Hello everyone and I apologize for the delay in posts. While I was
in India I actually sold my condo! Yep, I’ve been trying to sell that thing for
years and of course it finally happens whilst in India. I was sitting next to a
chanting Tibetan Monk at the Green Hotel café just e-signing away my place,
laughing at the irony of it all. Oh, what magic! It could not have been
more perfect. However, that meant the second I hit US soil I pretty much had to
be out. I had precisely 7 days to find a new place to live as well as move out
of my place I’ve been in for 7 years. It was one of the craziest weeks of my
life but India certainly prepared me for it. I spent the days frantically
driving around West LA looking at horrid, cat liter box sized, carpeted nightmares
to possibly live in. Then spent all night packing up my entire life. It’s
insane how much one human can accumulate in a couple of years. I made four
trips to Goodwill with my SUV packed to capacity, sold things on
Craigslist, gave away furniture, dropped food off at the food bank, and still
had 15 boxes full of crap I needed to
take with me.
After just coming from a place where I saw 10 people sharing one
room with only the clothes on their backs as their “must haves.” I gotta say I
couldn’t help but feel like quite the 1st world asshole when I
watched the movers lug my dishes, bed, bedding, and enough clothing to provide for a whole block of people
into the truck to be brought to a new space I will live in alone and share
with no one but myself. Good God
we come with so much baggage here! Simplicity definitely keeps you free. But as
Americans we’re conditioned to think we need all these lavish things in order
to survive, like we’ll die without that down comforter or pea coat from JCrew.
And trust me, I’ll be the first one to admit that pea coat is damn cute!
It will be 2
months since India on Monday and honestly it’s like it was all a dream. Did it
actually happen? Was I really exposed to a reality that exists so far separate
from mine? But it’s not even about mine. I’m talking on a level of what we
have, are, get, live, and experience as Westerners versus what they get to
experience as Easterners. My specific life and how it differs… Well that’s more
like when we all had the pleasure of realizing Billy Ray Cyrus had a daughter- it takes ridiculousness and shocking to a whole new level. As if Achy Breaky Heart wasn’t enough. I realized so many unnecessary
things about my life like my Mom telling me I should immediately buy a new
place for an atrocious amount of money because God forbid you “piss your money away on rent”
as if the concept of rent is somehow not living up to its duty of providing
shelter for humans… A privilege a lot of people don’t enjoy in India. Not to
mention, that kind of money could revolutionize an entire city there.
So yes, the transition back has been quite an intense one. First
off, everything here is so quiet and orderly. Cars driving on the streets sound
like nothing more than a casual ripple of a wave on a calm day at the beach.
And I love how the cars we drive scream at you if you don’t put your seat belt
on within seconds of turning it on. Meanwhile, in India 90% of the time you’re
in a Tuk- Tuk where they simply laugh at your pathetic concerns for safety. There
are no seat belts and they don’t need them, Incredible India! Oh yeah, that’s
the saying there- Incredible India! Whenever something doesn’t make sense like,
say driving up the middle of oncoming traffic in the heat of stampede hour (rush hour is an
understatement there so I prefer to call it stampede hour- you truly never know
what type of herd could be plowing towards you at any second in the wonderful adventures
of Tuk-Tuking.) But yes, it is physically impossible that we’re not hitting
anyone as we soar up the middle of oncoming traffic and what’s even more
bizarre is the oncoming trafficteers
response. No one is outraged by this. There’s no shouting, bird flipping, or
cop calling. It just happens, all works out, and the flow remains
uninterrupted. Fucking A, we’re still
alive, how is this possible!? Slowly the westerner will gain their voice
back and upon asking the driver to explain the unexplainable their single
response will be- head bobble- INCREDIBLE INDIA! And that’s it, nothing more
will nor needs to be said.
Now cut back to America. As I sit at one of those 4 way stoplights
by UCLA- the ones where all traffic is stopped while the pedestrians get to
walk in all four directions and are even allowed to get a little wild by
walking within the lines of the diagonal walkway that runs through the
intersection. I clearly see just how well trained and obedient we are to the
system. Like clockwork, the white man lights up on the traffic signal and the
humans walk. The countdown begins and we safely make it across. Next the
greenlight shines and the cars punctually accelerate. Honestly after India, watching
all this feels very robotic. Nothing keeps you more alive than dodging through
traffic and allowing yourself to have nothing but trust in this
incomprehensible force- that you will in fact- not get hit. But it’s the truth,
you don’t, and by the end of the trip I found myself not even looking as I
casually cut across four lanes of traffic twisting one way to avoid a cow then
turning another way to miss that cyclist. Abruptly stopping to let the Tuk- Tuk
pass before maneuvering around a pile of shit to dart through an opening that
only lasts a split second but voila! I am across and the whole moment is
forgotten as quickly as it happened. Yet here I stand in LA on a street that
looks like 90% of the other streets across upscale America. You know, the perfectly
manicured trees and bushes, beep-beep sounds of cars locking on the command of their owner's key chains as they methodically walk to get their
Starbucks. Lululemon-ed housewives systematically scurrying from store to store preoccupied
by their smartphones, buildings all relatively the same size and color with
cutesy lampposts decorating the sidewalks. Yeah, you know the routine. There’s one in every town.
So here I stand in what the media has sculpted as America’s dream
and I find myself actually nervous as that ticking countdown flashes. What?
It’s a total false sense of fear as well as security. Trust me if all hell
broke loose in the world, India would be just fine and we’d be the ones who
wouldn’t make it due to the sheer fact that we simply would not know how
without rules and order. We’ve been
trained well my friends. I mean, the fact that over here we are slowly
shifting into a society that doesn’t even have to flush their own shit is
somewhat unnecessary, is it not? Seriously, I am noticing more and more public
bathrooms that have the automatic flushers installed on their toilets while in
India most of the bathrooms don’t even have toilets. Quite the drastic gap,
huh? I see us becoming more and
more dependent on a system that was created by humans for humans but is in no
way human- of our human nature that is.
I’d have to say the biggest
question I take away from this whole experience is: who here is more free? Is
it us in the “1st world” or them in the “3rd world”? It’s
shocking that we both in fact exist in THIS world. More to come...
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