All Starry Eyed
Rucha Deshpande, Team member, writes about the balance between harsh realities and the beautiful daily in her everyday life in Ijeirong.
This article was originally posted here.
I came to Manipur exactly 9 months ago. 9 really short months ago. It seems just like yesterday when I met Tracy and her baby Rining (who has now started walking and gibberish-talking btw!). It seems just like yesterday when I came all excited to this place thinking I’m going to be happy now- After the glossy corporate life, this was inevitable. Wasn’t it? None can touch the bubble of happiness that I will now reside in.
Well, I wasn’t wrong- for the most part. My life here turned out to be more or less how I expected it to be – full of laughter, trees, hidden spots in this quaint village to steal a moment or two alone, art and (unfortunately, little) music.
I have now mastered the art of taking a head bath with 3/4th bucket of water, being convinced that electricity is nothing but a luxury, NOT brushing my teeth at night because the freezing water would otherwise take my life, going down to a certain pond to wash clothes, APPRECIATING ANY KIND OF VEGETARIAN FOOD THAT COMES MY WAY!!!
Unadulterated love and all that 😀
What started off as a slight discomfort has now become a part of the daily- As is true with almost anything in life.
You know what else has become a part of the daily? A cup of coffee on a green patch outside my nest with a friend talking about beautiful things. Letting out a sigh everytime you look up at the sky, because you sometimes forget the magic show that the stars put up almost every night. Sitting by the fire on cold winter nights with the fam and laughing at Jeilan (another baby I live with) dancing to most any damn beat that he hears. The smile of that one Appi when we greet her every 2 hours- turns out she is as fascinated with us as we are with her! Plucking lemons, annam (garlic leaves), oranges off the trees and consuming these without even thinking of rinsing them before use. Waking up to tress and mountains and now-familiar smiling faces!
But there is definitely more than meets the eye here- positively, of course! More than these, I have made a few other tidbits a part of my daily. These I observed on my trip back home last month. I always thought I was a patient person, maybe it was true. But now I notice how that has improved five-fold. A new realization has set in where I see how less I require to actually exist. I have always had a minimalistic lifestyle, without knowing it was minimalistic- I rarely bought new things and believed in reusing and borrowing. Now I do the same with awareness and I’m rather impressed with the kind of life I’ve built for myself as I grew up. I have always been very accepting and tolerant of people and their lifestyles but now I have learnt to deal with it without having to flinch a single time. I also see how I am at peace in most of my relationships with people now- insecurities and neediness have taken a backseat (At least on the face of it. I have my fingers crossed!). Most importantly, I have learnt to take myself seriously- it took days and months, but I am learning everyday. I never knew I was capable of so many things before coming here, but I made it! I have learnt to forgive myself and I’m currently working on the art of letting go- it is a beautifully painful process, but I know I will only come out being more content with life.
I sometimes find myself lost in thought about how life would have been had I been born and brought up here. Would I still be content with the life I live right now? Or would I have pined for more? As the song goes, ‘Little town, it’s a quiet village. Everyday like the ones before. Little town, full of little people…’, would I also crave for more than this ‘Provencal life’?
Sitting atop my roof, probably thinking about the above mentioned. 😀
I think it’s easy when you know this kind of a lifestyle has a deadline. It is easy to say ‘I could do this forever’ than to actually do it forever.
So, while I can, I am going to acknowledge the beauty and the reality of the life here and be so very grateful that I learnt to be grateful. I have noticed how most little thing rejuvenates the fascination in me.
Favourite kids in Manipur! These are the kids who sang the ‘Happy Birthday’ song for me that I uploaded on Insta.
So while I can, let me be all starry-eyed and march right on ahead in this journey with wind in my hair, head in the clouds (literally that!) and muddy unpaved roads at my feet.
