I’m attempting to get a correspondent job with National Geographic, and they made us write an essay. So, for anyone who’s been to/lived in India, or feels like reading a non-fiction essay, here’s my submission:
Throughout my time in India, I have noted that everything seems to grow. I have tried to connect my experiences of Benares and Leh, and how they are both part of Bharat Mata (Mother India), and I cannot say the way has come easily. But today, as my group and I were driving through the mountains, I saw an image that threaded itself so completely between what I have been calling “the two Indias”. It was an almost imperceptible detail—perhaps this is why I missed it. I had been looking for some enormous difference, rather than a simple, earthly sign.
We were coming back from a small village, two hours outside Leh, and I looked out my window to a view of rock. But budding out of a tiny crack, barely blossoming, was a pink flower. I had expected the transcendental moment to thunder down on me, but it came, as all great lessons learnt do, quietly. Even in the most unlikely condition, life springs forth. It’s fragile, wholly delicate, but persistent. Life finds its own way.
I had been mistakenly looking for a connection of two man-made distinctions, forgetting that man can only make within his own mind. The conditions of the “two Indias” may be harsher conditions than most—the heat, the cold, the humidity, the altitude—but it is all Bharat Mata. The regions are not any different to her than the religions that fight over her land. Life itself is the unifying connection—defying and growing, it moves on.
From then on, I watched for the small things while in the car. We were driving back to a more westernized world, and it was apparent from the landscape. But then another little detail came, this time directly in the road: A patch of deep green grass. Despite the charge of progress, there is still something organic and unstoppable. It’s almost natural the grass would grow there. I can’t explain why, I don’t have the words for it, but it just feels like that is as it should be–that the road was built with the grass in mind.
There have been so many times on this trip where I’ve felt as though words were failing me, and as I look back at them now, I see that they are all from simple images like these. It’s as though the Earth is still creating itself here, everyone I’ve talked to feels its influence. I hadn’t fully noticed it until the night the monsoon began, the night before I left for Leh, when I the shift completely. Suddenly, in the storm I was alive–feral and alive. I thought the world had to be going faster, because I now was. But Bharat Mata continues on slowly, even if tourists see it differently.
Tourism is so rampant in India, I think people forget why they go, or forget to see what they’re looking for. I saw a woman in a boat on the Ganges watching the pooja, completely topless. This selfish tourist mentality almost always gives way to the disrespect of culture. And while I wanted the best glimpse of culture I could get in a month, who is to say I didn’t fall into this trap? Maybe not so blatantly, but I did have the hubris to look for a connection that has never existed—and in doing so I disrespected Bharat Mata, whether I meant to or not.
I have never been particularly religious, but in India, where the some of the gentlest of cultures has grown from the harshest conditions, I feel more so. It seems impossible not to be religious here: How can you not believe in something when there is so much of everything? As the saying goes: “Life is as it should be.” I never respected the truth in that statement as I am trying to now.
When we got back to Leh, we went to an audience with an oracle. One of the people in the very crowded room needed to be exorcised, as she had a spirit stuck in her which drove her to convulsions. So needless to say, I was skeptical about asking her anything, but what was I here for if not to try every new experience I could? I asked about the health of my parents—I don’t know whether or not I would have put any trust in her answer, but I couldn’t help but be curious. However, she waved the question aside and spoke about me instead. Between the two translations from Tibetan to Ladakhi and Ladakhi to English, I was told that I was going to achieve enlightenment, but that I shouldn’t take it. Instead, I should study and devote myself to religion in this lifetime, humanity in the next, and then go onto Nirvana. And honestly, I have no idea what to make of that. It’s all a bit weird, because everyone secretly hopes that someone of great power will look at you and see something special—almost a cosmic, “Ah, I’ve been looking for you.” For the record, there is nothing so awkward as walking out of a tiny room packed full of people who think you’re holy. And while I doubt I’ll attain Nirvana, perhaps she was right in that I should study religion.
I’ve never felt so peacefully overwhelmed as I have in India–even in the monsoon, I felt a sense of it being right. There’s a serenity to it all, even in cities like Delhi. Maybe it was due to the abundance of religions, and my exposure to them over the trip. Whether intentionally or not, we’ve spent our trip with a heavy Brahmin presence, in a Tibetan refugee guest house, and participated in several religious functions like pooja. But what little exposure to culture I had in this month-long trip has been very deeply religious. India is undeniably spiritual by itself, but there is a quality here unmatched anywhere else I’ve seen.
Life is so completely intertwined with faith here; it’s palpable from the first moment spent in the culture. And that truly is the defining feature of what I had considered my two Indias. Bharat Mata gives herself away as the secret you almost forget because of her own ubiquity. Every experience, every place, every moment, has her love left in it. She is the life and land itself. It may have taken a month, and it may take my lifetime, but my belief is that this is what the true India is. What tourists travel the world for, what they often miss, is that the spirit of Bharat Mata is not indigenous to India, but that it is everywhere. It can be easily missed in the mediocrity of normal life, and India may have the most beautiful landscape to represent her, but this vitality is wherever you are. And nothing can destroy it.
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