India is a land of cognitive dissonance, a sensory overload, a place where every sensation is aroused at the same time. Good dances with evil; life embraces death; beauty defies decay. Here extreme poverty cohabits with ostentatious luxury. Here opposing actions happen simultaneously without reason nor order of sequence. Life blossoms and never ceases to exist. It takes every form imaginable and occupies every inch of empty space across all dimensions.
I sense incomprehensible chaos and see a mesmeric clash of all things which exist in the here and now. Traffic, storefronts, dwellings, and places of worship sprawl along the busy streets as far as my eye can see.
This mayhem forces me to anchor my very being to the sole instant in which I exist. No time to think about the past or plan for the imminent future. It’s the here and now that matters the most in India.
Life, there is life here; and death, there is death here – no separation in between. Existence doesn’t arrest with death. Vital energy assumes a different form and continues on, until the being reaches ultimate bliss an liberation in an extracorporeal dimension, at which point the cycle of reincarnation terminates.
India is highly spiritual and traditional society, the people are curious, inquisitive, and almost suspicious of the unknown strangers wandering their streets. There is a certain naivete about the way they approached me as a tourist, looking at my camera with interest and wonderment. They want to engage, share food and take selfies with me, converse about where I am from and what I do for a living, and proudly show me what their stunning land has to offer. They are honest, blunt, and witty.
When I slow down, listen and reply to what they have to say, deep and sincere interactions flourish naturally. Politics, society, history, castes, religion: everyone seems to have a well-formed opinion about these challenging topics. “In our country there are no rules. We all do as we wish, and it works for us” I am told time and time again by people while smiling and chuckling.
People here believe unquestionably in the power of love, benevolence, and karma. They are devout and trusting in the spiritual energy of their crowded pantheon of deities; in fact, when it comes to spirituality, they ask no questions and abide blindly by the karmic rules permeating all aspects of Indian society.
I see how these beliefs make sense in a place like this, where the present seems so precarious and the future uncertain. I feel a sense of liberation when I surrender my expectations, preoccupations, and compulsive control habits to the spiritual laws that reign in India – relinquishing control feels beautiful and right in this atmosphere, and perhaps it could be so elsewhere too.
I catch myself wondering if I could allow myself to live a simpler life with less practical rules and material possessions, void of much future planning. I think about whether I could shift my focus on embracing uncertainty and risk-taking, giving into the whirlwind of sensations that surrounds me. I consider a life trajectory grounded on the here and now, a path that would allow me to become more of an active participant and less of a passive observer in my own life. I want to feel, I want to feel it all.
Do I need to be in India to feel this way, or can I embark on this journey through the senses in the place I currently call “home”? I can’t find a compelling reason not to attempt to.
Through this physical as much as spiritual sensory journey, I find out how shallow my concerns are in comparison to the turmoil of daily life in cities like Delhi and Varanasi, and the hardship of rural life in a small village, where the inhabitants are at the mercy of seasonal floods or droughts. I find reinforcement in the idea that material ties to this earth can be a toxic downward spiral that severs human connections and obfuscates our bond to nature and the elements. Material ties, when mishandled, can be a poison for the mind, a blindfold for the heart, and an anesthetic for the spirit.
In India, I witness how simple it is to become part of a living community by sharing beautiful, meaningful, and spontaneous moments. Strangers turn into friends effortlessly through the magic of kindness. Gestures of care and love surface naturally as if they were the tenets of a mutual unspoken agreement. Discovering friendship and community in a strange and unexpected place prompts me to ponder the meaning of love and hatred, creation and annihilation, joy and woe, wealth and poverty.
The question I will be taking with me…
In a society where we are made to believe that we need possessions in order to find contentment and measure success, at the end of it all what is that we truly need to be happy?
