In India, Shake of the Head Worth 1,000 Words

The colors, the people, the smells, the food, the attitudes around here are just incredibly....Alive. The only way to broadly conceptualize this place is as an incredibly dynamic organic mass that is intermittently woven between strands of chaos (the noise of auto-rickshaws, buses, motorcycles, etc.) and threads of great peace and stillness (the beautiful flowers being sold on the street, the Hindu aesthetics who implore you in broken English to match your academic education with a spiritual one of equal dedication, the generous smiles from complete strangers on the street). The soul of this place is not one which wishes to engage in "cultural exchange" or any sharing of differing lifestyles but instead something completely different - India seems willing to engulf you, in a sense which is both intimidating and liberating, into this all-encompassing mass of life. It is more than ready to look beyond surface diversity and assimilate individuals, even foreigners like myself, into a web of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians living amongst one another.

There is a great little idiosyncracy here that I have come to love and enjoy which illustrates this - the headbob. When in conversation, an Indian will often allow his head to bob from side to side (imagine a bobble-head doll on a plane stretching from shoulder to shoulder) that makes them seem as if some joint in their neck is loose. It is both goofy and disarming at the same time, and the best part is the beautiful ambiguity of its meaning. I've asked four or five people since I've been here exactly what the head-bob means, and I've gotten equally creative and divergent responses every time. To the best of my knowledge, it is simply a catch-all behavior to illustrate a very primal connection between two people - not agreement nor disagreement but unadulterated recognition. My best rationalization of the head-bob is a comparison to the African Zulu philosophy of "Ubuntu" - a word whose English translation roughly equates to "I am because you are" or "a person is a person through other persons". As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has posited the concept:

"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."

At least for myself, this philosophy rings true in a sense which is both very personal and very haunting. Having literally sludged through the muddy poverty at the slum of S.M. Krishna Nagar and talked for hours with its gracious inhabitants, I am both emboldened by their pride (which far exceeds their humble circumstances) and at the same time made weak when witnessing hopes for their children which may outlive their own time here on earth. How can a child become a doctor to heal others if he or she cannot even escape the dangers of contaminated water themselves. How can a child become a teacher if they do not even live long enough to finish their own schooling. I have seen too many portraits of lost sons and daughters on the walls of these small shanties to feel anything but "diminished" myself. S.M. Krishna Nagar is an area that can greatly benefit from small steps towards healthier habits and cleaner water, and in this abstract sense of mutual recognition the least we can do is work our hardest to provide these things. At the very least, we must present the opportunity to attain them. Only then will the promises implicit in the statement "I am because you are" begin to deliver themselves to the community of S.M. Krishna Nagar.