Ok so hi guys. I could use this blog to talk about today and yesterday, not a lot happened in all honesty but I'm not going to do that. I believe that blogging is also a way of expressing oneself and that is what I want to do today.
I want to write about two things; homesickness and dance. India is a vast country, full of sights and sounds, colours and smells, people and cars. There is so much to see and experience, so much to learn and appreciate. But. It isn't home. I have been here 9 days roughly now and in that time India has taught me a few things. Firstly, that England is my home, it's where I'm from, where I was brought up and where I identify with. Secondly, that actually there is a living, breathing culture in England that we take for granted as English people. I have worked and lived for short periods of time in France and Germany, but they are still in Europe, some things are the same as in England and I only stayed for 6 weeks maximum. In India nothing is the same. The people are different, in the way they act, talk, walk, sleep, everything. The language is different, I'm surrounded daily by mainly Bangla and Malayalam, neither of which are my own. I notice small things a lot when I'm away from home, things that are insignificant but things that remind me I'm not at home. The doors here are different, the locks here are not built into the doors as they are in England, but rather there are huge padlocks everywhere. Front doors here tend to open directly into a room, there is no hallway as it were.
India is teaching me to appreciate where I come from. I feel very English here and I feel the need to be English. When I speak English here I speak with an Indian accent because the people I'm with understand it better, but when I speak to someone from back home I want to speak in my regular accent, in my mother tongue as it were. One tip I read about dealing with homesickness is trying to build some kind of routine in your new country, perhaps based on what you did at home. I am trying to do that and I feel an urge to try to preserve anything English I can. India is a wonderfully interesting country but I couldn't live here, they say home is where the heart is and I can confidently say that my heart is in England. That's not to say I'm not enjoying my time here, just that for me this couldn't ever be a permanent change.
The second thing I wanted to write about today was dance. My training here is hard, really hard. I do not have a dancer's body, I'm not fit and healthy and it is a major barrier in my training. I can't do the amount of practice others can, and it's not because I don't want to but because I physically can't. I can't change my body overnight, and I have no doubt that in 5 months it will change, but for now it is a barrier I can't control. Training is also hard because there are other, better dancers around me, watching me and it is easy to feel as if I shouldn't be here, as if I was naive in coming. But, I am realising that such feelings won't help.
I have been forced to ask myself if this is really what I want to be doing. Dance came into my life very late and for years now I have felt like I couldn't live without dance, it became a need. Here though I have questioned that need. Here it is not something that is rare and fascinating in the sense that it is in England. Here it is something you either devote your entire self to or you don't. Training is gruelling and on top of that you're expected to do hours of your own practice daily. Discipline is a big part of training here too, I am not supposed to drink water whilst dancing, only after training has finished for the day, so far I'm not managing this. I have had to sit and imagine life without dance, could I be happy just as a dance lover rather than a dancer? The truth is that when I day dream and think in my head of ways of coping with difficult situations, dance is always my answer. When I think of what defines me I think of dance. There is a quote by Albert Einstein I'd like to share here,
I want to write about two things; homesickness and dance. India is a vast country, full of sights and sounds, colours and smells, people and cars. There is so much to see and experience, so much to learn and appreciate. But. It isn't home. I have been here 9 days roughly now and in that time India has taught me a few things. Firstly, that England is my home, it's where I'm from, where I was brought up and where I identify with. Secondly, that actually there is a living, breathing culture in England that we take for granted as English people. I have worked and lived for short periods of time in France and Germany, but they are still in Europe, some things are the same as in England and I only stayed for 6 weeks maximum. In India nothing is the same. The people are different, in the way they act, talk, walk, sleep, everything. The language is different, I'm surrounded daily by mainly Bangla and Malayalam, neither of which are my own. I notice small things a lot when I'm away from home, things that are insignificant but things that remind me I'm not at home. The doors here are different, the locks here are not built into the doors as they are in England, but rather there are huge padlocks everywhere. Front doors here tend to open directly into a room, there is no hallway as it were.
India is teaching me to appreciate where I come from. I feel very English here and I feel the need to be English. When I speak English here I speak with an Indian accent because the people I'm with understand it better, but when I speak to someone from back home I want to speak in my regular accent, in my mother tongue as it were. One tip I read about dealing with homesickness is trying to build some kind of routine in your new country, perhaps based on what you did at home. I am trying to do that and I feel an urge to try to preserve anything English I can. India is a wonderfully interesting country but I couldn't live here, they say home is where the heart is and I can confidently say that my heart is in England. That's not to say I'm not enjoying my time here, just that for me this couldn't ever be a permanent change.
The second thing I wanted to write about today was dance. My training here is hard, really hard. I do not have a dancer's body, I'm not fit and healthy and it is a major barrier in my training. I can't do the amount of practice others can, and it's not because I don't want to but because I physically can't. I can't change my body overnight, and I have no doubt that in 5 months it will change, but for now it is a barrier I can't control. Training is also hard because there are other, better dancers around me, watching me and it is easy to feel as if I shouldn't be here, as if I was naive in coming. But, I am realising that such feelings won't help.
I have been forced to ask myself if this is really what I want to be doing. Dance came into my life very late and for years now I have felt like I couldn't live without dance, it became a need. Here though I have questioned that need. Here it is not something that is rare and fascinating in the sense that it is in England. Here it is something you either devote your entire self to or you don't. Training is gruelling and on top of that you're expected to do hours of your own practice daily. Discipline is a big part of training here too, I am not supposed to drink water whilst dancing, only after training has finished for the day, so far I'm not managing this. I have had to sit and imagine life without dance, could I be happy just as a dance lover rather than a dancer? The truth is that when I day dream and think in my head of ways of coping with difficult situations, dance is always my answer. When I think of what defines me I think of dance. There is a quote by Albert Einstein I'd like to share here,
I am a dancer. When things get tough dance is my solution. I turn to dance in times of need. I can't leave it. I have to dance because dance is a part of my existence. I do of course want to study the technique and the theory but the essence of dance in my life is none of this, it is simply expressing myself through movements that speak to my soul. This is what I have to remember when I'm in class feeling dizzy, sweating enough to fill buckets and generally on the verge of collapsing. Dance chose me. This hard work is for me a way to a better understanding of myself.
So I shall persevere because I am human. I can do nothing else. I cannot give up because I have to live with myself and the decisions I make and if I gave up I couldn't do that. I have to be me, I have to be as loud or as quiet as I am at home. I have to be my own little weird ball of cultures and languages, of dance. I have to transport that ball wherever I go, because the one part of home that is always with me is myself. I shall talk to Aunty about how I'm doing and about how I feel because I am someone who speaks their mind and I have to do that here too. I shall learn, appreciate, accept, work and be inspired because this is life. Then I shall return home to England, because it really is home and I shall have stories to fill a library and I shall have an inner strength for life.
One small piece of humble advice: appreciate that you went to India because you managed to fully question your love of dance but overcame it with a stronger belief that dance is your life. Now, because of that, without even knowing it, you will be more dedicated, committed to dance than ever before.
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