I’m finally leaving India. I can’t say I’m terribly unhappy about that. It’s the first place I’ve been where I can say that, and that feels a little dispiriting.

There’s lots of reasons for it. Partially it’s just that a month is a long time to be alone; barring a single evening meeting a friend and his family I’ve been entirely by myself for the month. A big part of it is health. It feels I’ve always been hovering between one kind of intestinal distress or another the whole time I’ve been here, and that’s led to a lot of days locked in my hotel room eating room service ice cream.¹

But I do pretty well alone. And if I’m spending more time on my computer feeling queasy than I’d like, well, I’m not on vacation. I’m not really missing out on tourist things. I can always come back.

I guess that’s really the real crux of it. India has thousands of years of history and hundreds of cultures² to explore. But that’s spread over a vast area, and much of the truly breathtaking stuff is difficult to get to, far from the major cities.³ That makes it great for tour packages, and not-so-great for, well, me.

I did manage to spend some time visiting some of the classic sights in Mumbai — the Gateway to India,⁴ the Elephanta Caves, the elegantly High Gothic Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, the glitzy Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. But with the exception of those caves, those are all Colonial Era sights. And that’s a little odd.

I mean, even if you visit Boston, you’ll see Faneuil Hall and Beacon Hill, Boston Commons and the Old North Church, the site of the Boston Massacre and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Fenway Park. There’s a huge mix of Colonial Era, Revolutionary Era, and Modern places to visit. Mumbai mostly has sights built during the Raj. And Mumbai is 25 times as large as Boston is, so you’d imagine there’d be 25 times as many tourist destinations.

I know that’s not a fair comparison; the Raj ended less than 75 years ago. Boston’s been a vacation destination for a lot of the world for a fairly long time.⁵ But there’s something else going on, as well, something about the relationship between modern India and the Raj that I just don’t really understand.

Here’s an example: traveling through Indian cities, you’ll pass statues of various English administrators or leaders or even Queen Victoria. It’s a bit confounding for an American. It feels like catching a cab in New York and passing a statue of George III.⁶ Maybe it’s more like Confederate Civil War Memorials, but even that’s not a great fit.⁷

I’ve been thinking about what the difference is. I’m not sure. The fact that the struggle for India’s independence was by and large non-violent may be a part of it. There’s also the fact that Americans were British until the revolution;⁸ it wasn’t until the Revolutionary War was underway that you could properly say the British were occupying New York, for example.⁹

If anything, it’s a reminder that the legacy of colonization is complicated.¹⁰ It’s meant different things at different times, and there’s far from a common reaction to decolonization. That’s not to defend it or suggest that it wasn’t so bad, but only to point out that there were lots of effects, some of which were positive, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise to find people with somewhat confused feelings on the matter. It’s complicated.¹¹

I’m now sitting in an airport lounge waiting on my flight to Dubai (now delayed for the second time). I’m tired — I didn’t sleep well last night — and I’m finding it hard to gather the energy to do much.

I’m still somewhat mystified at India. This lounge doesn’t have Diet Coke (natch) but does have a light greenish drink called Jaljira and of course I figured I’d try it, only to wish I had stuck to the soda water.¹² Be more careful, I guess.

Would I come back? Maybe? Probably, someday, eventually? There’s so much I haven’t seen here. I’d love to see Goa, and Pondicherry, and Kolkata. And there’s all those ruins scattered through the countryside. But … being sick for so long really starts to take something out of you. I don’t think I’d book in for another month, and risk spending half of it in a hotel room again. And India is far enough out of the way that it doesn’t really afford itself for a quick 6-day visit from Europe.

So we’ll have to see. I’m meaning at some point to visit Southeast Asia; when I do I’ll likely have to travel across the Indian subcontinent to get to or from there. And when I do I’ll look at connections across India, see what flights stop where, and see if I’m feeling up to trying again.

Next: Dubai (DXB) to Copenhagen (CPH)
Prev: Bangalore (BLR) to Mumbai (BOM)

Footnotes

¹ I am really, truly mystified over what exactly is going on. It really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the places I’m eating or the kinds of food I’m consuming. Sometimes I’ll be perfectly fine, sometimes I’ll be vaguely ill for about 12 hours, sometimes I’ll be out for 2–3 days.

I’m not exactly an inexperienced traveler, and I’ve never been hit by this sort of thing before. I’m deeply curious — if curious is the word — for how things turn out in Mexico. Is this just something I’m susceptible to? Is it just bad luck? Am I actually adjusting to the local microflora, and I’d be rock-solid if I just stayed another week? Who knows?

² I’m not really exaggerating here. The 2001 Indian Census recorded over 130 languages spoken by at least 10,000 people, and that’s not counting historically.

³ I mean, if there’s a constant in human history, it’s a fervent itch to repurpose whatever used to be there into raw materials for the present day. A mere glance at the pictures of present-day Penn Station and the previous incarnation should suggest how well that generally turns out.

Accordingly, one of the best ways of preserving the architectural treasures of the past is to have them located far, far away from other people.

⁴ On Republic Day, no less, because if there’s one thing you consistently wish about India is that they’d find a way to jam more people into public spaces.

⁵ Don’t underestimate the global allure of the Red Sox.

⁶ Famously, there was a statue of George III in Bowling Green in New York City but American troops, in drunken celebration, pulled it down following the reading of the Declaration of Independence.

⁷ Civil War memorials were erected by Southern sympathizers, after losing, so there’s this weird white-power aspirational aspect to most of them.

Maybe the best analogy would be if Native Americans managed a successful insurgency and won the right to govern Florida, but decided they were cool with all the George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues standing around. Like I said, it’s a difficult thing to wrap my head around.

⁸ I’m obviously glossing over the existence of Native Americans here, who have ample reasons to hate both Loyalists and Patriots.

⁹ Although I doubt the British ever really saw it that way

¹⁰ Gandhi was educated in law in England, and apparently considered himself primarily a Briton early in his career, although continued experience with racism and disillusionment with the possibility that Indians would ever be considered the equals to the English in their eyes eventually changed his mind.

¹¹ This strikes me as a real problem in the way issues are framed, these days. Things have to be unabashedly good or unabashedly evil. There’s no room for nuance.

Listen: it’s okay to miss your abuser, sometimes. You can admire George Washington for his skills as a general and politician and still denounce him as a slave owner. You can watch sitcoms or reality television or soap operas without defending them as high art. And (I hope) you can travel the world and still be concerned about the externalized costs of our global air network.

¹² According to Wikipedia, “Jaljira powder generally consists of cumin, ginger, black pepper, mint, black salt, some fruit powder (usually either mango, or some kind of citrus zest), and chili or hot pepper powder.” It’s apparently intended to “startle” your tongue and, hey, mission accomplished.