A Flair for the Grotesque

This country brings out the Flannery O'Connor in me. The chief difference between the two of us being that O'Connor wrote masterpieces of literature about life in the American South and I'm scribbling incoherently about India in a notebook, we still share an attraction to life's uncomfortable facets. O'Connor tends to shade her stories with someone's snotty nose or craft a hilarious plot around an awkwardly taboo subject, like a young woman's wooden leg. So many of the realities I used to turn away from or cover up – red betel juice spat in the gutter, greasy hotel pillows, what the men across the street stare for, middle-aged women without teeth, the satisfaction I get out of picking scabs, the way the grocer's ear hair curls over his ear lobes – are being taken out, turned over, and brought to light. I'm not sure why it feels natural, even necessary, to openly recognize these things here, but they pull at me like a distant lump on the side of the highway: you know what it's going to be but you just can't turn away. It's remarkable what a bout of Delhi belly can do to broaden your horizons.

What I'm finding is that it's okay to notice the dirt in your fries. At the very least, a bit of gritty humor can be extracted, and usually a glimpse at the honest, beautiful contradiction of being human.