As I've blogged through my journal entries about my time in India, I've realized the first several days my journal functioned primarily as a narrated itinerary. Today a month ago, we were preparing for our final hours in Hyderabad, and because we had been on the ground for twelve days I had a glimmer of confidence in my ability to exist in this new place. It has taken this past month for me to let the experiences roll around in my body, mind and heart so I could attempt to begin articulating all that I learned and felt. To say our trip was dense is an understatement. Our first five nights were spent in a different hotel or bus (more on THAT in a bit...) so we were constantly on the move. I was intentional to take it all in - the smells of sandalwood, incense and smoke; all the sights - the colours, flowers, diverse cultural dress; the sounds of horns, voices, ambulances; the tastes of curry, rice, butter chicken, chilis; the feel of less personal space but greater welcome and the gift of growing familiarity with my travel companions. My senses were never on pause. The sensory intake alone made sleep come easy every night and made each morning begin with anticipation of the day's adventures. But the integration of all that sensory data into my being is still being done.
According to my journal, I'm up to January 8th in my reflections - January 8th to the 9th was the hardest 24 hours for me on the trip. While it was "winter" where we were, it was warm. Locals wore winter coats while I was sweaty in my linen. We had been on the go since we landed four days prior, my ankles were still swollen from the 24 hour travel day and I'd not been by myself for more than ten minutes since I'd showered in the Qatar airport. This takes a toll on an introvert. January 8
th was Sunday and we began our day at worship in a Mar Thoma congregation in the native tongue, Malayalam.
Mar Thoma worship was a beautiful sensory overload. The sanctuary felt somewhat familiar, and I recognized the curtained off altar that was similar to the one we had seen in the Syrian Orthodox chapel the day before. We experienced the two and a half hour service in Kerala's native tongue Malayalam and stood for great lengths of time and sat a good deal as well. Men sat on one side of the church and women sat on the other. It was humbling to feel welcomed as a conspicuous outsider. I struggled with knowing when to cover my head, when to stand, when to pray. But our hosts were extraordinarily gracious - Dr. Mothy (our host in Kerala and faculty member at Mar Thoma Seminary in Kottayam) preached and kindly incorporated English phrases in his sermon so we could follow along. He spoke about our senses being windows through which we experience the world and cautioned us not to allow our sensual experiences as embodied beings to override our conscience. It was a beautiful and challenging message.
There was a great deal of incense as part of the worship service and the man who was the incense bearer (is that even the right word? I don't know.) had 25 years experience in doing just that. It's no small matter - there are times when the censer is swung modestly and times that it is swung aggressively. There are times when the gentleman stood tall, times when he offered a slight bow and times when he was in a deep bow as he swung the censer. It appeared there was a pattern to how many times the censer was swung in different ways as well - I couldn't keep proper count because there was so much to take in. The altar was ornate and much of the service took place with the entire congregation facing east. There was a bell ringer and I jumped when the bell first tolled as I didn't expect it to happen. All the windows and doors were open to the outside and it felt like the most invitational church service I've ever attended because anyone could come and go. Children who got fidgety played in the driveway right outside the main doors, people walked forward to offer prayers, again to make our offering and again to receive communion. At one point we heard a protest outside the church making its way down the street. I have no idea what the protest was about, but holding that in tension with embodied worship of God was powerful.
After worship we were invited into the rector's office for cookies and chai and we were able to talk about the service experience. I was unable ot form questions in the moment as I was still letting the experience soak in. We returned to the Chrysoberyl Hotel for a final lunch, only to find the hotel restaurant had been reserved for a private birthday luncheon. We deferred to our professors and they found another place to eat - we boarded the van to...wait for it...The Windsor Castle.
At this point it is important for me to let you know that Dr. Nadella, our professor who hails from India, and whose "research interests include postcolonial biblical interpretation, migration and New Testament perspectives on economic justice," (www.day1.org), was walking into a hotel named The Windsor Castle in South India. Picture this - a group of VERY obvious tourists enter the lobby (this is real - not the actual beginning of a joke about light bulbs) and are ushered into the dining room. This group is in South India and YET we are walking into a room with red velvet chairs, brass fixtures and every piece of decor is British. There are portraits of Britain's kings and queens, an out-of-place portrait of Napoleon, and a poster size picture of Kate and William waving to their people just after getting married. The buffet was delicious and full of local flavours but we drank Coca Cola products. And we were with our professor whose passion is DEcolonization. This was dramatic irony on a Shakespearean level (pun intended)! The very best photo of the day was the one Dr. Nadella took of two classmates toasting with their Coke cans in front of a British royal's portrait (sadly I don't have that photo...you just have to trust me).
This experience so brilliantly illustrates the myriad of juxtaposed images and realities that India shared with us. Here we were, in a nation about to celebrate only its 75th year of independence from England. A nation whose time is 10.5 hours ahead of my home because when Britain's colonization of India ended and Pakistan and Bangladesh were formed, they chose to have their time be between the time zones of the newly created nations that were part of their own until 75 years ago. We were surrounded by beautiful Indian people with varying shades of brown skin, yet there was this shrine to England in their midst and the number one selling beauty product in India is skin lightening cream. This collision of images and realities in a place I hadn't marinated in helped me better see some of the same types of juxtapositions in the US that I'd allowed to wash over me because I'd they are part of everyday reality. I think about how the US came to be - it began with colonizers and the pushing out of indigenous people, so many of our buildings built be enslaved peoples - it's complicated! My daughter now uses self-tanner to make her skin darker in a nation where darker skinned peoples' stories are riddled with violence at the hands of people who look like me. Caste in India is so pervasive and having it defined and seeing it lived helped me see that we too have similar structures that keep people neatly confined to categories they have not chosen. How do we work to dismantle the barriers that colonization and economics built while simulataneously lifting up ways to one another well? This is why processing this trip has taken (is taking) so much time. I can't take my observations of India and tie them up in a neat little package and file them away. What India taught me is to see my own reality more clearly - warts and all - and not be overwhelmed or depressed by the warts but instead to channel that energy into gracious welcome and hospitality and get to work. For ultimately, my story is bound up in the stories of others and the story I tell must be honest and make space for all the voices bound up with mine to be heard.
