Looking Back

I am now sitting at Osho Park  owned and opperated by the Osho Ashram. The locals hate the Ashram for it's open group fornication and skimmed down versions of cherished Indian practices. As if to shock myslef, I find I identify with the locals. I make a keen effort to seperated my westerness from Osho westerness. My knee-jerk reaction seeks the local approvial. I want to feel am I am safe here, not part-of but not apart. Small fish in a great whale.

Once again, today was bigger than me, and too much has run off the top. I cannot encapsulate India. The deeper I breath, the more India rushes in. Into my lungs and hair and under my nails. By the time I crawl home in the hot afternoon, India has soaked up the natural odor of my body and painted me fully with herself.

Before I traveled here, I think to what I knew of life here, what my impression was. In my head, India was images of devout ascetics and starving children on posters for Christian charity. It's food to tempt new dates, a topic of avoidable politics and kitschy elephant figurines from Pottery Barn. I knew it was scarce, guessing a foreign place is like watching a strangers on the street, their there with you, but you only know their dolls.

 At the moment there is a group of teenage girls, in mixed Hindi and western garb giggling and staring at me. One approaches slowly with others huddled behind, egging her on. They peek sheepishly at me as if approaching an older boy on the playground. I know they have questions, I know they have thoughts. I know they are interested. I am much an oddity to them. I suppose I am the cutout from People Magazine. I look like TV shows and structured western clothes which collapse here under the heat. I have short hair, I have freckles, an ipod, and make-up. In Agra and Delhi, young girls and boys would walk up and ask to take a picture with me. I couldn't see the harm. It's not about harm.

I turn back to my writing.

But, I can feel you watching me.
I can feel you wanting to ask.
What is it that you want?
Do you even know?

Every morning on my way to this part of the town I pass a row of cupcake princess dolls that beggars lay out in the street for sale . Little arian angels in green, orange, pink and blue crinalin dresses. They are each pearched on little wooden stands, tiny pink cheeks, tiny glossy hands, silky yellow hair tied back like knotted spaghetti. I see these little dolls, lined up on the side of the road as an endless parade of rick-shaws, cattle cars and trucks march by, spitting dirt and funes. Every morning I pass them and wonder; who buys these little angels? Who are they for? The Indian women who sell them lie in dirty saris on reed mats stretched out over the side walk. A row of backs like staggered dominoes resting in the shade. Lady Domino and the little cream angels.

Today, on my way to explore a new garden, I had mispronounced the name and was taken instead to an in-process construction site. After a few stops, I abandoned the quest to find the place and asked the rick-shaw to take me to Osho Park. Directionally disoriented inside the rick-shaw I leaned out the non-existend door a bit to gaze over the field of motors and gather my bearings. It wasn't until the man next to me had pulled out his iphone, snapped a few images of my breasts and unzipped his pants, that I got the sick feeling I had a few days before. I thought: "I am the lost angel hair doll out in the road." I watched the man through his open wind window play with himself, without shame or hesitation.

Before, when I thought of India, I thought of the sights to see. My big eyes, a continuous 35mm roll romantically, spinning though pages of National Geo specials. I failed to realize, in my painted-planet romance, that they see you back.  They want to know the way I want to know. They want to touch, and ask, and jerk off, to me the way I am to them. I have tried to be as passive and respectful as I can here in India, where English is as common as skinny jeans. But I have not. I am not a one way mirror. I am not ineffectual. I am a minnow carried in the belly of a ship to sea, and released. 

I've written this post twice now, and twice unpublished. Its no more shocking than a hundred stories I have of late night EL rides though Chicago, or broken down buses on the Fung-Wa trip though NYC's Chinatown. And yet, I typed and deleted. Typed and deleted. And then I realized the difference. I didn't want to share with you. 

I wanted for you a rose water and curry India. An elephants and noble natives fable. I wanted to wrap up the faux antique market crafts and present it to you like a child on Christmas. But, I'm not going to. India is a place unlike any I have ever been. It's not a fantasy, and it's not a fiction. Its a world of dark earth past, and wild evolutionary future. In my exposed truth, I came here wanting. Wanting change, wanting honesty, wanting. So I will take India and I will give it back to you. I will see how it goes and I will see who I am.