{photo from our trip to muthayalapadu in 2009}
“he was
baffled as to why an american woman would want to live in india, unless it was
to help the poor*.”
this is a recent comment a friend of mine shared with me after he spent an evening chatting with an indian man who now lives in the usa. i've been thinking a lot about this comment since b sent it to me about a week ago- why am i in india? why did i come here (this time, but any time)? why on earth would this be a place i could see myself living long-term? can i really help the poor? should i?- and as with most of my blog posts of much content lately, this is from an email i've been working on.
the last thing india needs is another foreigner bent on "helping." i can’t help the poor. the longer i’m here, the more i know
that’s true. i can help them in my own country, maybe, but maybe not even then.
i can give to organizations that help the poor, but i can’t be mother teresa,
as much as i wish i could. i can’t help them. they helped me, though. and
they helped me in ways i can’t even begin to fully articulate. but because not trying makes for boring conversation and pointless emails, i'll try.
anyone
who knows me will tell you that i tend to fixate on certain things i want.
you’d think this would be great, given that it sounds as though it would lend
itself well to setting goals: i will buy myself a patagonia happenstance pullover this month, and that's all. however, i hate setting goals. mention the word
‘goal’ and i tune you out. (fear
of failure? who knows. i claim boredom.) anyway, so say i find something i like
and want to buy for myself. if it’s a big financial decision, i deliberate and
think on it for a long time. if i’m in a store, i’ll try it on and carry it
around with me. if it comes time for me to pay for whatever it is and i still
want it, i usually get it. if i don’t, i put it back. sounds like a fairly
reasonable way to decide if i want to buy something, right? it also means i spend a lot of time thinking about Things. you know, the sort that don't matter in the long run. the kind you can't take with you when you die.
my
friends in calcutta, my friends in bapatla and muthyalapadu, my friends in tamil nadu have
taught me that it is completely and totally possible to live a life of
generosity and joy without having much of anything to your name at all. hear me
now: there is nothing romantic about being poor, and i think it is patronizing
to pretend otherwise, especially given that i fall in the world’s top
5-10 %. what i do mean to say is that my friends in this place have
taught me that even with a list of wants (or often in their case legitimate
needs) longer than it should be, i
can and indeed should give to those around me, especially if they ask anything
of me. if i stop thinking about myself and my wants for a while, and stop trying to save the world, i can give to those around me, even if that giving is seemingly insignificant. i’ll write more about indian hospitality soon, but let it suffice to say
that while we think we have hospitality down pat, especially in the south, we
have more than a thing or two to learn from our indian brothers and sisters.
whether it’s sharing time or a delicious cup of tea, being here is a reality
check: i have a lot to offer, even when i don’t.
i don’t
just mean that i have a lot to offer materially, and i don’t mean either that
this is limited to beggars or the poor who walk and live on the streets here. i can offer conversation.
i can offer tea. i can offer a meal, a book, a quiet space. i can share a game
of dominoes or a kind word, or give five extra minutes of my time to the
wonderful man i married instead of camping out in the internet. i have a lot i can give. (i’m thinking so
much about sharing cups of tea that i’m feeling a little inspired to change my
blog name, even.)
i can’t
give much to the poor that will make any sort of lasting change, and if
anything my time here in india has clarified that fact over and over again.
(this doesn’t mean i shouldn’t try, but that’s also a topic for another
conversation.) but i can give time, dignity and sometimes even some
conversation. and i can give, and in fact feel compelled to give a lot more to others because of all that i’m
learning and growing into here.
i hope
to keep thinking about and being challenged by this question for the remainder
of my time here in india and on into my future beyond this little peninsula. i
think the reasons why someone in my shoes wouldn’t want to come to india are
fairly obvious, so i probably won’t spend much time on those, but just as i
share little “snippets” of the things in my daily life here that make me pause
and smile (or want to beat my head against a wall), i hope to think through
this question and my own reasons more in depth to answer it for myself as well
as to share with those of you reading.
____
the obvious answer as to why i'm in india is because my job is here.
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