Back at the guesthouse I was on more familiar terms with the residents. Being the longest-term lodger there I was graciously welcomed into their daily routines. I think they sensed my deflation upon arrival and that I was going through a difficult thing. And it became a more and more awkward fact that in their togetherness I was exposed to be on my own. Many Indians have puzzled at this fact. I have struggled with their being flabbergasted that I am traveling alone, am not married and have no children. There is a cultural disconnect here that probably can never be bridged. How could I possibly relate to them my difficult experience in life, how I had to learn to make do on my own so very long ago? After having made the mistake of truthfully talking about myself and things falling into the category of mental health in India, I learned that this just wasn't culturally appropriate. Every culture has its things that are talked about and those that are not. So, in time I learned to make an exception to my rule of commitment to being truthful, and allowed myself to lie.
"Yes," I would say, "The wife is in the States with the children. No, she couldn't come along, she had to work. Yes, I will bring her along on the next trip." But to this day I rarely resort to this false presentation. I only offer it when I am exhausted with being put in the position of explaining myself to an audience that is not ready for the truth. This touches on the more difficult aspects of straddling cultures. One day I met a man and his two sons at a basic restaurant I had been frequenting. This was not a tourist spot but a local place that offers, in Indian terms, “homely food.” The man was so excited to meet me that he fumbled with his few English words to forge a conversation with me. He even called his wife, who was working in Kuwait, just to proudly share with her his new American friend.
When the subject of marriage and children came up, he literally could not fathom the fact that I was not married. I could see in his face that it just did not compute. When conversation got too difficult due to my not speaking Malayalam and his not speaking English, I pulled out Google translate to understand what he was asking me. He spoke into the phone a flurry of words that seemed to last half a minute. When I pulled the phone to me the only translation that lay there for me was, “Are you fucking?” Now it was my turn to be flabbergasted. My cultural instincts screamed "invasively personal question!" But this was India; I may as well have asked for privacy or personal space. I then typed in that yes, I was. This response instantly brought him at ease. I can only conclude that he suspected that if I was not married I was some deviant roaming the countryside. I guess that in the end, for many folks in India, being married means that you are healthy… and fucking. Needless to say that despite the help of google translate I am still processing the interaction.
Anyways, my lone self settled in as best as possible amongst the folks of the guesthouse. It stands to reason that they would have had to learn to welcome strangers in their home as part of the deal of their home also being a hotel of sorts. The casual drawing lessons continued with my young students. Things went well for the most part. A hiccup happened when Iz’s favorite, an aspiring med student, over achieved with a perfect cartoon of her own. This did not make the youngsters feel great about their own work. Alas such competitiveness, which I had recently been reminded had been present among students of the Buddhist Studies Program, is probably unavoidable.
Drawing beside the kitchen I got to know Iz’s wife, “G.” She was an exceptionally kind and soft spoken woman. I also met and got to know a couple of the foreigners that had trickled in. Through these people (mostly Europeans) I began to learn the landscape of modern travel in Asia. I also learned about the Europe that they had left behind. There was a lot to learn to bring my travel-chops up to speed. There were strategies regarding visas and border crossings, apps and secrets to ticket and lodging bookings. All of these techniques were in constant flux due to apps and services falling by the wayside or changing how they functioned. Something that used to work no longer did and now a new approach was needed. There were also all manner of do’s and don’ts. And always amongst the travelers there were competitive boasts of trips made, hardships endured and challenging budgets achieved.
This is understandable as travel in India is not easy. Fortunately because each person had their own approach it became evident that there was freedom of expression and choice in travel. It is like many things in that there is more than one way to do it. The use of the smartphone enabled greater independence and a lot more choices than when I had traveled as a young buck. Around the guesthouse rooms was a nice sprinkling of foreign cultures. There was a withdrawn young man from Japan that had been on the road for six months. He had made his way through China, Myanmar and Cambodia before making it to India. A dreadlocked young man from the East Coast of the United States stayed for a few days. He had been a sake’ and Japanese whiskey sommelier at a fancy restaurant in New York or Boston I think. I remembered him telling me with embarrassment that his ”look” had curried him special favor among the movers and shakers of that exclusive foodie world.
Another lodger was Eric, a French man traveling with a Brazilian lady whom he lived with in Brazil. He was staying at the guesthouse for a few days before heading for a much-anticipated trek in Nepal. At one point Eric had been a scientist at a high level. He had embarked on expeditions to Antarctica and had been involved in projects in the space industry. To my envy he had also made ocean passages aboard a sailboat. He could not recommend this enough. He had moved to Brazil to be with his love years ago and he urged me not to try to become an expatriate. Basically he affirmed my suspicion that it was next to impossible to feel at home in a foreign culture. He had grown increasingly disenchanted with the Brazilian culture and government and had regrets about leaving France. Now retired, his budget did not allow him to return to and afford to live in his home country. He felt trapped and was not hopeful about the future in Brazil. It does indeed seem that things have gone downhill there since eric and I last spoke.
Another lodger was Lilly, a rugged eastern European beauty that seemed to be a wanderer of the most hardcore variety. She even had Roma blood in her veins. In my mind this fortified her status as a veteran of the road. Years ago she had sold the modest flat she had inherited and embarked on endless travels. She shared with me how she had met a man and then lived aboard his sailboat in the Caribbean for a while. “You know what we did most of the time…” she told me. I got the sense that using her sexuality for leverage was a tactic that was familiar and useful to her. Lilly related how she hitchhiked through Pakistan before coming into India. This last feat immediately commanded respect from me. She told me how graciously she had been received there. With “the guest is god” belief quite cemented in many cultures in Asia, Lilly related how Pakistani’s had gone way out of their way to be hospitable to her as she thumbed her way through the country. Her favorite place in India was Varanasi, about a day’s journey by train from Bodh Gaya.
She relished the significant energy of the place and had spent time there on and off through the years. After her latest visit there she was in Bodh Gaya for a spell while she tried to figure out a way to travel to the beaches of Papua New Guinea via ship, for some visa reason that I don’t remember. We tottered about town a bit for the few days. An interesting perk was that for most of my stay in Sujata Village I was the only American around. This helped to preserve my cultural experience and a sense of making discoveries on my own. To me, this is an essential component to a meaningful travel experience. I was to have more experiences as the sole American around later in my travels. In every case I tried to act as a positive ambassador of a culture that for good reason is often looked upon unfavorably by Indians and other travelers. Americans have a reputation for ill manners and ignorance, among other things.
I like to think that I was living, walking proof of an alternative.I really made a positive impression compared to the Northeastern States, where New Yorkers had been the only Americans traveling about. “They’re so rude and pushy,” Indians there had told me, “You’re not like that.” What was funny was that because of how I conducted myself, many Indians did not take me for an American. Some Indians assumed, based on my dress and behavior that I worked and lived there. I took this as a compliment and evidence of professor Robert’s excellent training in how to travel India properly.
It was nice to be stepping in circles of people far from what I had been surrounded by in the last twenty years in California. I don’t think I heard the word “dude” once. I did hear “bro.” A lot. Frustratingly, it is a term now widely used by Indians. Anyways, at the guesthouse everyone I met had had adventures and were rightfully proud of their accomplishments. It was a common practice, especially among the male travelers, to understate difficulties and achievements and denigrate those of others as inferior. There was a full range of folk, from the green-horned to the leathered veterans. But these folk all had a story to tell and in doing so they made obvious that for most there were chapters to their life that they would rather not shed light on. Some of these people had left behind their home countries permanently and others were on temporary backpacking jaunts. They told inspiring and sometimes frightening tales of the road, border crossings, close calls, etc.Many of them, like me, were restless and unsettled. Something was off. All that they had seen and done had not satisfied them and they, like me, had been left wanting. Many of these folk had been roaming about the earth as strangers without roots for some time, yet they were fixated on the next travel goal, the carrot on the stick.
I sensed that my trajectory was similar … and likely to produce the same empty results. This was disconcerting. But I had already made the decision to pursue this life. My job, my apartment, my car, my former life- these were all behind me. With a mix of excitement and foreboding I listened to their tales and pumped them for information to help prepare myself.
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