I am now home from my 3 weeks in India and in an attempt to readjust to life in America, I thought I would describes the adjustments needed to life a life between cultures.
Life is so quiet here at home. The quiet is the first thing that I notice about returning to my life in California. Don’t get me wrong, I have a full life here in America with family and friends and a busy job and an active dog. There is activity. But life in America is literally quiet.
Let me explain.
Life in Padhar is loud. Because the roads are only partially paved, there is a constant clatter of vehicles on the road: trucks going over bumps and potholes, motorbikes zoom by as herds of buffalo and goats saunter along. Additionally, the horn is used to notify other drivers where you are located, if you’re passing, and for other reasons I’ll never understand. Some trucks have the distinctive “elephant” song that echos throughout the village. So the road is loud and the village is located around the main road.
Occasionally, a loudspeaker will broadcast a worship experience from the Hindu temple, or from an evangelical preacher, or the Muslim call to prayer.
Roosters crow, dogs bark, cows moo.
When I travel to Baihiram, I stay on the campus of Panchsheel School, which is also on a main road with all the road sounds. The almost 600 children also stay on campus as it is a live-in facility so days are filled with the chatter of children playing, working, eating, going to and from classes. My favorite sounds happen around 9:00PM when bedtime comes and the girls sing several songs to finish the day.
I am accustomed to this noise: the joyful singing, the exuberant honking, the clatter-clatter on the roads and when I am in India, it becomes the comfortable background of my living.
And my life in America is quiet.