Lessons Learned from India: Preparing to Return to the Scene of the Calcutta Riot

Unlike some of the women I’ve encountered in my own culture, that of the United States, I have no trouble admitting my age. After all, in the true Zen fashion I have learned to love what is, and I am thirty eight years old, about to turn thirty nine. That is a fact. Sure, I travel to the salon about once a month to cover the gray, because to be gray-haired looks too unfamiliar. I don’t feel like myself. That notion, however, is exactly the one I want to call into question now.

As many of my readers and clients know, my cross-cultural career began in earnest when I accidentally caused a riot in a railway station in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. For those who don’t know you can read the story here (http://wanderlustandlipstick.com/wander-tales/the-calcutta-railway-riot). In those days, my early twenties, I traveled differently. My budget was about five dollars a day and I rode only local buses and trains across Asia. I struck out in search of adventure at every turn, which lead me to such memorable times as a camel safari across the Thar desert, teaching in a fishing village off the coast of Thailand, and assorted cultural immersions in Nepal, including learning conversational Nepali.

All of these grand journeys and the associated learnings became the basis for my cross-cultural company, the one you see before you now. As the company grew, the world shrunk. Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat taught us that Globalization and its bride, Technology made us more connected and equal. Emerging markets now regularly acquire Western companies and flying to the other side of the world doesn’t seem so exotic anymore. Many countries have skipped the personal computer and gone straight to the mobile device, which you can spot in the most remote villages.

The world shrunk…or did it? Perhaps so, but I have also changed. The success and growth of Highroad has taken me to India over and over again, but this time no railway riots break out. Now my clients pick me up from the airport and drop me back off safely when our work is done. I stay in nicer hotels and sometimes from my window I can see the silhouettes of women carrying water on their heads as the sun goes down over the fields.

On my last trip I came to the conclusion that the comforts of India are still real India. Though a large portion of the population still resides in the rural areas and many in relative poverty, India’s middle class represents a vital part of the culture. To claim that the only authentic India is a poor one is a case of gross misperception.

What I hadn’t yet learned, however, is how to accept that I am still the real me even though I have changed. Sometimes I look back on the travel tales of my twenties and wonder where that brave wanderer has gone. The depth of cultural understanding I always longed for before is certainly there now. The conversations I have with my clients in India, for example, provide me much more insight into Indian culture than did my four-month trek across the northern part of the country in 1998. I saw a lot back then but learned little. When I stay with my adopted family in Bangalore now I gain more from one discussion around the dinner table with them than I did in a year of backpacking around Europe.

Still, the young adventurer calls. This past summer my husband and I went on the adventure of a lifetime. We spent a month in the Pacific Northwest and saw such beauty that I can hardly use common words to describe it. Still, the young adventurer calls. What does she call for? Perhaps more hardship. It has been awhile since I’ve faced the challenges of rat-infested hotels, seventeen-hour bus rides, and the constant flirtation with dysentery. I continue to visit India often, as well as Europe, Canada, and small towns in the U.S., but as my hairs get grayer I take more comfort in comfort. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night thinking about that.

So as I often do, I turn to India for the “answer.” In his book The Elephant, The Tiger, and the Cellphone, Sashi Tharoor writes, “The notion of Indianness as something sanctified by a prescribed list of acceptable attributes is not just highly contestable, it is positively un-Indian.”

Tharoor believes, and I agree with him, that rejecting aspects of culture, religion, and even sports that do not fit the picture of “authentic India” goes against India’s most authentic trait: its pluralism.

Is the same not true of ourselves? Though being authentic is a key part of any work we do or life we lead, that authenticity itself is not static.

For the first time in twelve years I am preparing to return to Calcutta, the scene of the railway riot that sparked my cross-cultural career. This time, however, I am returning as a consultant to deliver phase five of an initiative to build a strong partnership between my clients’ Indian and American counterparts. Though the young adventurer still calls, I answer that although we will likely not be starting any more riots, we will be building bridges between West and East – and in the end, which one is really the grander adventure?

I will, however, listen to that small voice within. This summer Jay and I plan to trek around in South America, and I hope to encounter a little travel misery here and there, perhaps some rodents of unusual size or standing in the rain for hours waiting for a bus that never comes.

Stay tuned for our adventures in India beginning January 10^th, 2011!