I was only in Los Angeles for one night as it was significantly cheaper for me to start my trip to India from there then from Florida. Steve and I grabbed dinner… both of us unwittingly oblivious to the irony of having chicken korma and baba bhatia from Flavor of India the night before I was to go for a week plus of in country Flavors of India.
Between Naan and kheer, my brother and I discussed a section of a classical Japanese text he’s been translating. It was a “comic” vignette in which a “fish out of water” commoner shows her ignorance in etiquette, charm, and poetry by doing everything wrong… including not even realizing how many syllables one should have in a poem. And in contemporaneous times the audience would be on the side of the nobles mocking the incompetent youth for a lack of education or breeding. Steve and I were talking about cultural comedy and class comedy and wondered when the storytelling tradition turns to seeing the nobles as pompous subjects of ridicule and the “commoner” as a mechanism for pricking their high falutin hot air balloons.
Part of me wonders if the literary shift doesn’t coincide with the socio-economic-political awakening of the middle class… if in recognizing the power of numbers both population and monetarily that stories needed to expand into encompassing the strength of the “middle class” experience. While aspirational tales of wealth and power resonant, we as a global culture shift to stories of the underdog overcoming the roadblocks of class to achieve success and satisfaction.
Steve and I did ponder if the Greek Tragedies with tales of hubris didn’t somehow also indicate a perspective shift… but neither he nor I was sure of how to read the foibles of the gods. Were the heightened flaws of the gods a reflection of humanity or were they at times simply easy of mocking a rival city’s namesake protector/god, the way modern sports teams mock each other?
I have no answers here. The superficial summary above is about as deep as I can go at the moment. And once we cleaned up the take away containers we settled down to watch the Jeopardy Greatest of All Time finale so I’ve been feeling even more shallow and incompetent.
I’ve been feeling more and more like the classical Japanese girl, out of her element, trying to fit in, and failing. There was a throwaway poem that was variously cut or added to the original text that Steve wanted to include because it was resonant and sad… and alters the “comedy” entirely. I’m bastardizing his translation and summary here, taking it out of context entirely and reframing it improperly… call it a sample for my song. The gist of her noble-dismissed “poorly formed” poem is that the commoner’s better who instructs her shouts at her constantly and our heroine tries to do her best just to avoid being yelled at for just one day. Yet the instructor blows in and yells like a hurricane… and our commoner wishes she herself would just get blown away.
All of this is to reiterate that I’m feeling like I’m totally out of my element. This may not be the best time then to visit a different country, immersing myself in a culture foreign to me… but at the same time, maybe it’s an ideal time.
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And yet, I could’ve done without the guy next to me on this flight spilling his wine on me, climbing over me so as not to disturb me only to fall on me, playing his media without headphones, or coughing/sneezing on me. It doesn’t take much to get off on the wrong foot; this guy was more like a whirling dervish of wrong footedness.
Sigh. Just 16 more hours to go….
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I’ve really been feeling I’ve been playing the fraud of late. I always kind of feel like I’m not nearly who I should be, half expecting somebody to point out I’m not supposed to be there or that I’m wearing a coat of no clothing. But it’s a feeling a bit more pronounced since I huffed and puffed my way through the WDW Marathon last weekend. After as many marathons as I’ve run, and after humbling health issues, I thought I had kinda gotten things under control. I still overly panic I’m going to sleep through my alarm on race morning; I still get nervous at the start line; I still try and respect the distance. But I usually feel like i can do the race. Last Sunday, gasping for air, holding my chunky, flabby side, hunched over and shuffling along, I really felt the fool. It was demoralizing to be so physically and emotionally thwhacked. I’m trying not to let it consume my thoughts but that’s the funny thing about our brains – we can tell ourselves NOT to think of something but that seems to MAKE us think of those things and at the weirdest, possibly worst times.
Sigh… only 7 hours to go from Beijing to Mumbai…
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So… I’ve never been to India, but I’m pretty sure I’ve flown with this pilot before… possibly to the Outback in 2015.
After several circling maneuvers, we finally landed 30 minutes late… and then despite it being 2 am, the five customs lanes to exit all wrapped throughout the baggage claim, interlocking, interweaving, intermingling. It took me an hour to navigate.
Fortunately, my hotel’s shuttle driver chose not to obey the road safety weel advisories that “lane driving is sane driving!” As everyone drives with no regard for lanes, insanity might be the sanest choice…
The usual travel time is 45 minutes to an hour. We made it in under 25 minutes.
Shoes off, teeth brushed, and now to sleep a few hours. I left CA on Wednesday afternoon… and arrived here on Friday morning-ish.
Tomorrow… today… we will start in earnest.