wait, they don’t love you like i love you.

On a full bus to my parents’ house, I gave up my seat for an older lady. Standing in the swaying aisle and trying to finish a book; a girl taps my elbow; gestures at my bag, ‘Shall I hold it for you?’

I shook my head and thanked her, marvelling at how little suspicion there is here, how this is the norm.

—

I held a stranger’s daughter in my lap the other day. She slept in my arms without a second thought and I tried to remember if I had ever witnessed this before. A full bus, a woman cradling her newborn; without an empty seat for her four year old- but laps aplenty.

I was loath to wake the girl as my stop approached. I wasn’t sure which to language to even attempt to speak to the mother in and say my regrets. I didn’t even have to speak- she smiled at me and hauled her child out of my lap and into someone else’s.

She patted my hand in thanks as I got up to leave.

—

Schoolgirls with heavy bags boarded the bus. I was finishing a book by the window; a lady cradling her sleeping baby- half on my elbow, and half in the crook of her arm.

She gestured to the schoolgirl; my broken Kannada grasping her suggestion.

I nodded at the girl, her heavy schoolbag handed over to sit in my lap for the rest of the journey.

I didn’t remember carrying such a heavy schoolbag.

She straightened her ribboned plaits before asking for her bag, and yelling out, ‘Thank you!’ before jumping off the bus.

—

I am always unsure of the hows and wheres of behaving on public transportation, no matter the country. But in India, where everyone is an extension of family and friend, where your lap is not beyond the realm of possibility, and words like ‘imposition’, ‘comfort’, ‘inconvenience’ don’t come into being; I follow examples and do as I’m told.

I’m marked out as ‘new’, as ‘unbelonging’ by how I dress, my accent, and my hesitation before speaking in a mixture of Hindi-Telugu- Kannada. Older ladies take me under their wing, prodding me and grabbing my arm as a seat frees up, urging me to sit before someone else claims it for themselves. Bus conductors watch me give up my seat for pregnant women and grey-haired ladies; and reward me by asking if I want to get off at the bus stop or at the corner after to save me a walk.

Young girls stare at my scaffold, giggle and whisper into their companion’s ear. Once, one reached out to touch it, unsure of what it was and if it was real.

Her eyes rounded, she asked, ‘Does it hurt?’

I shook my head at her, smiling.

—

I don’t mind these liberties that people take here. Where touch and words and depositing bags and children into your lap are not seen as encroaching on you or your person. It’s an expected part of being here, being Indian.

This is what we, in the Global South, mean about being a community-based culture, not individual. It’s that this is part of who you are, and who you are is part of something bigger. That its claim on you is as valid as your claim on it- and there is enough for everyone; there is space and time enough for everything.

And somehow, it makes my heart fill up a little and makes me breathe a little easier. A shoulder and a lap is always there for a weary head or a heavy load.

 

foreign extra

I’ve had a rough few months- not knowing where things began and where they ended, and where I stood in the middle of it all. I felt buffeted from one country to another, one airport to another; transient in more ways than I was ever before.

Transience became more than just about time and space, it became about identity.

I was truly temporary- a bag, a passport, and not much more. My parents’ house has never been more than a short-stop for a rest and a hug, a week of my mother’s cooking. Suddenly, it was an extended stay. I was occupying spaces that weren’t mine to occupy. Lives disrupted, schedules overturned.

For nearly four weeks, my only accessible possessions in the world were held in one grey rucksack. Everything I owned in the world- books, memories, photos, film, my brand new coat- was in a country I couldn’t get into. My life, lived out of hotel rooms and rucksacks, was suddenly all in one place.

I imagine it says a lot about my priorities that I had more work-related literature in my bag than I had clothes.

It boggles my mind that my life could be neatly packed into boxes and shipped to me over seas and oceans. That somebody else could box up my life, my possessions, my worlds; and that I am still here, that I am still alive and not dead and you’re only meant to go through other peoples’ things when they’re dead. 

I feel riffled through, my pages askew, and a little dirty, a little cheap, a lot disposable. I feel violated.  A word I know better than to use- it isn’t meant for me with my privileged issues of migrant anxiety. My guilt battles with my soul, my identity broods in the corner.

—

In Kuala Lumpur, feminist activists all around me and a dreaded question posed to the room: where are you from?

I cringe inwardly and attempt to hide.

‘Wait, what happened to the Philippines?’ and the sordid story is raked over again.

When it first happened, I told myself I’d eventually find it funny; that it would amuse me. Three months later, I still struggle to understand how quickly my world fell apart, how quickly I was shut out.

How quickly I went to not belonging, how quickly I was not wanted.

—

My father (gently) lectured me about minimalism, materialism and maya, about needs and wants and never learning the difference.

This week, I’ve been surrounded by feminist criticisms of the neoliberal agenda, of our capitalist controlled world. More, more, more! 

—

I’ve realised how much I’ve moved away from my original principles. How much more settled I’ve gotten. I care about my clothes and my shoes and my boxes and boxes and boxes of things. All 80 kgs of them making their way to me.

And it’s dangerous. Dangerous to get attached to things. Things are transient, temporary, trivial. Things don’t last forever, things aren’t meant to. They’re only as valuable as I make them.

And right now, they’re all wrapped up in who I am and draped over who I used to be. They’re all I have left in the world- all that I can touch and feel and know, know where it matters that I was here and I am real and this is true. 

And that makes me a little more permanent, a little less transient.