For breakfast this morning, my Australian (Korean-born) housemate Soo, made banana pancakes. I haven’t done much cooking in the volunteer house, after an incident about two months ago when a lizard found its way into a cooking pot.
But Soo’s pancakes were delicious, and having her bubbly presence in the kitchen makes our small house, often devoid of natural light, feel large and warm.
Just now, she peeked her head into the bedroom and asked if I’d like to be a guinea pig as she experiments on how to best flavor a fresh brew of chai. I can never say no to chai, though I often wish I could-- as I’ve seen how much sugar people add to it here.
What smells like cardamom and ginger delight to my Indian self, smells suspiciously of diabetes to my young, hypochondriac, American self. It’s a struggle to balance these two brains, often in contradiction with each other.
I feel like my experience here has brought me to a point of convergence of the many brains I’ve embodied, and worlds I’ve known during my life.
First, there is the world of an American college student. The volunteer house is currently filled with girls from all over the globe in various stages of their education. We share stories about the best pizza back home, and how wonderful a pedicure would feel after walking through the slum in open-toe shoes for three months. They understand the tensions of figuring out how to put a college education to use in a way that feels fulfilling and significant, and the insecurities and frustrations that arise when we work with people from different cultures. But often, I find myself wishing that I wasn’t surrounded by people who are familiar with the mass-consumption and extreme ambition I left at home. They are a reminder that the lifestyle I’ve taken a break from still exists, and will have to be faced sooner or later.
Then, there is the world of an Indian daughter. I was raised eating khichdi and khadi, like any typical Gujarati household. My mom attempted to teach me how to roll proper round rotli when I was about nine, and we always promptly removed our shoes upon entering the house. Yet, I ate Eggo waffles for breakfast and grew up in a home that cheered for the 49ers and the Giants. Despite the obvious “Indian” forces that have shaped me, I was for all intensive purposes, an American.
In Manav Sadhna, I often feel like I am a daughter to the older staff members, with a pressure to act as a proper Indian daughter should. I should touch the feet of my elders when I greet them, to ask for blessings, and keep my hair tied in a simple, modest braid, slicked down with coconut oil. I’ve definitely grown an understanding and appreciation for traditional customs, during my time here, but I have not been able to completely embrace them. Perhaps it’s the feeling of being an imposter – trying to adopt customs that are not my own, to be accepted by this community.
Finally, there is the world of a seeker of spiritualism. The ideas of karma, nirvana, and atma (soul) have made appearances in my life for as long as I can remember. My mom has been a faithful advocate of the power of spirituality in finding happiness, and forceful in her insistence that the rest of the family find a similar faith. Perhaps it was a case of teenage rebellion, or simply a lack of context in my trouble-free childhood, but these beliefs had never truly struck a chord with me.
Everyday, I see people with lives drenched in tragedy and uncertainty, who somehow manage to make it through each day. This setting has brought new meaning to the spiritual terminology I’ve been listening to for years. It is not a solution to the problem; it’s a lens through which to look at our problems and untangle the unfair or unexplainable circumstances we are dealt.
The problem with living at the edge of so many worlds is that the logical course of action in one world, may not convert so logically into another. Each world gauges value by a different metric.
I worry that the value I add to my life here will be lost in translation when I return home and to school. The importance of spirituality and service at Manav Sadhna has fostered my belief that faithful service will contribute to bringing humanity forward, even if the results are not immediate or tangible, and as a result, bring me forward.
However, in the setting of competition at college, tangible results seem to be the only thing that matters at the end of the day. We measure our worth in terms of grades and income, on an individual level, and by the abstract figures of GDP and stock values, on a larger scale.
Yet, the single number of a GPA that is meant to embody one’s intelligence is really just a reflection of what limited knowledge a person happened to know at a given time. It (most often) doesn’t reflect a curiosity in pursuing new experiences, or the ability to survive in a resource-poor setting. Similarly, a country’s GDP is supposed to be a measure of economic prosperity and quality of life, though it includes the amount of money spent on advertising by cigarette companies, to build jails for convicts, and to clear trees in order to build sprawling new highways (borrowed from John Robbins’ essay, “The Economics of Happiness”).
In essence, these tools all fail as they attempt to quantitatively measure things—intelligence, success, prosperity, happiness – that are inherently qualitative in nature.
I haven’t yet decided how to translate the value I have earned in India to my life back home. And, I haven’t yet decided if I’m okay with presenting my friends and family in America with the un-translated version, and allowing them to piece together their own renditions of my experience, determined by what represents value in their world.
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