Jaymes, Have you considered writing as a career? It seems to move me tremendously. I find myself romancing an India that I often complain bitterly about when in its soil. Very beautiful post you wrote. I wish I had anything more eloquent to say. I shall try and share with you what India means to me. Is India mysterious as you suggest? Very much so, it thrives in that mood. Is India majestic? Well, the answer lies in the many conquests that that land has seen. The hypnotic clouds, the green leaves of every shade, the tall trees, the chirpy birds, the high proud mountains and the river that touches the largest number of masses ever in the world, and the music of the many different people that populate every corner of it, will stay with you if you give them a chance. For all of India's beauty, it is not for the faint of heart. It can be the most shocking place on earth to land on, if you have your mind set on experiencing something magnificent the first moment you open your eyes outside of the airports. At least the ones in the bigger cities have no magic. Just the sheer numbers of people can dazzle you. It is also this continuous contrast between the most sensuous and the most mediocre that India thrives in. While many nations, cities and sights can give you a grand setting and beauty beyond measure; India leaves you speechless many times in your discovery of each of its diverse paths. A speechlessness that is not always because of beauty, at times for having witnessed something grossly disturbing, but seeing in that horror, a sense of dignity and happiness that you cannot find anywhere else. That dignity and acceptance of ones lot in life is also what could well be termed the bane of modern India's existence. How many times could you think of walking amongst the poorest of the worlds poor and not be worried about being robbed? In India, you can do that. How often can you see children who are near death, smile at you a smile bigger than any you could see, and why? For they are happy making contact with another happier than them. How often will you find a human being hungrier than one who has not eaten in weeks, and see them offering you a first bite of food given them by a generous person? India will afford you all these sights and then some. But there is no fooling anyone that India does not have a seedy underbelly. While in many places the seedy underbelly can take over the flip side, in India, one will not see it unless one scratches way deep. Volumes could be written about that India as well. But that is more a matter of fact for those that study that part of India. It is universally said by many that once you have made a trip to India, it changes you and affects you profoundly and for a lifetime. Is that true for all? Yes. In fact, three years ago an acquaintance and his wife left for India. We connected them with the grand dames of Indian society and these in turn were planning this couples itinerary. This couple came back miserable and certain that they could never venture into the third world again. They were humbled by the richness of the rich and devastated by the poverty seen by their eyes. They simply could not look at the poor and give themselves a chance. It was in that regard that they failed as much as India. But still they were changed. I most often hear the positive stories. I would rather share the worst with you. I live with the poor when I can, and often come back having learned which money, history and politicians cannot teach. They have to share with those that can take it, an honest and fearless point of view. Those that could be bitter to the faint of heart, but charming and scintillating to one like me. I come back with things I need to do for those that live in that poverty. I come back knowing how blessed I am. You question India in your flirtations rather sensuously. Even more than it ever may seem after you have been there. It is compellingly beautiful. All of the Indian Sub-Continent. No one part is any better than the other. That is what makes it compelling. It has tucked away at every nook and corner a new mystery to be discovered and entertained and spoken to. In one nation, you have more diversity than in Europe and the Americas combined. More languages and more seemingly different types of people. IN India, if you look hard, you can find Indians as white as any Caucasian or Indians as Black as the darkest African you have seen. And then there is a majority that is somewhere in-between. The Ganges is very awe-inspiring. Even when it first touches the plains at Haridwar, where ashes have polluted its water, your eyes can either be charmed and enchanted or you could be a scientist looking for statistics. But if you let your guard down, You will see in the very rapid flow of this rivers water as it first comes to the plains from the gargantuan heights of the Himalayas a serenity that one could not assign to any place where millions crows a small space meant for no more than a few dozen thousands. But even in the bustle of the crows, there is an order, an energy and a camaraderie that mankind does not see very easily in a lifetime. The Ganga has many names. Each of which is redolent of the turns the rives makes from the glacier from where it begins into the last leg of the path before it joins the ocean. The myths of the Hindu lifestyle are apparent to even one that cannot understand the language. India is deeply and totally visual. You can be silent in India and never fell bored even for a moment. Thousand years of oppression by its own and foreign rulers has left a deep impact on India. What could have been a dark and mournful black spot, has fortunately for Indians and the world, translated itself into a people who enjoy today, each day as if it were there last one to live. Certainly India has deep wounds that are still healing, people that are dying in millions, hunger that is greater than the population of many nations, but not once has this nation needed to suffer more tragedy than what it was blessed with. India has changed in the last 50 years. Many cities have become polluted like one could never imagine. Every amenity you can want is yours to have. At any corner of a big city, you can see some of the most beautifully dressed and poorest of poor people. Again in this disparity is also what makes India brimming with hope. Anger seems to have left India with the treasures it lost in almost totality to all its many invaders. What was left behind was a nation living in pride of what it had in the past. For most of our riches, any which could be transported with just some trouble, are prized possessions in lands oceans away. Indian students learn about their ancestors, their arts and culture through textbooks. There are no museums of any worth documenting what was lost and taken from India. What we have, are symbols of the hope we have today. Our temples, mosques, churches, Sikh shrines, Buddhist temples, Jain temples and even the worlds oldest Synagogue in Asia, are what we have today. The invaders also destroyed many of our temples. But again, the legends and tales of these remain and get told with positive and hopeful commentary. In fact, we have had our share of political tragedies. One of which was the destruction of a Mosque at the hands of fanatics associated with a Hindu fundamentalist group. That too left India hopeful in that not again would it allow for such anger rape its womb. In Democratic tradition, that can often be painstakingly tedious, it is learning a difficult lesson. India may have lost all those gems that fill pages of museum catalogs and fill room after room in galleries around the world, but what India gained was the innocence that can be found when a people are raped, but hope is still present. India has picked up where it found itself just over 50 years ago, at its very lowest ebb, and today, with some anguish, it is on its way to becoming a big player in the world scene. Now only if the leaders in the two larger countries of the Sub-Continent would let their people live as they choose, we could stop wasting funds on arming our land, but on feeding and educating the masses that could certainly stand to gain so much more with these very basic facts of life. But then again, a question remains, would India be as magical if every Indian became a clone of the other? Can India go through Industrialization without becoming singularly obsessed and hopeless as the many nations around the world that lost so much of themselves in gaining not that much in the larger picture. But as Gandhi had always dreamed, there is a chance, if given in the right way, that India could sustain itself and its people in dignity, if we can take from the masses that which they indigenously produce and give them an economic stimulus that would sustain India's thriving culture without it losing it to mere greed for accepting that which is new. But, I am no Gandhi, and most of India has forgotten his preaching's. India is on the road to being another major power. Only if it now lets itself live and peaceably with its siblings, its neighbors, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
