I finally made it to India – at 61. I fell in love with India in 4th or 5th grade, 1974/75. Back in those oldie timey days our school did not have YouTube, or even a TV with video tapes… we had a film room. Yes, an entire room dedicated to watching reels of film. Seats bolted to the floor, a projector in the back, you know, like a movie theater. Remember those?
Anyway, we were watching a film about India and I got a different lesson than was intended. I am not sure there was a particular lesson to be had, I think we were just being exposed to other cultures. This was the early 1970s so the film was likely shot in the 50s. It already looked very old, and getting new film was rare.
The film showed a rural Indian village, The men were steering plows pulled by bulls. The women were cooking with dung fires. They used cow manure for fertilizer. It showed a man break off a twig, chew the end and use it as a toothbrush. This is where my own lesson came in.
All my friends saw only a poor village, so poor that not only did they not have proper farm equipment, they cooked with cow poop, and could not even afford a toothbrush. A truly hellish place. This is not what I saw.
I did see a hard life, but a life lived with the land. Nature provided the work animals, the animals provided labor, milk, fertilizer, and cooking fuel. The land was so magical that toothbrushes grew on trees. Truly an amazing place.
I admit that was a naive vision but the lesson I learned is that people do not experience things equally. We all saw the exact same film – at the exact same time – and we saw and experienced completely different things.
I knew that people remembered different details of movies, but this was much more. This was the same film, but so different. How could we interpret the same film so differently? The pictures, the details, were the same. If we had to draw a picture of what we saw, it would have been pretty much the same picture (in as far as bad art goes). But if we had to write about what we saw… there would have been almost no similarity.
Everything we understand is filtered through everything that we are. This lesson stuck with me and helped form how I relate to other people.
I found this to be a very fascinating lesson. One that the other kids and teacher did not seem to understand or care about. Life and school had not yet destroyed my soul and creativity… but that was coming soon…
