today's map of beth

Whenever we travel, I get to thinking about our life in India. Because we are about to leave, I am pondering more than ever the things that I'm going to miss and the things that I can't wait to get away from. This may be the next-to-the-last installment (or it may be the last, depending on what I do or do not care to say in a month) of “Beth's Emotional Map of Her Two Years in India”.

We have been tracking my development from the beginning, and a lot of it has been extremely positive. Quite honestly, I would not change the experience for anything (once again, I'm not at all convinced that Chris would say the same). Some of it has been hard, but it has all definitely taught me a lot about life in the Foreign Service. As I believe I said a very long time ago, in the very beginning of this adventure, it was harder to adjust to Foreign Service life than it was to get used to being in India. The very small universe, the forced friendships that would probably not occur in the “normal” world, the constant need to be on good behavior both in and outside of work, and the vigilance that comes with having your every moment, public and private, potentially examined under a microscope can all be very tiring and can wear a person down. That, and the thankless, horrible, never-ending, dehumanizing work that almost killed my husband . . .

(We know - read: sincerely hope and pray - that this is a situation particular to Chennai and not indicative of the Service as a whole)

But the rewards, in my opinion, outweigh the demands. Especially once you get used to it and once you learn from the many mistakes that you make in the beginning. After one tour, I feel very confident that I will not make the same mistakes again. The travel, the intense and in-depth exposure to other places and other people, and the vitality of the majority of the FS community is exciting and mind-expanding and extraordinarily educational. Also, we get free housing. Coming from New York, that actually means a lot.

Anyway . . . India has been hard. I have said this, and I have tried to explain why as well as I can, but it's very difficult to pin down. I love it here and, again, I would not change it for anything. It is a place that I will remember for the rest of my life and I will always be thankful that I have had so much experience with Indian culture and Indian art and Indian food (me, always with the food). Mostly, I have loved traveling. The trips that we have taken have really enhanced my life in a lot of ways. But, as always, some things happened in Bangalore that reminded me of why I can't wait to move on.

Going into detail is pointless, because it is the same story every day of our lives here. The fundamental problem with being here . . . the thing that makes it so damn difficult for me to be a whole person here . . . is this complete inability to communicate. I have said this before, but I will try to explain it again.

Mind you, this is NOT a language problem. It is a cultural problem.

First of all, I am American. I am American and I am rich and I work at the Consulate, that enigmatic entity that doles out one of the most highly prized items that many South Indians can imagine - a visa to go to the United States of America. Whatever anybody wants from me, it is NOT to know who I am or to understand me or to be my friend. They already know me. They know who I am, where I come from, and what makes me tick. They know my motivations, my priorities, what I care about, and what I believe in. They learned it from Hollywood movies. It would take all of my effort to dig myself out from under what people ALREADY know about me and, if that task could ever be accomplished, I wouldn't have the energy left to begin the project of educating them about who I really am and what really makes me tick.

(Here is a thought that I wrote to one of my friends from my ConGen class. He is in Guangzhou, China, and is experiencing similar issues: "It's hard to be "you", qua you, when you are already so many things on top of you that you can't even begin to shovel yourself out from under the suppositions and the trivializations and the assumptions regarding your motives and your driving forces. It wears a body down.")

Secondly, this leveling of my personality is part of a chain reaction that forces me to level back. When one sees a thousand people a day, all telling the exact same story for the exact same purpose, it begins to seem like a pattern. The visa line is my version of their Hollywood movie. All I ever needed to know about Indians, I learned from the visa mill. And that is EXTREMELY sad. I have made some very good friends. I have even made a lot of friends through this website, many of them who live in the US and who, as displaced Indians, go through the very same thing that I do here, only in reverse. It is comforting for me to know that people all over the word who are plopped down into foreign cultures all experience this same inability to communicate on an even footing. But I often find myself in situations where even the hope of communication is utterly impossible. They will think that they know what I mean, and I will think that I know what they mean, and we will all be totally and completely and utterly wrong. We "know" each other so well that we can not possibly ever know each other.

And imagine this: I am famous AND a second-class citizen, all at the same time. People watch us whenever we go in public. They stare at our car and they stare at me. People want to take their picture with me to show it to their friends. People are overly deferential and want to make me happy. However, American women drink and smoke and have sex with men that they are not married to. We are exotic sluts. I could easily charge admission for people to watch me sit in a cage, smoking a cigarette and drinking whiskey. Once, an employee at Temple Bay asked me to kiss Chris in front of him so that he could watch. We are utterly dehumanized. While we are partially godlike, we are also demonized. We are included in a caste somewhere above Brahmins and yet somewhere below untouchables, all at the same time. It is very confusing and frustrating and depressing.

Every time we go anywhere or do anything, we have to brace ourselves for the fight. It is a trial to accomplish anything that requires any sort of interaction with others. It takes time and patience and an extraordinary degree of self-control to get even the simplest of chores done. My biggest single difficulty comes after those moments when I get truly angry and become aggressive with Indians. Sometimes I find myself reduced to acting in a way that has nothing to do with my own personality. I have to become a battleaxe to get anything done, because it is the only way to get my point across and, in some nefarious way, it is what is expected of me. After the fact, I have asked Chris many times, in despair and full of a seething meaness and some intangible sense of shame, “why did they make me act that way?!?”.

So this is where we have ended up. It has been an extraordinary experience and I have enjoyed myself immensely, but it's pretty much over. It's very yesterday. I am ready to move on. I hope that I do not sound too cynical. And I truly hope that I am not too judgmental. I try very hard not to be.

Of course, Japan is going to be even harder, according to all available data . . .