January 12, 2024
Experts in the Field
When I was in high school, I took a class where I had to write a large research paper. I still remember it was drilled into us that we needed a thorough literature review with input from ‘experts in the field’. This is how I have always viewed expertise; a word to describe a mysterious academic standing in a dark laboratory with lots of fancy machines and degrees telling me how the world works. However, after a very long day in India, I am dumbfounded in realizing I am continually surrounded by experts.
The day started with some early morning, frantic, last-minute packing for our weekend trip before getting on a bus with our expert driver who somehow manages to wield a behemoth of a bus through the organized chaos that is the traffic system here. From my seat in the back, I feel the speed bumps and hear the horns, but it is not until I look out the window into the sea of smaller vehicles that I grow to appreciate this expert’s work getting us safely from points A to B. I make a mental note to never complain about Seattle’s traffic again.
Our first stop on today’s journey is breakfast in a restaurant tucked away from the road, hidden in trees and a hotel. While eating the delicious food I am beginning to become familiar with, I watch the monkeys expertly navigate the trees and branches surrounding us. How do they know which seemingly too small branches can support them and when did we as humans lose this skill? Kind of a bummer. I change my attention towards the people at my table. After all, I am sitting with the expert of all experts: Bhargavi. Seriously, I think I could ask this woman any question and she would know exactly what to say. Yak is masterfully asking her questions, and I get to sit and listen in awe at how one person can know so much.
From breakfast, it’s bathroom breaks then back on the bus to the Ramanagara cocoon market for silk. Surrounded by baskets and baskets of silkworm cocoons, our guide easily flaunts his knowledge of the silk market and industry. Did you know there’s more than one kind of silkworm cocoon? Neither did I. We take our basic understanding from the silk market with us as we go to the house of a gentlemen nice enough to let us in and show us the cocoon-to-string transformation. Upon entry, two women to our left are experts in extracting the actual silk from these cocoons. It’s easy to get mesmerized watching their hands move seamlessly above what looks like plates of floating cocoons where the silk is practically too thin to see. Like their playing a concerto on an invisible piano they’ve played a thousand times, they casually toss us a smile as we watch. The man who owned the silk-turning said it is hard to find skilled workers like this, and I can see why. After all, they are experts in their field.
Once we are content with our viewing of the whole operation, we go upstairs to an open, airy room that is both indoors and outdoors in the inexplicable way Indian architecture knows how to do so well. Our kind guide explains to us how the silk is made and sold, and I find out that he is a silk expert from a long line of experts before him. He describes how he determines which cocoons to buy each day in the way only someone with mountains of experience can. I never knew a cocoon could be so interesting.
So really my original way of thinking was all wrong. Experts aren’t hard to find; they’re everywhere. But how do I become one? Actually, maybe I am already on my way. Since arriving in India, I have started to become an expert at waking up early, crossing streets, and handling tummy problems. But I know there’s more, for me and for my peers. We’re like little silkworms, gobbling up mulberry leaves of learning. Eventually, we’ll use those lessons to spit up a cocoon of new knowledge to sit with and reflect on for some time. From these cocoons, we will extract our silk and start creating our line of expertise. I have no idea where we’ll end up when we have spooled it all out, but no matter what pasture we end up in, I’m sure we’ll be experts in our field.
By Elena
