Contradictions

My cousin and I walked to the store to buy Diet Coke. We went along a paved road, rusty red and dark with dust. Three-wheeled taxis went by us. She calls them "rickshaws" but they bear no resemblance to the human-powered bikes normally associated with that word.

I mentioned that I've been wanting to learn to drive in India. My Uncle first suggested it. A place around the corner from his house gives a course of 30 lessons and guarantees a license. I'm terrified of driving in Mumbai, but I was terrified to learn to drive in Washington, DC, too. It never came naturally to me. The other day our driver backed the vehicle through a crowded intersection, around a bus and into an alley, narrowly avoiding five pedestrians. In the backseat, I was shaking with anxiety all the way through.

My cousin asked me if the United States had similar traffic. I realized that to describe a regular roadside in the States is no easy task. It's hard for me to compare experiences and locations. Words seem to carry judgment. I could say that Mumbai's streets are busier, narrower, dustier, louder - but none of this does them justice. Just like I could say that the United States is colder, vaster, impersonal - but this doesn't do it justice either. It's very difficult to find neutral language in which to describe factual differences.

Yesterday evening we went walking down to Worli Seaface, a long stone wall that fronts the Arabian Sea. On one side, people promenaded down a wide avenue. Children played on sets of waist-high monkey bars (not actually meant as monkey bars, I later learned) while couples shared coffees. Vendors passed by with roasted lentils that they served in cones of newspaper and notebook paper.

Worli Seaface is one of Mumbai's most famous landmarks. It's appeared in numerous movies. Thousands of people walk along it every night to see the sun set over the waves. The night I went there the wall was beautiful, but I couldn't help but notice that the beach below was made up of sharp black rocks. At first I thought the rocks were moving, but then I realized that the beach below us - although several stories below and on the other side of a stone wall - was alive with rats. The smell off the water was almost putrid. I walked along the wall until I came to a set of stairs that led down to the rocks. These smelled like a public urinal, which indeed is the purpose that the beach too often serves.

As I was leaning over the side, I thought that Worli Seaface is another landmark that might get lost in translation. It's beautiful to look at, but I suspect that the average American might not find the actual visit quite so uniformly lovely. The seaface confronts the senses, it doesn't allow complacent observation.

But perhaps this, too, is a sign of being an outsider. Home is a place of complacent observation. It is an environment whose contraditions we've absorbed as normal.

When my cousin asked me if the US was like India, I realized that I've been asking myself that same question all along. How is it like the US? How is it different? But to translate something makes it inherently foreign. Until I stop wondering about that, I won't ever see India for what it actually is.