DATED JULY 25th

This was the first thing I wrote on the trip. I am not sure I feel the same way. But, anyways, there it is.


Initially the only difference between this trip and any other to India was that my family wasn’t coming with me. Instead, I held on to my own passport, slept on my own shoulder on the plane, and couldn’t steal anyone’s extra bread roll. Everything else on the trip seemed previously seen—the airplane blankets we desperately wrapped around our small brown bodies despite the static cling and smell of vomit; the discomfort of sitting upright for more than half a day; the luxury of watching multiple Bollywood movies in a row. We were all well acquainted with the journey, just strangers to each other.

Once we landed, that same tearing sense of familiarity and estrangement, one that continually resonated with us since we took the very first trip to the home country years before, consumed us. The same disparity between the tall, glass buildings and the short, muddy huts, the same littered streets, the same potholes and stray cows, the same colors in the street and blatant stares at our bare legs, and the same heat and warmth, all equally confused and relieved us. We got into our Bharat Yatra bus and started a 6 hour journey to Mandawa, Rajasthan. We passed by 2 naked boys showering by the highway, and they waved to us with a sense of wonder. We waved back to them with the same sort of curiosity, and took pictures of them as they became part of the frieze.

It soon became very dark, and the bustling India we know in the day conceded to the vast emptiness of the night. None of us was from Rajasthan, and so the night was even more isolating than in years past. The bus drove past endless fields of green, of bent trees, of dirt. And a feeling of fear suddenly rose in my chest, a feeling I have had in India before. I was in the midst of an impenetrable mystery, unable to solve it, unable to participate. We passed by lots of arbitrary buildings, a lone cement block in the middle of a field, abandoned shops and carts, and miscellaneous wrappers evidencing the day’s events. I wanted to know everything that had happened, wanted to know the purpose of the shed, of the cart, and wanted to know who was there just 12 hours before. Every inch of land had a story, and it was in a language I would never understand. I was watching, I was alone. Like everyone else pretending to fit in with ease, I found myself caught up in my own lies, unsure of my place in this dark, desolate, and incredibly quiet place.

How can we call this the home country when we bring with us precautions, when we make sure to carry repellant and antibiotics and flipflops for the perpetually wet bathrooms? How can we call this the home country when we fear theft and harassment? How can we call this the home country when we sit staring, while everyone stares back at us?

I finally went to sleep, in hopes of finding an answer soon, ideally in the next 13 days.