Parallel Places

I’ve heard of India as a world of organized chaos. A world of gaping disparity between rich and poor. A world of spontaneity where things don’t run according to a pre-conceived schedule. If I were granted a right to generalize, perhaps I would say that this is, among others, the quintessential experience of being in a developing country. But there is a lot to explore even with multitudes of traits in common between the two countries.

I grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the river is choked full of trash and untreated sewage, where traffic is governed by the law of the jungle, and where people live in shantytowns squeezed between neighborhoods with comfortable, air-conditioned house. And all of that is, even then, home and perfectly rational to me.

The last cross-cultural experience I had was when I began college at an American institution, where millions are spent to revitalize local rivers, where pedestrians are almost treated like royalty by cars, and where socio-economic classes are often rigidly segregated in terms of space. All of those are often the complete opposite of what I have lived before, and yet, after two years of trying to make sense of what is different, these opposites have become things that I appreciate as well.

India, where I will come in a few weeks, sounds like a place where the experiences of growing up in Indonesia will be echoed in a very similar tone for me. It won’t probably be a radically different setting, but I feel that the similarities are very significant. They are both battling fundamentalist, singular religious and political aspirations in a struggle to accept plural identities. They are both nations trying to come into terms with blurring the colonialist binary of the developed and the developing.

I’m looking forward to see these similarities flourishing under the cover of different languages and colors.

A very short summer in DC!

It's been months since I've posted - but it's been a great albeit super-packed summer in DC working for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Our Task in Arlington!

This blog will look a lot better soon with a new layout and photos! Time to give some audiovisual quality to record my travels in India.