And in the ensuing months, that rug would be ripped out from under me again and again and again.
I spent last semester studying the Tamil culture in Tamil Nadu in southern India. I lived with an incredible Hindu family in the conservative (even by India's standards) city of Madurai. I got back to the states about a month ago. Since then, a lot of people have greeted me with a big "How was India?" How was India? What do I say? It was amazing, it was hard, it was frustrating, it was intense, it was loud, it was depressing, it was fun. I feel stupid when I finally muster up the words "I don't know."
But see, that's the thing. Of all the millions of things I learned last semester, the millions of realizations I came to about my own world view and my own beliefs, that is the one thing that I feel comfortable telling you with any authority-I learned how to not know.
At one level, it was learning how to not know the easy things, the superficial things. It was not knowing why none of the 14 light switches in my room would turn on any lights, not knowing which temple to turn at to get home, not knowing how much money I should pay a rickshaw driver to take me downtown. It was not knowing the language, not knowing why people constantly wobbled their heads at me (it means yes, so now you know). And each time I learned one of these things, I realized 10 more things that I hadn't known. But I was ok with that. I had to be.
Eventually it came to be not knowing on a much larger scale, or realizing that I didn't know. It came to be not knowing where I felt more comfortable as a woman, in a "conservative" society where I had to be home before dark and have three layers of cloth covering my chest, or in a "liberal" society where I am "free" to be made into a scantily-clad object at all the college parties. It came to be not knowing what love really was, when my notions of it were turned upside-down in a city where everyone has an arranged marriage and love marriages are unheard of. The last month of my program we each did an independent research project and I studied spirit possessions at a temple outside Madurai. When all my analysis was said and done and all my arguments were carefully conveyed, my conclusion was that in the end, I just didn't know.
Southern India, like anywhere, has its ups and downs. There were moments when living there was difficult. But I love it. I love the temple elephants that will bless you with their trunks. I love the noisy excitement of the streets (cluttered with cows and buses and people and bikes and goats going every which way). I love the friendliness of most of the people I came in contact with, the way the ground smells after a monsoon rain, the spiciness of the food. Living there definitely ripped the rug out from under me everyday, and I'd do anything to do it all again.