Exorcising ghosts from the past

March 14, 2004,

Dear XXXX,

I am stuck for words as soon as I finish typing your name. So you know how this letter is going to turn out.

Let me attempt to make this one different from the usual declaration of a love that will not be.

I woke up this morning and found myself in Bangkok.

When I write this line again, hopefully it will be true. Actually, I woke up this morning and found myself in Auroville. I came here to meet Jesus. (Strange place to look for him). Anyways this Jesus runs a dyeing company called “Colours of Nature” and, as the name implies, he works with natural dyes. Unlike his long gone namesake, this man is rude, unprofessional and suspicious. He could have told me that he is not interested over the phone instead of making me ride 135 kms. I frankly don’t understand why he doesn’t want to work with us when all we want is for him to dye 50-100 cotton sarees. Anyways, it is his loss. Now I am on the look out for other people who dye fabric with natural colours.

The rest of the day was fine. I created a billing system in excel for this organic farm where I have been volunteering. I saw a documentary on Bob Marley’s life in the evening. There was dancing to reggae before and after the screening. This was fun. I had to keep reminding myself that I was still in India. Considering I was one of 5 Indians in this gathering of about 300 people. Several thoughts were running through my head, “So this is how Hippies dance!!” “I don’t listen to Reggae. What am I doing here?” “I don’t belong here. This is not my place.” “How many others feel the way I do?” “I don’t fit in here.” (That’s the way I feel most of the time. So I just ignored that thought.)

I observed the people and came to the conclusion that most of them were far away from home on a shoe string budget and just wanted to let their hair (maybe I should use the word ‘dreadlocks’ instead of hair) down on a Saturday evening. And it was pretty much like any other party I have been to. I saw all the stereotypes –
the wall flowers,
the cool ones with the cool moves on the floor,
the group smoking grass in the corner,
the guys trying to impress girls with tai-chi and Capuvera and failing miserably,
the couple trying to Jive to Reggae,
girls dancing alone who groove so sensually to the music that you want to …,
guys and girls dancing alone and
just regular people having a good time.

The only strange thing was that THEY WERE ALL WHITE. It is funny that I should run into this congregation in a small town in South India and feel like an alien.

And then there was me. The outsider. The observer. I’d like to think that I was the only one of my kind. But I am not sure. This letter is threatening to run into two pages. So I shall stop.

Love


P.S: One last thing. This is something that has been troubling me for the last three months since my granny had a stroke. I have been unusually curt and brusque with her. That’s because, everytime I see her, I want to tell her “My dad did not die because of me.” She used to say so in anger when I was a kid. Now she is 82 and I feel I should hold my peace let her go in peace. I needed to get this out of my system. I feel a lot better already.