PART 6

An Indian Adventure

A recent month-long trip to India proved to be a real eye-opening experience for me. I went with a childhood friend of Indian origin, and her father, who had grown up near Mumbai. When the call came one afternoon, announcing their intention of returning to India after 30 years and inviting me to join them, I didn’t hesitate for a second; I’d been waiting half my life for this opportunity.
(37)  .
Having spent a good part of my teenage years amongst the Indian families of my two best friends, I had an image of that ancient land which differed greatly from the one of these pessimists and doubters. To me, India was not a tragic place, but an exotic, magical, mysterious one, teeming with quirky and vengeful gods, beautiful princess-like women, and pleasingly unfamiliar traditions.
(38) .
Of course, this is part of what makes for a great trip – the learning which comes from exciting and challenging experiences, acquiring new information and making observations about what you’ve seen. But this type of learning forms only one part of what you discover when you’re on a trip. Inevitably, travellers have to process data regarding other matters as well, such as those concerning their companions or, worse, themselves.
(39)  .
But the wonders are equally incredible: ubiquitous outdoor markets overflow with produce the likes of which you’ve never seen; sweet, delicate flavours hide in hideous fruits; restaurants abound with an endless variety of delicious savoury dishes; the scent of herbs and flowers fills the air; women of all shapes and sizes are radiant in brightly coloured saris; fabrics of all the colours of the rainbow hang outside shops; scary, grimacing faces adorn coconuts and ward off evil spirits; enormous temples with intricate decorations are carved out of the rock… the list goes on and on.
(40) .
Of course, this is part of what makes for a great trip – the learning which comes from exciting and challenging experiences, acquiring new information and making observations about what you’ve seen. But this type of learning forms only one part of what you discover when you’re on a trip. Inevitably, travellers have to process data regarding other matters as well, such as those concerning their companions or, worse, themselves.
(41) .
Her dad, however, was an unexpected delight. Evidently, a childhood of trips with my own shorttempered father had given me the impression that travel inevitably made fathers irritable and hard to please, which was clearly not the case. My friend’s dad’s gentle patience and tolerance greatly enhanced our trip.
(42) .
And so it was. Just as the driver hadn’t seen the great grey beast, so things which had shocked and astounded me early in the trip had no real effect on me by the end of it. The begging and starving children barely registered, the stench of the city streets no longer made me retch, the sight of skeletal animals didn’t move me to tears any more.
(43)  .
Countless times since my return, I have been asked whether I would ever go back to India and, of course, I would. But I know that it would be like reading an extraordinary novel; you can read it again, but the exhilaration you experience as the plot unfolds and the characters evolve and develop can never be repeated in quite the same way.

A. And so off I went, despite the ominous warnings and concerns of those around me, armed with a guidebook, some Hindi cassettes and several volumes of history and literature under my belt. As I took in the smell of burning rubbish and the sight of row upon row of sleeping bodies on the pavements on the drive into Mumbai from the airport, I wondered whether I would leave India as enamoured with it as I had been when I arrived.

B. If it sounds like every minute in India is one in which you are tempted, tantalised, stimulated and challenged, it is because that is the truth. It requires every ounce of energy and attention to deal with the sensory stimuli which constantly bombard you – the honking horns, thronging crowds, careering rickshaws, suffocating smog, reeking gutters. And although making sense of it all is a round-the-clock proposition, the prospect of blinking and missing one split second of it is equally daunting, because everything somehow seems like something that can’t be missed.

C. But there were still other lessons to be learnt. Once, driving along a narrow, bumpy highway in an old jeep, we passed a man riding an elephant. I was amazed: was this simply a means of transport in rural India? ‘What was that man doing with the elephant?’ I asked the driver. ‘What elephant?’ was his reply. This brings me to the alarming thing I found out about myself, or perhaps about human beings, in general: the truth of Dostoevsky’s famous adage, ‘man is a scoundrel; he can get used to anything.’

D. A few of my friends and relatives expressed apprehension at my decision, especially after news of political instability and border skirmishes in India hit the headlines. Efforts to convince me not to go reached a peak as the list of inoculations needed to guard against a dazzling array of diseases grew ever longer. My worried parents headed the team of opponents – unsurprisingly, given their press-inspired vision of India as an impoverished nation ravaged by internal conflict.

E. Fortunately, I am already well aware of many of my own shortcomings. I can’t say I found out anything unpalatable or even surprising about my friend either. We’ve been fellow travellers on a couple of trips and on the road of life for a long time now, and she was just the cautiously eager and reliable person I’ve always known her to be.

F. One of the most insightful travel writers of this century wrote that to see poverty in India is to see merely what’s obvious, and both this and its implications are equally true. There is blinding, indescribable poverty: people live in the streets, picking food from the piles of rubbish, drinking water from the shallow, muddy rivers. Naked children with distended stomachs beg relentlessly, disturbingly, while mothers wash shabby clothes outside tin huts, scrubbing them against the dirt road, hanging them to dry on the overflowing rubbish bins. Diseases long-forgotten in the West cripple young and old alike, despite desperate door-to-door vaccination schemes.

G. And elephants weren’t the only animals we had seen on the streets, either. Cows were everywhere and, though they seemed peaceful, they could be vicious for no apparent reason; I’d been head-butted by two cows for nothing more than walking by them. Camels were also common in some parts, though they didn’t meander in and out of shops and lie down to rest in the middle of the street.

H. I suppose this tendency to become accustomed to the truly appalling is both a stroke of luck for the human race, as well as being a serious shortcoming. In the context of India and the rest of the developing world, it is quite a worrying talent, for there are such a lot of upsetting things to get used to, and succeeding in this only makes it more likely that things there will never change. On the other hand, for a relatively powerless individual such as myself, it may be the only way to cope.