Things I've Learned in India, in no particular order.

I've not learned so much in so short a time as I have this past week. Even thinking back to my one-week-ago self makes me feel like a stranger. I’m now happy to report that India still offers a chance at having a journey in the sense I've always yearned for; at any given moment while here, I had no idea what to expect. Even now, sitting in the Kolkata airport, exhausted and admittedly a little fogged from last night's good times, I’m halfway-unsure that I’ll be able to make it back to Colombo. The feeling of authentic life, or life without all the usual safeguards, has not yet been lost in this country, as I feel it has in most places I've lived and visited, and it’s a baffling delight to experience it.

Such is life in India. It’s abundantly clear that the dominant values here have nothing to do with what we in the West call “reason”, “logic”, or “sense”, and I've only learned to cope with this difference to a tiny extent. I’ve learned that this country is a cultural behemoth that is struggling fiercely to reconcile its values and history with a path of development that seems to always be just-out-of-reach. And I’ve learned that the fact that people here sometimes do things for absolutely no reason, like honking the horn of their car, and that while excessive noise is annoying, there is a wild freedom in their making it.

I've learned that it’s never quite worth it, under an analysis-of-risk and a desire-to-be-wearing-clean-underwear, to offer your tuk tuk driver an extra ten rupees to get you to your destination double-time. You will also have a cleaner conscience in general if you avoid being the unintentional cause of minor traffic accidents.

I’ve learned that travel and exploration are unquestionably more enjoyable and fruitful when you have company. And I’ve learned that it’s easier to make friends when you recognize both your own frailty and your strengths, and reach out in companionship to others who walk your path, even if only for a moment. I’ve learned that such friendships, as potentially brief as they may be, offer a quick view into that which makes life worth living.

Never before has my own social nature been so clear to me as now, flying solo in a doubly-foreign land. I’ve learned that most people are quite happy to join hands with strangers who are also trying to understand the world in order that they might do some good in it. And I now know that I really, really need to learn, for my own self-respect, a few more languages.

I’ve learned, or rather, emphatically re-learned, that it will never be possible, without the complete unraveling of the native cultures, to overlay the official idea of development onto this land. And I’ve learned that the countless attempts to do so are rather evil, despite their potentially good intentions, in their subversive ethnocentrism. I’ve seen the enormous potential for autochthonous, inside-out development here, and it pains me that this potential is largely neglected in favor of highways, dams, English literacy courses, and new markets for Coca-Cola and GlaxoSmithKline.

I am also delighted to have visited one medical clinic of the Institute for the Indian Mother and Child (IIMC), for there I saw a model of development I can truly cheer for. It gave me hope to see that the ideas of basic health, community empowerment (especially for women), self-sufficiency, and quality human-to-human interactions have not been completely lost in the ratrace flurry of Development (capital “D” intentional). It’s very easy to become disheartened when neither government nor non-governmental organizations seem to be doing the right things, and when the most you can hope for towards poverty alleviation, social justice, and environmental sanity are a few conferences and some full-gloss promotional pamphlets.

I’ve learned that there is such a thing as Ratatat withdrawal, only curable, of course, by a timely mixture of coffee and “Loud Pipes”. (Disregard the funny looks as you jam out. They would understand if they had had that one Indian pop song stuck in their heads for five days.)

I’ve learned that there is an enormous amount of energy in the resistance to the step-by-step, sequential, Keep-Calm-and-Carry-On attitude I and the rest of my culture seem to have evolved and internalized. There is a quiet sort of anarchism here, and it’s slippery as pickles and always will be. The harder the officials push to have everyone in their Rightful Places with Plenty of Work, the harder people will skip work, sleep wherever the hell they want to, buy and sell illegal things, and ignore the “Obey Traffic Laws” signs. I admire this, and hope my country can take a cue or two from India as it rises in power and precedence. “There are no rules to this thing,” said one wise man. Indeed.

I’ve learned that we in the West are caught in a sort of metaphysical crisis, which has been written about and analyzed in countless contexts and through various lenses. Unfortunately, more analyticity and cleverness will not solve the problems of analytically-induced despair and the boredom caused by being too clever all the time. I stop short of saying the East has all the answers, because they’re caught up in plenty of contradictions and crises of their own. But I will say that I’ve learned that it’s easier to take a breath and take it easy when you’re not shoestrung into cooperating with someone else’s view of what you ought to be doing, and the people of South Asia seem to understand that better than Americans. It’s hard to say what The Answers are, but I do believe that there needs to be a real reconciling between these two world-views, rather than the petty liberal “acceptance of others” we’ve been spoon-fed our whole lives. I’ve come to see “acceptance” as merely another excuse for keeping The Other at arm’s length, and I believe humanity must really begin to rectify the collective skeletons in its closets with the kind of lifeways that will be conducive to the continued survival of our species on this planet. It’s going to be difficult, and it will require a new sort of cosmopolitanism and global citizenship we’ve not yet seen. But I’m more hopeful now than in previous weeks that good people the world over will be able to choke up and do what needs to be done. I’ve seen enough wild beauty and committed people this summer to know that a livable, beautiful, crazily diverse future is possible. And that journey is worth taking.