Taking the Plunge
Using Deweyan introspection to narrate an experience
A conventional South Indian wedding begins with families exchanging pictures and horoscopes. Upon the family’s approval of the boy and the astrologer’s approval of a horoscope match, families meet, traditionally with the boy’s family visiting the girl’s home. Coming from an orthodox family, I was bound to go through the conventional route of getting wedded. With technological solutions being ubiquitous, my parents had resorted to a matrimonial match making website to find me a prospective husband. I had tweaked the conventions though, requesting an option to choose the boy from the list of profiles, though astrologer’s approval was mandatory.
Months after some thorough searching, I stumbled upon a profile. It was of a handsome, well-educated south Indian boy, working in the United States (as proudly described by my parents). I was charmed by his smile (as was seen in his pictures). I was hoping that I surpass the conventional steps (of the horoscopes matching and the families conversing) to eventually talk to him. Two days into the process, after several phone calls between families and approval through the conventional screening process, I spoke to him for the first time! Luckily, he was equally charmed by me as I was of him.
Things moved quickly from there on, from 30-minute calls to 3-hour calls, from voice to video calls and in no time the wedding was fixed (well the families fixed it). While we were equally in on the decision of getting married, the fact that we hadn’t physically met, held us back from instantly saying a yes to the wedding. He couldn’t travel to India to visit me owing to immigration complications. That was when I decided, to travel all alone to a foreign land, to meet my prospective husband. In my parents’ eyes, I was being an arrogant rebel, who was breaking norms to fly all the way to the US alone to meet her prospective husband. Their fear though was associated with the pessimistic likelihood of the boy calling off the wedding after meeting me. It was a matter of socio-cultural pressures and self-esteem.
The journey, a rather tedious one, began at the Bangalore airport, with a transit flight from Paris, France to Raleigh, North Carolina. It was my first time travelling alone, let alone to a foreign country. With flight delays and a huge, empty, theft-prone Charles de Gaulle airport giving me palpitations, my ray of hope was of landing in Raleigh and meeting the man who had cajoled me into travelling so far just for him! The flip side though, was of the fear of he not liking me or perhaps me not liking him (although that was highly unlikely)!
After 22 hours of travel, I had landed in Raleigh airport, still feeling fluttery, though this time excitement was higher than my fear, until I saw myself in a mirror! I had to make sure I look the best, though a long flight and jet lag was wreaking havoc on my face. With tiredness and sleep dripping off my face, I had to do something to look brighter, and I instantly turned to my contact lenses. I quickly rinsed my face, swapped my eyeglasses for contact lenses, put on some eye liner and was ready to step out of the airport. Just then, I remembered how he liked me better without glasses and the smile on my face brightened me even more.
I stepped out of the airport to be welcomed by his father, who had coupled his visit with mine. We exchanged greetings and waited, just when we received a call of his arrival to pick us up. It was the moment, my eyes gazing to find his car. There he was, more charming than the pictures, with a rather straight face. I was puzzled. Questions like did he not see me, did I not match his expectations, or worse, did he not like me, clouded my head. As I seated myself in the back seat, with his father sitting in the front, he greeted me with a “hi”, still the straight face! As we drove away from the airport, my gaze caught him looking at me in the rear-view mirror. My heart skipped a beat, he smiled, I blushed, and we took the plunge!
Reflections:
The process of doing and undergoing in choosing an experience to write, was an experience in itself. Having chosen an experience to write about, drafting the intricacies of the experience was another experience. There were constant doubts on what to include and what not to include. Taking a step back and re-reading Dewey gave me the idea of splitting the experience into beginning, middle and the end with alternations of doing and undergoing leading to a satisfying experience. What was challenging though, was to draft the nuances of my experience while maintaining the flow of events. It was surprising that an experience that I reminisce every day, was so difficult to describe in words. What helped was the process of thinking out loud (through writing). Re-reading my account transported me back to my experience.
While reflecting on the process of writing, I could sense that McCarthy and Wright’s threads of experience (inspired by Dewey) played a role in choosing what to include and what not to include. Precisely, the satisfying emotional quality was happiness and love, thereby an inherent association with emotional elements. Sensual and Spatio-temporal elements were also interwoven throughout the narration. I constructed my premise based on the compositional element to let the readers know the context in which my experience was framed. It was particularly interesting to construct the compositional elements as I was conscious of my tacit knowledge and wanted to make explicit, the details of the context relevant to my experience. This involved asking the question “what part of the experience adds meaning to making the experience an experience”? And the responses tied to what I wanted to highlight in my experience.
References:
Dewey, J. (1964). Having an experience. Chicago
McCarthy, J., & Wright, P. (2004). Technology as experience. interactions, 11(5), 42–43.Chicago