The difference between living and existing…

So I have been in India for a month. I came to realise at the beginning of this week that a transformation was taking place. Yes I’m still being stared at and I fear for some of the men on bikes, but they have learned the art form of riding whilst looking backwards at me - I don’t mind that. I still have children following me round the market and strangers waving at me asking me if I am Katy - I don’t mind that either. The transformation is taking place within me.

I was dispatched from England four days after the will she/won’t she month long visa debacle, to arrive in Delhi, spend three days there and then find myself on a 26 hour train ride to Deoghar, where I am to stay for the next year. As anyone would, I got on with things, I washed my clothes, I found food, I cooked said food with varying success (the incident with the aubergines has meant I won’t be going there again for some time!) I cleaned myself and the flat and even took a photo of, and named,  a cockroach all the while dragging myself to work on a daily basis to stare wide eyed at project files pretending to know what I was doing.

Only this past week something has changed – I know where to buy fruit and veg and to avoid the meat stalls. I even know where to buy milk and chocolate, how to ask how much something is and then look dumb founded at the response as I only know the numbers 1, 2, 10 and 20 oh and 100. I almost know what I am doing at work.

When you move into any new place you have to get the lay of the land, where the shops are, how long it takes to get to work and more importantly where your local is. This is done without fuss or even really noticing that you’ve done it. I however have become acutely aware of how I’m feeling and this transformation has come as a welcome surprise, I didn’t really think penny dropping moments happened that often but here they do. I can honestly say I spent my first two weeks counting how many weeks and DAYS I had left here. That has stopped thankfully. Obviously every shred of me misses people but in order to survive this I’m going to have to live, I can’t live in December 2010 when I was with my friends and family, or December 2011 when I will see them again. I am living for the here and now, to enjoy and embrace this adventure that I decided to take on. That was one of my many penny dropping moments.