Life is busy. I leave for work around 8:30 every day, and by the time I come back in the evening, it’s after 7:00. During the day, I can be found working in the office, having lively debates over lunch with my colleagues, running around Hyderabad’s old city on site visits, and hooping on to meetings with partners. In the evenings, I meet with the friends that I have worked hard to meet here and continue to explore a city that feels endless. On my weekends, I am constantly on the move, trying to see as much of this massive, incredible country as I can.
I try to keep my family and friends in the loop of all of this. My family group chat is filled with photos of me exploring white sand beaches, expansive deserts, giant salt flats, jungle temple complexes, modern cities, and archeological sites. In my mind, people back home know what I am up to. They have seen photos of the adventures I am involved in and as a result, get it.
Last week, I called my brother for the first time in far too long. When I live in the United States, he’s right down the road from me. We frequently have dinners, work on projects together, and just coexist. All of it is done casually, without any extra effort or additional thoughts. The mix of my busy life, his new job, and a 10.5 hour time difference though, had made it difficult for us to line up on a phone call.
When we finally were able to hop on a call, I ran into a problem. The stories that I was telling him were difficult to explain. The flavor of my stories, the vibes of the streets I walk down, the names and faces of the people I know, and the cultural context that made an interaction odd, were all missing. So much of our relationship was built on the fact that we grew up in the exact same context. In America, we know the same people, went to the same schools, have the same parents, and exist in the same cultural and social context. When that was removed though, it made it difficult to explain the things going on in my life here in India.
This call highlighted something important to me. My brother and I have the exact same relationship that we have always had. In order to maintain this though, I need to put more work into explaining the context and the reality of where I am living. Photos of my travels and the strange things that I see around the city are not enough for others to understand my life. In my first few months here, a million things constantly shocked and surprised me, but have become things that I no longer think twice about. I need to understand those when I am communicating with people back home. Relationships that are used to proximity are difficult to maintain when distance is added. This is something that I have noticed with many friendships from college that have faded now that the barrier to communication is higher. For the relationships that matter though, the work is not only needed, but part of the joy.
