Hola, Guadalajara!

Guadalajara? Where is that? How do you say it, again? 

In my home city of Mumbai, three continents, an ocean and a sea away from Mexico, most of us knew very little about the country.

We knew it was the poor, desperate neighbor of the almighty USA and a haven for drug cartels that kidnapped innocent tourists and shot people in the streets. Americans loved to vacation there and everyone drank tequila and ate tacos.

That much we all knew.

My mom had just got a transfer at work and had to move to Guadalajara. The news came a couple of months after I had quit my job, for a much-needed break. The timing was so fortuitous, I could not ignore it and so I decided to go to Mexico with her for a year.

Whenever I told someone I was going to Mexico, I was asked the same questions. Are you sure? Isn’t it really dangerous? Don’t they have drug wars there? 

The questions did not come from a place of ignorance, as my friends are all smart, well-educated people, well up-to-date on global current events. But its what we had always seen about Mexico, in movies where criminals seeking to flee the law in USA go to hide and on the news about corruption scams and cartel violence.

Regardless, it was an exciting opportunity so we packed up our house and got on a flight (actually, several flights) to Guadalajara, which I had since learned was the second-largest city in Mexico.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but when I landed in Guadalajara, jet-lagged, 50 something hours later, I felt something that only a few, very special places make me feel. It’s hard to describe but its a feeling of familiarity, of a place that feels comfortable, feels something like home. I knew then, that Guadalajara and I were going to see each other often.

But when I made my way to the Centro Historico a couple of days (of sleep) later, I felt a slight frisson of fear too. I didn’t quite know what to expect.

What I felt when I stepped into the sunny Plaza de Liberacion, with a grand cathedral on one side and the gorgeous Teatro Degollado on the other, is a feeling I struggled to describe for a few months till I heard a TED Talk by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie.

In the talk on ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ she spoke about her own visit to Guadalajara, and how, like me, seeing the smiling, warm people walking around Centro Historico, she felt ashamed. She felt ashamed of having fallen into the trap of believing a single narrative.

Seeing people walking to work or their families, vendors selling fruits and horchata, reading or hanging out with their dogs and kids running around, she realized that she too was guilty of what she resented people for doing to her home country Nigeria. For buying into the narrative of a poor country where everyone was starving, wretched and miserable. She had bought into the narrative of the impoverished, desperate Mexican immigrant, uneducated and pathetic, whose only salvation was to make a better life in the glorious USA- the bastion of freedom and opportunity. 

This narrative had been, if not created, then at least oversimplified and propagated by a racist, biased and sensationalist media and entertainment industry, with global reach and political clout. I had fallen for it too. Like Adichie, I too come from a country that’s often misunderstood in its complexity and widely misrepresented, often caricatured. To draw a parallel, it’s like expecting Mumbai to be like ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ or New York to be like the Godfather movies.

I understood then that we all have a responsibility to do better. Especially in a world rampant with divisive politics and facist leaders, we all need to be constantly vigilant and critical. As educated global citizens, we have to read between the lines and as aspiring global travelers to approach new places with curiosity rather than condescension.

I stood in the plaza and realized with a rush, that the fear was gone and instead, I felt excitement and anticipation of adventure. This feeling has stayed with me through every minute in the grand and elegant city of Guadalajara and the beautiful, welcoming, historic country of Mexico.