Avjo India

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We are back in Mumbai in our final days. Today, walking through Hardick's neighborhood, I recognized the gulley (alley) that we had explored one of those first days. I've acclimated. Being back in the gulley reminded me of how wild Mumbai intially seemed to me with its scuttling rickshaws and motorbikes, unhampered by traffic signs, their frequent use of horns, clusters of free-standing shacks in open fields of gravel, dirty-faced children naked below their belly buttons, cows hitched to the side of the road chewing cud, the possiblity of an elephant, the flamboyance of the men's shirts and their tight-fitting pants, the bright silk of women's saris and the surprise of Indian women in bell bottom jeans and pastel, chiffon, Western-style shirts, the frequency of temples, contemporary stucco buildings strung with marigolds and lights I previously would have called Christmas lights of red, orange, and yellow, or squat roadside temples, votives burning in front of the image of a deity. This afternoon, it all just felt like India.

India has tired me out with its heat, its multiplicity of deities, the challenge of crossing its streets, its heavy and plentiful meals, and, possibly, something about its people that is hard to describe in a few words, sentences, or, even, paragraphs. Maybe, I could say that they entertain diverse points of view. His relatives seemed to bring out the argumentative side of Amit (which is, afterall, not that far from the surface).

Amartya Sen, an Indian who won a Noble prize in Economics, coined the phrase, "argumentative Indian" with his recent book (which I read). He theorizes that, over centuries, Indian culture has been the product of plurality, and Indians are uniquely capable of a multiplicity of viewpoints. Hinduism, for example, is generally understood by theologians to have historically incorporated aspects of other religions, including Islam and Bhuddism (which has its seeds in India). This means that, asonishingly to me, like Krishna and Rama, Jesus Christ is actually considered an avatar, or incarnation, of the Hindu god, Vishnu. In this way, Hinduism has sucessfully incorporated Christianity.

Hindus are encouraged to pursue "multiple paths" to god. This appears to me to be a philosophy of "whatever works". Amit's family was interested, then, to hear that I was raised Catholic, but didn't see it as incompatible with going to temple. What was important was that I was willing to go. When his uncle asked me if I believed in God, he finished my explanation of my own belief for me: "all gods are one god." It was a Hindu explanation, and so different than how I was raised.

I was told that I was adaptable as a Westerner, but it didn't seem so difficult when these were the terms. Still, everything that I have read about India makes the same statement: for any one "truth" you can make about India, there is always a counter example. Indians may be capable of diverse viewpoints, especially about religion, but the majority political party until recently was Hindu Nationalist and preaches a "pure" Hinduism that is largely revisionist.

And, as Amit pointed out to the family, within the middle class at least, they all seem to want *their* children to be doctors.

There is no easy way to explain India.

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