When I was 17, I traveled to India alone. I'd traveled internationally before, but always in groups and always supervised.
I arrived on the doorstep of a stranger's house. He was a retired math professor whose 25-year-old daughter spoke some English. She claimed to have done a PhD in the subject, but I never saw any evidence of a thesis.
My goal, ostensibly, was to visit tribal schools that had been set up by a DC-based nonprofit in partnership with local NGOs.
That first day, the professor invited 30 local organizers over to meet me. I fiddled with my traditional Indian dress until someone was done serving 30 tiny cups of very hot, very sweet tea. It was well over 100 degrees outside, the hottest day I'd ever experienced, and the single ceiling fan seemed to know it was fighting a losing battle. The professor gave a short speech which I didn't understand, and then one of the organizers nodded and turned to ask me a question.
More than thirty pairs of eyes were fixed on me. In the Hindi that I'd hurriedly reviewed on the plane ride over - 100 nouns, 1 tense - I answered. A long moment passed. The organizers exchanged looks. Then several of them burst out laughing.
The professor's daughter came to my side. "I don't think they understood," she said. She had to repeat it three times before I understood her accent. I looked again at the roomful of strangers. My head hurt from the heat.
"Excuse me," I said. I put my teacup down very softly so as not to spill a drop, then fled the room. I ran to the small side room they'd provided me, shut the door and turned on the fan, breathing deeply in the dark. A moment later, there came a knock on the door. I opened it a crack.
"Your Uncle," said the daughter, handing me her mobile phone. Mobile phones were still new in India, and network was spotty. My own phone had no service.
"Hello?" I said.
"Thank God I reached you," he said. "Are you okay? If there's a problem, you can come home now. Immediately."
I thought of the heat, the strangers, the discomfort. Yes, I wanted to say. Please. At that exact moment, my eye fell on a poster taped to the far wall. Ships are safe in harbor, it said, but that is not where they are meant to remain.
"No," I said.
"Are you sure? You don't sound so good."
"I'm fine," I lied, but with more enthusiasm the second time.
Over the next two months, I'd find myself on bullock carts, in Jeeps and on motorcycles, wandering from village to village in tribal Madhya Pradesh, examining one room schoolhouses. I'd visit four or five villages in a day, eat meals while seated on the ground, drink a cup of tea in every village chief's house. My Hindi would improve only marginally - although I did give a "speech" in front of 1000 people - and I didn't know any of the people I traveled with. Anyway, my companions changed daily. I took third-class sleeper trains between towns, landed in airports that consisted of nothing more than a runway, and jostled for space with Aunties in neon burkas.
I was in the so-called Hindi belt, but nobody I talked to spoke any Hindi: instead, they spoke various dialects. There were no roads leading to any of these villages, except for one, in the hills near Pandhana. I met women who talked openly of pulling their 15-year-old daughters out of school to prepare them for marriage. If the villagers were shocked that my husband had allowed me to travel alone; they were even more disturbed to hear that I had no husband at all, that I seemed to belong to no one.
I had a cell phone, but it didn't work. The woods were known, then and now, as fertile territory for armed robbers. I'd only brought sneakers with me, which quickly got messed up in the dust and dirt of the fields. The professor's daughter lent me a pair of slip-on shoes and a tiny suitcase, appropriate for my new environment.
Many of the women had lost children to cholera or diarrhea, but they found my digital camera a novelty. If poverty was a desperate affair - and it was, or so I'd read - many of the people I met also seemed to live full lives. They welcomed me as an honored guest. They asked me about the time difference between India and the United States, about the size of my father's house.
Every night, before going to sleep, I'd do yoga for thirty minutes, a familiar ritual in an otherwise unfamiliar place. I lost 15 pounds and wore a sari for the first time.
Years later, I often think back on this trip, trying to figure out what I learned, if anything at all. I've tried to figure out the origin of the quote on that poster, which certainly helped affirm a choice that until that moment I wasn't sure I'd made.
I'd remember it years later, when my house in Delhi caught fire. I woke up in a burning building and jumped out the window to safety - a story that has now become apocryphal among the people I know. Afterwards, I couldn't sleep for days. I fled to Mumbai for a week, cried into my keyboard every morning, fought with the person I thought of as my closest friend.
"I want to come home," I told my Mom, and it's the only time that I came close to actually doing it. I'd spent two and a half years in India - I'd made a decent go of it, as far as I was concerned.
"If you want to, you should," she said. "But not under these circumstances."
So I stayed. I know that many times, when I'm nervous about the future or something I'm about to do, I remember that poster. I remember that 9 years ago, I stayed, and crazy as it sounds, that made all the difference. I went on to have one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. For months afterwards, I clung to that initial experience in India as something that made me different, something that made me think more deeply. I had an interesting story to tell.
One of the benefits of taking big risks, or doing unusual things, is that you often end up with interesting stories to tell. If I take nothing else out of India except for this, that alone will be worth it, I think.
I arrived on the doorstep of a stranger's house. He was a retired math professor whose 25-year-old daughter spoke some English. She claimed to have done a PhD in the subject, but I never saw any evidence of a thesis.
My goal, ostensibly, was to visit tribal schools that had been set up by a DC-based nonprofit in partnership with local NGOs.
That first day, the professor invited 30 local organizers over to meet me. I fiddled with my traditional Indian dress until someone was done serving 30 tiny cups of very hot, very sweet tea. It was well over 100 degrees outside, the hottest day I'd ever experienced, and the single ceiling fan seemed to know it was fighting a losing battle. The professor gave a short speech which I didn't understand, and then one of the organizers nodded and turned to ask me a question.
More than thirty pairs of eyes were fixed on me. In the Hindi that I'd hurriedly reviewed on the plane ride over - 100 nouns, 1 tense - I answered. A long moment passed. The organizers exchanged looks. Then several of them burst out laughing.
The professor's daughter came to my side. "I don't think they understood," she said. She had to repeat it three times before I understood her accent. I looked again at the roomful of strangers. My head hurt from the heat.
"Excuse me," I said. I put my teacup down very softly so as not to spill a drop, then fled the room. I ran to the small side room they'd provided me, shut the door and turned on the fan, breathing deeply in the dark. A moment later, there came a knock on the door. I opened it a crack.
"Your Uncle," said the daughter, handing me her mobile phone. Mobile phones were still new in India, and network was spotty. My own phone had no service.
"Hello?" I said.
"Thank God I reached you," he said. "Are you okay? If there's a problem, you can come home now. Immediately."
I thought of the heat, the strangers, the discomfort. Yes, I wanted to say. Please. At that exact moment, my eye fell on a poster taped to the far wall. Ships are safe in harbor, it said, but that is not where they are meant to remain.
"No," I said.
"Are you sure? You don't sound so good."
"I'm fine," I lied, but with more enthusiasm the second time.
Over the next two months, I'd find myself on bullock carts, in Jeeps and on motorcycles, wandering from village to village in tribal Madhya Pradesh, examining one room schoolhouses. I'd visit four or five villages in a day, eat meals while seated on the ground, drink a cup of tea in every village chief's house. My Hindi would improve only marginally - although I did give a "speech" in front of 1000 people - and I didn't know any of the people I traveled with. Anyway, my companions changed daily. I took third-class sleeper trains between towns, landed in airports that consisted of nothing more than a runway, and jostled for space with Aunties in neon burkas.
I was in the so-called Hindi belt, but nobody I talked to spoke any Hindi: instead, they spoke various dialects. There were no roads leading to any of these villages, except for one, in the hills near Pandhana. I met women who talked openly of pulling their 15-year-old daughters out of school to prepare them for marriage. If the villagers were shocked that my husband had allowed me to travel alone; they were even more disturbed to hear that I had no husband at all, that I seemed to belong to no one.
I had a cell phone, but it didn't work. The woods were known, then and now, as fertile territory for armed robbers. I'd only brought sneakers with me, which quickly got messed up in the dust and dirt of the fields. The professor's daughter lent me a pair of slip-on shoes and a tiny suitcase, appropriate for my new environment.
Many of the women had lost children to cholera or diarrhea, but they found my digital camera a novelty. If poverty was a desperate affair - and it was, or so I'd read - many of the people I met also seemed to live full lives. They welcomed me as an honored guest. They asked me about the time difference between India and the United States, about the size of my father's house.
Every night, before going to sleep, I'd do yoga for thirty minutes, a familiar ritual in an otherwise unfamiliar place. I lost 15 pounds and wore a sari for the first time.
Years later, I often think back on this trip, trying to figure out what I learned, if anything at all. I've tried to figure out the origin of the quote on that poster, which certainly helped affirm a choice that until that moment I wasn't sure I'd made.
I'd remember it years later, when my house in Delhi caught fire. I woke up in a burning building and jumped out the window to safety - a story that has now become apocryphal among the people I know. Afterwards, I couldn't sleep for days. I fled to Mumbai for a week, cried into my keyboard every morning, fought with the person I thought of as my closest friend.
"I want to come home," I told my Mom, and it's the only time that I came close to actually doing it. I'd spent two and a half years in India - I'd made a decent go of it, as far as I was concerned.
"If you want to, you should," she said. "But not under these circumstances."
So I stayed. I know that many times, when I'm nervous about the future or something I'm about to do, I remember that poster. I remember that 9 years ago, I stayed, and crazy as it sounds, that made all the difference. I went on to have one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. For months afterwards, I clung to that initial experience in India as something that made me different, something that made me think more deeply. I had an interesting story to tell.
One of the benefits of taking big risks, or doing unusual things, is that you often end up with interesting stories to tell. If I take nothing else out of India except for this, that alone will be worth it, I think.
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