I've been writing about the places I've been to and the sights that I have seen but recently have thought that these things, though wondrous as they are, can easily be read about in any travel guide. While they are a vital part of the experience and understanding of India, they tell only part of the story, a story of how 1.25 billion people manage to co-exist together peaceably.
I've decided instead to write about my impressions of India as I see it from day to day. When I am on the bus or riding in a tuk-tuk, I look out the window and see the people living as they do. I would describe India as functioning in a sort of organised chaos. Just taking a rickshaw, for example, you are thrust into the mayhem of a traffic system that has no rules. The drivers seem to read the traffic with intuition and skill rather than use reflex or reaction. They drive on the left hand side of the road but often cross over, pass, or stop wherever they feel like. Our guide Mayank told me that statistically, there are no more accidents in this system of disorder than in an organised, rule driven system. Hard to believe, but so far, I have not seen any sort of accident at all.
The busses are really interesting too. I like taking local transport because you get a chance to observe the locals and sometimes even have a conversation. I look out the window and the scenes I observe are little vignettes frozen in my mind forever. An old man bathing by the side of the road; cycle rick-shaws lined up along the street, their sleeping owners lying precariously on top of the seat and handlebars. This is their home. Countless beggers, children, bedraggled and looking like they have never had a bath. Public toilets (I use the term loosely) with no doors but facing the road where you can see them doing their business. Men spitting the vile red juice of the paan they chew all day long. A half naked, dirty toddler playing with a plastic bottle in the middle of a roundabout, oblivious to the chaotic traffic swirling around him, no parent in sight. Men, young and old walking hand in hand, not as lovers, but as best friends. I find this oddly endearing. A polio survivor, his twisted, crippled body crawling through the filth of the streets, begging because it's all he can do. A man, sitting in a barber's chair having a shave, perilously close to the side of the road, only inches away from the speeding traffic. Women dressed in colourful saris, deftly stepping around the rubbish and piles of cow manure in their jewelled sandals, anklet bracelets jingling in the noisy street. Scrawny, mangy dogs scrabbling in the garbage looking for scraps. More tattered, filthy, lice infested, smiling children, playing in the squalor, always seizing the opportunity to beg from the passersby. Young men on motorcycles, usually two at a time, dressed as westerners with their aviator sunglasses gleaming in the sunlight like giant flies. And the ever common sight of people relieving themselves unabashedly in a country where there is no privacy at all. It is accepted, just as the filth, the rubbish, the dirty children, the foul smells are so much a part of the fabric of this complicated and interesting country. I am overwhelmed, overstimulated as I try to make sense of it all, immersing myself in it and trying to blend in, my whiteness too stark a contrast to the beauty of the Indian people.
I hate this place. I love this place. I can't explain it
