Im wondering aloud...Where am i?

Returning home was always going to be a little strange. Basics such as climate change i was prepared for, and God Bless the woolen jumper and the casual denim jeans, how I've missed you my old friends!

However i was not prepared for how empty i would feel.

For the past six months I have filled my daily life with an assortment of tasks, that naturally led me to observe some of the most horrific things in existence in a developing country like India. Abject poverty beyond words, i could not with the whole dictionary at my fingertips begin to explain the alarming numbers of families who are at risk from starvation and illness living on the streets of Calcutta.

I did however see alot beauty, amongst the people i met.

I have said it before but truly the people with nothing are those who wear the biggest smiles. Their sense of community and willingness to support one another in the direst of circumstances humbles me greatly. I have returned to a society which appears to me somewhat fractured and is missing the great sense of community that i have admired and been apart of for six months.

I miss the jubilant smiles, the dancing in the streets, the protective touch between a sister and a brother, the peoples strong sense of belonging and cultural resonances, a mothers laughter whilst at play with her children, the shouts of the street vendors, the general hum as the city beats it's unfamiliar rhythm of horns and cries and i miss meeting the security guard Anup in the morning, who would always shout, 'Good Morning' at the top of his voice as if i had been pronounced deaf upon arrival!

I feel uncomfortable in the skin I'm in.

I love my home, my family and my Friends, but i do feel like I've just slipped off earth plummeted for miles through the atmosphere and woken up on Mars! People keep saying to me, nothing much has changed here, life moves slow in the valley, but it has changed for me, i see things differently. i have become somewhat impatient with the woes of others, my relative understanding of suffering reaches far beyond what i consider to be a unnecessary falling out between friends. I do not profess to be a martyr, hold some higher power, and i respect that everyone suffers in relation to their own relative understanding of what that is.

I'm content for the moment with being lost.

Someone asked me not so long ago what it meant to me to be British? I sat for a while contemplating my answer, wondering aloud why it was so difficult for me to answer the question. I asked them to let me think about it and i would tell them the next day. Before leaving, they asked me another question, what does mean to be Indian? The answers rolled off my tongue, as though it were a speech I had prepared long ago for such an occasion, though i assure you there was no pre thought involved. I began listening the answers i was giving realising that community lied at the heart of my answers.

In the UK i belong to many communities, but ask me if i were starving, would my next door neighbour bring me some food?

I lived in India for six months, i knew my next door neighbours, (though a couple weren't very friendly, no matter how much i smiled), i knew the people who ran the shops down my street, i knew the little old lady who would carry around her wears in plastic bags, i knew the laundry man, i knew the lady who lived two apartment blocks up from mine who taught English at a Bengali state school, i knew the men who worked in the carpentry shop across the road, i knew the man who always wore the faded white t-shirt and always was looking for his wife, i knew the man who would come at 8.30 every evening to the shop across the road just to have a chat with his Friend, i knew the little girl whose father doted on her and always bought her a handful of sweets on Friday evenings, i knew them all, to talk to, to smile at, to sit in silence with.

I've lived in Little Frieth for 15 years and i don't even know anything about the people who live a couple meters away from me. I hear them roaming around the house, hear the lights click on and off in their bathroom, hear their radio, but i know nothing about them.

So i present the question again, if i were starving would my neighbours bring me food?

Humbling thought isn't it. India taught me how to spend my time, and how to spend it well. Time is precious, but better spent i think making a difference and investing in what matters to you and those around you. We build the walls insisting on our privacy, our rights to seclusion and isolation, that's fair enough, and some would say to have everyone on top of one another is unhealthy. However if i were starving in India, living on the streets, the women next to me, would share her rice with me.