Transition Blues

“It’s dirty, It’s hot. It’s crowded! What am I doing back here!”

I recently arrived back in India after several months in Australia. Having made that transition perhaps 10 times over the last 20 years, you’d think that I’d have got used to it by now. But the dust, heat and crowds still struck me in that first week back. It was a source of some tension between Cath and me. She’d made a special effort to clean up our room in preparation for my arrival (after not having seen each other for 6 weeks), so she was a little hurt when I, (less than sensitively, in retrospect) commented on the proliferation of dust and spider webs!

Even though my transition from Australia back to India, was, as usual, not easy, at least I was aware this time that the feelings would soon dissipate. I realised that within a week or so the temperatures, crowds (and spider webs) would become my ‘new normal’. And that’s exactly what happened. After having been back for almost 2 months now, I’m no longer noticing the dirt, nor pining for Australian beaches.

It seems to me that several factors ease these ‘transition blues’ from the West to the crowded urban settlements like the ones in which some of us live. Being able to speak the language is a great way to feel part of things again – especially the feeling of bringing that dormant vocabulary back to the ‘desktop’. Having an existing network of friends and colleagues also helps to feel like we belong. During this particular transition, we had the added bonus of moving straight back into the same room where we’d left our stuff. In fact, this time was even easier, since my son Tom and wife Cathy had arrived several weeks earlier, so had already cleaned much (although not all) of dust that had inevitably settled on everything in the months we were away. I just walked in and was ‘home’.

I guess my brief period of transition blues, even after all those years of making those same transitions, shows that the more we do it, the more we learn to get used to a new environment fairly quickly. Even though we were only in Australia for a couple of months, I’d already got used to the lower temperatures, the lack of dirt, and the smaller crowds in public spaces, such that coming back to the dust, heat and crowds of India was hard, even if only briefly.

This all causes me to reflect on the importance of our ability to adjust quickly to new situations, be they easy ones or tough ones. The world is changing so quickly that this ability to adapt is becoming a vital life skill. We seem to forever be moving house, changing jobs, making (or losing) friends, travelling, dealing with new technologies and new rules.

Perhaps Servants’ people’s finely honed ability to adapt to new situations could be a way to encourage people to join us in the slums of Asia? I can see the promotional line now: “Live in a slum and learn to adapt – a skill that will help you for the rest of your life!”

While I wait for lots more people to join us, I’ll just clean up that one more cobweb – so their transition is a little easier!