YOu say:
"For an artist there is no greater joy than feeling understood and appreciated."
For an artist? Isn't this what each human being needs and desires?
"We all like to feel that We have someplace to go
where We are received with love and without judgment;
when that is real, that is a place that really feels good",
says "God" at the end of the 8 books called "Right Use of Will".
And what is the only "real" story in the Bible, after the 3 chapters of myth,
if not this message? Cain killed his brother - not for money, land, power, a woman-
but because he wanted to give , to give from the fruit of his work,
and there was no one to receive it...

Your - again so very good - account this time reminded me of my 3 months in India in 1998:
You came to me just a day before my travel and gave me "The God of small things", remember?
Unlike you I was mostly in Madurai, South-India, but the cultural shocks you describe were the same.
I could add some more - like hearing from my friend Gabriela (who adopted India like I adopted Israel),
when I asked for a mattrass: "It's not a concept here!"
As to the toilet-water-culture, in time I found it much, much cleaner than the paper-usage
and I stick to it ever since: pouring water from a jug on my left hand and cleaning myself....

One pain/shameful phenomenon, which you didn't encounter,
since you never went out alone,
is the sexual exhibitionism of men.
The book you gave me, tells about such a severe incidence,
that I could not re-read the book a second time...
Three times suddenly a man stood before me with his exposed cock.
I experienced this so often in my childhood in Germany, - everywhere,
that I couldn't bear that this trauma was activated like this in India.
Yesterday I learnt , that an Israeli singer, I forgot her name,
is causing a scandal by her book,
about the only way up in Bollyhood : through the beds of the managers.

Except for the beautifully dressed women and some very brave women,
who, like my friend Gabriela, work for bringing about change,
there was nothing in India which I liked.
In fact, even when I was young, I feared to ever go there.
At that time people died of hunger like flies
and I knew I wouldn't be able to bear it.
In 1998 it was much better, but the only thing I learnt,
really the  o n l y  thing I learnt in those 3 months,
was, that I let myself be born in a Western culture,
so as to no longer have to cope with survival,
but to dedicate my creativity, energy, wisdom and time
to heal the root problems of the miseries on this planet.
And this I've been doing before and more so ever since.

thanks for listening!

Rachel