It's been two months since I wrote here! It's a new year, which suggests that something must have changed, but not that I can tell. New Year's Eve, every year, is a ritual I go through in the hopes it'll live up to its impossible symbolism. I keep thinking that one of these years I'll have the New Year's Eve to end all the years, after which I can say, that's it, I've done this right, now I'll throw in the towel and stay home every year like a normal person. But it hasn't happened.
I've been in Delhi for five New Year's, and when I tell people this, I start to feel a little uncomfortable, like I have to justify getting swept along for so long by fate. The landscape of Delhi in winter lends itself to reminisces and possibly Gothic novels, with spooky white fog rising everywhere like steam off a pot of boiling water. Driving through the streets is largely a silent and isolated adventure, and every moment I expect some Hound of the Baskervilles to come up behind, or Heathcliff to entreat from an intersection. Instead, we barely avoid sideswiping other people who are jumping red lights.
Recently, I've been trying to address my anxiety about symbolic events by embracing them. If New Year's disappoints, please imagine the many years I've spent hiding from the prospect of that other obnoxious annual event, the birthday. Who doesn't feel anxious about their birthday? I would like to meet that person. I think it was 2010 that I celebrated my first birthday in Delhi. I invited nobody, intending to suffer it stoically and then pretend it had never happened. But late in the evening some friends came over anyway. I blew out the candles on the tiny but delicious cake. My power had gone out, and so we ate cake and told stories by the white light coming from someone else's living room across the street. The couches in my apartment were so close together that our knees touched the plastic table.
When I think about that, I think about the many ways my life has changed, but also, the many ways it has stayed the same. The other day, I read some post on Facebook that asked, "what would you tell your younger self if you could?" I don't know if I'm at the age where my younger self - any of my younger selves - would really want my advice, but the first thing I thought was, things change a whole lot less than you would expect. The locations and circumstances of life may have altered, but the thing I am most struck by, of late, is how seamlessly each phase of life has led to the next. I don't think anyone who knew me at age 13 would be surprised at what or where I am now, and to be honest, that's probably true of most of us.
This realization doesn't coincide very neatly with the political situation in Delhi, or possibly in India as a whole. Everywhere I go, I see slogans and Facebook groups promoting change. I've rarely seen so many people so whole-heartedly advocate a total break with the status quo. And some of them, in daily and minor ways, manage it. If life accrues, then so does its alteration. Nothing changes overnight, but rather by a process almost chemical in its exactness, until years later the final object is nothing like what it was. Unlike in the case of two chemicals, we have no way of knowing how we will interact and react when faced with the things that change us.
A friend told me the other day that I'm a romantic; she said it with surprise. Someone else recently told me that many people spend a lot of time denying what they feel. And maybe that relates to the idea of romanticism, of holding what you love at the core of your life. I suspect that people who do that, also change less. Or surprise us less by the changes.
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I wrote about living in Delhi, globalization, and women's changing place in the world in an essay for the Common. Read it here.
I've been in Delhi for five New Year's, and when I tell people this, I start to feel a little uncomfortable, like I have to justify getting swept along for so long by fate. The landscape of Delhi in winter lends itself to reminisces and possibly Gothic novels, with spooky white fog rising everywhere like steam off a pot of boiling water. Driving through the streets is largely a silent and isolated adventure, and every moment I expect some Hound of the Baskervilles to come up behind, or Heathcliff to entreat from an intersection. Instead, we barely avoid sideswiping other people who are jumping red lights.
Recently, I've been trying to address my anxiety about symbolic events by embracing them. If New Year's disappoints, please imagine the many years I've spent hiding from the prospect of that other obnoxious annual event, the birthday. Who doesn't feel anxious about their birthday? I would like to meet that person. I think it was 2010 that I celebrated my first birthday in Delhi. I invited nobody, intending to suffer it stoically and then pretend it had never happened. But late in the evening some friends came over anyway. I blew out the candles on the tiny but delicious cake. My power had gone out, and so we ate cake and told stories by the white light coming from someone else's living room across the street. The couches in my apartment were so close together that our knees touched the plastic table.
When I think about that, I think about the many ways my life has changed, but also, the many ways it has stayed the same. The other day, I read some post on Facebook that asked, "what would you tell your younger self if you could?" I don't know if I'm at the age where my younger self - any of my younger selves - would really want my advice, but the first thing I thought was, things change a whole lot less than you would expect. The locations and circumstances of life may have altered, but the thing I am most struck by, of late, is how seamlessly each phase of life has led to the next. I don't think anyone who knew me at age 13 would be surprised at what or where I am now, and to be honest, that's probably true of most of us.
This realization doesn't coincide very neatly with the political situation in Delhi, or possibly in India as a whole. Everywhere I go, I see slogans and Facebook groups promoting change. I've rarely seen so many people so whole-heartedly advocate a total break with the status quo. And some of them, in daily and minor ways, manage it. If life accrues, then so does its alteration. Nothing changes overnight, but rather by a process almost chemical in its exactness, until years later the final object is nothing like what it was. Unlike in the case of two chemicals, we have no way of knowing how we will interact and react when faced with the things that change us.
A friend told me the other day that I'm a romantic; she said it with surprise. Someone else recently told me that many people spend a lot of time denying what they feel. And maybe that relates to the idea of romanticism, of holding what you love at the core of your life. I suspect that people who do that, also change less. Or surprise us less by the changes.
====
I wrote about living in Delhi, globalization, and women's changing place in the world in an essay for the Common. Read it here.
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