“Babe, I want to get my nose pierced like the Indians!” my mom announces excitedly out of the blue.
We are strolling down the main drag in the hub of our neighborhood when she drops this bombshell. It is a brisk and bright afternoon and the smog is unusually absent. I have just purchased my usual two marigold garlands from a woman selling them off a fuzzy blanket on the sidewalk. These garlands, called varmala, have an unpleasant smell—a little bit like rotting fruit—but I can’t stop buying them! The fluffy pom-pom suns, strung like necklaces, brighten the whole street and my hospital room. We visit this area of Green Park almost daily now, and it’s starting to feel like any Main Street in America to us. We know which shop to visit for the best Indian sweets—multicolored glutinous gifts, made with rich flavors of sweet syrup, cardamom, saffron, and mango. We’ve also discovered a coffee shop with the perfect cup of chai. It has a cozy bookstore in the back with a great variety of Indian books, some of which are in English. We feel worldly and cultured when we shop there. I sink into my chai and a book called Q & A, which will later become the blockbuster movie Slumdog Millionaire. Mom always gets a latte, which tastes like those at home but is made with soya milk, and another Nicholas Sparks book. She’s going through them both at record rates. We have a book exchange at the hospital, and Nicholas Sparks books are a hot commodity.
“Will you do it with me? We can have matching piercings!” my sixty-two-year-old mother asks.
Something is happening to my mom in India. She is not typically conservative by any means, but here, she is more carefree than I’ve ever seen her. India has brought out her inner flower child and she seems to be fully embracing it. In this crazy city, she is automatically 10 percent more fun, willing, and even a little bit wild.
I think this is true about me too. What I love about travel is how you can and will do things you’d never do at home. There is a freedom of some sort that cannot be captured in your typical environment. Something about being away from home makes the not-normally-okay somehow okay. The rules of home fade across borders, perhaps because no one is keeping score—not even me. The order of daily life is absent, and therefore all my inclinations to adhere to it are as well. Here, it’s all YOLO (you only live once), all the time.
“Come on, babe, I came all the way to India for you,” Mom jokes—or maybe it’s not a joke. Her head is tilted to the side and her ponytail is swinging with hope.
“Let’s do it!” I agree, rolling my eyes with a playful smile.
We walk only a few blocks before spotting a fancy-shmancy jewelry shop.
“Over there.” I point, already embracing the adventure. There is an armed guard outside and gold chains hanging in the window.
We enter the store and I approach the suited man behind the counter to ask if they do nose piercings.
“Ahh, yes, suuuuure,” he says, making no eye contact, but sizing up our noses from a few feet away. He claps in the air and a barefoot teenager appears from the back room almost instantly. His hair is growing in all different directions and his shirt is torn. In his hands, he holds a pair of rusty pliers, a little container of jewelry, a blue pen, cotton balls, and a canister of alcohol. I guess he is the piercer.
“You’re first,” I say to my mom, caught somewhere in between a this is stupid and a this is hilarious laugh. I should stop us both from letting a shoeless stranger put permanent holes in our faces, but it’s too entertaining. Mom sits down on the stool and closes her eyes, and the boy puts a blue pen mark on her left nostril. Women in India are always pierced on the left side of the nose. According to Hinduism, this is one way to honor Parvathi, the goddess of marriage. A large nose ring, joined from the nose to the ear with a chain, is an integral part of bridal jewelry. It is also said that the left side corresponds with the reproductive system in women, so the piercing allegedly reduces pain during childbirth. Some also say it can alleviate endometriosis, a painful condition where the uterine lining grows on other parts of the reproductive system. This is another disease on my never-ending list. Since I first got my period at thirteen, I’ve had several surgeries to ease my agonizing and heavy menstrual cycles. None of them have worked. Maybe this is my ticket to monthly serenity. No pressure, piercing guru!
There is no consult or pleasantries before he lines up a long, thin needle to Mom’s nose. He never asks about her preference for sides, but I don’t think she cares. She is fidgeting in her seat with anticipation. I’m the nervous mom here and she’s the excited teenager. Capturing the entire thing on video, I watch through the camera. When the boy makes the puncture, her only reaction is a slow, tight blink of her eyes. She says nothing and is done before she can even tear up. He removes the needle, inserts a thin gold rod, and pushes it through. Bending the piece of metal into a hoop, he finishes and then tips his chin up for her to get out of the seat.
“Woweee, I love it!” she says, admiring herself in the mirror.
The piercer doesn’t speak English, but when he sees my mom standing proud in all her boldness and bejeweled glory, he finally cracks a smile.
He waves me over to brave the stool next. It is with my butt in the seat that I feel the weight of what a truly stupid idea this could be. My immune system can’t even handle a cold, let alone an infection from a piercing gone wrong. I glance down at my right hand, which has an IV line inserted and taped down. I cover it with my left hand as if to shield it from seeing this irresponsible act. The piercing hurts more than I imagined but not enough to make me cry. I move to touch my nose gently when it’s over, as confirmation that I really did it, but the boy swats me away. The man behind the counter claps once more, and the boy leaves as quickly as he appeared.
We pay about twenty American dollars and are free to go. Pierced and high on our impulsive decision, we leave the shop—two schoolgirls who have just taken their parents’ car without asking.
“What do you think the other kids will say?” Mom asks curiously as we walk back toward the hospital.
“Lauren will hate it,” I reply confidently, because my sister is the most straitlaced of our bunch and would definitely file this under what were you thinking? “David won’t care at all,” I predict, because he is both super laid-back and a serious mama’s boy. She does no wrong in his eyes.
“And what about Dad?” she questions next.
“He’ll totally love it!” I assure her. My dad loves everything about her and I don’t think this will be any exception. I adore how my parents let each other be who they are. They don’t drag each other to activities the other one wouldn’t enjoy, never get mad or jealous if one does something fun without the other, and don’t ask each other for permission to be themselves.
I fleetingly wonder what Jay would think about this new addition to my face. What I do with my nose and my life is no longer any of his business, but I still find myself tangled in the aftermath of our complicated love.
I learned early on that Jay and I worked best when we were floating blissfully in the whirlwind of us. Even before I got sick and the days of partying and fun were long gone, I began to see that our love was built in a bubble. While we did epically better than I might have predicted if I’d known what was to come, I saw that when stressful forces shook our world—an issue at work, a family strain, even just a fight with each other—we splintered a little. I made it my job to compartmentalize feelings, thoughts, and even my relationships with other people to protect our chamber of happiness.
There were times when Jay drank a lot, especially after I got sick. And these were the times he’d sometimes become resentful, jealous, or unhappy with me for any little reason. And by this time, I had transferred my sensitivity about upsetting my parents to my fear of upsetting Jay. I developed a persistent case of it’s-my-fault syndrome, believing when he was upset or in an off mood, it had to be because of me. I jumped to overcompensate for tensions in our relationship. “I know you don’t mean it,” I’d say when he said hurtful things to me. When he didn’t come home or call as promised, I’d reassure him: “I know this isn’t you.” I ran to excuse him, to take blame, to save him from himself—and from breaking my heart.
Would Jay think this piercing was a cool and independent move, or would he be irritated that I’d done something cool and independent without him? Even now, ten thousand miles away, I am still hard at work in my head wondering what would make him happy.
It was about a year into our romance, just as the novelty of my cool bleached-blond hair was wearing off and my liver was tiring from all the booze, that I started to see how tugged and torn I was between the real me and the me that fit best with Jay.
“I don’t feel like drinking today,” I said one Sunday afternoon, as we got ready to go to Mike and Mallory’s house for a barbecue. Mike and Mallory are a kind, mellow couple, Jay’s longtime friends—who were always with a cocktail in one hand and a joint in the other.
“You’re just not as fun when you don’t drink,” Jay replied quickly, as if he’d been waiting to tell me this forever.
Crushed, I cheerfully consoled him. “I will totally have fun even if I don’t feel like drinking.”
“It’s not the same,” he rebutted.
“Okay, maybe I’ll have a couple of drinks,” I compromised, and off we went to Mike and Mallory’s in a car stuffed with silence.
“What’s up?” Mallory asked me in the kitchen as soon as we got a second alone.
I could confide in Mallory, because even though she was friends with Jay first, she was always on my team.
“I’m not fun when I don’t drink,” I shared. I turned my head in Jay’s direction as he chatted with Mike. Mallory flipped her ash-colored bangs into the air with the breath from her hearty laugh.
That day, each time my glass was empty, Mallory grabbed it from me and brought it to the drink station she had set up in the kitchen. I saw her refill my cup six different times: lemonade only, no vodka.
I kept chugging.
On the patio later, Jay leaned into my stone-cold sober body with a lit cigarette and whispered, “You are so much fun tonight! See why I love it when you drink?”
When I went inside the house, I mouthed in wide words to a totally baked Mallory, “Thaaank yooouuu.” She nodded back and winked, exhaling from her pipe.
This story is both small and insignificant, and also everything. Because it would repeat itself over and over in so many different ways. This story represents a million things that I ignored in our relationship, a million things that, had I listened to them, would have made my life difficult while I was busy forcing it to go smoothly. This is a story I’ll never forget, a story that will come into my mind often when I try to push away the things I’m noticing about my life. The world is always telling us stories about who it thinks we should be. But it’s up to us to know and own our own truth.
On that day, for whatever reason, I recognized that Mallory’s story was the same truth my heart was trying to speak to me: I am good enough just how I am. For the record, I am also a damn good time on pink lemonade.
I can feel that truth today, pierced right through my nose. I feel a little bit out of character, but I’m also surprised by how me it actually feels.
When Mom and I return to the hospital, my dad is where we left him, carefully studying the user’s manual for his new Indian alarm clock. He looks up from his inch-thick magnifying glass and notices our gold-adorned noses.
“Where’d you get that?” he asks, his eyes glistening toward my mom. But before we can answer, he lifts his hands to the air in disbelief and confirms what we already knew. “It’s really fucking awesome!” My dad never left the sixties. He raised us on Carole King, Paul Simon, and James Taylor. Peace, love, and fun are his religion. At this moment, we are shining examples of his spirit, and it’s no secret he is totally loving it.
In India, I may be coming undone, but I am also becoming unclenched.
In these past few weeks, I have started to suspect that life cannot be manhandled and things cannot be perfect. No matter how hard I try to force them, I cannot be anything close to the vision of my strongest, most pulled-together self. And because of this, I feel the urge to stop trying so hard—something that is impossible for me at home. In this erratic and free-for-all country, it is becoming clear what the crushing pressure of holding on so tight has done to me. Not only has it made my life harder than it needs to be, but I start to really wonder how much this pattern has affected my body too. What is the cost of clinging to stability and consistency?
Up to now, I have tried to control everything and have ended up sick, in a foreign country, and battling for my health. While I suppose it could be worse (or maybe not), let’s face it: my regimen of control may possibly not be the most effective approach to life. I think it’s time to let go.
When I decide I am ready to start letting go, I recognize that I don’t even fully know what letting go means, because I am such an expert at holding on.
I hold on to fear about my body and my future.
I hold buckets of resentment from my past.
I hold frustration and bitterness because there was no cure for me at home.
I hold on to relationships with people whom I let tell me who I am.
I hold on to grudges like they are gems that will one day make me rich.
I hold tight to the idea of how I think things should be.
I hold myself to impossible standards, responsible for everything and everyone.
I decide to define letting go as going with the flow of life instead of fighting it. I will no longer try to manipulate the unchangeable. I will not swim upstream, against the current, like the one stupid fish in the river going the wrong way, the hard way. I’m pretty sure I’ve been that fish.
It seems there is no better place to try this than in the magical, glorious chaos of India. If I can conquer letting go here, I can conquer it anywhere.
From now on, here’s the deal I make with myself. If it won’t kill me to go with the flow, I will. And if I can’t let go, I will accept the horrendous feeling of being dragged—the emotional torment of trying to wrestle with what is beyond my control, like time, space, my dislike for saag paneer, traffic jams all damn day, air I can’t breathe without choking, and wherever the Universe is intent on taking me.
When I first begin this experiment of letting go, I’ll fail quite a few times, only to rein my efforts back in like a cowboy who temporarily lost the lead on his horse. Let go, it’s okay. Let go. Then, No no no, you idiot! Fight! Then again, Let go. Each time I feel resistance rising within me, I remind myself of my two choices—let go on my own or be dragged. Soon it feels like letting go is almost always the better option.
When I find myself resenting the beeping horns outside, I decide to lean into them. I study the traffic, observing carefully to see what they are honking about. I am fascinated to find that all the honking is actually a language: instead of using blinkers to indicate their next move, drivers beep before they change lanes and even when they are saying thank you to another driver for letting them merge. This does not immediately make me a fan of the beep beep beeps, but it makes me part of the game instead of an enemy of it.
When I see Dr. Shroff in physio and she asks me the usual “How are you?” I start to panic. I want to run away, preempting an attack on whatever she thinks I am doing wrong. When I decide to let go and speak the truth—that some things are good and some are not—she tells me to focus on the good, that I can heal myself, and that I must let go of all thoughts that are not working for me. “I’m trying!” I agree genuinely and with a smile. This is the first time I feel her words not as criticism, but as a message with some kind of truth. There is a new softness in our exchange. She even notices the nose ring and tells me it’s cute. I think we are making progress. Maybe.
I press on, proud of my successes, making a brand-new conscious decision in each moment: to turn away from the fight within me . . . and let go.
I do it each evening when the sister comes to do my IV and doesn’t use the disinfecting protocol that the nurses at home would. Let go. I make the decision when the tuk-tuk driver promises he knows where he’s going and then loops around the city for two hours because he clearly doesn’t. Let go. I make the decision when I see the hospital’s “premier dry-cleaning service provider” set up on the street corner, hanging my delicates from a makeshift clothesline, then beating them with a wooden stick for all the world to see and all the city’s dust to cling to. Now I know why my laundry has been returning with holes. Let go. It is really not long before I learn that letting go won’t kill me and I start to enjoy it.
And that’s how I end up packed into a car with my parents and our bags on a winter road trip to Agra—the famous city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and home to the Taj Mahal. Because there is nothing that throws you out of your comfort zone more than agreeing to head off into the great wild of India for a four-hour drive with a stranger behind the wheel.
My parents have been gently cheerleading, asking me to consider a trip outside the city’s perimeter. Up until now, I have been too worried about how I’d feel, what I’d eat, and being in the car for so long while I’m so emotionally unsteady. But it is now, after three weeks of keeping company with the most unstable version of myself I’ve ever known, and surviving it, that I have agreed to visit the magnificent spiritual mecca of the Taj Mahal.
Dr. Shroff has approved me to leave overnight. “Good! You will not focus on illness there,” she tells me.
“True!” I reply, with sincerity that matches hers.
Most of the patients here have already made the journey to the Taj and have told us we must see it. “You can’t go to India and not see the Taj Mahal!” “It’s only four hours away. How could you not?” “It’s unimaginable, you’ll see. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.” I am a total antitourist, typically avoiding these types of excursions like the plague, but I am also desperate to flee Delhi.
Carpe diem!
The ride to Agra, home to the beloved and spiritually magnetic mausoleum, is rough and rugged, like all car journeys here. It feels like there is no asphalt beneath our wheels and we are simply being dragged over rocks and potholes toward our destination.
Our English-speaking driver, Raj, chats in his thick, melodious accent most of the way. Raj is well educated, but tells us that unless he has enough money to bribe someone in India, he cannot get a good job.
“If only I could buy a car instead of working for someone else,” he declares, “I would be reeeech!” But with the tiny salary he gets, there is just no way to get ahead. “Your America truly theee laaand of opportunity!”
Driving past the government officials’ mansions, which look like they are located in the Beverly Hills of Delhi, he points a finger out the window and says, “Theeese are the homes of the corruption leaders.” He doesn’t crack a smile.
I am absorbing the sights and sounds from the window in awe, camera in hand, trying to capture the things that fly by too quickly. Dad is in the front seat doing the same, and my mom is in the back with me, peering out the window in wonder. In between capturing shots of wild boars running, children dancing, and men pushing food carts of every kind, I use the technique I’ve learned to avoid getting carsick in India: look out the side window, only and always. When I’ve looked through the front window here, I want to jump out and walk, convinced it’s the only way to arrive at my destination alive.
During every car ride, you are guaranteed to come face-to-face with cows s-l-o-w-l-y crossing the road, causing the driver to terrifyingly swerve with no warning; cars skidding into oncoming traffic to make a left turn; people running in front of your taxi to sell you a calendar in Hindi, or a single carrot; and a host of other absurdities. If you ever visit this hectic, amazing country, simply focus on one thing when traveling by car: side window only.
One of the towns we pass through looks as if it is made from nothing but brightly dyed trash. It appears that a bomb has exploded, scattering a sea of rainbow candy wrappers. Animals and children play among the piles of rubbish as if they are there for the purpose of pure enjoyment. People are drinking from puddles of water outside their huts, which are made of mud and sugarcane. Kids are playing naked. People living along the sides of this stretch of road to Agra have no money to eat and are drinking and bathing in filthy water, but have goats that seem to be worth a fortune. The furry friends are lovingly decked out in sweaters, bells, and jewels.
This would be the mother of all MasterCard commercials:
Bottled drinking water: $1
Enough rice to last a week: $6
Making your goat’s wardrobe a priority: PRICELESS
We arrive at the Taj just in time to see several phases of the sunset in its last hour before dusk. Raj parks and shows us where we go next, to meet our already-assigned tour guide. Cars and buses are not allowed to come within five hundred meters of the entrance. This prevents vehicle exhaust from tarnishing the building.
The rush to enter the glorious Taj Mahal is like trying to get into Boston’s Fenway Park—everyone is crammed in line to get to the front first, only to go nowhere at the same time.
Men in one line and women in another, we are patted down and our bags are lazily searched, with the guards often looking in another direction while they do their rummaging. My backpack is full of pill bottles, tubes of lip moisturizer, and the single roll of toilet paper I carry everywhere after learning the hard way that some venues in India are BYOTP.
Once we are declared weapon-or-whatever-free, we flood through the entrance and get our first glimpse of the opulent architectural icon. Beyond the sprawling garden and grand fountain that opens before us, we see the Taj Mahal, meaning Crown of the Palace, standing at a towering 240 feet. It is made entirely of ornately carved, glistening white marble. There are four huge pillars that encircle the Taj and appear to be protectors, the keepers of this marvelous palatial structure. The pillars are tipped away from the dome ever so slightly, constructed this way so the tomb would be saved if they were ever to crumble.
Inside the gates, the race begins for photo opportunities. It is a sea of cameras, bobbing heads hidden behind them.
We see a sign with our name on it and wave to our tour guide.
“Hello! Ready for photo?” he asks, and escorts us over to get the best shots. We fall into pose quickly for our family photo at the freakin’ Taj Mahal in India!
“This Taj was built for Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s favorite wife!” our guide explains, swinging his hand up in a circular motion toward it. I immediately snub my nose at this whole “favorite wife” thing, until I learn that the emperor had it built for her as a tomb, after she died during the birth of their fourteenth child. Any woman who had that many children deserved to be the “favorite.” It turns out she was the third and the favorite. But I do wonder if he told all his wives that.
We wander around for quite a while, our shoes hiding under the required cotton covers that protect the gardens and the ground of this forty-two-acre complex. I never realized how massive the entire area would be. I am going slowly, at a turtle’s pace, because that’s the only way I can keep up right now. But I am still going.
Mom and Dad are spaced generously around me. It is now that I feel something I have not felt in quite a while: the ease of my parents. Through the past years, I have been acutely aware of their worry, their cautionary observation of me when they think I might be in pain or discomfort. But right now, I am once again their little girl, and they are just regular parents able to enjoy a new family adventure.
As we continue our stroll through the grounds and toward the Taj, we see women draped in saris sitting on the lawns, little lime-green parrots perched in trees, and photographers getting the shots of a lifetime. The closer we get, the more impressive the massiveness of the building becomes. Over a thousand elephants were used to carry materials here from all over the world. The white marble from Rajasthan is what the Taj is most recognized for, but the different stones that are inset in the marble is what gives it life: jade, crystal, turquoise, jasper, lapis lazuli, sapphire, and carnelian. It took decades to complete this masterpiece. It looks like it would take no less.
When we finally get right up to the building that holds the tomb, we’ve been wandering around for at least forty-five minutes. I reach my hand out and the wall feels cool, like a bathroom tile floor first thing in the morning. The calligraphy inscribed on the surface of the Taj Mahal is remarkable, consisting mostly of verses and prayers from the holy Quran. To see the marble-carved floral imagery so close-up is to study the petals of a flower held gently in your hand after seeing the entire garden only from a distance.
The crowds that pile into the actual structure holding the tomb are packed like herds of sheep, only less polite. Our guide asks if we want to enter.
“You can enter, but I give warning,” he says, holding his hand out as a stop sign. “Your white skin may be appealing to others and therefore it’s possible it is dangerous! It’s best you don’t go in such tight quarters where you may be groped.”
“We’re gonna skip it!” Dad cuts in immediately, Mom and I nodding with utter approval. Getting felt up in a tomb would be wrong on so many levels.
After a few hours, I am pleased to be able to still be walking around, high on the validity of being part of thousands of culturally mature people who flock to the Taj each year. I feel like a champ for lasting this long and with less pain than expected; the continuous deep throbbing still exists inside, but it is no longer overpowering all of me.
As my physical pain becomes less of a focus, I am present in ways I’ve never been before. I notice blackbirds are screaming, flying high circles in the sky. I stop for long moments to take them in, listening to the click-click of Dad’s camera as he follows their flight. The breeze that blows my hair into my face feels sharp on my cheek. My awareness of my surroundings is heightened and I have less of an obsession about my body and what it is or isn’t doing. I am fully, and only, right where I am. I recognize this awareness as something I learned from studying Buddhism. I’ve tried to achieve it many times in my life, but especially since coping with physical pain and illness—this mindfulness of my current state, without being attached to it. At home, it’s always seemed unattainable. But in India, I am a natural wanderer, a drifter at heart, and able to be present without having to strive greatly for it. Although I am a Virgo to the core, often craving order, analysis, organization, and direction, there is a part of me deep inside that needs none of that. I need only to be. And that part of me seems to have a surprising and direct connection to total and pure joy. When away from home and my ideas of what should or shouldn’t be, it turns out, I do not freak out. Well, not always. Instead, I open up. I slow down. I give myself the permission to be free, to pay attention to what is right in front of me. Everything is new and vibrant, pulling me toward it.
The night is dark when we make our way toward the exit, and as we walk, I inhale the pure awesomeness of each step. There is no agenda in these quieter moments of my journey, no need for an urgent cure, and no immediate awareness of or thoughts about the stem cell treatment I came for.
Instead, I sense an unconscious, unprompted internal shift. Particles of my old self are being left behind on these cherished grounds. I do not have all the answers to who I am today, in these precious slivers of time. In fact, I am not even entirely aware how precious they are. But one thing is undeniably true: I am no longer willing to be the girl who holds on so tight that she breaks her own spirit to do it. Let go. Let go. Let go.
Under the remarkable towering marble and the black sky scattered with stars, the things that make me feel most alive become thoroughly clear: the glow on the crescent moon above me, the spark of a tiny new part of myself, and the brilliance of having a picture with my parents at one of the greatest destinations on earth. When life blows, I think, may I always return effortlessly to this day.