Letters from the Subcontinent

Before leaving for Asia, I made a determination that ran against all my previous instincts as a traveler. While traveling in Japan and the Middle East, I was decidedly incommunicado, calling home and friends only infrequently and never writing. This was primarily because I didn't want to shape my experiences with a set of preconceived categories of who I was or how I lived. I wanted to be changed by my experiences and so I generally didn't record them.


In Japan, in particular, I was adamant that I didn't want to record my experiences, living only in the moment...a method of traveling that resonated with my philosophical orientation at the time. But somehow, the transition to Asia is different. I feel comfortable in my role as an observer here. There also seems to be a link between comfort as an observer and tolerance for self-reflexivity. In Japan, I simply wanted to be there, perhaps seeing the opportunity for a more authentic, integrated, existed living within a homogenous culture. But here in the subcontinent, a region that is culturally, linguistically and political fractured in the extreme, somehow being an outsider seems more natural within this context. For example, the impact of the British colonization is evident everywhere--from the decrepit colonial buildings that remain as monuments to empire in Connaught Place in the center of Dehli to the small clinics set up by the British in the beautiful hilltowns of Dharamsala and Darjeeling. The disparity between the lingering British imperial institutions and the life of the impoverished masses is actually an appropriate metaphor for the more general discontinuity among regions, ethnic groups, religions and castes. It is as though the term "India" is just one more in a succession of organizing principles--following from Ashoka down through to the British--that never does justice to the seemingly infinite variety of cultural fissures within the larger subcontinent. The upshot of this realization is what prompted me to take this new approach to my travels. Although many will disagree my sense is that being an subcontinental insider is extraordinarily problematic. Therefore, the temptation to attempt to become one diminishes significantly. And so I record the next three months as a self-reflexive outsider--comfortable with this relationship in my interactions with others.