Blogs from the Subcontinent

By Piya Kashyap

As part of a creative writing independent study project for Middlebury College’s English Department, Piya Kashyap chronicled her month-long winter-term travels through four major cities in India in a series of blogs entitled “A Journey Back.” The project earned her the prestigious on-campus Alison Fraker Prize for writing.

As a first generation American, Piya had only visited India as a child. Upon returning with her parents and brother, she met a number of family members for the first time. In her blogs, she explored issues of self-identity, displacement, and what it means to return to the roots of her heritage.

In her first blog, Piya wrote, “I have so many expectations with no idea what to expect. I know that being Indian has affected my life and who I am in extraordinary ways that I am only subconsciously aware of. I may be able to say that I am Indian when really the only connection I have to the country is genetics. I don’t speak Hindi and I am ashamed of that. I know little about the cities that we are going to visit and I can hardly pronounce their names. I can remember specifics about my last trip to India but I am hazy and confused about the overall feelings I experienced. I am Hindu and I know so little about my faith. I struggle to believe.”

The focus of Piya’s study was on women in India and explorations of her own identity as an American-Indian woman through digital storytelling, which incorporates travel writing and travel blogging, as well as photography. Interwoven throughout her blogs are fiction, non-fiction, literary journalism, and poetry.

Every Friday, Piya went to an Internet café to post writings, responses to readings, pictures, and digital footage—all under the guidance of her study adviser, Barbara Ganley, a Middlebury College faculty member for the Writing Program and the English Department. Ganley provided Piya with writing prompts and feedback that challenged her to think beyond herself and respond to her critics.

To read Piya’s blog and more about her project, go to http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/pkashyap/India.

HARD REFLECTIONS // As the sharp winds of Delhi scathed my spirits I was ready to come home. My grandparents’ cramped, unheated apartment was closing in; the bucket baths with barely one bucket of hot water were leaving my body cold and dry; my stomach decided once and for all that it was done with Indian food, and I missed my life. India is not an easy place to be, and coming from the U.S., where the quality of life is more than agreeable, bucket baths and no heat in 40-degree weather doesn’t cut it. It is an adjustment that spans miles away from home. But it is amazing what the human soul can get used to. Watching the people of India it is blatant that life for them is tough. The battle is to make it through the day; to not fall off the motorcycle barreling around buses that just aren’t looking your way; to not catch the latest disease swimming in the sewers, to not starve, to not give up, to not just collapse and die. In the West our struggles are that much more complicated, and I suppose trivial in the grand scheme of things. Our days become a war against monotony, a striving for perfection, an ascent toward a height of ultimate fulfillment that just doesn’t exist. In India things might be backward, but they are simple; they are cold and practical. And to people on our side of the fence, their stripped lives are mysterious; they are fascinating in their straight-forwardness. The masses, they wake up each morning; they make enough money to survive at a bare minimum; they eat, they sleep, and where they stumble upon a piece of happiness, they laugh in between. There is no room, no option of anything more.

* * *

After awhile the novelty of India wore off and I found myself dozing off on the long, dusty car rides, and the street sights that had once held my interest, consumed my every being, just whizzed by unnoticed. And the only thing you do start to realize is that lifestyles are much more comfortable in the West. “Either you live like Bisab and Bhabi do, in a beautiful house with a lot of house help, or you don’t live in India,” my mom said. Her comment disheartened me. Is money the key to happiness in India too? Does this ancient land not have more to offer? And if it does, why was I no longer enjoying its gifts, why was I so fed up? At the end of the day, is it our hot showers and central heat that gets us through the passages of life? I hope not.

* * *

I wonder if I could ever live in India, if it could become my home and not just a journey to another place. If I lived there for a few years could I become happy, or would I always be longing for my life in America? I realize that three weeks is a short time to become truly acquainted with a place, that if I moved to India it would be the people around me who would create this sense of belonging, of feeling at home. But when we travel we usually end up connecting with the Americans traveling with us, because we share the experience of life in a similar context.

* * *

I enjoyed meeting my relatives immensely but it was hard at times to get past our differences. My American accent sounded so harsh and ugly against their soft tongues, my eyes in a completely different direction from theirs. The mindsets, the way of being, are as far apart as the distance between our two countries. And it becomes evident how necessary a common ground can be. Sure it is interesting to learn about their lives, about living in India, but when I look at my own life, deep within myself, I find little relation to their souls. I am left with the sinking feeling that I am just a visitor, that no amount of time can make India my home. And once again it becomes merely genetics that link me to this land. Even my parents have begun to consider the U.S. their home. “I have now lived longer in America than in India,” my mom said. “I wonder what I would call my home?”

* * *

“I don’t think you can call India your home any longer,” my grandma said. Even my grandmother was loosening my mother’s roots. But does geography even come close to answering the question of where we are from? Will I ever be able to physically locate my true home? Maybe this deep circle of in-between, this never-ending chain of questions, is the closest I will ever get.

* * *

I will return to India. And it will have to be an effort on my part to journey back, as it was this time around. This was a good introduction, but I am far from the discovery that I am determined to make. Re-reading my entries it seems as though I learned a lot more about India than about myself. But I guess that makes sense. Maybe it is essential to learn about a place before becoming a part of it, being able to really connect with it. But before I visit again, I have to learn Hindi. I became so self-conscious of my language barrier, felt so un-Indian speaking English with an American accent. Although all of my relatives spoke English, they conversed much more comfortably in Hindi. And to reach that level of comfort I am more than eager to learn my native language. I think it’s a promising first step.

* * *

Everyone was so shocked that this completely Indian girl can’t even speak Hindi. When I dressed up in salvaar kameez on my last day my grandma said, “She looks so Indian!”

“Well she is Indian,” my grandpa said. And I am. And it is also an effort not to forget this.

* * *

I made this journey back with open eyes and with an open mind. I was in wonder, in a learned state of constant observation and absorption. And it is too soon to judge how what all I saw and experienced will affect my life. I was broken and bruised when I left Middlebury. I had become profoundly unhappy with my surroundings, with my life. The void that has haunted and inspired me my entire life had become a black hole and I had little idea why. I became completely caught up in myself, with my own issues, a stranger to myself. I also convinced myself that this trip to India was the answer, that seeing another place, other people’s sorrows and pain, a different perspective on life, would cure whatever this was. I put an enormous amount of pressure on this journey. And somehow I shed this ridiculous burden during the trip, but now that I am back home, contemplating it all at 5:30 in the morning in a dark basement, the pieces are slowly falling back upon my shoulders. And I desperately reach back to brush them away. Things don’t seem that different here. My home has remained the same, and sitting inside another dimension from where I was a day ago, I feel the same.

* * *

“How was it? How was it?” all my friends are asking. And I have nothing. I am still figuring it out. This process of self-discovery cannot be over in a mere three weeks. Maybe I am just more lost than before, maybe there aren’t any answers, maybe I will go back to Middlebury in a week and nothing will have changed, except that when people ask me factual questions about India I will be able to answer them. I’m not going to fool myself. I haven’t become a different person; I am not suddenly an enlightened soul. I am just another ant, looking for a way to carry the load, inching along, hoping that I am heading somewhere, searching for a possibility of meaning and a sense of identity along the way.

>>PIYA KASHYAP, from Ridgewood, NJ, is a junior at Middlebury College. She is studying in Florence, Italy this fall. Read her Italy blog at http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/pkashyap/italy.