Past the Phantom Tollbooth

Guests (Guess): The Family Visit
February 5-12^th, 2007

There they were. Three bright, exhausted, familiar faces poised on alien bodies, sitting still and smiling amidst the chaos. The bus – which I managed to jump on when it deigned to stop at an intersection a too-long walk from my flat – wouldn’t slow down in front of their hotel, but it did pause long enough for me to hop off a hundred yards past the Krishna Residency. I got a nice long view of them on the approach, as I stumbled over the hardened exposed dirt that was once the lawn of the hotel, and will someday be part of the newly widened Habsiguda road. There was the usual crowd of autos, half of them empty, their respective auto-wallahs crowded around a tea stall around the corner. There were businessmen in ill-fitting suits, children in impeccably matched and pressed uniforms overflowing from school buses, migrant laborers with a trays of rocks balanced on steel necks, their saris hitched high, exposing knurled feet clutching cheap plastic flip-flops.

One of the other Fellows had warned me that the strangest thing about having his family visit was the feeling that, in many ways for the first time, he was the one taking care of them. This seemed like an exciting yet frightening prospect, and I spent a considerable number of hours evaluating the wide variety of emotional responses my mother, step-father, and step-brother might experience upon landing in my little piece of this massive, steaming, teeming country. On their arrival, over idly and milk tea in the humid dining room of their hotel, I presented them with a charged cell phone, a key to my apartment, a hand-drawn map of the neighborhood, and a list of easy things to do while jet-lagged. Then I went to work.

And then one day (three days later), they came to work with me. That was the day I snapped – not because of the shock at the actual meeting of these two worlds, of the respective Hyderabadis and Seattlites with whom I have spent the maximum number of minutes within each of those worlds – but because of the internal pressure to have those worlds enjoy each other’s company (which they did), to get my work done on time (and I did), and to have the traveling family’s needs all taken care of (and they were) in the same few hours and the same few feet. Luckily, I was able to find last minute tickets, and we were in the air on the way to Fort Cochin less than forty-eight hours later. As we stepped out of the airport and into a pre-paid white Ambassador cab, headed towards the thick palms and perfect sunset and closely imagined sparkling dark water, I quickly began to melt back to my normal shape. This part was easy. We saw family friends, and dined on chocolate samosas in mango sauce. We floated by houseboats and stared into tiles and flurried through antique shops.

The night before I turned twenty-three, I was sitting on the thin white sheets of one of the twin beds in the room I was sharing with my step-brother – and it was funny to think of the rooms we had shared, tiny bunks on sailboats and strange motels in Montana and the stable of a castle in northern Italy – when we heard the rain begin. In the thirty seconds it took us to unbolt the dark wood door and patter out onto the warm night, the rain had already started falling in thick sheets. ‘If we weren’t…’ I started, and was quickly overturned. To find privacy in India is precious, especially in a city the size and scope of Hyderabad (only seven million, really). To have a moment out in the world, not watched, not separated, not veiled, not controlled, not careful, is absolutely delightful. I ran past soaked and through drenched glee and eventually back to the shelter and the shower and the cool of the thin white sheets of my left-hand twin bed.

We celebrated my birthday together, and with family friends in Cochin, and with my flat-mates back in Hyderabad. And with one last overpaid taxi, with confusion and happiness tinged green with goodbye I dropped my mother and my step-father and my step-brother back at their hotel and sped off towards home. They flew north to Jaipur and circled around the Golden Triangle in northern India. I caught up on my work and arranged a trip to Chennai and left and launched a website and came back. They arrived in Seattle. And so I asked them what they thought, and if they would like to share pieces of their stories and I suppose I was hoping they would help out with the narrative but instead their impressions reminded me of Milo and his ride past the Phantom Tollbooth. Because the mental tugs and the visceral smells and sounds and shapes that shift the frame of your perspective are the pieces that matter. The impressions that change your future impressions. The story – the sequence – is just that, a tale told to explain the new glint in your eye or the phrases you’ve picked up or the differently exaggerated way you weigh your own way (of life).

‘India Impressions,’ from my mom:
Just being there, sniffing & tasting & hearing...the waves of sensation that accompany the intricate visual feast that India offers up, moment to moment, wash over you in ways that no amount of sedentary immersion in film or literature can provide. And then there is what gets under your skin and opens you up: ways of living, facts of life that move from the abstract, strange, impossible to dawning recognition of how it could be. What a gift, to be able to imagine so much more.

I have a new appreciation for the deep purity of intense color, for the way personal cleanliness can glide over trash and grime, how almost anything can be recycled. When in doubt, decorate! Collage your truck, shave patterns on your camel. I took in the serenity of Persian style tombs and have a feeling for the safely of a burkha in public space. I visited a Jain temple and wondered at the "stations of the gurus" as an ancient template for a church interior. A tapestry style mural of Hindu mythology captured the boundary-less chaos and tumble of the human flow of life: conflict, sex, birth, death, triumph and foolery. All the world's a stage...

And now that this incredible sea of humanity is on wheels and well aware of being straddled by western markets and unequal global power, with so much that is out of reach and simultaneously present, now what? And here my imagination fails and I rehash troubling experiences of competing economies of scale; so many needs I refused to meet, so many transactions that were confusing and felt vaguely exploitative in one direction or the other. This is not a complaint. We were almost always treated with respect and consideration. And no wonder we are seen as walking, talking resources. It gives me a much clearer idea of how anyone of us who intends to make a difference, to deliver a usable resource, to support indigenous development must navigate a dense array of expectations and projections while keeping a grip on the compassion and commitment to a better world that drives us in the first place.

What an enthralling place to make that attempt!

From Robert:
I love India and I miss it. It is intense stimulation for the mind despite being very hard on the body. It is a country, or what I saw of it, of intensity – there are the brilliant colors of the saris, temples and bejeweled sandals of course; the air pollution that is so intense you can taste it that becomes green or orange florescent in the evening light; the traffic sounds are New York’s Canal Street of the 60’s on steroids; the scamming and dealing (“my-brother’s-wife’s-uncle’s-friend-owns-a-shop-
where-you-can-get-a-really-good-deal-on-pashminas-let-me-get-you-an-
auto-rickshaw”) is constant. Oh, and then there is the food – better than any Indian food that I have tasted in the USA; an intense multi-layering of spices resulting in a richness of flavor without being overly spicy-hot. And I loved the birds in the trees: large bright green parakeets with long tails, black and gray eagles, pure white egrets and high flying peacocks and peahens. And the monkeys on the walls and in the trees, and the cows and water buffalo in the streets, sidewalks and especially median strips, and the piles of hand formed cow-patties drying in the sun, and the garbage everywhere, and driving the wrong way without lights at night on a high traffic highway in a three-wheeled sputtering auto-rickshaw taxi with horn constantly beeping with trucks and buses coming directly at us and then passing on both sides of us, let me know that I am not in Seattle, nor could I have imagined it before I left Seattle. But now back in Seattle it is all with me all the time.

It was wonderful to have them, and it was strange. But of the million and one emotional outcomes I had predicted and internally planned for, the least expected one came true. It was a pleasant trip. Almost easy, in the way I had learned to let things go here. And I was proud that they had decided to come, that they had enjoyed my city despite its constant road construction its blaring sounds and constantly overwhelming smells; proud that they had continued their adventure on their own in the north, that I have learned things worth teaching here.

Appendix A: Something I sent a few days before they left.
Some pre-travel thoughts:

1. You will be overwhelmed. Try to enjoy it. Just remember: here, you're one-in-a-billion. The roads are the scariest part -- after driving, you won't worry about those strange tropical diseases that you're relatively unlikely to actually contract.
2. Most people speak at least a little English... to be better understood, enunciate clearly, roll your r's, and over-pronounce your t's.
3. Think about your 'giving policy.’ You will see a lot of poverty. You will be asked for money and over-charged pretty constantly. Who do you give to? How/What? How much? Why? Think about the impact of your actions in terms of expectations for other foreigners. Think about sustainability, rights, and other fun 'simple' things.
4. The head nod, aka the head waggle: shaking of the head does not mean no. Except when it does. But sometimes it means yes. Usually, it means maybe/probably/ok/I'm listening.