how india changed me
our experiences abroad transform us in ways that do not come to fruition for many years
experience abroad transforms us: this much is obvious. when we step into other cultures and learn about them, we recognize how much of our own culture is a fabrication used to dominate and control us. we see people living their lives according to totally different norms and habits: we realize that the way we are living our own lives is not something we have to do, but something we are doing, automatically.
going abroad, immersing ourselves in foreign experience, is such a great way to shift our own internal worlds toward new focuses. and as i’ve said, we find reality inside ourselves, not outside ourselves: the external world is useful insofar as we immerse ourselves in environments and sensory inputs that enrich our inner lives, and this is why i am constantly emphasizing how critical it is that we immerse ourselves in art:
but art is only one avenue toward transformation, as i discovered in india.
it’s now been just over ten years since i arrived there to live in kolkata, and now i finally understand five ways in which india transformed me.
i will make no attempt to explain exactly why these transformations occurred. we try to come up with logical explanations for how we transform, but all i know for sure is that my ten months in india transformed me in the following observable ways.
1. my passion for music reborn
in college i had such a deep passion for music: i was constantly listening to music because i felt as if it was only through music that i could access an authentic sense of myself. but then after college, i slowly started to become disconnected from music culture: i became focused on money, career, professional accolade. and i was so sad.
i was so sad during diwali in mumba in 2014: why? i don’t know. i was afraid to spend time with my friends. i didn’t go out with them. i was too scared. i felt like i could not be myself around them, but i did not even know what that meant.
once i was back in kolkata, i remembered: it was through music that i explored my inner world as a child. it was through music that i found peace in the midst of trauma. and so i began finding new artists, as many as possible, slowly at first: then everything came to a head in 2020 when i discovered phoebe bridgers and descended into music entirely. i completely abandoned the news and podcasts: all i wanted was music.
i wonder sometimes: had i not had this lonely experience in mumbai, would the thought have even occurred to me to re-immerse myself in music?
2. my spirituality reactivated
when i arrived in india i was a fundamentalist atheist, with a strictly materialistic view of the world and its reality, and this depressed me, though less so than had the constant trauma i lived through as a teenager:
this experience with fundamentalist christianity had left me very anti-religion in general. i believed that “religion” was inherently bad.
but in india i came to understand that i had no clue about religion at all: i only understood religion from an objectivist western perspective. i thought “christianity” was a real thing with a precise definition.
ever since i went to india, however, i have had a passion for the spiritual and its intersection with music,
and this is why i was so excited to integrate some of that into these posts:
now i am what i always have been: a spiritual person!
and i am so happy that i was exposed to these ideas during my time in india and that my experiences there left me eager to pursue studies about eastern religion.
3. my sense of reality shifted
when we step into a different culture, we can return to our own and analyze our home culture with a completely different perspective. this can give us new ideas for how to improve our home culture: we can look at our home culture with a fresh perspective and we can assess its various elements.
for example, on the most basic level, when i returned from germany in high school i was immediately struck by the endless sea of strip malls outside detroit. i started to think about how much nicer the physical environment in germany felt. now there are so many people in the united states who are advocating for pedestrian-only spaces and less sprawl in our communities.
but on a larger level, i don’t think i’d ever have been able to write something like this if i had not been exposed to a radically different culture:
and then there was this other experience.
when i came back from india to michigan, i was just mesmerized by how blue the sky was. i could not even believe it: i just stared up into that blue for so long. i felt as though i hadn’t seen a blue sky my whole ten months in india.
“except in the mountains,” i often told people.
ever since, i have cared much more about the environment.
4. new interests which follow me for years
before i went to india i was very intent on becoming a “serious person.”
i thought i needed to constantly read dense history books and classical literature, and this is essentially what i did with most of my free time.
once i opted to stay in reading a thousand-page history of christianity rather than go to a musical festival with my friends, and this is why i call myself a ravenclaw.
but i was not happy living this way.
india exposed me to so much new art, music, architecture. i saw enormous mountains and beautiful rivers. i fell in love with the himalayas. and gradually these elements of the world — the beautiful and unserious ones — came to consume me.
by 2021 my interests were blooming in so many directions: roman & chinese history, buddhism, romance novels, 90 day fiance (an amazing documentary of american culture), fantasy… i began watching more television shows! before i went to india i had this idea that as a “serious person” i should never watch television: which makes me wonder, if i hadn’t gone to india, would i ever have gotten into Buffy?
maybe! but our experiences do not affect us in a linear or logical way: our experiences plant seeds inside of us, and these seeds grow into flowers over time.
5. the sudden urge to record my experiences
i felt so sad and lonely when i got back from diwali in mumbai.
i was living in kolkata where i did not have so many friends, just my roommates, and my social anxiety was bad: it was difficult for me to talk to them sometimes.
in the loneliness of that environment, i had a sudden urge: i should write. i should write about what happened when i was a fundamentalist christian as a teenager.
and for the first time, i tried to tell the story.
i hope you will consider spending significant time abroad!
just choose a place that calls to you:
i ended up in india after drunkenly buying a one-way ticket on my phone while seeing a show with my friend V.
so long as you have the resources, don’t think about it too much.
i want to visit India someday 🫶🏾