I Don't Want to Go to India

I don’t want to go to India. That was my first thought as I boarded the initial leg of a lengthy journey to that very same country. I had a few connections spanning several days before finally reaching Mumbai. But I didn’t want to go to India. It wasn’t even on my top 50 destinations. I had little to no interest in Indian culture, which is kind of odd considering my general culture-curious nature. I didn’t care to die without seeing the Taj Mahal or the corpse eating crazies of Varanasi. None of it called to me. I had had Indian friends growing up and never put much thought into their summer vacations in the homeland.

But here I was, going to India against my own will, but by my own volition, and unfortunately, my own dwindling funds. This is what some might define as the actions of a completely madwoman.

Nothing new.

I have this tendency to get into doing things I don’t necessarily want to do. Part of it stems from determination to follow through with my decisions, even if I’ve changed my mind. And the other part is partially due to –would you know it- fortune cookie guts.

“Try it. You might like it.”

When I read the fortune from the fortune cookie that I cracked open and I passed on to my friend -because as we already know, I hate fortune cookies- I laughed. We sat around in the living room of our shared apartment in an old wooden house. I read the fortune out loud and everyone giggled. I was in college, a student luxuriating in the grandeur of $10 Chinese take out, a somewhat rare treat. And in that rather juvenile mindset the two fragment sentences seemed to refer to something sexual. Try it. You might like it. It sounded like encouragement from an eagerly curious sex partner. Everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. For a long while it remained a phrase I thought of that made me laugh. But almost every joke has some truth to it, and this one was no exception.

I have no idea where that little white paper with tiny words printed in dark blue ink went. I haven’t seen it in years. But those six words and their two punctuations have remained engrained in my thoughts for nearly a decade and with time their meaning has altered much like the person housing them.

Try it. You might like it. Became a sort of motto. I have even been known to add try it TWICE. You might like it. on occasion. Of course, might is a word that bears probability. “Might” could be 50% or 60 or 40. You really don’t know until it’s already underway. The potential to strongly dislike “it”, whatever “it” may be, is always present. When in doubt, do it for the experience. The most difficult ones always make for the best stories.

And that’s how I determined that I was going to India and I was going to love it, whether I like it or not.

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