Contrasts

This seems to be my view for much of my day, every day. 

Today instead of heading home after the kids went to school, I sat in a café.  That was fine for some days, but it won’t be for all days.  Some days I think I’ll start to venture out and walk a bit to explore.  I’ll begin in Koreagon Park-a largely expat part of the city.  I can’t wait to get my new camera so I can go explore with photographing in mind.  There is so much to see, and the contrasts are so vast.  I am constantly trying to describe what I see, the contrasts.  But they are everywhere and so different from my prior experiences.  I find it difficult to describe even in my own mind.  Alexander is a wonder with what he notices.  He loves to point out the “ninjas” all over India.  And if he sees someone getting onto a motorcycle, including our Baru, he lectures them on wearing a helmet.  When people try to stop him to look at him and take his picture, he declares, loudly, “we are from America.  We are from the United States of America and we are just visiting this place.”

There are giant billboards everywhere.  Advertising here is vast and gleaming and glamorous.  Most of the models have very fair skin, many even with green eyes.  Yet the people around are dark, beautifully so, but much darker than I expected having mostly known Indians in the US.

As you drive down the road there are thousands of cars and motorcycles, mopeds and autorikshaws.  The infamous tuk-tuk.  And in and among those throngs are cows and water buffalo, handcarts and bicycles.  Crossing the road here takes such courage, yet is done with such non-chalance: an extended hand the only thing separating the pedestrian from the vehicle.  If there are 4 lanes for traffic, there will be 8ish lanes of vehicles.  And if the roads are not divided by large physical barriers, traffic may be heading right at you even if you’re in the right lane.  Even when there is a divider, you will have some cars or motorcycles going the wrong way.  And even when there is space on the road, you can be sure your driver will drive over the dividing line, with it right down the center of the car, for no reason I can fathom.

I read something today which struck such a chord with me, resonant and deep.  It’s Jhumpa Lahiri in The Lowland, a character who has just moved to the United States from India, “The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind.  In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside.  There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link.  Here life ceased to obstruct or assault him.  Here was a place where humanity was not always pushing, rushing, running as if with a fire at its back.”

Again, the contrasts.  Everything does seem to be pushing, rushing, running, honking.   Yet the men all walk with a langorous kind of lope.  It’s a tropical walk, like a Hawaiian with nothing to do but surf and chat up wahinis.  It’s long and loose and slow, and it’s everywhere.  Even in amidst the pushing and rushing and running.  Yes yes, madam.  Yes yes.