Musoorrie

                Musoorrie has proven to be a decompressing ending to my India adventure extravaganza. It also has turned out to be a good place for me to “hole up” in a hotel room because I got sick again. In fact, Shane and I have been at the hotel so much and ordered so much room service that he is now friends with the employees of the hotel on facebook…

                Musoorie is snuggled in the Himalayan foothills with some of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. Like Dharamsala the entire town is emerald green and full of lush trees and foliage. At night, lights dot mountains as if stars have come down from the sky for a break. Musoorrie’s purpose is to serve as a tourist destination for Indians so it’s very clean and picturesque in an unnatural way that tourist towns often are. Benches are placed in strategic locations, buildings are painted more decoratively than is common for the area, candy is sold on the streets, and people are lighter hearted. I only saw three other white people the whole three days we have been here so needless to say, Kristen, the girl with yellow hair, sticks out like a sore thumb. Musoorie is the cleanest town I’ve seen in India and has the least amount of poverty that I’ve seen as well. However, since it is a sheer destination for tourism I also find it to be the only somewhat boring town in India. Musoorrie is beautiful and has perfect since I was sick. I did a lot of reading and writing. Shane and I played a lot of card games and shared some incredible India conversation. Had I been well, I would have craved more raw culture and excitement.

                My favorite part of my Musoorrie stop has been the two hours that I spent watching a monkey outside of my window. I am so going to miss the absence of wild monkeys at home! This particular monkey, we’ll call him Mark, was grayer and a little bigger than the Dharamsala monkeys. Mark kept running to a perch on the roof right outside of our window with an unopened snack that he’d put in his mouth while he climbed. I think he had found a way to get into the hotel and steal the snacks that they put in the mini bars because I recognized all of his neatly sealed delicacies. It is still enthralling for me to watch the little creatures, covered in fur with their curled tails, do things that are so human like. They strategize how to open things and perform tasks that no other animals are capable of- except human animals of course. Dhondulp once told me that he saw at least 100 monkeys get in to organized groups and fight each other like humans would in gangs or battles. Our cook in Dharamsala told us that once a motorcycle ran over a monkey and killed it. It was only a few hours before an enormous group of monkeys hid and attacked the next motorcycle that went by. Apparently they killed the driver. Yes, Dharamsala is full of myths. But, she was so serious as she told this story!

                It has been a very interesting experience to be such a minority in Musoorrie. Living in the U.S. where white people with blue eyes and “yellow hair” are abundant has never given be the opportunity to contemplate what being a minority would feel like. Though I have not felt even sort of unsafe, I suddenly find myself very self-aware. I have never felt so many eye balls wander to my direction like little brown magnets before. I have begun to think about what it is like for foreigners in some parts of the U.S., especially those who don’t speak English. It’s got to be a lonely and isolated experience. At least for me, in India, everything is written in both Hindi and English and almost everyone speaks at least mild conversational English so I have the ability to still communicate.

                Something I find even more interesting than this feeling of being a minority is how much emphasis Indian women place on “fair” skin. There are so many commercials for so many different brands of products which are supposed to make your skin “fairer.” From face wash to make up, the Indian women here are striving to look less brown. Ironically, at home, the American women are striving to look browner. Tanning salons are everywhere and bronzer is a common item in the American women’s cosmetic tool box. This leads to a very obvious question: why are we so discontent with who we are? Is it a wiring thing? Maybe it’s human nature to just want to be different from one’s self- a defense mechanism, an attempt to escape who we are by using our façade/our outside appearance to do so. After all, this seems easier than changing the inside. So I’m sitting here wondering if we are wired to simply want to change what we look like, to simply want to strive to look like something else. Or if we are wired to want to escape ourselves and maybe the easiest way to do it is to change our appearance because changing our inside, our true self is terrifying. I would love someone to weigh in on this one……