India has extended the lockdown another two weeks. At this point I’ve given up on including an end date in the title of these posts. It will be over at whatever point it is which is very much out of my control.
A quick update:
- I have cafes — yes, plural — that I can visit to relax, write, chat and gulp down a good cappuccino. (lockdown rules are broken)
- I have friends — yes, plural — that are adults — yes, human — that I have met at said cafes. (lockdown rules are broken)
- I can stay out until 4-7pm instead of the previous 1pm curfew. Shhhh! I was out until 9pm tonight at a friend’s guesthouse. (lockdown rules are broken)
- I still have donation money left and continue to look for more opportunities to build up my Karma points. Will update as the days move forward. (no lockdown rules are broken)
QUARANTINE INSIDER SECRETS
Some of these cafes are not supposed to open, alcohol available to be purchased at three times the normal rate and nighttime parties are happening at various locations. I am only on the periphery of some of these things, but feel almost like a cool kid outlaw with the inside track on the underground life of a Quarantiner (made that word up. I’m owning it).
I am limited in that I only have knowledge of most of these things and G.I. Joe said knowing is half the battle. Maybe one of these days I’ll find out what the other half is.
WRITING REFLECTIONS
I never thought I’d feel at home in India. Amidst the swarms of circling flies, dodging animal shit every third step, sweltering afternoon heat and heaping mounds of discarded trash, it is not what I would have pictured as a place of comfort and familiarity.
Ever.
To reemphasize…
Never in a million fucking lifetimes.
But here I am walking the dusty streets, petting cows, sharing smiles and Namaste greetings, and feeling more at home than I ever have.
Not home in the form of my hotel room. Or the familiar streets and shops. Nor the clockwork schedule of animals traveling from here to there.
The home I refer to is the one within.
I am in many ways more myself than perhaps I have ever been.
Whenever asked where home is along my travels, I often joke that it is wherever I am at that time — the exact point where I am standing or sitting.
There is more truth in that jest than I could have anticipated.
Why, you may ask?
What’s different now versus months ago?
The answer is not India. Not in the specific location of it at least, but rather in the idea of India. It’s rooted in the reasons why I came here (and Sri Lanka), choosing it over countless other available options.
The answer, though explained with simple words, is not so simple at all. But here we go nevertheless.
I once said there is truth in chaos. And freedom in it as well.
Now there is also home.
And this has only been possible through —
Acceptance. Gratitude. Commitment.
These are each and of themselves individual journeys, lifetime pursuits filled with plenty of faltering footsteps yet to take. But I cannot minimize their importance nor effect since taking those initial, unsure steps-now-footprints along each respective path.
There is synergy in these often vague, ethereal traits/characteristics/concepts (take your pick) that cannot be explained. They are only known by being felt.
That is a frustrating reality for a writer. To be unable to explain in words the most important and valuable aspect of human life — the experience.
I wish I could, honestly and truly, put ink to page with eloquently descriptive language, but all I am able to do is relay stories to describe small pinpoints of the experience in hopes that the listener may understand and identify with the unexplainable mystery that flows like an undercurrent beneath my chosen words.
The most incredible event in my opinion is when you share these experiential stories, struggling to identify how best to describe them, and amidst the floundering fumble of attempts comprised of incomplete backtracked sentences, a light goes off.
Not in you. But in the other person.
Your ineptitude has been enough for them to know what you struggle to convey, showing clearly that they didn’t need the right words nor the carefully-turned phrase to realize the meaning.
Because it was felt.
And that, my friends, was the point from the very start.