"Entering India" 7th Mar 2006

In some way, I’m still trying to “enter” India. Something about this country is impermeable past a certain point. The India I want to find is a small village family in Gujarat, a gathering around an evening fire on a Himalayan mountainside, or the rolling expanse of the Thar Desert on some romantic, thirsty camel ride.

For some reason it is easier to fly overhead or pass on the perimeter in an autorickshaw than it is to plunge into the experience of all that India encompasses.

This is, of course, no problem for me in the States. I’ve never seen Death Valley or the Rockies, save for my cushioned seat on an airplane, but I am also never bothered by the feeling of needing to “enter” America—I am American and when I am home, it is simply undeniable, I am part of the scene and I belong there. I need not extend any effort or go through any motions whatsoever to “be American”. As much as I am who I am because America is part of my own identity, I also, to some extent, define America, at least for myself.

Feeling “at home” here in India also works similarly. Walking down the streets of Rishikesh in baggy jeans and listening to Iron and Wine on my MP3 player, I feel I am a part of India and that it is naturally a part of me. Running to Shiva temples dressed in kurta-pyjamas and sporting the tikka mark on my forehead afterwards, I feel “other”ed—by taking my own personality away from naturalness, the surrounding world pushes me out and reflects how impossible it is to be something other than the totality that I am.

“India is what it makes of you” comes to mind (John Keay, Into India) India is not only the same meditations, yoga, and chanting that I’ve been doing for years, but it’s also singing Stevie Wonder as I walk down an alleyway or having endless Chais and ice-creams when I “really should be more productive.”

Thoughts persist that I am in a beautiful and exotic country and I have endless opportunities to see new things and learn new ways of living. However, no matter that I do, I will be in this same beautiful, exotic country—everything I see is new and I already have the fullness of a way of living. There is no sense in chasing down some other “India”—actually, when in India, for sure, “India” can’t be missed!

This idea of “another India” is for sure a mirage, walking down the street or going for a meeting, it is so immediately evident that the rule of thumb for Indian culture is inactivity. Like a remnant of the caste system, it is part of life that one person (or several) watches as another works because, “it’s not my job.” (This is a very effective division of labor for a densely populated country with some amount of unemployment problems.)

Bonding between friends seems to happen with a silent agreement to do nothing for a short time. At any point in time, you can look around an Indian city and you’ll see beggars and saints, babies and grandparents—people whose lives are defined by indolence. Finally, the moment a new visitor finds they have genuinely urgent business to attend to, they almost invariably find that it is either before or after the elusive “working hours” of Indian professional life; hours which at times seem to overlap (like finding out you have come both after the last group of working hours and before the next) and which are anyway at the mercy of the seemingly random calendar of multicultural and political holidays.

Returning to the original question: how one “enters” India, might simply be answered by doing nothing. With a country that is so large and varied, with culture that is impossible to understand in any form of summary and with the close existence of so many opposites— the key of wisdom to understanding might be looking beyond the façade of bustling street hawkers and car horns and simple “doing nothing” with whoever is around; simply experiencing the truth of having already entered India.