"Americans are very time oriented people..."

"It's true, it is a very Western concept - time and scheduling. Not something that is very typical of the East"

This was from my Hindi teacher last week. The crux of his argument was that many of his previous American students suffered under the burden of wanting to get certain things done within a particular time frame ... "I will learn the script in a week!" ... "I'll finish a chapter a week in the lesson book!" ... My teacher said ideas like that can be very detrimental in a place like India, where schedules and timing are virtually no existent.

"Oh, the concert says it will start at 7pm? Best not to show up before 8pm."
"The repairman said he'd be back in a half hour? Hmmm... guess we'll be hanging around the apartment for the rest of the afternoon."
"Oh Hello! So good to see you, I wasn't expecting you ... ummm... didn't you say you would come by last week?"

We've learned a long time ago that time doesn't mean the same thing here. Another thing to add to the growing list of things I took for granted back home, but, you'd be amazed how much more efficient you can be while errand shopping when there are sidewalks... when at best you're delayed by a "slow-walker" ... rather than dodging cows, crap, and cars! Our running joke/sanity-maintaining-mantra is "Even getting one thing or errand done in a day should be considered a big accomplishment" ... so why should it be any different when it comes to school work here?

I'm laughing (instead of crying) about my teacher's advice because it came on the very day I had started my new "school schedule." I was frustrated by the fact that my time hasn't been very organized during the day - I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment because I couldn't ever see an errand/project/reading the entire way through. So, I wrote out a class schedule for myself: while Allen was away at school at the Institute, I started school at home. An hour of Hindi, and hour of computer science, an hour of history/economics/political science reading! Accha (good)!

Hours after my Hindi teachers prophetic warning about setting myself up for disaster, I wasn't feeling well. By the end of the evening I had an elevated temperature and by the next morning I had a full blow fever. Allen lovingly took me to the doctor - who diagnosed me with an amoebic infection* - and looked after me for the next couple of days... which was a real help because I was totally delirious because of the fever.

I wouldn't say I'm back to 100% yet - but, I can't help but laugh (instead of cry, remember) at the delicious irony that I was really put in my place about trying to keep a rigid schedule.... It also makes me think about India as being the birth place of Buddhism: life is impermanence, trying to force the universe to bend to your desires will only result in frustration and anger; it is better just to accept the circumstances that life hands to you.

I'm still working on that acceptance part ... but we'll see.

____
*Side note: (Not that much can be done about it) But I'm tired of *always* being diagnosed with "traveler's diarrhea" when I'm sick. It wasn't my stomach that was the problem, I had a fever ... but invariably it seems that when one of us videsh (foreigners) get sick we're prescribed a regime of antibiotics/probiotics and told to go home. I get it that we're not use to all the germs here ... but please! We've had more antibiotics in the last six months than maybe I've had in the last 10 years.