Jetlag 2019

3:15 a.m. I stare at the ceiling. Jetlag *&%*@#$*, I grimace and turn the other side. I open my eyes again and I know it’s not just the disturbed sleep pattern leaving me restless. That inexplicable hollow feeling inside doesn’t come from lack of sleep. It comes from leaving a life and people, continents behind. It comes from being soaked in life and love and then surgically removing yourself from it.

3:30 a.m. I think of my friend narrating how her dog recently tore her favorite cushions. As we share chai, brought back from India, she recounts how during a family gathering, the dog is surrounded by lots of people, receiving love and attention all day. He is then left by himself later and possibly confused on being alone, tears apart the poor cushions.   

Am I just this labradoodle, I wonder?

4:00 a.m. I stare at the ceiling some more, and think of India as a bowl – a large, noisy, chaotic, colorful bowl, filled with an overload of sounds and smells and flavors. The only way to survive it, is to give in. To become part of the color and chaos. To develop the lightheartedness, and sense of humor, to get through it and to enjoy it. To even lose yourself a little to the collective whole. You don’t choose to be in the bowl. You are already in the bowl, and in many bowls even. Your job is to figure out how to navigate the bowl.

On the other hand, in the West, each one is a bit of an island. Islands do come together and form beautiful patches of land. But it is a conscious effort. These patches of land can be harmonious for they are filled with intention, and purpose and definite direction and knowledge of where they are headed. Proactivity and individualistic decisions are guiding forces that steer these islands towards creating larger patches of land, that they may choose.

And if you don’t make the effort, you will always remain an island.

I suppose, both have advantages and disadvantages and ultimately, people are wired differently, and some may prefer bowls, with ready-made environments, while some may prefer islands, with their vast expanse of openness.

4:30 a.m I think I should go downstairs and write. Hmm… seems pointless. It feels like I say similar things over and over, in the same format even, each time I am jetlagged.

I try to remember what I have written earlier. Memory being vague, a few ideas emerge… Of collective vs. individualistic societies and communities in the East vs. the West.

Of being a round peg, that is now square. Which no longer completely fits in the round hole, but is still a little too round to fit in the square hole.

Of maybe the purpose of jetlag is to process everything we experienced in another time zone and make sense of it in the current.  

5:00 a.m. I decide to go downstairs and cook lunch. My mother often wakes up very early, and instead of trying to go back to sleep, she will finish cooking for the day. This last trip, I warn her each night when I stay with her, “No pressure cookers at 4:30 a.m., no blenders at 5 p.m…” Hmm… I had better be quiet in my cooking.

5:45 a.m. Lunch is ready. Jetlag may not be such a bad thing after all… I make myself a cup of tea and reach out for bakarwadi. As I put the bakarwadi in my mouth, I am flooded once again with musings of India.

I know that as I pack lunches and walk the dog and go about my routine, these musings will fade away like fog in sunlight. Maybe that is the whole point of jetlag… that you lay awake in the quiet of the night, in the stillness of your home, and process the thoughts and emotions involved in shifting continents, from moving from your place of origin to a new place you now call home, of noticing round pegs in square holes…

Maybe I will feel the same each time I travel. Maybe I will make better sense of it, after each trip. Maybe, I will learn to better process it emotionally, with better acceptance. Maybe I will learn to treat it as a vacation and stop wondering why returning from India, never feels like returning from a vacation.

Or maybe I won’t. And maybe I will write the same things, in the same format over and over again...