Wow. India. India was a whirlwind
of sensory chaos and social overstimulation…or was it the other way around?
Whatever it was, we got served an extra-large helping. I had traveled to India
once before, with Fort Lewis College in 2009, and the experience had been
extremely positive and inspirational, enough so to convince me I just had to go
back. This time around, things were a bit different. India was the same of course—loud noises, enormous
crowds, cows in the street, the overwhelming smells of delicious food and human
excrement combined—but our level of preparation, friendly connections, and
funds was dramatically lower, which made our trip significantly more difficult
than last time. Every time we took a
train, instead of arriving by taxi and finding our pre-booked seat, we had to
run around town to find an honest rickshaw (not an easy task when you’re a
clearly overloaded white person), then explore the station with our big bags
looking for the tourist office (if it was open) to reserve a sleeper (if it was
available) or anything which kept us out of General seating (a giant writhing
mass of body parts and bags literally bursting out every open door and window).
Usually the outcome of such a situation would be that we would be sold some
half ticket which didn’t get us a seat anywhere, and try to find an empty spot
until somebody came by to sell us the other half, only to get charged a hefty
fine by the train guy for not paying for our spot. We never actually had to pay
those fines, since there was always a friendly local around to defend our
bewildered state, but it did make for a lot of hoopla and bustling around (and
no sleeping whatsoever through one 9-hour night ride). One time we decided to
avoid the situation altogether, and spent four hours in the hallway between the
bathrooms (not recommended).
We
didn’t have the comfortable sedans to drive us the long distances between
towns, choosing instead the cheapest transport options, which usually meant
local buses. On one 15-hour nightmare bus ride, we veered around sharp corners
and leaned precariously over cliffs, nearly running into buildings at every
turn in the near-total darkness while everyone around us somehow managed to
look completely unconcerned, and even sleep! On another bus, we found out after
leaving the station that the bus trip would be lasting just enough extra time
to make us miss our connecting train, and we spent three hours sitting in the
very front listening to the horn blow and trying not to freak out. Since we had
no pre-arrangements made for our travel, we met a lot of people who were eager
to scam us. We were overcharged, tricked with loopholes, not told the full
truth, and taken to a few strange places on the way to our intended
destinations. Feeling like people were making a business out of our misfortune
made it difficult for us to feel like we could trust others. And then the big
whammy came on our way out of India.
Our
flight itinerary involved a domestic flight from Delhi to Mumbai, then a 3 hour
layover, and an international flight to Tel-Aviv, Israel. The reality involved
one big storm and a whole lotta mess afterward. We had to land at another
airport to wait out the storm, finally arriving in Mumbai at midnight and
getting on the 30-minute shuttle bus to the international airport, only to be
dropped off outside the secure zone and not allowed back in since our ticket
was no longer valid. We spent the rest of that night and the two days afterward
in a covered waiting room with two Israeli girls in the same predicament, being
rejected help by all participating airlines and looking for any accessible form
of internet to beg the outside world for help. We had no phone, no rupee or
functioning ATM, no internet, a lot of luggage, and one pricey coffeeshop to
provide soggy sandwiches twice a day. On a stroke of luck we managed to rig the
ticket kiosk to access email, and wrote to friends asking for money, which they
assumed was a scam and posted warnings on Facebook for nobody to send anything.
It’s a real funny story, just ask us to give you the full account and you’re in
for a hoot. But for the sake of sanity, long story short we miraculously
attained WiFi for enough time to call my parents and have them purchase us
escape tickets to Switzerland and then Tel-Aviv. It was a 20-hour flight that
evening, and my mom asked us if we would be up for such a long travel time. We
hadn’t slept much at all in our three –day ordeal, and at that point all we
wanted was to GET OUT, so we couldn’t have said “YES” faster. I wish I could
have photographed the look on Neal’s face when he ordered his free Scotch and
Coke from the hostess on our Swiss Air flight ten hours later. All I can say
is, THANK GOD FOR PARENTS!
Anyway, the point of all these
stories is not only to urge anyone reading to PLAN AHEAD any trip to an Asian
country, but also to share the big lesson we had to learn about Patience. Every time something difficult came my way, I
would say to myself, “Patience, patience.” I didn’t want my experience in India
to be one of grudging toleration and thinly-veiled irritation when I had been
so changed by my last experience there. I wanted to open up to the beauty of
India, to forgive the place for its troubles and love it for its ability to
transform the soul. But if I was going to do that, I would need to pass this
patience final exam and transcend those obstacles.
If you have the fortitude for it, India
is a beautiful place. It is full of vibrant color and teeming life, and the
culture there is a whole different type of freedom than the one we are so proud
of in America. There, a man can renounce the material world entirely, wear no
clothes and cover himself with sacred ash, and his neighbors will make sure he
eats every day. There is always a place for the poor, and practicing your
religion in public will not get you sidelong glances from passersby. A person
can open a shop under the stairs somewhere and never have to pay property
taxes, or sleep anywhere and never be questioned. Bartering is customary, so
you are free to decide what price an item is actually worth instead of letting
the business determine how much money it can make off you. The fabrics are of
finest quality; the music and dancing are exotic and entrancing; and the food
is absolutely delicious. And don’t forget the centuries of politics and
religious teachings, which form the backbone of many Indian people’s lives (as
well as transforming Western ideas), and deepen the sights and sounds with
enchanting mystery.
India is also a place where you can
see life at its most real. The vast separation between rich and poor took us
aback—we saw well-dressed professionals driving personal vehicles to and from
work, and others who had never traveled much farther than the mud hut or
curbside shack where they were born. The sheer numbers of people at every turn
was overwhelming, especially when a good number of them were staring openly and
unabashedly at the two of us. Because of the huge population and the absence of
governmental programs and regulations such as waste management or traffic police,
the effects of the increasingly popular consumer lifestyle are starkly obvious.
The smell of garbage burning takes over the streets at dusk, and people suffer
from all sorts of lung diseases from breathing noxious car exhaust fumes. There
are no education programs or incentives to help the poor become less so, so the
caste system which was abandoned so many years ago still plays a big role in
the opportunities each person has access to—in other words, if you’re born
poor, you stay poor.
Despite all of the difficulties
that Indian life presents, however, the people are remarkably tolerant and
accepting of most things. They have mastered the art of waiting hours, days, or
even years for something to come, and they are even better at shrugging it off
when it never does come. Watching those people sleep on the bus when I was
certain we would die any second was an eye-opening experience for me. I
realized the level of relinquishment that total acceptance of one’s situation requires,
and the power inherent in the most seemingly helpless of moments. Indian people
redefined the word “patience” for me. I realized that patience is not just an
idea, but a way of life.
The interesting thing about
patience is that we wouldn’t need to use it if there were nothing around to
test it. As Helen Keller said, “We could never learn to be brave and patient,
if there were only joy in the world.” Every description of patience is
accompanied by words such as ‘difficulty,’ ‘delay,’ ‘provocation,’ ‘annoyance,’
‘anger,’ ‘negativity,’ ‘strain,’ et cetera. Notice that these words describe external
situations with internal responses. Usually what is testing our patience is
outside of our selves and our sphere of control. This can be extremely frustrating, especially
when the problem is being caused by another person, but it can also be freeing.
The modern philosopher Eckart Tolle says that we have three choices in any
situation: “change it, leave it, or accept it totally.” If one or more of those
options isn’t available, you are left with what is left. We hear the same idea
in the Christian peace prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things
I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know
the difference.” Being able to accept a situation completely without inner
resistance takes a lot of practice (which I can personally vouch for). It also
requires us to forgive others for their habits or indecisiveness (or for
viewing us as a source of income rather than a fellow human being), and realize
how dependent on others we actually are in nearly every aspect of our lives. Being
patient with others is a form of compassion and respect for them. The Buddhist
philosophy goes beyond patience as merely a form of endurance, saying that we
have to be committed to never return harm. “See that no one returns evil for
evil; rather, always seek what is good for each other and for all.”
In India, I often felt like I had no
control over our situation. On that long and scary bus ride, I had the same
three options: I could get off the bus, I could try to convince the bus driver
to slow down, or I could put all my faith into something completely out of my
hands. I considered all three options, and I decided to have faith. I sat there
on the bus and worked hard on my trust, accepting my situation and all
potential outcomes as out of my hands, and forgiving the people around me for
not feeling the same way I did. I allowed the storm to take its course, instead
of creating another storm within myself to fight it. And guess what? We made it
safely to our destination—though I never plan to take a night bus in India ever
again. I do have control over THAT situation…I hope.
It is okay to feel helpless. It is
okay not to know what to do all the time, because it isn’t our job as humans to
know what to do. We are subject to the workings of the Universe, and we really
can’t control much except our inner realities (which I believe is the MOST
effective way to influence your outer reality). Sometimes the only option you
are left with is taking a deep breath and sitting back. This applies to boredom
as well. I think Americans often suffer with the affliction of boredom, because
we are trained to feel like we should always be busy accomplishing something,
always being MORE and BETTER than we were two minutes ago. However, sometimes
there is really nothing to do but wait. Pema Chodron wrote a book called “Getting
Unstuck,” which discusses our desire for escape and the many ways we perpetuate
our own feelings of dissatisfaction. Her solution to this perceived problem is
not about freeing ourselves from our physical confines, but rather our mental
ones, by Learning to Stay. Boredom may be a struggle, but think of how rare it
is in today’s society to be given the chance to sit around with nothing to do.
I am practicing the art of the Passive Observer, taking the time when there are
no responsibilities to open my eyes and see what is around me in a new way, and
I am starting to see just what a gift it is that we are given that chance to
step back and look around every once in awhile without having to always play
the role of Decider in our own lives. We met a man from the UK in the Mumbai
airport who had been waiting FOUR MONTHS to be issued a ticket home. Granted,
he was a bit crazy, but nobody could say he hadn’t made the most of the
situation, making friends with the staff and taking on the responsibility of
helping other marooned travelers find cheap food and shelter when nobody else
would help. He opened up to the possibilities inherent in What Is, and allowed
himself to adapt to an unpleasant situation in a positive way. The future is
uncertain, but that doesn’t mean we have to feel trapped in the Now.
I think the hardest part about
learning patience is that it is such a slow process. Even though I had many
successful patient moments along the journey, it was no guarantee that I wouldn’t
overreact in another situation. The true challenge of patience is making the
commitment to doing it over and over again. Persistence over the long term does
pay off, but sometimes the experience feels like starting all over again. When
I get into mindsets like these, I am reassured by the lessons I learn from the
journeys of others. The inspirational activist Peace Pilgrim made a graph of
her path to inner peace, with a whole lot more ups and downs than any sort of
gradual incline towards improvement. The Dalai Lama has been living in
Dharamsala, India, exiled from his homeland of Tibet for most of his life, and
yet he is adamant that the people must allow more time for the long-drawn out
Tibetan struggle to be resolved. If people such as these can use patience as
one of their tools to become powerful leaders in society, then I know I can
brush myself off and start again and my efforts will never lead to failure. It
seems like a big undertaking, but luckily I really only have to do it one
moment at a time, and be committed to doing it when that time comes again. And
hopefully after such a big final exam like India, the smaller challenges of
daily life will be easier to put into perspective.
The first stories I told about
India at the beginning of this blog are commonly told by travelers to this part
of the world, so it is easy to understand why people are often wary of visiting
such a place (and I know we had a few moments of uncertainty ourselves). I
suppose in order to see India at its fullest you have to let your mind
transcend the idea of what is “good” or “bad” and just take it for all that it
is. In order to do that, it’s going to require a lot of patience, but I assure
you, fellow explorers, that the rewards far outmeasure the challenges of such a
unique and vibrant place. Jump into the deep end of the Ganges! Let those mosquitoes
bite! Be fully awake and alive! INDIA!
