It’s beautiful on this beach. I wish that my mind would ease and let me relax into this lifestyle again, this wonderful blur of days spent doing nothing on sand and under coconut trees. But I am craving something new, and these years of tropical natural beauty have made me lazy, and although I have only five days left of soft pastel sunrises and baking afternoon heat, of thali and scooter rides down jungle roads, of constant company and the unceasing noise and litter and cows, I can always come back.
So here I sit, in the middle of a crescent of white sand set between two hills, the lush green of a monkey-filled jungle at my back, gazing across the Arabian Sea. This beach is full of an easy life, easy compared to some, its all relative after all. The people are beautiful and open and loving, always welcoming and smiling and touching each other. Coming from the Caribbean where no one touches you and the locals don’t want much to do with anyone it is refreshing to see the goodness of human nature bursting out of everyone around me. Before I came to India, people I knew, guidebooks I read, everyone warned me to be careful, to never let me guard down, that this country was waiting to swallow me whole. I stared down men before they started leering, I acted aloof and haughty before shopkeepers and taxi drivers, I guarded my possessions day and night and I regarded everyone I met with frosty suspicion.
But gradually, I came to my senses. After three months in this country I have not been taking advantage of once, not one man has acted inappropriately, not one person has robbed me or been unkind to me in any way. The angriest I have been at anyone here is when someone is too nice to me, too interested in my life and where I come from, and arrogantly I have felt too busy to want to interact.
I would leave my door unlocked while I went for a swim at the beach, I would lend my computer to fellow travelers who needed the internet, twice now I have forgotten my purse with all my money, credit cards and passport at a shop in a busy Indian city and when I finally realized it half an hour later and rushed back, the shopkeepers have lectured me about losing my possessions and made me promise I would be more careful next time. Maybe its because I no longer have any real material attachment to the objects I own, or maybe its because when I trust and love I do not attract thieves, but I am so very glad that I dropped my guard and learned to trust this country.
I’ve been welcomed into homes and invited to dinner, been shown countless peeling and faded family photo albums, explained to dozens of women why I am not married yet and assured them that although I do not live with my parents, I still love them very much. I’ve been given amazing prices on souvenirs when I have gone into a shop, and sat down to talk over tea for an hour or so before beginning to barter. I’ve been pulled off a train by a nun, horrified that I was traveling alone, when I was too sick with food poisoning to go any further, and when I really needed someone to take care of me, weirdly enough the sisters of Our Lady the Savior were there to help.
Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics have all treated me the same. Men and women, kids, it didn’t matter. In Mysore, I sat on layers and layers of bright silk rugs in the basement of a shop drinking Kashmiri tea and discussing religion with a Muslim man who was infinitely more accepting and open about other faiths than any Christian I have ever met. You would have to be, I suppose, in a country of a billion with so many different beliefs. I wonder what America would look like if we had such love and acceptance for our neighbors. If on every street corner there was a church, a mosk, a temple, and before the bells start ringing at each the men all stand together sharing tea, the women gossiping happily with their friends, the children running through it all not constrained by religious boundaries.
There are over a billion people packed together in this space and at times it feels like every one of them is looking at me. I realized, however, that they are staring at me not to be rude, not to seem intrusive or to make ME feel anything at all. People would look at me because I am different, and they are satisfying their own curiosity, the same way I watch women balancing baskets on their heads or smoking men wearing lungis. Indian culture is one of openness, who am I to get irritated and annoyed when everyone who sees me feels the need to come over, stop me on the road to shake my hand and ask me where I am from? What kind of continental drifter would I be if I expected to find a western world, complete with western social stigmas and rules when I came to the east? I am the visitor here, I am the guest on foreign soil, so I embrace this life, eat with the fingers of my right hand and sip a steaming cup of chai while I look on to the amazing human kindness that surrounds me, feeling hopeful for the future.
