The Heat is On in Chennai

It’s difficult to accurately describe India in the first place and even more so in a single essay, but I will try both for the sake of sharing on your behalf and for remembering on mine.

Let me begin with our getting here. I left the United States at 3:35pm on May 29^th and arrived to India around 4:30am on May 31^st. After anxiously waiting for our luggage, which luckily for us was the very last to come through (my already-frayed nerves really appreciated the universe’s humor on that one…), we packed into an airless van and left the airport around 5:30am, bags in tow and ready for the heat.

However, what I’m learning quickly about India is that it is at once just as you expected and nothing you could’ve dreamed. For example, I knew it would be hot, but you can’t truly imagine the heat unless you’ve personally been wrapped in a 100-degree blanket on a hot summer night beside a bonfire on the surface of the sun. You quickly realize that you are sweating in places you didn’t know existed (“Why are my kneecaps sweating?”).

The last two days have been a whirlwind to say the least. I finally got to sleep around 7am that first morning, and after a restful hour I woke up at 8am to get ready for a tour of the area we will be living and working in for the next month and a half. We walked down a street or two to reach the veterinary college and that quarter mile or so was no Kansas.

Again, expectations surpassed. I knew we would see homeless people, poverty and (my biggest dread) stray animals. What I did not anticipate were the entire homeless families living in cardboard makeshift huts that leaned against walls and doubled as bedding at night. I didn’t expect the scrawny dogs running around everywhere. I didn’t expect to see someone’s dinner being cooked in a pot between crumbling sidewalks beside rickshaws and trucks screaming by. As such, India has been a lesson in juxtaposition because the next thing I knew we were walking into a department store to pick out fabric for the saris we’re wearing to a wedding next week. Between the colorful patterns and stunning bolts of jeweled satin, you’d never guess that someone had been urinating on the street as we’d walked in.

In any case, we left our saris at home the next day as we set off to work at the college’s hospital. Our group of 15 has been further divided into groups of three, and those smaller groups will be rotating through the different specialties together for the next few weeks. Our first rotation was dermatology, and we were marched down to our unit and told to wait. So wait we did…

The three of us stood by the wall as we watched them – about two professors and ten students – prepare for the day. We were a little unsure of ourselves for we had been specifically instructed to “stay here,” yet no one was making the first move to talk to us and quite frankly we weren’t sure if we were allowed to do that first either. We had little time to feel uneasy, though, because suddenly the clients came pouring in and the day had begun.

We sidled cautiously over to the exam tables and pretended like we understood what was being said as owners began to tell the students what was going on with their pets. I should take a moment here to attempt to describe what it is like when there are 4 sets of animals, 4 sets of owners, 4 sets of students at 4 sets of tables about a foot apart and everyone is talking (or barking) at once. Combined with the fact that the talking (and barking) is in a language for which you know approximately 3 phrases, I was fairly overwhelmed within the first 15 minutes to say the least. I felt like a bumbling foreigner until our professor, Dr. MohanKumar, came in to check on us. I frantically asked how to introduce myself in Tamil (the primary language spoken here) and expressed my frustration that I was so limited in communicating with them. He calmly replied, “Lily, just go up to them and they will be able to tell you are happy. Just start examining the animal and it will know you are helping. You don’t need language.”

After that, we started jumping in and really enjoying ourselves. I think there had been some awkwardness on both sides because once I started asking the students to help me understand what was being said, they were very helpful and friendly, and, even with our limited number of common words, we could be colleagues. The day was there and gone before I realized, and I have never in my life been so happy to see my bed. At some point once the jetlag wears off, I imagine I’ll stop wanting to go to bed at 9, but until then I’m happily sleeping 8 hours a night (a feat I couldn’t quite nail in the US).

I’m still very much getting adjusted, and I think that will undoubtedly take time. It’s exhausting not speaking a language, constantly trying to understand what is being spoken at you, and feeling guilty when you can’t, but luckily I am making friends at the clinic kind enough to translate for me or to speak very slowly – they have patiently repeated everything to me at least once! And in doing so, I am learning to also be patient with me. To be perfectly honest, acclimating to India has been a challenge in every respect – adjusting to everything from a new time zone to a new approach to medicine to a new value system. I am light-years from my comfort zone, but that’s what I wanted. In 72 hours, I have been more challenged that ever before, and that won’t be changing any time soon.

But I will be.

And that’s what’s exciting.

“It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”
~ Hugh Laurie