A conversation of two ordinary passengers I overheard in a public transport I took today in Chennai was typical of the daily concerns of an average family in India. There was one who had to share his concern on spending over a 1000 rupees (USD 22) on his son who was running high fever for last three days. As if it would comfort him, the other topped it up with his concern of spending around 20000 Rupees (USD 445) for his daughter's education. The thickness of their emotions got encrypted into two simple lines in this blog, but I understand well the conversations that must have taken place at their homes in the dim lights at night as all the members settle after their days activities!
I am undoubtedly in love with India. Chennai where I live is a place where you cannot travel more than a hundred meters without passing by the sound of hymns or chanting from a road-side temple or a community hall that will have a loudspeaker playing the latest beats - celebrating anything from coming-of-age of ones daughter to a graduation ceremony and wedding, or a kiosk selling beautiful garlands weaved and sold fresh, to merrily welcome a guest or to express condolences to the family of the bereaved!
I am growing a fear when travelling in India, a fear that some may scoff at, and some others may sympathize with. While it may become a great photo opportunity for a visiting traveler to India, I am growing an intense dislike and a strong fear when I listen to the sound of the dangling bells of a bullock-cart pulled by the exhausted bullocks with froth in their mouth, silenced by the sound of horn from the Mercedes behind, and a Piaggio share-auto-rickshaws stuffed with men and women seated in layers of seats symbolizing Indian innovation, with empty tiffin-carrier in one hand and a bag full of vegetables in the other, fighting for space and racing against time, desperate to reach home ; the school children queuing for their buses or dangerously hanging on the foot-boards, the crowd dodging between the different vehicles, animals and buildings, drunken men - rick-shaw drivers to office-workers - lying on the pavements and the thought of their wives and children waiting for them at home for whom a bunch of grapes would have been a delicious treat instead of the bottles of liquor their parents spent their savings on - I am scared of the India I see around me, how much so ever I try to be proud of the India that's projected as Incredible outside of our borders.
On one side is the wrinkles and sunburns of poverty staring at onlookers, in their never ending struggle to make the ends meet, and on the other side are the opportunities that we dream of the country and the power that we are gradually becoming in the world of nations!
I am no stranger to the difficulties and struggles of making the ends meet. Memories of burnt fingers aren't a story of a distant past, and the struggles of being swung from the comfort of being safe and secure with a perfect job and its perks to the dark pit of uncertainty causing cracks on my dreams of a future is as fresh as yesterday. The bitter taste of biting that hard pill is perhaps what highlights to my conscience the shaded side of the life around me. The stories I hear of the people, the colours and wrinkles on their faces, the torn edges of their collars and the stitched straps of their handbags, the raw and rugged life that I see around as a contrast to the clean, organized and structured life that I now have the privilege of enjoying undermines its joy and destabilizes my ability to live in the moment.
The brightness of the moment in the now is eclipsed by the possibility of a reality in the future!
I do not desire this state of mind.
It is nonetheless a state I am traversing through.
It is not about me. It's the unsettling whirlpool of feeling that I am drowned in when I see the life around, one that makes me overcautious and overly conscious of what I have and what I am, making me wonder my eligibility to live my life and have peace with it!!!
What is enough to be sufficient?
Shahir
April 15, 2011
