India Redux: Thoughts about why I love India

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India Redux: Thoughts on why I love India

I'm writing this on a very cold Toronto winter day. Ajay and I are basically trapped in the house. It's a good day for reflective thought. And I do find myself thinking a lot about India. Ajay teases me that I cannot go a day without talking about India. And it’s true. India is no longer just a place on the map to me, nor is it just a place I visited and loved. Sometimes a place catches you - it gets into your imagination and into your heart, and even into your daily life!

I find that India inspires me as a creative person, as a person interested in the spiritual side of life and as a “budding humanitarian.” There is so much you can learn in India, so much you can experience, so much to challenge you (especially your prejudices), and there’s so much good you can do.

Specifically - and briefly - India inspires me to write and take photos. In the past year, I bought a laptop computer and a digital SLR camera both expressly for the purpose of trying to capture my thoughts and feelings about India, or perhaps more precisely my experiences in India. Or maybe even more precisely, my experiences of me in India. The sounds, the smells, the colours, the culture, the people, the food, the way people relate to each other, the vigorous and open spirituality, the ancient monuments and traditions, the rituals, the incredibly warm smiles, the sublime beauty and appalling poverty - so many things. And, so often, all at once! India can be so overwhelming ("full-on sensorial rape" is how my friend described it) that I think it’s only natural that one becomes interested in how one reacts and responds to it.

I also find my yoga practise invigorated in India - transformed, really. Unless you have experienced yoga in India, it will be difficult to really understand this, but taking yoga out of the context of Indian (and by that I mean Hindu) culture, tradition and geography changes it beyond recognition. We "do" yoga over here in North America; but in India, people "are" yoga. Yoga is a state of mind, a way to live, a philosophy, spiritual tradition and dedicated path. To be in a place like Rishikesh, or in an ashram like Sivananda in Kerala, or at a school like the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai, or in the vicinity of a saint such as Amma is to breathe in the soul of yoga. It is a transformative experience.

My unique experience in India has also given me a privileged window into Indian family life and the values that shape it. Indian families are the heart of Indian society, culture and tradition. We pay lip service to family values in North America, but in India, they really mean it. Society revolves around family life, and families spend a great deal of time together. It seems to me that family life and cultural tradition come first in India; in North America, it is so often that work comes first. Life in India moves at a slower place, even in the capital city: I have often said that it is like going back in time to the 1950s. I also feel that, generally speaking, India is a much more humanistic place.

This is a big topic, and I know there are some terrible social inequities and atrocities committed there, but on a day-to-day level, the relationship is just as important, if not more so, than the commercial activity. Even in a shop, the sales person will offer you tea, and ask where are you from, are you married, etc. And, honestly, people seem so much happier, more joyful, and much more content in India - even people who have very little material wealth. When will we learn that it is not a flat-screen TV, anti-aging serum or a corner office that makes us happy!

And then there is the humanitarian level - the human reaction to being in a place that is so much poorer than North America, with so little opportunity for people who are stricken with poverty.

When I was in India in 2006, I met a lovely English woman who opened an orphanage in southern Tamil Nadu. Although I no longer remember all the details of her story, I do remember that the stars seemed to line up, and the heavens open, to enable her to get the orphanage off the ground. I also met other westerners who were committed to volunteering at schools and orphanages and for programs such as Art Refuge (the organization I volunteered for in Dharamsala, India).

On Travelblog.org itself, I have been reading the blogs from a charming young Australian woman, Ellen around the world, who was recently volunteer teaching at an amazing school for poor village children, called Providence, in Shillong in north-east India. She also wrote about Sister Cyril, in Kolkata, who runs Loreto, a school for both poor and affluent girls. And surfing the Internet I discovered what looks to be a wonderful organization, called Child Haven International, that opened and runs homes for destitute children in several places in India and in Tibet and Nepal. The organization was started by a couple from a small town in eastern Ontario. It's just amazing what people are doing!

Personally, I felt it was part of my moral duty as a global citizen, and as a person aspiring to discovering and following higher ideals, to leave my middle-class North American "bubble" and go and see how the rest of the world lives. Of course, I realize how lucky I am to be able to do this! To have the freedom (no kids, no mortgage) and the money. But of course now that I have seen the impoverished street kids of Delhi, the people disfigured by leprosy in Dharamsala, and the tsunami refugees living in temporary thatched roof settlements in Tamil Nadu, I cannot forget.

I wanted to raise my awareness about the way most of the world lives. I wanted to expand my field of consciousness, to become globally conscious. My favourite writer and teacher, Joseph Campbell, said that what the world needs most is a global myth. I have come to really understand what he means. I made the effort to extend myself and I now feel much more a part of the global community. And, increasingly, my thoughts turn to the kids of India. I read recently that half of all the world's children who do not go to school are in India. I am thinking about how to respond to this sad fact, wondering if there is anything I can do.

There are no easy answers to “solving” the world’s problems and there’s a lot to be said for accepting what you cannot change. Joseph Campbell’s advice was to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. It is one of my favourite quotes.

I know people who don’t believe in volunteering in “third-world” countries. They seem to think it is too self-serving, there is too much self-interest and not enough pure altruism. But I don’t know if I believe in pure altruism. From what I have seen and experienced, there is transformative magic in personal engagement. Volunteering changes both the volunteer and the beneficiary. It is a mutually beneficial relationship. By just throwing money at social problems, you short-change yourself and short-circuit the transformative nature of the relationship. Frankly, I shudder to think what would happen to the world without the work of volunteers.

But then, again, I think caution is often in order. A woman from my neighbourhood in Toronto decided to open a much-needed orphanage in Kenya. We went to her fundraising event last summer, just before she left for Kenya to continue to set-up and run the orphanage. From her emails, she seemed to be doing great until civil unrest broke out recently and she had to flee for her life. I just found out she landed safely in Toronto yesterday. Was she naïve, or wise; courageous, or foolish to attempt to do some good in a far-flung place? I guess everyone has to answer these questions for him/herself. In Hinduism’s holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna counsels Arjuna to do his duty, his dharma without attachment to the fruits of his labours, as we cannot control the karma or destiny that shapes our lives. Krishna tells him to charge into battle as the warrior he is, even though he is fighting against his relatives and friends, because he is on the side of Krishna, and Krishna represents everything that is right in the world; in other words, Arjuna is on the side of “right.”

The adventure begins when you return home

You do not know what will happen when you leap off the cliff, and do something like travel through a foreign land. You do not know how it will change you, and your life. My former yoga teacher told me, before I initially left for India for the first time, that the adventure begins when you return home. I think I know what she means. I am challenged to integrate what I have learned and how I have changed, and what to do about it.

India is now a part of my daily life. I have an Indian partner, and I have been welcomed into his family. There are certainly challenges to having a partner from such a different culture, but so much to learn, too. I have a cupboard full of Indian spices and I regularly cook channa dal, aloo gobi and jeera rice, etc. I am studying Hindi and learning about Hinduism. I watch the South Asian news and worry about how heat waves and cold spells and out-of-control monkeys in Delhi will affect Ajay's family. I have friends in India.

I also read books about India and books by Indians. One of my favourite writers in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a European who married an Indian and lived most of her adult life in Delhi. (Among other things, she collaborated with Merchant/Ivory on their film productions.) I recommend her book Out of India. In the introduction she says, “The most salient fact about India is that it is very poor and very backward. There are so many things to be said about it but this must remain the basis of all of them … whatever we say, not for one moment should we lose sight of the fact that a very great number of Indians never get enough to eat … Having once seen the sights in India, and the way it has been ordained that people must live out there lives, nowhere in the world can ever be that good to be in again … After seeing what one has to see here every day, it is not really possible to go on living one’s life the way one used to.”

While I think this is true to a large extent, I don’t think it means you have to have a negative response; you don’t have to become depressed and give up. I like to think that confronting the reality of this world can open you up and make you a better person, rather than the opposite.

My friend was over the other night, and she openly and courageously expressed her feelings of despair, and hopelessness, about the state of the world. I showed her the pictures I took of the very, very loving Tibetan refugee children I worked with (played with, really) in Dharamsala, and how the Art Refuge program helped them to adjust to their new life in India, and to cope with their feelings of sadness, grief, fear and homesickness. I also loaned her one of my favourite books, The Power of Myth (based on the PBS series with Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell, just before he died in the mid-1980s) because of his inspiring injunction to “follow your bliss.” I didn't really know what else to do.

Later, that night, the first day of the new year, Ajay and I watched the film Gandhi on television. I love that film, it is one of my favourites for so many reasons - and it is more alive to me now that I have been to India, and traveled through the countryside on trains, meditated in his room in Birla House in Delhi, and visited Raj Ghat, where he was cremated. Right at the end of the film, I think it is while they are showing Gandhi's funeral procession and cremation, there's a voiceover that expresses Gandhi's hope and optimism. He said something like: tyrants always fall, and love, goodness and "right" always prevail.

So, with that positive thought, I am attaching some pictures from my travels in India that I hope you find inspiring. I'm not sure I was successful at expressing my response to India's beauty, vitality and poverty, and how it has completely changed my life, but I've tried. Thank you for traveling with me again!

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Comments

[JANE]

Hello
I read your article with great interest and pleasure. Now I am wondering if you can help me...can you remember the name of the English woman who set up an orphanage? is there any chance that you have her email address? I am planning on going to Rajasthan to open a small orphanage-it would be great to be in touch with someone who could advise me! Just a thought!!! thank you Jane

[o.v.maniprasad]

photos are amazing

[o.v.maniprasad]

photos are amazing