Finally...Adjusting to India

The day we arrived home from our trip, Navjot and I both fell ill....me with the Delhi-belly, which still allowed me to eat, but I had a fever and endured quite a bit of lower abdominal pain for well over a week. Navjot had a nasty cold, with a short fever. I also got the cold, so I was still sick when I joined the gym two weeks later, but I was determined to find a place with equipment I could use to help me heal my runners knee.

I had been reading articles of out a collection on the subject of intercultural communications, and this collection had a few informative pieces on culture shock. One article described about 10 'symptoms' of culture shock, and to my surprise, I had every one of them. One of them was excessive cleanliness.....and I did a lot of cleaning during my first week in Jalandhar City, and I still dust more consistently here than I have ever done at 1430! During my first month here, Navjot and I actually had an ARGUMENT about my excessive interest in cleaning the rooftop......this would never happen in USA. Never.

The article suggested the obvious: learn the language and make friends. I took up the language workbooks again, and allowed anyone who was interested (Navjot, and his guru's daughters) to help me pronounce words and speak sentences. I visited my landlady more, and allowed her to help me navigate Indian shopping. She inspired me to design my own cotton shirts for the summer...because her tailor can make my designs if I provide the cloth and any decorative accessories. In order to do this, I had to try to communicate what I want to the people in the shops the best I can with my language limitations.

The first day, I just went out in the afternoon, by myself, to see if I could deal with the busy streets and the staring people. I wanted to just walk down a new street to see something new. That's where I found an affordable, good gym. I was able to, on my own, find the price of joining for three months, and make them understand that I would return the next day. True, the lady who helped me could speak English fairly well, (which does not mean we will understand each other--India English is not American English at all)..but this experience felt like such a victory for me. It spurred me to visit the chemist's shop to get throat lozenges for the nasty cold that was settling in. I knew some words for this exchange, but 'throat' wasn't one of them, so some gestures and guessing were necessary, but I left with not only lozenges, but with some other symptom relievers (which worked great!!!!...it ended up being the easiest cold I ever had).

Since that day, I have been going out almost every day to the gym...this has added routine to my life, and I 'deal' with India every day: communicating at stores, avoiding or ignoring beggars, securing a rickshaw for a reasonable price, and being able to direct him, and practicing (Navjot taught me) the self-absorbed look I have to have on my face when I am out (or staring men will think I am interested in them). I have been taking on most of the grocery shopping, and I have been dealing with some of the tenant/landlord issues, like paying rent and getting receipts.

Overall, I feel better because I can be a little more helpful to Navjot, so he is not completely running the house and performing his studies. Getting back into shape and healing my knee is keeping me physically active, which is important to my well-being. The language is still very difficult. I am making slow progress in both Punjabi and Hindi. I can pronounce letters and words better, but, as my Italian friend Paolo feels about learning German, I feel it would take a century to be able to communicate well in these languages. I keep practicing patience....that things so simple, like making a dental th and a 'roof-of-the-mouth' th sound, will take practice and patience, and time, just time. The individual letter sounds are so simple, but put within the context of a word...it becomes difficult, and then putting that word in a sentence with other unfamiliar sounds... makes the speaking almost impossible until my multiple, ridiculous sounding imitations begin to so slowly coalesce into the correct sounds...

This evening I returned to the neighborhood I lived in briefly in 2004. People there remembered me, particularly for the volleyball. They seemed quite happy to see me, the ladies laughing as they remembered the volleyball games (as told to me by the young sign painter), and the young adults trying their hardest to communicate meaningfully with me, both of us mixing our limited English and Punjabi. Young girls crowded around me and stared at me until I asked them to tell me their names in Punjabi. My visit became a little party of sorts. I really wanted to find those children who loyally visited me every day in 2004, Preinka and Saahil. Saahil did appear this evening, he must be a young teenager now, he looks much older! He still presents a shy, sweet demeanor, but he is no longer an innocent child who would show me all the happiness he had through his eyes when we played volleyball or walked in the park with Preinka. Preinka did not appear, so I will return another time to find her. We exchanged letters during my absence; I would feel terrible if I didn't see her while I was here!!

Well, it is getting late, I hope Michigan State wins the basketball game, for the safety of East Lansing, and for the fact it would make so many of my friends and family joyous!!