Deconstructing Darjeeling

It's a rare event when I venture out to see a movie. It's not that I don't enjoy movies--I love them, and when I see a good one, it's usually a source of reflection for weeks following. Sadly, time is at a premium in my life. As I hinted in an earlier post, I essentially hold down two careers simultaneously--my career as a doctoral student in Communication and my other life in the NGO world (more details on these in a later post, or perhaps later in this one)--and I place tremendous value on my time with friends and family as well. Between these three pillars, there are few opportunities for movie watching.

A couple of weeks ago, however, I saw one of those rare films that has been rolling around in my brain ever since--Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited," which you can probably still find in theaters if you hunt around a bit.

As a brief synopsis, I'll simply note that the film is about three estranged--and somewhat apathetic--American brothers who come together for a "spiritual journey" in India a year following the death of their father. This is a film about travel and about the recharging of the spirit that is usually the result of such journeys.

Travel is a passion and a calling for me, and so films like Darjeeling tend to speak especially clearly to me. As a young male, I'm obligated to (and with pleasure, I do) list the Godfather (parts I and II taken as a single entity, of course--part III notwithstanding) as the greatest movie of all time. The second greatest, however, would be a classic from another Coppola--Lost in Translation, the story of a washed-up actor rekindling his spirit in Japan with the help of a young traveling companion.

People give me strange looks sometimes when I reveal how high I list Lost in Translation on the film hierarchy, but those who know me assume that, as somebody who found new life traveling Asia, it is only logical that I would be drawn to a film about--of all things--somebody who finds new life traveling Asia.

My parents encouraged travel from a young age. They never traveled alone and always took me with them on their vacations both domestically and abroad. By the end of middle school, I'd been to Europe three times (one time visiting Finland after writing a school paper about that country). By my senior year of high school, I had found cheap ways to visit Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, using my experience in Africa to work with a charitable foundation in Kenya to raise money funding AIDS education and computer equipment in a Nakuru school house.

When I started college, I opted to take Chinese, figuring that it would be a nice challenge for a couple of years and would fulfill my school's foreign language requirement. After spending my freshman summer studying in Beijing, taking a Chinese work boat through the Three Gorges, and discovering a culture that was begging to be explored by the non-Chinese curious, I declared a minor in Chinese Language and Culture.

Two summers later, I returned to China on my own intending to find summer work in the northeastern town of Changchun. I found this work as a teacher and part-time office worker with a corrupt organization that fronted as a staffing agency for educational institutions ranging from weekend foreign language schools to large universities. The real money was funneled to investors from a chain of nursing homes in Japan.

The profits were too robust to pass muster with Chinese joint venture laws, and so the company's directors had formed "strategic partnerships" (read: under-the-table wink-and-nod agreements) with organizations such as China Telecom, China Mobile, and of course, with the local government and police department. Northeastern China is the wild west of the business world, and I was on the front lines of this phenomenon.

It was venture capitalism at its purest, and it was alive and well in the far reaches of the People's Republic of China.

While in Changchun, I also forged friendships with expatriots from around the world--a community that at once impressed and puzzled me. There was the 40-year-old Canadian ex-grocery store manager looking to start a radio station, the Salvadorian street tough from Brooklyn supporting three kids in both former homelands, the Welsh carpenter seeking to find a wife and disappear into the Chinese masses, the American physics professor who had escaped his former life after a nervous breakdown and electric shock therapy in the States, the Australian socialite looking to escape her gilded childhood. The cast of characters was rich with back stories, secrets, and a sense of comradery that I still feel with many of them, even though it is unlikely that we will ever again cross paths.

And then there was Gavin--the ex-drug dealer and psychiatric nurse from Wales, with whom I formed the strongest of bonds. He had children in two hemispheres (his tongue-in-cheek goal was to sire a soccer team) and longed to settle in Thailand, where he would, some years later, be robbed by his pregnant girlfriend, imprisoned for visa fraud, and deported.

I could write a dissertation on this experience alone, and I'm sure that this won't be the last I mention it, but in the interest of time (and the fact that my coworkers are starting to wonder exactly what I'm doing with my morning), I will jump to my point.

The point is that I am not a sedentary person, and so it is unnatural for me to be sitting here, behind a desk, worrying about the bottom line. After graduating college, my best friend and I backpacked Southeast Asia. After finishing my master's degree, I took off to Spain. This year, I spent a week alone in Ireland...and yet, I am more restless than ever.

As I write this, flourescent lights are illuminating my desk and keyboard. Papers are being shuffled in the background. Accounts receivable is sorting out our expenses in order for us to stay on budget. Invoices are being mailed. IT is on its way to train a new employee. People are coming down with colds, the flu, allergies, because, of course, "it's that time of year. Must be the weather. I wonder how many sick days I have left?"

This is the organizational life, and while my coworkers are pleasant and my boss is generous, it is difficult for me to concentrate on this cubicle when I know that there is such a wealth of experience to be had out in the world.

I love the academic lifestyle, but the corporate one is a bit harder for me to stomach. Part of me is seriously considering taking a leave for three months next summer and traveling the world, alone, and sans set itinerary (a week ago, I had a Star Alliance Round the World Ticket on reserve, but I let it go). My practical side is asking, "how do you expect to be retained by your organization if you leave because you can't stomach the environment?"

It's a good question. There are so many good questions to ask, but never enough time to answer them. Or is there?

Always wondering what the next move will be...