particularly in terms of sexuality and political conviction. But, at one point or another I've started to arrive at a point of being ok with these missing pieces and the possibility of not really regaining them or finding things to take their place for a year, stripping my life back to an at times essentialist, at times more minimalist state. I'm ok with that.

At least this is how I feel on these nice cloudy afternoons where I can take a nap without sweating and think about eating a warm kathi roll and maybe another odd and yet all eerily similar milk-based sweet-squishiness from the mishti dokan (sweet shop) in between leisurely doing grammar exercises and memorizing new vocabulary. Sob theek achchhe. (Everything is ok).