India, part 2

It really was hot. I thought that the month of March would still be cool and refreshing, with all the dust that comes up from the road but without all the heat and sweat to make it nasty, but, I was wrong. It's only my second time to India as an adult, so I'm not to blame. Ahem...my parents are. They grew up there - why did they tell me to bring a sweater? Anyways, the heat didn't prevent me from moving around, well, actually, yes it did. But once I did start moving around, it didn't prevent me from having fun. Okay yes it did, let me just change the subject.

It's hard to describe the intesity of India. Like many things in life, like such gradiose notions as love and spiritual awakening, it must be experienced to be known. India, with it's "I have to move forward and build a country even if I have only had 60 years to work with since the British were here before that and took all my money those greedy bastards...and the Mughals before that but lets stop blaming the British (It's the white man's fault my autoricksha broke down!) since that's just lame and pathetic now" predicament, has reached the level of such legendary emotions as the aforementined. You can take pictures, but the pictures have a way of clouding up reality; you cannot feel the heat in a picture, you cannot hear the horns blasting in the bakground, accompanied by the sound of birds and noisy children, the local subjivala screaming the prices of his vegatables, the sound of the chain laboriously rotating over the gears on a ricksha. You cannot feel the eyes that may have momentarily looked in your direction, the dry wind and the sweat on your legs that make your already tight pants even tighter, the confusion of so many people and the pressure of the overbearing sun. You can't smell the smell that is Indian people, sometimes somf, sometimes a general mix - a masala if you will, though I hesitate to use the hackneyed word - nor can you smell the environs, sometimes the smell of pan, sometimes the smoke from the garbage that people burn on the streets in the morning, sometimes the ridiculously delicious subji your bhobbi has made. You need to wake up at 3 in the morning with the sound of people singing - the leader using a loudspeaker - at the morning worship in the Hindu temple in front of your house, with the pillow over your head thinking, why in God's name do they need to sing with a loudspeaker! That's just rude!! Then you need to realize that you're in India, and you can't get mad at things like that - western etiquette doesn't apply - good luck with the second part though. Then you need to sleep in your other cousins house and go through the same thing, expcept this time is the kirtan (Sikh religious/devotional music) from Harminder Sahib blasting on TV (same great time though!), and though it's much more peaceful music, it's still not as peaceful as your dreamy sleep. You need to be heading back to Delhi on a rickety metal bus with no cushions after you're long trip to Punjab, be halfway between the land of dreams and the land of...well, India could be called a dream, the bus driver needs to be going ridiculously fast, maybe 75 km an hour, and you need him to abruptly hit the brakes as your bus zooms to the left accompanied by the loud screeching wail of rubber burning on asphalt that throws your heart into a gear it's never been in before, and you instictively throw your wieght down on the seat, as if you could counterbalance the centirugal force with your own gravitational force, only to feel him turn to back to the right as you turn to the left and realize that you cannot prevent what will happen over the next few seconds (actually it lasted at least 10 maybe 15, but I've heard moments like that tend to be longer in our minds than in reality so I may be wrong) and that your fate is inextricably tied with that of the bus and the natural driving talent of your driver; do you know what if feels like to have a bus lose control like that? Of course you don't, you've never been to India. You need to hear by rumor from the guy in the front that we barely left the early morning passengers of an autoricksha surviving, and then you need to wait three minutes, look around you, and see that everybody has fallen bacl asleep, including your father, while you cannot help the instinct to start praying to a God you do not nearly pray enough to in you daily life for the safety of the rest of your trip back home. And then, you need about 10 more minutes, maybe 15, till you resign yourself to fate and fall asleep yourself.

You need it all. India is an iinflux of senses that must be experienced to be understood, it is an experience you can never forget, nor would you ever want to forget. It's much more than that though, to be continued in part 3.