A Love Letter to India

Many years ago, I wrote a piece on my travels to India in 2008. It’s hard to believe that this was 13 years ago! It’s even harder to think about everything that has happened there in the last few months.

Originally, this piece was titled “Giving When it Hurts: Finding relevance in the land of holy cows.”

Now, I consider it a love letter to a country that taught me so much.

The air was hot and humid, my stomach was churning from the malaria pills, and I had been up since 2:30 in the morning. This was day three in India. “Only day three”, I thought to myself “Out of the 32 days I will be here, this is only day three.” I lay in bed not sure what the day would bring, already missing my family and friends – and speaking English. “Why did I come here by myself?”

It took me eight months to save up for my trip to India, and I knew that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When I first began to save for the trip, there was no clear destination. All I knew was that I wanted to go somewhere that was culturally different from the United States and that had a great need. At the time, I was studying education, and through a series of random conversations and experiences, India would enter my mind like an echo. Little did I know how my desires to experience something new would be answered, and how it would be the catapult to experiencing some of the most challenging and, simultaneously, rewarding moments in my life.

After landing and getting settled with my host family, I left to experience my first jolt of reality. For my first two weeks in the country, I was scheduled to volunteer at a little school that was located in the middle of one of the most populated slums in Delhi. On my first day, already full of anxiety, I commuted in some of the worst traffic I had ever experienced. To get to the school, not only did I need to maneuver through the incredibly high number of cars that occupied the road, but the last ten minutes of my commute was spent pushing my way through the dense population of people that occupied the slum. Arriving at the school for the first time was like arriving at the finish line of an obstacle course that I had not expected to participate in. I truly felt like I had just accomplished one of the greatest feats of my entire life.

The school was very small and under construction. The classrooms were only held up by three walls with a ceiling fan in each one that would be the only break from the heat. At the time, the walls were bare, and there were no tables or chairs, so the students huddled together on mats when it was time for their lessons.

As the students arrived, they were eager and excited to start the day. I, on the other hand, immediately questioned where I belonged. Everyone spoke Hindi, which was a language that I literally heard for the first time when I arrived at the airport. I felt unsure and worried about what I was supposed to do. Unfortunately, these anxieties were only heightened as the day progressed. With no one around to communicate my feelings, I began to feel alone and overwhelmed by my decision.

On day three the sun began to break, and at that moment I could not help the rush of guilt that I felt as I tried to get myself motivated for the day. I knew that I would shortly be experiencing my obstacle course of traffic and people and that I would see some aspect of how someone lived that I was not expecting. There were moments where I felt like I was living in a fishbowl. I was the observer trying to make sense of what was going on around me. As I began to remove the thin sheet that I slept with from my body, I could hear the man from the street yelling “Chai! Chai!”, and I could hear the children from the government school across the street laughing and playing before their classes began. Later I would begin to appreciate those moments and use them as my natural alarm clock.

As I began to take hold of the decision I had made, my fear and anxieties of experiencing something new started to fade, and I embraced the moments more. This does not mean that the following weeks got any easier. If anything, I had more moments of heartache. But India renewed my trust in God. I learned to be braver and to take greater leaps of faith. I matured emotionally and recognized how my own feelings of loneliness and helplessness were only temporary.

India is the land of excess. Not in the way Americans view excess. India’s excess is illustrated through their abundance in colors, their rich heritage – and their smells of curry and spices. Most importantly, I saw their abundance of love for one another and for me.

India was one of the most culturally rich places I have ever experienced, and in the end, Mother Theresa was right:

“If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”