India (again) Dec 2009 to Jan 2010

I have been in Pune, India (a very rapidly growing sprawling mass of 3.5 million people) for 6 weeks now at an ashram (or more correctly the Osho International Meditation Resort) - great to get away from the cold and snow to the warm and reliable weather of India... And doing some intense inner work including assisting on an 8 day Primal course and participating in a 7 day Path of Love. After these then I was completely exhausted (physically, emotionally, in every way) - but I still managed to notice a few things about India... the good, the bad and the very ugly... not necessarily in that order.

Things that I dont connect with:

- The traffic on North Main Road - Five years a go when I first came here it, this was a poorly paved road which didnt really go anywhere and it had a few cars and bikes that bumped their way up and down the road. Cows roamed the verges in search of food, and water-buffalo were regularly herded up and down it on their way to the river, causing not much inconvenience to the trickle of traffic.
Now it is a fully paved dual-carriageway-superhighway crammed full of cars and (motor)bikes. It is not just 'busy', everyone using it is attempting suicide. And as I have to cross the road several times a day (as the ashram is on one side and I live on the other) and apart from at 5.30 in the morning when it is quiet, I always feel that I am half a step away from not making it. So then that makes me a reluctant road user, and therefore an unwilling participant in this suicide pact.
Getting halfway across is the worst as then I have to stand cms from traffic, whizzing by in both directions, who sole aim is to miss me by as little as possible. And if I should wobble, lose balance or take a tiny step forward or back I would immediately be gobbled up in a knashing of spokes and a mess of car body parts.

I occasionally sat and watched it all (whilst drinking freshly squeezed sweet lime at the roadside) and was amazed at how close everything came to hitting each other - the only word that kept coming to my mind was 'Suicide! Suicide!' How can these people put themselves through this it is madness only worse! Somehow they miss - I dont know how. But with 30,000 people killed on India's roads every year and countless more injured then I guess they dont always. But there is no road rage, no one gets angry, no-one is taking anyones elses space, because in India the rule is that 'everyone has right of way all of the time unless someone else gets there first' and everyone knows this and this allows them all to drive like maniacs without ever realising it!

There is a crossing - and I used it once - it has green and red lights to tell the traffic when to stop and the pedestrians when to cross. Unfortunately I thought it would work - that was my mistake - and so crossed when the green man appeared only to find the traffic roaring all around me as if I shouldnt have been there. Safer not to use the crossing!

And of course the road gives rise to incredible noise and pollution... but that is a whole other story.

- Pollution - this is a whole other story (told you so) - being unable to breath, being knee deep in rubbish, being awakened at all hours of the night, the stench in some places... from every imaginable source: cars, bikes, rubbish, washing powder in the rivers - in short everywhere and everything pollutes and no-one really seems to do anything about it...

- Cockroaches - I find it difficult to respect the (Hindu) sanctity of life when there are large cockroaches in my room - sod them they are gonna get trodden on!

- Words that Indians dont understand No. 8
'Quietly' - Nothing is ever done quietly - it is all an excuse to make a noise. Even in the cinema everyone loves to describe each scene to their neighbour as though they were blind; in English, Hindi or Marathi, or frequently a combination of the three.


But enough of moaning - there must be some great stuff about India:

What I was in tune with:

- Th eoccasional small herd of Water-buffalo crossing the road as if they own it (well I guess historically they do). What I love is that they just walk out into the streaming traffic without a care in the world and without any fear at all. The traffic realises this and has to slow or even stop (a rarity in India) and the buffalo just stroll around totally unhurried - I found it beautiful to watch - it makes a change, the old creating havoc in the 'advanced' world rather than the other way round - maybe the balance is being restored.

- The food - it is great, fantastic, can be very cheap, always interesting and usually waiting time is minimal. This applies to Indian food. (It does not apply to the various Indian attempts at European food which are woeful and embarressing! In England we have Indian people who cook Indian food, Chinese people who cook Chinese food, Italians to cook Italian food etc etc and that is they way it should be - this experience has shown I do not value that diversity enough!).

- The wildlife - diverse and beautiful in all its ways - the constant supply of different coloured flowers that fall around me as I walk along (less busy) roads, the herons, egrets, kingfishers, cormorant, striped squirrels, parakeets, and elegant vultures that constantly glide overhead (like birds of prey not like the scrawney ugly ones in cartoons) and small birds - they all somehow put up with the pollution to live here - how they do it I dont know but I am grateful that they do. And then there are the enormous fruit bats which come out every evening and dance around they sky.
There is an exception - the elephant that is made to walk up and down the superhighway to grab the attention of locals and foreigners alike - it is an amazing animal but it should not have to suffer this environment.

- The markets (mainly fruit and vegetable) full of vibrant colour and shapes, and with some things I had never seen before - especially the matt black stuff that looked like small bit of coal - I was told you have to peel and cook them (a bit like potato).

- The meat market - despite being mainly Hindu (who are vegetarians normally) and cows being sacred, I did manage to eventually find a thriving (Muslim) beef market. Oddly enough an awful lots of cats and a huge number of vultures seemed to have discovered it too!

- The colours - this is a colourful society beyond doubt - why do we wear desperately boring colours in England - maybe we are desperately boring?

- The dogs - There are many on every street corner almost all unowned. I am strangely attracted to them - most are in decent health - as they are playful and friendly and I love the way they just go to sleep by the roadside and expect everyone to go around them (and everyone does) and then just get up when they want and wander around, defending their territory against insurgent dogs - it is a whole culture in itself.

- The pavements - actually the pavements are useless for walking along - I have no idea what the actual purpose of a pavement is in India but where they exist they are put together with such care that they must have a purpose. What I love is that if there is an obstruction, like a tree, in the way they just incorporate it into the pavement, no cutting down of trees here. Unfortunately this often means that the pavement is completely obstructed by the tree and so everyone has to step into the road to walk around it. So most people just end up walking in the road anyway.

- The poverty and the disparity between rich and poor - I have to mention it even though the huge divide between rich and poor goes unnoticed after a while - it is just part of the fabric of life here. It is a direct result of being Hindu - if you are born desperately poor then it is your karma and so you should stay that way for this lifetime. In Pakistan, which is generally poorer, there are almost no very poor people, as one of the tenants of Islam is to give to the poor. I do have to remind myself that the whole of India's poor are not my problem although it does sometimes feel like it - especially when the beggars who target westerners are on the prowl (and that means that they aren't 'real' beggars anyway but out to con those who are a little more gullible).

When I came to the end of my stay I gathered up all my excess clothes and bits and pieces that I wasn't going to take home to give away to locals who ran basic stalls along the roadside so they could sell them. Amongst them was a plastic 'lunch' box that I had bought, used and no longer needed. I decided to fill it with nice stuff and give it to someone who I had come into contact with and who was obviously poor. This raised tonnes of issues such as:
- what do I fill it with - what does a 'poor' person in India need?
- Am I helping the right people - I mean is the family I intended to give it to really poor? - I mean there must be poorer people around.
- what does poor mean in India? How little do you have to have - do you have to be starving to be poor - and how do I know whether they are or not? They do look poor and most people who are poor try and look like they aren't (apart from professional beggars).
- If I can help one family a bit why can't I help others - 2 families, 3, 4, ...10 ...100 ... In some ways helping one family seems so pointless in amongst the millions that need it.
- And why am I doing it - is it just to feed my ego? (not that 'poor' people would care but I did feel that my motivation was important.
- And what if they didnt accept it - unlikley in India but who was I to break the Hindu concept of karma and acceptance?

In the end I decided:
- Anyone who sits by the side of the road all day trying to scrape together a very basic living is poor.
- Helping one family is better than helping no-one
- I can only do as much as I am able in this moment
- I may be feeding my ego but creating this 'opportunity' and making it happen also it felt like an important thing to do (not historically being some-one who gives anything away).

So I asked at a shop what 'poor' people might need and filled my box with what they suggested (like shampoo, toothbrushes, tothpaste etc) plus I added a few more fun things like chocolate and biscuits (well if you are going to clean your teeth you might as well make it worthwhile). And they were delighted to accept it - as delighted as I was to give it. And whether it made a difference I dont know - I would guess at 'a little'. And ego satisfied - giving is not that difficult after all.



I have concluded that India, and Pune in particular, and North Main Road Superhighway in particular particular is simply an experiment to see how much stuff you can throw at one place (and by stuff I mean people, cars, bikes, rubbish, pollution, dogs, shops, in fact life in general) and keep throwing more and more stuff at it, and without anyone controlling anything, just see what happens. This is what it feels like and so far the experiment is progressing well with huge increases in everything and life adapts and still functions - which is lucky cos the experiment has very far to go! I hate to think what it will be like in 10 or 20 years, but it will be stretched to the limit, and probably beyond. But being India, it will still some how function just because it has to cos people's lives depend on it worksing somehow (although outsiders may not use the word 'function' to describe it).


The last word must go to the Indians who put up with all the shit, accept it and get on with life, cos that is just how it is right now. I am not sure if I want to learn a lot from this or not! The acceptance of 'what is' is great, but it feels like there is also an acceptance that things will always be like this (or worse) so why bother trying to change them - and that feels like a missed opportunity. India is full of contradictions and I should expect nothing less than to be challenged by them all!