A Foreign Land

Jenna and I arrived back in Delhi near midnight on Monday after a slothful eight-hour train ride from Amritsar. With less than three days left in our 'India adventure', a certain reflectiveness has entered our thoughts. To counteract this, we went out to Delhi's Connaught Place and shopped till we (or, at least I) dropped.

We both have feared our fashion habits have fallen into ill repute over the past eight months. Living hand-to-mouth in India does not inspire in one a great since or care for fashion. But the mindset is understandably different in Paris. Therefore, Jenna and I today bought some items we thought would make us appear if not totally sartorial at least presentable--jeans, some branded T-shirts, a nice button-up, and a frilly-trimmed blouse for Jenna.

This type of consumer therapy helped me momentarily forget any pangs of anxiety I was feeling for leaving this once-in-a-lifetime experience, but some reading I did later made me think about it again.

I have been on top of Edward Said's critical study Orientalism, an illuminating if rather dry academic text. A quote stuck out for me. Said was actually quoting Victor Hugo, when he wrote: "The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land."

It made me reflect that, indeed, when Jenna and I travel home, the US will feel like a 'foreign land'--the differences between American and Indian culture, in some ways, so stark and drastic to be beyond the scope of this short entry. In Said's analysis, this is an advantage for the open-minded traveler (something I hope I have been). He says in response to Hugo's words, "The more one is able to leave one's cultural home, the more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment and generosity necessary for true vision."

Like any visitor, I have judged India by my own context and history, my own experiences and opinions. I have loved this country at many times, and hated it frequently as well. I have been caught up in its grandeur and suffered through its chaos. I would never claim to 'know' India--or a version of India I hold inside my heart--but I hope that I have observed this land as calmly and with as much 'spiritual detachment and generosity' as I could.

Likewise, when I return to the US (and also briefly pass through France) I hope I carry the same generous spirit with me. For I will still be a traveler, an explorer, and in my own way, an adventurer. My 'native land' can still teach me and show me so much, in the same way that India did in a brief, frenzied bit of tutelage this past year.

I like Hugo's assertion that to the 'perfect' person, the 'entire world' is a 'foreign land'. It infers a bit of humility and liberal open-mindedness that, I think, is lacking all over the world (not just in America). But, at the same time, I also feel the necessary pang of native association. The US is my home and always will be. I am proudly American. What I can learn from it and give back to it is a new 'adventure' upon my return.