Back to India One Week Later

Bangalore Castle: May 28, 2012

Determined to stay awake until this evening, and make the most of my one free day in Bangalore I had a driver take me in search of earrings for Shar. In route I went to see Bangalore Palace. Built 150 years ago by a Sultan that was reinserted on his throne by the British, it is an amazing embodiment of art, wealth and architecture reflecting the taste and values of collaborators with the British Raj. This castle was built at a cost of one million rupees to look like Windsor castle. The interior captures Victorian and Tudor tastes filtered through Indian sensibilities.

Less Worry, Less Wonder: May 30, 2012

It's 11:45 pm and I just arrived at the Marriott in Pune after an hour flight from Bangalore. On the drive from the airport to the hotel I saw my first traffic light anywhere in India. We came to a red light at a major intersection. As soon as there was a break in the on coming traffic all of the stopped cars just proceeded ahead through the intersection at full speed. Like median dividers and other traffic control devices the light was apparently understood to be ornamentation. Actually it seemed like a pretty reasonable thing to do, like turning right on red. Two weeks ago, when I was here, I'd think, "Can you believe this shit?”  Now it's more like, "Hey, not a bad idea."

I always thought of Beginner’s Mind as a state of effortless wonder; a baby lying wide eyed on the bed drinking in the dazzling newness of it all. But a baby doesn’t have to catch a plane or find a business park in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that Beginner’s Mind consumes a lot more energy if you are trying to get things done.

When I was in India two weeks ago it was my Beginner’s Mind trip. Everything was new, unknown, and unpredictable: do I have all the documents in order, will I be able to withstand the jet lag and brutal schedule, will all the little things that we take a for granted – electricity, receptacles that accept the plugs to my equipment, common language, addresses that can be easily found, and so forth – will they all come together so that I can do my work? This created a state of both anxiety and wonder.

The wonder was Beginner’s Mind. It was astonishing and endlessly fascinating to see the contrast between worlds and realities. I could see myself and the givens of our culture with new eyes and deeper understanding. But the anxiety and effort to navigate even the smallest details with full attention and effort rather than knowing that they would take care of themselves took a lot of energy.

This trip the equation has flipped. I now know the ropes. Certain things that I was worried about on the first trip I now know to be non-issues. Others I have taken the necessary steps to avoid. The connections are more solid, the destinations known, the entire enterprise more stable and predictable. On the upside this means less stress and energy; on the downside much of the wonder is gone. Not completely, but the contrast with the last trip is noticeable. It almost seems like the equation is: Less worry, Less wonder.

Traveling in this space between worlds, random observational snip-its like this pop up all the time, flutter around, and then disappear. I think it’s just the by-product of coming unglued.

Coming Unglued

Coming “unglued” generally means going crazy or losing it, but in the best tradition of R.D. Lang, it also seems to describe getting unstuck from a familiar, fixed reality or state of mind. Routines and predictability provide the glue that keeps our realities stuck together in one piece.  They sustain the illusion of permanence. At home, time and body rhythms fit together smoothly – up by 7:30, dinner at six. I generally know what day it is, and certain days correspond with certain activities: working Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, playing music on Fridays, or watching favorite TV shows at night. It’s all so normal, so familiar; it seems real. Scramble days and time by traveling halfway around the world (every other week,) and it becomes stunningly clear it’s not.

Stripping away the props of identity: home, friends, and family, familiar foods, destinations, and schedules, creates a very floaty feeling. Who am I without these immediate reference points?  I have very little future orientation. I am living very here and now. There’s a-matter-of-factness to everything, which on the one hand feels very grounded, very basic, but on the other feels a little bland. That’s a weird way to describe being in India, I know. But it’s just another odd contradiction in a world bursting with them. Are our lives at home so much more coherent, or just more familiar? Questions like these keep surfacing – they come and go. Arriving at answers does not seem to be the point. Apparently it’s just what my mind does as it comes unglued.

The Butler Did It

In any training room in corporate America there will be three or four waist-high (pardon the pun) garbage cans at the back of the room and by the end of the day all of them will be overflowing with trash. When I scanned the back of the training room in India for the garbage pails I couldn’t find them. Explanation: they were too small to see. They have two petite little garbage pails about the size you might have in your bathroom, and at the end of the day they are still not full. In their washrooms the paper towel dispenser provides you with paper sheets that are the size of two squares of toilet paper. I am guessing from these anecdotes that they are much more frugal with their resources.

On the other hand the company training room comes with a butler. Throughout the day a young man in a white shirt, black vest, black bowtie, and, get this, white gloves enters the training room and places little plates of cookies, bowls of sweets, and china plates with grilled sandwiches on each table. The elegance of this practice is somewhat undercut by the intermittent power interruptions that occur throughout the day. I am told that is caused by some load balancing inefficiency of their power company. It’s no big deal. Two or three times a day the power goes out, we keep working in the semi-dark, and then it kicks back on. I guess normal is whatever you’re used to, and it seems that we can quickly get used to just about anything – even the butler.