A third world

So we’re back on a plane from London to Mumbai, filling out custom forms, just a couple hours left until we land. I think we’re over Afghanistan now. It feels kind of strange being back here, some new faces, some returning. But I feel strangely calm, and I’m a little worried at how calm I am. We’re about to be back in Mumbai, in two hours thirteen minutes, to film a documentary but for some reason I don’t really feel like it. It doesn’t really seem like it’s about to happen. Aside from the not-that-thrilling Virgin Atlantic Indian food, everything we’ve experienced so far has been distinctly Western. I don’t think it’ll hit me until the airplane doors open and the humidity and the odors and the noise rush in; not until we get on our bus and drive right past the slums into the pristine cricket club; not until we leave that air conditioned oasis and enter the real city, heat closing in around us. We’re over Pakistan now, just one border left to cross.

I do find it strange, though, how different this already feels from home but how comfortable I am here anyway. Home already feels foreign to me; but really it usually does. I feel like I live in two distinct worlds: that of Andover, and that of my family. Most people don’t know that my parents were divorced last year, and that my twenty year old cousin died last week of an overdose. And most people at home don’t understand the frameworks of the philosophies of Johan Galtung and Paulo Freire(which my friends know I’m obsessed with) which explains how that one cousin died while another is running a successful startup in San Fracisco and is now expanding to the Phillipines.

Even though I’m with people from Andover, it doesn’t feel like it, and I feel comfortable with everyone here. So in essence, I’m leaving behind two worlds for this third one which I’ve been longing for since last year, and it feels foreign, but it also feels free.

But now I’m feeling very tired and writing is probably incoherent. I’ll end it here and keep thinking...

--Jordan