The Music of India

The last few weeks in India have really been punctuated by lots of travelling. After Deli and Agra we have ventured to Varanasi, Darjeeling and South Bengal. A combined total of 74 and a half hours of travelling mixed with work in between (I promise you we are doing something!) I finally feel like we are getting a bit more of a rounded India experience. And the truth is…. I LOVE INDIA. Hand on heart this country has really captured me.

Just like no two things in life are the same, no two places in India bare resemblance. From the beautiful quiet hills in the Darjeeling mountains, the ghostly cremation ghats of Varanasi, to the totally secluded villages of Laxmikantapur, India is a place with more contrasts than anywhere I have ever seen. Even just travelling ten hours from Kolkata, the local people speak a different language, have a distinctive look and eat a different cuisine. All these places have such beauty in them. Yet isolated they give a very distorted picture of what India really is.

Moving on from the variety of places we’ve seen to the variety of people we have met while here. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even a ‘lost tribe’. People from the highest casts, women from the slums, villagers, celebrities, missionaries, businessmen, shop keepers and even some fellow Brits. Every person I have met without fail has given some sort of personal philosophy, whether on politics, religion, sport or life – opinions vary like nothing I’ve ever seen. There are so many contradictions in India; the top two phrases people have said to us while here are totally conflicting, “Not possible” and “Anything is possible in India”. Even their cricket team which was the best in the world just lost to England! There is no way to describe this country – nowhere is there a place with such contrast and conflicting faces.

Yet nearly everyone we meet will tell you one thing in common: “I love India” “I love my home country”. One of our good friends here is moving to Switzerland to live with his wife but you can see the pain it causes him to leave India. How much it is in all their hearts. But what is ‘India’? What is this thing they love so much? How can a child in Manali and an old man in Kolkata be talking about the same thing?

The truth is that I have seen this before in one other place not so far from home; in our own community. Gosh if you put a load of Jews together and Indians we’d be arguing until the end of time! The deserts of Israel and the green mountain hills; the polar spectrum of politics, culture and Jewish practice; Ashkenasim and Sephardim. Is this why Israelis feel so at home here?! Their ability to criticise and damn their government and fundamentally oppose another’s religion and yet remain unified as one people is remarkable.

While we have been away I have watched the rioting in England with horror and seen the hate many English people have for each other. It almost feels like at times in England there are so many separated communities who are fearful of each other, radicalising in their own enclave of society. Ignorance, boredom, social problems, a long summer? The historians will debate the causes for time to come but how can we move forward, how can we unify again as a country? How can we retain that passion and move critically forward without erupting into more violence? How can we learn lessons from India, a country that is not immune from issues of fragmentation yet seems to have an inbuilt ability to deal with it?

I don’t really have any clue at an answer and I really don’t know how India works. That is just another beauty of this land though; it dances to its own music with conflicting rhythms. Just like two notes of music – when they are sounded alone, they are totally opposing sounds, so different in every way and yet when played together they produce a unique and beautiful melody. This tune is distinctly Indian and our inability to narrow that unique aspect of being Indian is in essence what makes this place even more amazingly stunning.

“It is this variety which provides a breathtaking ensemble for experiences that is uniquely Indian. Perhaps the only thing more difficult than to be indifferent to India would be to describe or understand India completely. There are perhaps very few nations in the world with the enormous variety that India has to offer. Modern day India represents the largest democracy in the world with a seamless picture of unity in diversity unparalleled anywhere else."

A Rough Guide to India

Big questions...

There is one place in the world where you really could be anywhere in the world – an aeroplane. The overdressed air hostesses, highly unhelpful safety instructions (surely they could be simplifies to, ‘if the plane crashes you will die’) and those small overhead light/call for help buttons which invariably you will always get mixed up and up end with 3 hostesses trying to assist you when all you wanted to do was read your book… One thing though most definitely meant that this plane was not anywhere but India:

“Good evening ladies and gentleman, welcome to Spice Jet flight number….”

‘Spice Jet’! Well I couldn’t stop laughing; I was definitely still in India!

Last weekend I took the two hour flight from Calcutta to Dehli. I was not at all sure what to expect. My friends here in Calcutta told me nightmare stories about tourists being ripped off and not so friendly locals. One very interesting observation was made by an Indian friend about why he prefers Calcutta, “In Calcutta it is so cheap, even the most poor can live. They cannot survive in Dehli”. Well it seems that location really is everything for some people and New Dehli with its wide, clean western streets and high prizes would certainly prove a challenge for the vulnerable. In contrast, Old Dehli managed to take the biscuit from Calcutta as being highly overcrowded, cramped and simply manic.

Switch to another scene in Dehli: down a dark alley way full of shops, in a backpackers haven is a security man with a huge gun, protecting the entrance to a single door which on any other day you would walk straight past. To gain entrance to this man’s private club you not only needed a passport but proof that you were Israeli. After some negotiations he decided I could enter; Beit Chabad Dehli. Manned by three young yeshivah bochers, this Chabad house is really a home for any Jewish backpacker. Friday night I was completely overwhelmed by the 60 odd Jews sharing dinner together, singing songs, drinking whiskey and wine and sharing experiences. Within just a few hours I felt that I was with family, transported to my own Friday night table, eating my family’s food. To have spent four Shabossim, with at times, no other Jews this was a highly emotional moment. There is something so special about the Jewish people, these people, none of whom I had met before, were singing my songs, shared my experiences and a deep connection. We spoke the same language (or tried to!) and had the same desire – to spend Friday night together. Shabbat morning I sat opposite a Canadian man. It turned out that he had been living in Calcutta for a year and this was the first time he had met another Jewish person – he was nearly crying. Needless to say we will be in contact. It was an amazing experience. That bond of Am Yisrael could make Dehli be ‘any place in the world’ for me; last Shabbat I was at home.

This idea about the importance of location and the transference of your ‘home’ to somewhere else has been something which as Jews, over the last 2000 years of exile, we have had to deal with. Making home wherever we go. In today’s society however, with international news at our fingertips, most of our possessions made abroad by people we cannot relate to and eating food from any country we so wish, are we now not part of a global society as well as own our community? Multi-cultural Britain after all is all about staying true to your own community while at the same time being part of a wider British society based on the rights of all. Should our model for helping others then reflect this wider society? Is how we choose to give our time and tzedaka still all about location location location?

The Chief Rabbi in his book The Dignity of Difference, points out this modern day conundrum:

“Traditionally our sense of involvement with the fate of others has been in inverse proportion to the distance separating us and them. What has changed is that television and the internet have effectively abolished distance.”

Commenting on to whom we as Jews are obligated to help, the Chief Rabbi makes the point that a more globalised society has brought the suffering of others closer to home and diminished the distance separating ‘us’ and ‘them’ potentially giving us more reason to want to help those in need abroad. However baring this in mind Americans gave nearly three times as much money after Hurricane Katrina than after the Asian tsunami even thought the tsunami killed many more people (Levitt and Dubner, 2008). Have things really changed and is it natural that they do?

Does this sense of one large global community though increase our obligation to others, make us care more about the plight of those further afield and does it really make us into one big community? These are very large questions and ones that being in the international development field one is confronted with every day. Ignoring the potential pitfalls of volunteering and giving charity we must ask ourselves more- fundamental questions. Why these people, why this place?

If you heard someone screaming on your street would you help them? What if they are a homeless person on the street where you work? What if you saw them on T.V? Would it make a difference if you knew them personally, if they were English or Jewish?

This is what as a group we have been discussing this week and the truth is it requires a lot of soul searching and I think a lot of truths need to be confronted. I have my own personal reasons and motivations for being here but I also believe that you are put in situations for reasons unknown to yourself and it is what you do with that that counts for the most part. Do you also ever feel like you have heard something you cannot ignore and you are somewhere for a reason? That you have been given this opportunity for a greater reason, that simply by being born British and in a globalised world you have an opportunity to help bring peace and order to our world that those before you simply could not have?

There is an idea that when G-d spoke to Abraham in the first instance that actually he spoke to everyone in the world but it was only Abraham who listened. He was a radical, he wanted to bring about drastic change which takes ultimate courage – he listened and he answered. Every day we are confronted with choices, messages, decisions – which will you answer, what will you do and most importantly – why?