Dr. Kani's Take: As a Desi woman, why I travel for myself

Since childhood, I was aware of the tremendous pressure on Desi women. I remember reading a story, “Mother’s Picnic,” in my cousin’s schoolbook from India. To celebrate her birthday, the family decided to have a picnic. The mother prepared and packed her kids’ favorite foods. When it was time to go, there wasn’t room for everyone in the car because of the large picnic basket. The mother chose to stay behind because her joy was her family’s joy. I remember being shocked and angry that young kids were being taught this is what it means to be a good mother.

I resolved to fight this societal pressure on Desi women to be so self-sacrificing. As a psychiatrist, I am aware that we can internalize value systems that we don’t agree with. As psychotherapist Dr. Aries Liao said, “Women are taught to give all the good away and that suffering is honorable. A woman’s value is the service she provides. Women are faced with the enormous responsibilities of maintaining their figures, avoiding academic and career failures, keeping up with expectations, and maintaining performance of upholding her cultural self and her duties towards her family and cultural tribe. Many women do not learn to love themselves beyond fulfilling filial duties and make a blanket sacrifice of selfhood.”

I resolved to resist that internalized value system in me, and I have. One of the latest ways in which I have fought it is that I took a trip for myself, just myself. No one else in my family wanted to travel, and my friends were not available. 

Undeterred, I traveled to the Amazon, a lifelong dream of mine, and saw what it is like to be in the wild, untethered from human civilization. My tour was amazing. We got to touch a boa constrictor and gaze into the eyes of a caiman. 

We saw creatures I never heard of before like the madre luna bird (Nyctibius griseus) that camouflages so well into a tree that you can barely see it. It has big eyes and a stunning, ancient presence. We also saw hoatzin, which is another ancient bird with unique adaptations, e.g., claws on its wings (like the Archaeopteryx). Its chicks can swim underwater to evade predators. 

We saw an anaconda, several types of storks, parakeets, toucans, oropendolas, squirrel monkeys, capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, river dolphins, river otters, two and three-toed sloths, morpho butterflies, curare, and quinine.

We went on a night walk in the jungle and saw tarantulas, rats, bats, frogs, lizards, moths, wolf spiders, beetles, caterpillars, and dragonflies. 

The grueling bus ride to and from the rainforest was 18 to 21 hours each way, but it was worth it in the end. 

At night, I listened to the multilayered tapestry of sounds, including birds, insects, frogs, and other animals. The rainforest sonarscape is like floating among the stars. It reveals your tiny place in this vastness, in this rich constellation of sound, everything unfamiliar, unknown. I was an explorer in this world of mystery. 

It was exhilarating being in the dark among these sounds and having no idea what they were. If I had wifi, I could have used an audio ID app, but I didn’t have Wi-Fi. 

We went to the Siona indigenous village and met Hector, a Siona shaman, learned about indigenous medicine, and harvested yucca to make bread. We saw a capybara that the shaman had raised since it was a baby.

For Hector, the jungle is God, since the jungle provides all. Hector’s grandfather was also a shaman, but his father chose to become an evangelical Christian.  Hector said that when he was a little boy, he wanted to be a shaman to help his grandfather with his tasks. His grandfather was grateful that his grandson chose to return to the family tradition and is now a shaman serving the community. 

I was moved by this family's story of adopting and rejecting colonialism, and had many questions that I didn’t get a chance to ask. For example, which version of the Bible did Hector’s father receive and teach? Did he get the Slave Bible or the Bible given to white people?

As writer Candice Lucey shares, “Slave owners worried Bible verses about freedom would incite their African slaves to rebel. On the other hand, certain passages of Scripture encouraged submission to authority. Rather than withholding the entire Bible, some masters allowed their slaves to have the Slave Bible, which was compiled from selected parts of God’s word to inspire submission.” 

Narratives like “Mother’s Picnic” and the Slave Bible are used to control people’s thoughts and behavior. It is less expensive to control people with stories than with armies. While the military provides direct control of a population, they are a financial, humanitarian, and logistical burden to maintain. Whereas stories shape culture and have a wider reach. Stories can be used to justify domination and create willing subservience, which makes them a more efficient means for long-term exploitation. 

While in Quito, I saw how the Spanish conquistadors razed the sacred Indigenous temples and built churches on top of their foundations. As recently as 1976, the Church even built a statue, the Virgin of Quito, stomping on a snake, which is one of the primary Indigenous gods, on El Panecillo, a sacred site for the Indigenous people.

It was encouraging and inspiring that the Siona people were in charge of the tourism in the Cuyabeno rainforest. They operated the lodges, boat tours, and village tours, the environmental protection, and decided on the logistics, amount, and frequency of tourist visits to the rainforest. 

I feel really grateful for the time in the rainforest, and it was an opportunity to renounce the modern-day tower of Babel—the internet. It was a chance to come back to the beginning, ground myself in presence, connect to life force, let go of all the roles that I have been given, and just be a being among beings. I felt grateful, joyful, and full of love.

We went swimming in the Laguna Grande daily. The Laguna is filled with nutrients and minerals. When I swam in it, I always emerged energized and deeply nourished. I asked our guide whether his indigenous community members are long-lived because of all the nutrients in the rainforest. He told us that his grandmother is 102 and is still fishing and caring for herself. I wish I had asked to meet her when we went to his village.

If you don’t like the song of modern civilization, you can change the record and choose a new song, even if only temporarily, and then return with an altered perspective. I know that’s possible because I have done it once before, when I lived in an ashram after I graduated from college.

If you are not happy with where you are, it’s never too late to reset and start again. If you feel you have lost your place, you can listen to the chorus of the rainforest and find your way into the dance.

I love how Indigenous people talk about animals as our older siblings who are patient with us humans—their immature, younger siblings. It is the opposite of the Christian idea of humans being granted dominion over all creatures. 

In the Indigenous perspective, animals are holding space for us to find our way again. And I really felt that when I came to the rainforest, I got a chance to find my place in this web of interbeing, this Indra’s net. It feels joyful to be there versus some falsely elevated spot, where our rampant, unfulfillable desires are cooking the world. 

We could just let our desires go and spread our tendrils into the interconnected web of being that surrounds us. The rainforest teaches us that we could focus our energy on connection instead of consumption. 

Our guide told us that the trees in the rainforest don’t grow very tall, unless they are adjacent to the river’s abundant nutrients. They don’t grow that tall because there are so many beings growing together that it would be hard for one being to dominate. It is such a contrast to our human society, with our billionaires and vast income inequality.

While in the rainforest, I had a fantasy of the Desi mom of the story partying after her family went off to celebrate her birthday without her. 

In our networked world, traveling off the grid might be the best opportunity for a room of one’s own.

Dr. Kani Ilangovan is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist, mother, writer and activist. She is a board member of The E Pluribus Unum Project and works for pluralistic curriculum advocacy.

What did you think of this issue? Reply to this email to chat with us, or join the conversation on Instagram.

Support our efforts by becoming a member or inviting a friend to subscribe. Let's make this a place for all Desis regardless of background, class or creed. ❤️