y**********o
发帖数: 7947 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/fashion/forgoing-a-shortcut-o
Welcomed With Open Arms in MumbaiBy MAY JEONG
THE weekend I turned 24, I fell in love with a man I would write home about.
I was traveling through India, the kind of trip you take in your early 20s
when you are full of questions and have no answers. I was sure that love was
a social construct and that the future would remain a question mark. I had
convinced myself that if only I could drift along the backwaters of Kerala,
all would be well. The plan was to land in Delhi, pass through Mumbai, sally
south.
Armed with this skeletal itinerary, I spent the first two months traversing
the Indian subcontinent: through the throat-searing pollution of Delhi, the
bracing mountain air of Dharamsala, the dunes of Jaisalmer. And, after a
torturous 16-hour train ride that was more romantic in planning than in
practice, I arrived in Mumbai.
On my first day there, I found something mad and lovely about the place and
decided to stay instead of continuing south. It was the cusp of May. My
namesake month has always been a fortuitous one: magical things happen to me
in May.
And so it was that I headed for a stranger’s flat in the leafy suburb of
Bandra. The house I was to spend the month in was not available yet, so a
friend set me up to stay at another friend’s place for the weekend.
Within seconds of being in the oppressive humidity of pre-monsoon Mumbai, I
was drenched with sweat. Answering my impatient knock, a disheveled man
opened the door. Something passed between us then, though we didn’t know it
just yet.
He suggested lunch. We shared childhood antics over Goan curry. Then,
tearing off a corner of a three-minute-old naan, he asked me if I had ever
been in love.
I gathered my fingertips toward my thumb and told him I had not.
He said that he wanted to be in love always. That love alone allowed you to
feel the whole range of human emotions. That emotional experiences were the
best.
Next I remember feeling lightheaded. My heart was pounding so fast, I
worried others could hear. I thought my knees might give in. I concluded
that all this love talk had gone to my head. I went to see a play. A
nightcap followed.
Later that evening, something still felt amiss. This was more than a few
butterflies in my stomach. I called a friend to relay my symptoms. Bombay
fever was his diagnosis. “Rest up,” he said, promising I would be fine in
a day or two.
Beached on the couch, drifting in and out of a fevered state, I got to know
my host.
First he offered unsolicited advice: “Don’t think money will bring you
happiness.”
“I know that already,” I said in that uncompromising tone reserved for
your early years.
He told me about proposing to his high school girlfriend with a plastic ring
. And then, “You remind me of my first girlfriend.”
“Thanks, I get that a lot,” I brayed.
This became our routine. We felt as if we had only to tell each other
everything. We had been up talking well into the night when he told me that
he found me beautiful. I was the perfect girl. What a shame I was just
passing through.
In return, I told him he was the closest to being my dream man, and I meant
it.
The following morning, in an e-mail to a friend back home, I described what
transpired the night before as a “two (wine) bottle situation.”
A Hindi expression I learned (it translates as: “love opened its arms”)
best describes what happened next. I felt as if I needed him for air,
pollution notwithstanding. Even the weight of groceries felt good in my
hands.
I felt drunk on Mumbai and drunk on the allure of this much older man. Even
the fact that he had been bankrupt twice seemed daring and darling. Despite
his many years, he still had a childlike wonder for the world, a trait I
value over all else.
Instead of focusing on the yawning gulf that separated our lives (along
generational, geographical and racial lines — I’m Korean), I chose to
focus on his salt-and-pepper stubble, sandpaper hands and broad shoulders.
Because, hey, here was a man who stole kisses behind rickshaw drivers. And
here was a man who would slice up mangoes and leave the best parts for me.
And here was a man who made me feel bigger than I was. And what else was
there?
Before I left, a friend had, in jest, given me a copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’
s “Eat Pray Love.” Being of the liberal feminist persuasion, we had found
the myth of the leading man to be antiquated and apocryphal. To the “love
conquers all” mantra, my last words had been (as G-chat records show), “I
am not going to fall in love okay!”
And yet.
When I told my father the news, he recapped our conversation in his
typically professorial patois: “So what you are telling me is you want to
move halfway across the world for a man nearly twice your age whom you met
seven days ago. Did I get that right?”
(He’s not actually twice my age.)
The carefree sex of my arrogant years now seemed vacuous and sad. I no
longer saw the point in yielding my body to men who subscribed to the 20-
something aesthetic of irony and irreverence. In the world I had left behind
, it was a sin to have heart. After years of tenure in that world, I was
finally through.
Mumbai helped me contextualize my desires, and I realized how much I wanted
things to matter. I had been sleepwalking through life, and now I wanted to
experience the overwhelming sensation of falling in love.
AND then came an insight as apt as it was inconvenient. As I was daydreaming
of trading in my life back home for a new one in the wild west of Mumbai, I
realized I did not have enough of myself to give up. I was not a real
person yet, and I possessed nothing of worth to sacrifice.
Giving up a life I did not yet lead would not be a gesture of love. It would
be one of misplaced brio. Instead of charting my own path to happiness, I
would be taking a shortcut by electing to be with a man who had already
lived his life to the hilt. Tried and failed. Fallen in and out of love.
One of the last times I saw him, we were sitting by the water, facing each
other. To my right lay the Arabian Sea, to my left, that impossible patch of
idiosyncratic wonder, Mumbai. In between, a man I could have loved.
When it came time to say goodbye, both of us held our hands behind our backs
, wary of what a single touch might undo.
Next came a moment of saving grace. I gave him a high-five, a reference to
an earlier conversation about how I had never mastered the art of saying
goodbye. Both of us burst out laughing. How absurd we must have looked to
passers-by. Thinking about our parting still brings a smile to my face.
On my flight to Istanbul, I realized I was much sadder than the gesture of
high-fiving would have led people to believe. I knew this because I started
ugly crying in the middle of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” I felt
fatigued and raw.
Miraculously, I did not die of grief. My heart did not collapse inside my
chest. It only felt as if it had.
Meandering through the cobblestone streets of Istanbul, I asked myself the
same question that the city’s resident man of letters Orhan Pamuk had once
asked: Is love without hope simply hopeless?
To sit shiva, I read Barthes. I burrowed into his depressing but
illuminating meditation on love.
Sure I loved him there that night, and for many nights that followed. But
was it love? Or was it an episode resembling love? Did I fall in love with
the man? Or did I fall in love with how the man had made me feel, like the
holder of some great promise?
A few weeks ago, I came back from a bar with beer on my breath and hair
smelling of cigarettes. I rummaged through my iTunes in search of music that
would lull me to sleep and came across an album unplayed. My heart skipped
a beat when I realized that it was the soundtrack of a film my Mumbai love
had made years ago.
I put it on, crawled into bed, rolled myself into a blanket burrito and fell
asleep.
Was he just the willing receptacle for all the affection I felt for Mumbai,
for India? Or was it love? I still don’t know.
What I do know is that sometimes I dream of Mumbai. I dream of night trains,
fruit-market mangoes and the shimmering waters of the Arabian Sea.
Occasionally, I dream of love.
May Jeong is a reporter living in Toronto. She is a founder of
gchatfortunecookie.com. | a**********y
发帖数: 2140 | | y**********o
发帖数: 7947 | 3 去印度
找回答。
【在 a**********y 的大作中提到】
: what qualifies as love?
| D**e
发帖数: 10169 | 4 太长。。。有 XXOO内容没有？
about.
was
had
,
sally
traversing
【在 y**********o 的大作中提到】
: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/fashion/forgoing-a-shortcut-o
: Welcomed With Open Arms in MumbaiBy MAY JEONG
: THE weekend I turned 24, I fell in love with a man I would write home about.
: I was traveling through India, the kind of trip you take in your early 20s
: when you are full of questions and have no answers. I was sure that love was
: a social construct and that the future would remain a question mark. I had
: convinced myself that if only I could drift along the backwaters of Kerala,
: all would be well. The plan was to land in Delhi, pass through Mumbai, sally
: south.
: Armed with this skeletal itinerary, I spent the first two months traversing
| f**e
发帖数: 3156 | 5 韩国女人YY
【在 D**e 的大作中提到】
: 太长。。。有 XXOO内容没有？
:
: about.
: was
: had
: ,
: sally
: traversing
| y**********o
发帖数: 7947 | 6 我的印度同事说，这是一个很好的读取。
【在 D**e 的大作中提到】
: 太长。。。有 XXOO内容没有？
:
: about.
: was
: had
: ,
: sally
: traversing
|
|
