12 Years Later

Now the summer of 2010, it has been 12 years since I last traveled with my family to India, making this my second time back to the country and my first time traveling to India on my own. From a little girl wearing a sparkly churidar and pig-tails running around the Gandhigram Workers Home in 1998, to a young woman who now spends a great deal of time sitting in a classroom having people in suits profess to her the “astonishing development India has undergone”, everything has changed. Things have changed not just with respect to India’s overall growth as a nation, a fact which can be known by anyone who picks up the morning newspaper and reads the section on international business, but by me. I was always a curious little girl waiting to ride elephants and have my hands painted with the beautiful designs of Indian Henna, but I have forever been a student of the world and my own education has completely consumed me. Being educated by my friends and family, by all who actively and passively participated in my childhood, and by those learning and teaching at the university level has far exceeded my personal hopes and expectations. From homeschooling with my mother and father, to attending a local public high school with some of the best teachers I know, to studying at a private university with professors from around the globe, I am more fortunate than most. I am fortunate not only because I truly believe I have received a diverse and holistic education, but because I have continually been given and encouraged to take all opportunities to complete my education. Knowledge of many different subjects learned from a myriad of different people is nearly worthless and most definitely incomplete if the receiver of that knowledge is not able to confront the curiosity that this education has brought about in the first place.

I have come to India not to assuage my curiosity with facts, but to fill the holes in own internal workings. I have come to work with LAFTI not only to understand the real development that is taking place in India, those changes not fast or popular enough to make the morning paper, but to understand what it is that makes me see, think, and live the way I do.