This morning I was chatting with someone about nostalgia. It's so hard not to get a bit nostalgic about India when confronted with cute kid pictures, mostly of us posturing or posing and having fun, or like the silly one above. But still, the letters of the not fun times come in to me steadily enough to be reminded of the fuck-upness of it.
What also is being revealed slowly is a current between 2nd generationers' patterns of recurring dreams having to do with India. I myself have a recurring dream. Often times in the dream there are a classmates who possess more enthusiasm for the program in India, and currently remain in the community. In my dream their persona and behavior is overbearing, and I am feeling marginalized and stressed out by it. I think they represent the overly fanatic dogmatic side of 3HO, and the message that one was a failure by not "getting with the program".
Some of the ones in my dreams are in reality to this day saying "Speak for yourself, but I was never abused". Lucky them to feel that way, but they are wrong and they are actually just attempting to invalidate others' experience by negating or denying their own. There were some that were given the opportunity to be henchmen or a cronies, and have since developed habits that embrace and even perpetuate authoritarianism and militancy.
If even one kid gets hit or assaulted by an adult - it's an abusive environment! Bottom line. Is the dirty sock picture not proof enough?