Retraining myself out of my retraining...

I find living in Lucknow to be very challenging (understatement of 2010), as I'm sure some of you have been able to guess from some of my blog posts. I've eluded to some of the various challenges Allen and I have encountered but I've shied away from really going into specifics about how much the move here has impacted me on a personal level... I guess because I don't really want to think about the ways that Lucknow has retrained me.

I don't want to think about how much more scared I am for my safety on the streets. I don't want to think about how much safer it feels inside ... or why I would feel that way. I don't want to think about why I wear a stupid scarf around my neck to protect my honor or why I feel naked without one.

On an intellectual level it is pretty easy to think "yeah, India is a different country, I'm sure they have different attitudes and norms over there" and it is a whole different story when you are here feeling the intensity of societal pressure to conform to norms that you don't necessarily agree with.

For me the hardest to swallow is the stark division between gendered spaces. Women are generally not seen out in public ... but hundreds of men will (seemingly) be loitering in the streets. For every 5 to 10 women you see on the street you will easily see a hundred men (driving, talking, sleeping, eating, spitting, pissing, you name it). It isn't that women are never seen in public - they have their spaces ... but these are usually confined to shopping establishments; inside malls or along the main shopping avenues. Women will usually be driven (or drive themselves!) by a male relative to these places and then taken back home. It is not common to see a woman shopping by herself; she will usually be with some other family member, including her children.

The only population that seems to be equally represented by men and women on the street are - very sadly - the beggars. Even so, women beggars are generally never seen alone and are often surrounded by their children.

"So what? Why should that stop you from doing what you want to do?" says the strong independent part of me ... but you don't realize until you spend enough time over here, that women are not seen in public for a reason; there is an implicit (maybe explicit, I don't know) assumption that men are not able to control themselves. You are putting your safety and your life in your hands by entering "the men's space" ... your honor is really all you have here and you should not lose it, even by accident. There are enough reports of honor killings of female victims of sexual assault or - heaven forbid - women who enter love marriages to indicate that her sins reflect on the entire family.*

It gets to you. Allen doesn't feel this as much as I do - which probably explains why we've responded so differently to India ... but male gaze is intense here. The fact that I'm foreign makes this doubly complicated because there are stereotypes here that foreign girls are sexually loose (read: amoral) and are "asking" for sexual attention (stupid hippies). Men take advantage of the fact that we're use to talking to (strange/r) men in public to engage us in conversations that they would never have with a female Indian stranger (decorum!) ... and social conservatives treat us as pariahs even when we are trying our hardest to fit in ... because we will never truly blend. There will always be something a little bit off.

All these interactions makes me feel sometimes like the whole country is joined together in a conspiracy to get a rise out of the white people.
"Hello! What country?"
"Hey! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!"
"What is your name?"
"Where are you from?"
I understand curiosity - but when you are bombarded by these questions every time you walk down the street to pick up some bananas for breakfast ... it gets very tiring (to put it mildly).

"I live here! I live in Lucknow ... I'm not a stranger, so please stop treating me like I'm a zebra escaped from the zoo!"

I what I'm saying is that I naively came to this country wanting to/expecting to/anticipating that I would fall in love with it and its quirks ... so I came to India with open arms and India responded by slapping me in the face and telling me that PDA is not decent in public.

I retreated inward, just overwhelmed by the difference of this place for the last 5 months or so.

But I read an article recently that got me to thinking that I could change the type of experiences I'm having over here, by changing my perspective. The article (which I recommend you read), in a nutshell says: "My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."

It is hard to notice chance opportunities when you're keeping yourself sequestered indoors, so I'm re-imagining that my fears and hestitations about living in Lucknow aren't anything more than just "shyness" ... I am "shy" around India - which is true in a manner of speaking. India intimidates me, makes me introverted. So I'm encouraging myself to take baby steps to try and get reacquainted ...
"Hi, I think we got off to a bad start there, let's try over. Hello, my name is Nikki..."

I still get overwhelmed from time to time, but ... I'm managing that flooding better: I pick it up and allow myself to just shut down rather than soldiering on and possibly getting more overwhelmed. The experiment is in its early stages but, I have reason to suspect that it will be a success**: I'm out at least twice a day ... I go on errands by myself ... I almost always say yes to some crazy scheme Allen has hatched for our afternoons together. In short, I'm jumping into the deep end (with my floaties on, of course). I'm obviously not putting myself in dangerous situations -- but I'm trying to overcome my fear of being out in public at all. I belong/am allowed out as much as anyone else and I won't let myself be intimidated anymore***.

We've had some excitement recently with registering the scooter, but we'll be going to Goa for a
week to visit a friend. Hopefully the beach will offer a retreat from our most recent headaches here.
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*Why no killings of individuals (men) who committed the crimes? I'm sure there are reasons, I just don't know what they are.
** Because contemplating the alternative is depressing
*** Or at least I'll try not to be intimidated anymore.