Living the Flipside

The best analogy I’ve heard from anyone about becoming an expat is that the process is like experiencing infancy all over again.

Hard to say, frankly, as I remember very little of that part of my life, brilliant though I am sure it was. But, truthfully, the aphorism seems pretty bang on indeed. Every day is uncertain, new, and literally awesome in the kind of way we, as adults, aren’t much accustomed. The joy of this rejuvenation, if you will, is that you get to relive essential wonder genuinely and viscerally. The downside is that, to those around you, you tend to look like a bit of an idiot.

On Sunday evening Sara and I sat on our terrace as the sun set over Delhi and the sounds of Indian music, traffic, and the general hurly-burly of the city wafted over the rooftops. We felt present in that moment, something I’ve not honestly been in a while. And we remarked to each other that, while it is hard to gauge incremental progress, the distance we’ve come since stepping off that plane is pretty staggering when you think about it.

We walk down busy streets, with speeding autorickshaws playing life-sized pinball, and barely bat an eye. We know where to buy our favorite eggs, how to dry our sheets on curtain rods, how to buy train tickets, and where to get proper beer. We know which corners have the unfriendly street dogs that are best to avoid. We have friends. We have managed to amass enough of a pidgin vocabulary that we can get by without much worry. Hell, we can even read Devanagari, the Hindi script. I mean, not very well, but damn, I’m still impressed with that. And that goes back to the whole childhood thing. Every day when we are out and about, Sara and I are confronted with signs that all of a sudden begin to make more and more sense.

“लाइफ़ जैकेट. La…eye…eff. Ja…ka….et. Life Jacket. No way,” said Sara to me as we took our seats on our recent flight to Bangalore.

The trouble with experiencing our new world as adult children is that I feel like we’re spending an awful lot of time playing catch-up, just trying to get the basics down. By the time we have to leave, I’m worried only then will we indeed be ready to learn the profound, mysterious ways of this remarkable country (which I’m told is never really possible to do regardless). But, again, the pure joy of making new neural connections and slowly wading deeper and deeper away from sheer and utter confusion seems to make up for it. We may be clinging to a pool noddle for dear life, but at least our feet are no longer touching bottom, and that is pretty exciting. And while I know that to people on the street, I look like a blithering imbecile tracing my finger over a word and sounding it out with all the grace of a sumo-wrestler on ice, to each other, Sara and I feel superhuman.

There will be missteps and challenges, and I’m sure the occasional heartbreak and frustration. But to be a child again, to explore your world with very few preset expectations, and to learn, step by step, is worth every ounce of effort.