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
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