The Dust is Everywhere

It takes the lowered, sun kissed light of dusk to illuminate the swirls of dust that hang and move through the streets like invisible cloaks of our daily activities. As the sky quiets and darkens, the surrounding activity explodes with sounds of people and vehicles and horns and competing amplifiers of music; smells of roasting meat and corn and chapatti and warm milk. Once again, the dust is captured, suspended in the headlights of the countless motorcycle taxis. As I walk through this night scene, unable to hide behind my whiteness which glows in the dark here, I collect the dust on my skin, my clothes, my hair and I become a bit more a part of the environment that surrounds me. This place is not my own. The history here is not mine. The hills and streets and people do not know me. My only connection or sense of belonging comes from the fact that I am also a human being whose skin collects dust just like everyone else around me.

What I love about traveling to a place that is so unfamiliar from what you know is that fleeting moment when you feel as if you have actually touched on the pulse, gotten to the heart of what it means to know a place on an intimate level; to understand the way of life. Not superficially, but on a deeper level. Even if it is just fro a brief moment before you slip back into the confusion of being a stranger…to just feel what is happening around you and understand that at every moment of every day people are living their lives with the means that they have to do so. To walk down a street at night and understand the sounds that you hear and the smells that are all around you. For that brief moment, you feel as if you belong and you understand the undercurrent that flows beneath it all; a connecting force. It is as if you have to drop your guard, let down your defenses to actually let this sensation in. Once you get there, a whole new world opens up and you are no longer on the defensive with every step you take. You are on the receiving end and you get to choose what you receive only to an extent…and that is the beauty of vulnerability. Sometimes the outcome is greater than you could ever hope to imagine. Just that moment of understanding is worth weeks of uncomfortable uncertainty, exhaustion and oversaturation. Like a balloon that has been filled with so much air to the point which it can’t remain within its own confined boundaries so it has to burst open to join a larger body of air. That, to me, is the beauty of putting yourself into a completely unfamiliar environment.