All You Can Do is Laugh (and Pray)

Its time for some real, potentially offensive, honesty, and some confessions.

If you are my immediate family or my husband you already know what I am about to confess.  You will have seen me apply hand sanitizer an exorbitant amount of times in day; you will have seen me worry that the slightly red cut on my finger is absolutely an infection in need of antibiotics; you will have heard me tell you to wash off the tops of your coke cans because one time I read this one article about this one person somewhere who got sick from the bacteria on their coke can; you would have seen me wash the kitchen counter with bleach more than once if any raw meat came within two feet of it; you will have seen me refuse to touch anything in a hospital; and you certainly would have heard me nag you to wash your hands and take your vitamins and get that spot checked out at the doctor because it is most certainly a life-threatening paper cut.

I am a germ-aphobe with a healthy dose of OCD and hypochondria, and a pretty stellar imagination. Now, I don't mean to minimize the seriousness of struggling against OCD or anxiety-related conditions; they can most certainly be crippling. I have my crippling moments. But I won't pretend to understand what it is like to struggle with serious OCD or other anxieties.  All I can know is my own experience. 

Now, I couldn't call my anxiety about germs and sickness crippling, but it does certainly shape how I experience the world, like, for example, a trip to India. I do not have the flexibility, sense of humor and carefree nature that make journeys to new places so fun and so much easier.  I am the kind of person who needs structure, control, and, well, alot of hand sanitizer.  This makes India a challenge. It makes any new place a challenge, really.

A brief interlude in my confession: I want to be careful here. I don't want to paint India, or my experience here, as purely one of contending with the "dirtiness" of the place.   In fact, for this very reason, I would normally hide today's story from most people because I don't want to reinforce denigrating stereotypes of India as dirty or backwards.  The thing is that India, and much of the Global South, has alot more figured out than places like America. They have to not only because of the amount of people living there but also the sheer lack of resources and infrastructure, which go hand in hand with competing with the Global North for those resources and with histories of geo-political oppression.  So, for example, my family is very conscious of the amount of electricity they use and are very careful to turn off things if they leave a room or aren't using it, and they produce much less trash than my American household because they buy most of their things in bulk at the market and have little need for packaging. At the mall they have motion-sensitive escalators that stop if no one is using them, as it saves electricity, and they don't waste a bazillion gallons (or however much I use each year) of perfectly good drinking water for their bath water (it now seems strange that we do this in the States when water is so precious...but that's just my self-righteous rant).  So, when I talk about the challenges of India, I don't mean to say that India is "backwards", I just mean that its  outside of my comfort zone, and full of stuff I can't control and thats the real problem.  That being said, Kolkata does have flooding problems. It also has people with no home and no bathroom but the streets themselves. Moreover, the city struggles to stay on top of waste and sewage disposal.  So, yeah, you're gonna run across some germs.

With my interlude in mind, I will still confess to you that even as I know, as a scholar critical of neo-colonial discourses, that I'm not supposed to be afraid of India or buy into the discourses that paint it as backwards and dirty, in my heart of hearts, if I am being totally honest, India freaks my shit out. I totally love it, and am thankful everyday for this opportunity, but it is WAY outside my comfort zone. Thus, I have totally bought into all those warnings that I roll my eyes at when someone else says them: "India is dirty", "You'll get sick", "Someone I knew knew someone who died there".  Even as I roll my eyes at the things I have been taught not to say, there is always a part of me that feels the same way-- that just wants my sanitized and comfortable and privileged American bedroom, set far away from mosquitoes and monsoon floods. I'm not supposed to say such things as a scholar of South Asia. But I'm not speaking as a scholar. I'm speaking as a broken, foolish, weak and anxious human. 

So as I prepared for my trip, I packed all kinds of products to keep my everyday in India as sanitized as possible: rubbing alcohol, neosporin, aloe vera, hand sanitizer, vitamins, probiotics, and countless antibiotics, tissues, soaps etc. Moreover, my everyday routine involves an admittedly exhausting process of sanitizing my world so I feel like it is "clean" enough to be safe for my existence.

Of course, for me, all of this is about control and faith.

Any time we leave our normal surroundings, we lose the control (or at least the facade of control) that we so carefully construct in our everyday. And for me, India offers plenty of challenges to the way I try to control and sanitize my world.  I will admit that some days it feels overwhelming, and just plain scary.

But here's the thing: I'm not really ever in control. I mean, yes, I can wash my hands and drink bottled water. But the fact is that the world (not just new worlds or "third worlds") offers a whole slew of things I cannot control.  If I, like the AA motto reminds me, recognize that which I can't control and stop trying to control those things, life could be alot more enjoyable. 

Life is always a gift, and one we, for the most, part lack control in.

We are fragile and broken beings and every day we wake up it is a miracle. Beautiful baby Jack reminds me everyday that simply being born is a miracle and not one to take for granted. Every breath is a miracle. Every thing seen, every touch felt, every taste tasted, every person met, every place visited, is an event that some have never enjoyed on this Earth.

But, regrettably, my everyday is filled with my own forgetting to enjoy each moment. Instead, I worry and fret and hurry around trying to keep my life controlled and sanitized, and miss so much beauty in the process.

Kolkata sent me a reminder of this today.  It is monsoon season and today it flooded. Nothing dangerous or tragic like North India is facing. Just a nuisance. But to my germaphobe, control freak self, I looked at that water and all I could see was "skin infection".


But as I watched people travel through the water, I saw a few different approaches to the flood: school children held hands and laughed at the chaos of knee deep water; women in saris piled high on a rickshaw and laughed hysterically as they tried not to fall out; Kolkata police and the neighborhood elders crowd around a tea stall and enjoy a snack as they stand in the water and direct traffic; kids (with absolutely absurdly strong immune systems) swim in the water.  Now I'm not saying everybody was having a great time or that Kolkata loves the floods. On the contrary its a pain in the ass. It takes longer to get home, your clothes and shoes get soaked, and pretty much everyone knows that if you are lucky enough to have a bathroom and soap, you ought to take a bath after your walk home because, yes, you really can get a skin infection.  But there was still so much laughter.

I understood this for myself as I prepared to walk in the water.  We were given a ride home (we are SO pampered at AIIS), but in order to get into the car in the drive way, you had to wade through the water in the courtyard. I will never forget that moment: my feet dry, my legs clean, my world sanitized so carefully, staring at the black water, about to wash away all my work of controlling and sanitizing.  In that moment, you hold back. You stop yourself. You just can't take that first step.  But at some point, there's just no other choice. There's only one way to get home, and that's to get into the water. So you do it. And you do it with everyone else, realizing that there is a whole city of people around you for whom this is just the everyday, and that your little inner crisis is not worth the attention you are giving to it. And in that moment, you are free because there ain't nothing you can do but get into the water. You're gonna get shit on you (literally....there was a diaper floating in the water), but if you have no choice, there is a kind of freedom. You don't have to control anything anymore.

The spaceman in the helmet is the Kolkata Police enjoying a snack at the stall

All you can do is laugh.

Well, laugh, and pray.

This is the other piece of the puzzle.  Its not just giving up control that is hard. Its giving control up to God, in faith.  Its being ok with the fact that God (and not you) is in control. Its having faith in God's faithfulness to you.  That's the really hard part, especially for a worrier like me.

In one of my favorite bible verses (Matthew 6:25-34--the inspirational verse for this blog's name) Jesus reminds his followers that they need not worry about even the basics of life not only because God's got it covered, but also because worrying doesn't do a damn thing except take the fun out of life and distract you.  This is a beautiful and important reminder for me. Its also one more easily said than believed and followed. It is difficult to have faith that God is in control, especially when we are scared; we like to think we are better at controlling it, or at least more immediately at work at doing so.

Although today's little experience was enlightening and, for a moment, freeing,  I still sit in my bedroom with the worry in the back of my mind that I will get sick or hurt or worse while I am far from home; that today's adventure means a skin infection tomorrow.  But if it does, worrying about it won't change a thing, except give me an anxiety attack, and blockade my enjoyment of the world around me and the adventure God is taking me on. 

I don't close this blog with any suggestion that I am somehow "over" being the worrying, anxious control freak (I am rubbing neosporin on my legs as we speak...). I will still pray each day for God's protection. Those fears are deep within me and hard to root out. But for a second today I learned a little about the joy and love that comes with giving up control to God long enough to laugh along with him.

I hope I can better learn to laugh like those school kids wading in the water today. May God's peace and joy be with you and may you believe that "God sends his love and his faithfulness" (Psalm 57:3).

Keep the prayers a comin' y'all. I feel you with me every day and in every step of water.

love and blessings

Retreating to Comfort, Taking off the Kid Gloves, and Seeing God

Note: The next two paragraphs contain a self-righteous diatribe. For the basic "How's she doing" stuff, you can just skip to the third paragraph.

I'm sitting in the only air conditioned room in my house, just after a refreshing shower, drinking a delicious cup of tea and a cold bottle of water, with a meal of my choosing being prepared for me. I am living privilege in India. That's most certainly not to say that I'm not enjoying every gift of privilege--especially the air conditioning and the internet that lets me Skype with Travis and my family. In fact, I must admit that my soft, first-world, pampered self might be finding it quite hard to "deal" if I didn't have these comforts to come home to each day.  Leaving comfort behind is extra hard when you are in a new place (and missing friends and family).  You want to find a rhythm and feel safe and at home. But its funny how much more I need in order to feel safe, at home, and balanced than an average Bengali. And as I, with great thanks, retreat to my air conditioned room and my shower and my cha (tea) and my Skype session with Travis every day, I wonder how do any of you servants, you who leave behind comfort to serve with love, do it?  I can barely go to a fully paid and very cushy language program.  When I am here, I can't help but think about the world's extraordinary servants, and how far I am from their level of love and courage,  not only because Cal is the home of Mother Teresa but also because poverty is less easily hidden here than it is in Bloomington (although it most certainly exists there as well).

Wonderful, wonderful afternoon tea with sweets

I am trying to walk a middle ground in this post because on the one hand I don't want to paint India, as far too many colonialists and missionaries have done, as a dirty, undesirable, backwards place of great need.  Aside from being incredibly culturally rich and filled with some of the nicest people I have ever met, Cal is vibrant, dynamic, often beautiful, and rich with God's presence (I'll return to this). Yet, on the other hand, there is no denying the fact that there is incredible need here, that you can see the results of systemic economic inequality, and that with every step outside, I am reminded of my privilege and challenged to consider what it means to be a Christ follower in Cal--especially when I am here on a cushy language program scholarship. I have been re-reading Shane Claiborne's  Irresistible Revolution, along with the book of Matthew, to keep this challenge alive and well within me--to let it mess me up every day--because the last thing I want is to let the Children of God sleeping on the street fade into the background in my effort to feel better about my surroundings. That's not to say that I am doing anything different as a Christ follower...I'm still stalled out there (see paragraph above and note addiction to comfort). For now I am just toiling with my own inner (possibly self-righteous) metaphysical crisis. And while I worry about getting sick from drinking water or mosquito bites and hand a 10 rupee piece to a woman on the street, someone else is washing someone's wounds and living love instead of theorizing it from the air conditioning. I can't wait for Travis to get here so we can let this screw us up together (from the air conditioning).

A family celebrating jamay shosti outside my home

A week ago it seemed impossible that I would ever feel comfortable in Cal because it is just so, so massive and new. After orientation on the first day of class, I learned that I needed to figure out the bus system to get to and from class each day. I'm the kind of girl who will avoid public transport as long as possible because I am so afraid of getting lost in a city riding on a bus full of people who know I am lost. But it was really the best possible scenario for me--a challenge to just jump into the city from the get go. My first two days of riding the bus were pretty hilarious. I rode the wrong bus, got off at the wrong place, got lost in the city (at night), got lost in the neighborhood on the way to class in the morning, got on the wrong bus again, oh, and got on the wrong bus again.  But with every wrong bus and every wrong stop I am slowly figuring out South Cal. 

My bus stop

Moreover, with every misstep, when I have asked a Bengali for help, they all have been extremely helpful. Sometimes on the bus, someone will overhear me tell the bus helper my stop, and they will tell me that they know the stop and will tell me when to get off. I've made alot of hand-drawn maps, and wandered down some main streets and have eventually become much more comfortable with my neighborhood and more appreciative of the kindness of strangers. Slowly, I am becoming able to look and enjoy, instead of searching frantically for street signs, and it feels liberating. If I hadn't been placed in a home so far from school, I know I would have spent the past week simply going from home to school, with no other adventures in between (note earlier stated addiction to comfort).

The street below my home (that's a Hanuman temple in the center of the street)

So Cal is forcing its adventures onto me. In the first few moments of each unexpected event or challenge, I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach--the "Oh Shit"--moment, and then in the next breath I am just figuring it out,  mostly because there is no other option, but also because I know God is with me (I feel your prayers for those of you praying--there's no other way to explain the goodness of the past week in the midst of my mini adventures).  And at the end of each adventure, as I return home sweaty, enlightened, humbled and mumbling prayers of thanksgiving for protection and the goodness of helpful strangers under my breath, I have learned a new way of getting around the city, found a new, lovely place to explore, and realized that you really do have to get lost sometimes to figure out where the hell you are.  I have also realized that despite my love-hate relationship with my privilege, when I am lost and scared, I will quickly utilize my American middle-class status and walk into the fancy stores to ask for directions because I know they will help me. Oh Cal! You teach me so much!

Birla Mandir

Ladies outside of the Birla Temple

Park Street Cemetery

After just a week, I have discovered the Park Street cemetery (a creepy but beautiful monument to British colonialism), worshiped at a contemporary Christian church service (with a white hipster worship leader with a haircut that's just as cool as Travis'), discovered the metro, enjoyed time at the famous College Street Coffee House, discovered the best place to get doi phucka (delicious street food), visited a handful of temples, and figured out some important basics like where to buy coffee, water  and toilet paper by my house (its the simple things). I've also figured out how to utilize a Taxi and the Metro (hint: always stare at a map for a long time before the journey, so you know when your Bangla has been mispronounced and you are going in the wrong direction).  I can't say that I did much of any of that on my own in Dhaka (don't worry, mom, I'm being safe), so I am thankful that the kid gloves were removed on the first day.  Of course, I am also keenly aware that I've got some guardian angels looking down on me. 

THE Indian Coffee House

I live in extraordinarily lovely home with a very, very kind, and very relaxed family. Sohag and Abhinandan are just a year older than myself and live in Abhinandan's parent's home (he unfortunately lost his parents already, so they live here alone) with their 19 month old son, Adhi, who is an adorable kid with a real skill for breaking electronic things.  Gayatri works in the home . She cleans and takes care of Adhi. Sandhya is the cook who also lives here with her two kids and cooks incredible food for the family each day.  Although there is obvious inequality between my house parents and Sandhya and Gayatri,  I get the sense that this is Sandhya and Gayatri's home as well--they certainly have control of alot around here. Sohag and Abhinanadan are generous, kind and lovely people. They have given me so much and are constantly checking to make sure I am comfortable. They are even allowing Travis to stay here with me, which is very special, and quite unique. But I don't see them much as I see Gayatri, Sandhya and the kids, so I am definitely becoming closer with them than with my host couple. I get to practice my Bangla with them and they are incredibly patient with me. Because they are "serving" me, it feels really strange not to be able to talk to them to any deep degree, so I have an added reason to learn Bangla. It seems to get better every day, and I hope we can develop a real relationship before the end of the summer. It will be fun and challenging to be Travis' translator for them!

Sandhya, Gayatri, Adhi and Sandhya's son

Sandhya's daughter Pinkey

As a researcher, I am overwhelmed by the richness of the religious landscape around me.  It seems as if there are temples and shrines at every step. There is even a thakurghor (shrine room) in my home, in which food is offered to embodiments of divinity and then returned as prosad (the subject of my dissertation). I've even been offered the home's prosad.  As a researcher, I am overwhelmed by everything there is to learn from this place. For Hindus in Cal, God is all around--on street corners, in little shrine stalls, and in massive temples.  For me, God show's God's face in the warmth and generosity of people around me and in the communities that I see on the streets and in homes, and in the answered prayers as I return safely each day. God is alive here for me as a Christian, and as a scholar it is an incredible thing to see how God is alive for others (and to hold those in a mind-bending tension ).  Cal offers so much to think about, so much to challenge me, so much to teach me, so much to fill me.

At the entrance to the thakurghor

And that's just the first week.  I am so thankful to have experienced and learned all I have so far, and to have seen God in answered prayers, kind strangers, and challenges to love and serve.

Dear friends, I miss you so. Please keep the prayers for safety and health going--as you can tell, they are in need daily for this directionally challenged and worrying gal--and any messages of greeting by email. I will post another update in the next week. I love you and am so thankful for the love you have given to me. I hope one day I will have the courage to share your love--which is God's love--with those around me here.