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Published: November 14th 2009
Picture it. Close your eyes and imagine. You've been on planes and in airports for over 20 hours, you've just landed at New Delhi International, it's your first time setting foot on such foreign soil. The plane door opens, your breathing quickens - finally, at last, yes! You step out of the plane, look around and ugh, the smell! You can see 800 feet on the brightly lit runway. From the smog. Wow, welcome to India.
We have been in Delhi for 7 days now and have lived a lot more than that. There is simply no way to describe to bizarre combination of chaos, crowding, crippling poverty and affluence that is found here. In a smelly shitty back alleyway, with piss all over the mud ground, there is a beggar asking for rupees for her baby, outside of a video game store renting playtime on an xbox. There is a nine year old on the side of the street with a pickaxe digging up the concrete and putting in new sewage pipes. The rest of the work crew are younger than he is. We go to the bank to check out money - the security officer at the front door opens it for us and dips his head. Only a close look shows that the double barrel shotgun slung over his shoulder is NOT a flintlock. What the hell? This place is ridiculous...
But there is beauty here too - it runs beneath and is often concealed by the sheer affront on the senses and sensibilities. Yet still it is here. We are detectives on its trail. We find clues and evidence of it's presence, but in a city like delhi, finding it in purity is perhaps asking too much.
On our first day here we taxi to Paharganj, THE place for backpackers to gather, live and be horribly taken advantage of. In the 10 minutes it takes to find our hotel room, i have my pocket picked. My cherished compass, sense of direction and trusted tool of navigation, is gone. We come to regret this later. The interaction itself is incredible, I FEEL it happen energetically more than physically, can see the bubble of my energy move out with the kid, and pass to another kid. I'm so amazed and interested and shocked i don't react. And besides, what could i do, grab the kid? Restrain him and hold him down? Later he must look at his gleen and say 'WTF?'
Second day we go into old delhi and here meet an aspect of our ego's world that is...well. I think, "behold here the full success of the ego's plan" Divine will be done. We ride down a street in a bicycle rickshaw driven by a very small thin Hindi speaking man. I am sitting facing out the back. The sheer crushing weight of despair and scarcity is a din. the people are filthy beyond filthy, dressed literally in rags, walking in bare feet on dirt road. There are cows and people and dogs and cars and bicycles everywhere. Pissing and shitting and belching their waste, and then living in it. A young boy about 17 crawls on his hands on the ground, his legs are crippled together under him in a perverse parody of the lotus position. a woman dressed a colourful sari, though still dirty, is picking through the street sweepings for food to feed her family. A man rolls a single giant wagon wheel down the road, like it will save him from this squalor. There is a baby lying on the sidewalk. People are ignoring it. A man is sitting leaning against a wall, flayed out with his head down so low i consider seriously that he might be dead. There is a dog on the side of the road. It's eating something.. It's eating an ear... It's a dog ear. What does it mean if you're relieved that it's not it's own ear, yet wouldn't have been surprised if it had been. At our destination, the rickshaw driver swindles us for 4 times the agreed upon price. Three dollars instead of seventy five cents. And we, we're all upset about it. As he goes back to live in that place, and we go back to our ipod, and to write this blog. What does that say about us?
Day three. I am horribly ill. We visit a friend in Delhi, Pinky. I am hot and sweaty and nauseaous and cramping and feverish. We move hotels. Pinky gives us her driver to help. We go to Majnu ka tila, the tibetan refugee community in Delhi. I am broken yet recognize a community with good will nonetheless. That night I receive great healing, deeper than just that instance of illness, into the archetype of illness. Light springs in a long dark place. I am renewed in spirit, though as for my body, that takes a few more days...
Day four-six. I am slowly recovering. There is first time with food. First time with solid food. First time with normal food. First time with spicy food (perhaps too soon). I am VERY grateful to myself for preparation of very extensive medicine kit, and to my travel partners for constant support and love. We travel to connaught place where the sellers are like birds of prey perched all the trees and looking at you like they're thinking "i'll start with the eyes". We get ourselves good and hosed our of a lot of money for what turns out to be junk. These people, living as they do in such close proximity to one another, and with their livelihood and very lives depending on their ability to succeed, are masters at interpersonal communication and manipulation. I am a bumbling half blind moron from a getto, coming to a professional arena of sport. This is okay. Doing well in the transaction is not what it's truly for. Getting hosed is a MUCH better forgiveness opportunity to heal false idolization of money. Money is a reeking heap of shit filled with violence and manipulation and ill will towards our brothers and sisters and ourselves, and fear, oh so much fear and guilt and shame and lust and greed and hatred and envy and total lack of trust or honesty or true communion. It is all these things, and somehow, SOMEHOW, I actually believe I want to call some of it MINE, and guard it and hoard it and protect it...from YOU. And if that weren't insane enough, i want even more! "excuse me waiter, I don't have enough of this reeking shit. Can I please have some more?"
Day-seven. Sam is sick and throwing up allot but still stable physically. I am recovered mostly. Keely is well. We have all enjoyed small (sometimes not so small) boughts of what we affectionately call 'ass-peeing'. We are all tired of Delhi and our respiratory systems are suffering from the intense smog and our bodies from sick and our hearts and minds from all the rest of what was within us each all along, in the darkest corners where we didn't want to look. It is time for respite, we are boarding an overnight train this evening to Daramsala, home of the Dalai Lama and center of the Tibetan refugee community in india. We talked to a traveler just returned from Daramsala, it's snowing there...
Sasha
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jewel love
non-member comment
great attitude !!!
the initiation sought proceeds perfectly ! Am One with All that appears to Be