And just like that, I am back home, and immediately started teaching a series of online students in the US within the hour I arrived.
When people ask about my trip, I find myself answering that it was eye-opening, very much like reading a satisfying book.
I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I knew what it would be like. I soon learned that what I had in mind was a narrow-minded, stereotype-based, and extremely ignorant idea of India and its people. And to think I read! To think I’ve been lugging books, including all 2000 pages of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet. How much more if I didn’t?
But the beautiful thing about being a reading traveler is that we do not read or travel for the certainties; and reading and traveling is an intuitive acknowledgement of an ignorance that we treat with a book or a trip.
It was Emerson who wrote, “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” A great book does this. India does this. But only, perhaps, if one pays attention. India has expanded the way I think about places, people, and even design.
“Thank you,” one guide said earnestly, “for paying attention.” After I repeatedly refused his offer to take touristy photos of me, “So you’re not a Tiktok girl, huh? Most of the time people are only interested in having their pictures taken, they don’t even listen anymore.”
We have stereotypes of Indian men and they have stereotypes of us. Fair enough. But would you believe that two of the most cultured, educated, and refined men I have ever interacted with I encountered in a father and son duo in Jaipur? Would you believe that I felt more safe and respected in the company of my guides, drivers, haveli owners, hotel staff, than in one provincial event that I attended back home where a senior and former politician (someone I’m supposed to be able to trust) undressed me with his eyes? But that’s a story for another day. I have way better memories now.
Like this memory of a Mughal garden across the Yamuna River, yet unravaged by the claws of Agra’s over-tourism, where one can spend the entire afternoon reading and contemplating, or gazing at the Taj Mahal.
Just like that, the transmutation of India into a memory has begun…and what a memory to relish!
The Book-Butterfly 