Groundhog Day

Being in India often makes me feel like I’m stuck in my own version of Groundhog Day.

This is one of my favorite movies. Bill Murray is a self-centred and snide television weatherman who is smitten by Andi McDowell, a producer who detests him for the arrogant jerk that he is but is stuck as his partner during their news coverage of the cute annual ritual of Groundhog Day in a small town. Every year, the town officially hails the end of winter after a celebrated rodent and town mascot named Punxatawney Phil ends its hibernation by emerging from its hole in the ground and approving the weather by looking as though he is interested in remaining outdoors.

The same sequence of events in a single day repeat themselves, over and over again, giving Murray a shot at re-capturing lost opportunities and re-doing everything he did unthinkingly or clumsily again and again, with increasing purpose and elegance.

Again and again, he gets the same chance over to be kinder to the people whose toes he treaded on. He learns to open himself to the beauty of moments he missed in his usual snarkiness. And with each new effort, he gradually re-invents himself as a sensitive, happy person who celebrates each moment of his day till he makes it perfect, for himself and everyone he meets. As he finally perfects this single, all-important day in his life, he enriches the people he encounters and finds his own hidden talents. He learns to be kind and gentle, to play piano like a virtuoso, to find joy in little things. And by editing and retooling himself, he crafts his own happiness.

The lesson is that we are the creators of our own happiness. Every day can be the most meaningful day of our lives, and we have the power, within our own selves, to make little moments and gestures reverberate with beauty. We are the artists who can paint and re-paint each still frame until it imparts the beauty we imagined it should glow with and becomes perfect as a work of art.

Every time I’ve come back to India, it feels like I am stuck again in the same set of events and given another opportunity to do things over in order to make them come out better.

The props change a little over the years. There are more cars, grander buildings. People have more money, wear nicer clothes and still cut into queues and attack buffet tables.

But the situations are the same. I interact with the same prototypes of relatives, neighbors, people I meet for work, or at a dinner party.

Each time, I have the same conversations and go through the same motions, over and over.

Each time, I have an opportunity to feel utterly stuck and utterly blessed with something new.

Each time, I have an opportunity to do better and to get things right as I become aware of the renewed opportunity to understand the people whose lives intersect with mine better, to offer better of myself and to come away enriched with simple gladnesses I was blind to in previous times.

Moving to India has felt like enacting my own Groundhog Day. I feel stuck in a maddening yet serene cycle of karmic repetition. When things happen, they are new, yet infuriatingly similar. It is a second chance disguised as déjà vu. I’m still stuck, still trying to get it right.

The country I have a love-hate relationship keeps throwing me fresh chances to know it, and myself better; to forgive me, and to be forgiven, to disown me and to embrace me in its fragrant shoulders.