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Memories of India
by Charlotte Erickson |
Editor's Note:
Charlotte Erickson spent one year in Kerala
working as an young adult volunteer at UC College, Aluva, Kerala.
This article is her reminiscence of the stay in India after her
return back to the USA.
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I left India on a steaming hot day in the middle of August. When I arrived in Chicago 36 hours later, it was another steaming hot day on this side of the world. Now, just over a month later, the temperatures here have dropped. It’s one of those in-between seasons in Chicago – when it’s not too hot and not too cold. I’m enjoying the change, but there is a downside; this season is unpredictable. It might be cold enough for a jacket, or it might stay warm enough for shorts. The sun might shine or the rain might poor. One can never know.
I think I could compare my own life to the current Chicago weather. It’s not too hot and not too cold, but just about right. I’m enjoying the change of season that coming home has offered me. But my life is at an unpredictable stage. I’m not yet sure where I am going; sometimes I am not even sure where I have come from.
I do know that I fall asleep and wake up in my old bedroom in the USA every single day. But even as I am doing these things, it is sometimes hard to believe it. It’s the very same thing that used to happen when I was in India. I would be going about my normal daily routine, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it would hit me that I was there. “I’m in India!” I would say to myself, as if it were news. And now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it hits me that I’m not there. “I’m home now!” I say to myself, with both a sigh of relief and a hint of a tear.
I’ve been asked to write a short article on my experiences in India. This is a difficult task, not because I don’t enjoy writing, but because my experiences are so numerous and so incredible that it is simply difficult to know where to begin; and once I have begun, it may be difficult to figure out where and when to stop. But I suppose if I had only one sentence with which I could describe my experience, I would say that spending a year in India was the most challenging thing I have ever done, but because of the challenge, it was also the most fulfilling and life-changing experience I have ever had.
I would not give back or trade even one moment of the year I spent in Kerala, and that includes every challenge and every tear, as well as every triumph and every smile.
With that in mind, I must say that the year began with nothing but smiles. I have a vivid memory of the moment I could see Cochin from the air. I did not have a window seat on the plane, but I leaned over one of the friends so that I could take in the forest of palm trees into which our plane was descending. We looked at the sight before us in awe. We couldn’t speak; there were certainly things to say, but there were no worthy words. My very first impression of Kerala was how incredibly beautiful it is. And, after spending a year there, that impression remains. “What was India like?” people ask me frequently. “It was beautiful,” I respond, before I can even think about saying anything else.
India is such a beautiful place. But it has its ugly side (not that the US doesn’t). Over the course of the year, I walked around too much garbage in the streets and killed too many cockroaches in my bedroom. I saw too many beggars lying on sidewalks and passed too many tarps under which people were making their homes. Just as I was awed by the beauty that always surrounded me in India, I was awed by the ugliness that surrounded me from all the same angles.
But it was the combination of beauty and ugliness that made it real. It was this combination that reminded me I wasn’t dreaming. And yes, I encountered poverty and pain, and I will never forget those images. But just as often, I encountered the beauty of the Indian culture. I was welcomed by all in my community, and I was taken care of by those with whom I lived and worked. I was greeted with smiles from rickshaw drivers and “hello”s from small children playing near the road as I passed by them every morning and again each afternoon. I was well fed and I was entertained. I was presented with numerous opportunities to see new places and make new friends. I was treated as an honored guest in my community, but I also had the sense that I belonged there, that I was a part of it.
And I was a part of it. I wore the Indian dress, ate the Indian food, and attempted in all ways to blend in to the Indian culture. I made mistakes, but I also made progress. In no time at all, I was comfortable and happy living in India, and, by the end of the year, I worried that I had forgotten how to be an American.
But upon my arrival home, I realized that this was a needless worry. I fell back into a normal routine of life here in the USA almost right away. And the lesson I learned was that, while we may have different customs and we may live differently from day to day, we are, at the core, all the same. We are all people. We have the same basic needs and the same desires. We do many of the same things (eat, sleep, work, play), although we might do them in different ways. Living in a culture that is vastly different from my own, I was able to see how similar we all are.
It is somewhat ironic. But, having learned that lesson, I can honestly say that, although I live here in the USA, I will forever be there with you in India. Your lives touched mine so that I will never be the same. Though thousands of miles separate us, you are a part of me. My prayer is that I am also a part of you.
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