One and not the other.

This project week we travelled down the south of India, to Tamil-Nadu and Kerala, and went as southern as I've ever been anywhere in the world, to the tip of India. After being accustomed to travelling via train and bus for quite some time now, and generally getting used to Indian modes of transportation and attitude, I think I realized something rather discouraging about myself. I get really pissed with Indians, excuse my generalization. Here, up straight, I said it. They annoy me. They infuriate me with their annoying attitude sometimes.

Chiefly, I think, I feel like they always try and trick me. I can't stand when I feel like I'm being deceived, like everyone around me is scamming to fool me and squeeze some profit from my clueless foreignness. I attribute this to the fact I cannot understand the culture and society I'm currently in. The structures and norms of the society I was brought up in are so heavily ingrained in me, cultural relativism just makes me anxious and edgy. Something are so inherently different, that I just cannot imagine assimilation and promptly reject any kind of similarities. For example, the whole atmosphere and treatment of religious sights are so contradictory to my notion of sacredness and holiness, that I find it impossible to take them seriously, in addition to the already somewhat mischievous feeling I get in Hindu temples.

I'm having a hard time with this, with myself. I don't like seeing how sometimes, unconsciously mostly, I tend to assume a more 'superior' statues than the Indians around me. I noticed this when, sitting in a bus for a few good hours, I got irritated by the constant glimpses of people around at us. I was irritated because I felt I was better, and that 'where I come from' this would be rude. I was maybe even flattered in some way by the attention I was given...

I tend to think of this is the dialectic of the West and the East. I just can't get out of my head this perspectivism that prevails in my mind as I travel, as I look at India and Indians. I will go as far as saying that at times I feel like this whole world around me is merely an illusion, a pretence. That people can't actually, truly, live here, and that the West, home, with all that comes with it, is the 'real thing'.

It's rather depressing. And I feel there's nothing I can do about it.