Popagandhi

Coming home from India, everybody’s bound to ask snarkily: have you found it? They mean Enlightenment, of course, since everyone from The Beatles to Alanis Morissette tried for it.

While I did visit the location where Buddha first taught the Dharma after attaining Enlightenment, and I was even on a train which passed other great locations like that, I didn’t enrol at an Osho ashram, or learn to levitate. I don’t feel even a chant away from Enlightenment. (Though I think the sight of the all-white crowd in the ashrams staying away from beer, may be sight enough to have me renounce my earthly possessions.)

What I did learn, were just as valuable. I’m addicted to travelling for the simple reason that it gives one a clear mind, and clearer sight ââ�¬â�� after all, if you are to live out of a backpack for 2 months, you’d damned well know what’s real and what isn’t. The people you meet on the road, especially in a place at once mystical, at once intense, and part repulsive and part enchanting, like India, are bound to be of a certain strain of mind and character. Indeed, on this journey alone the name cards exchanged (and bhang lassis, rickshaws, and Kingfishers shared), have seen the making of friendships and acquaintances more desired, than simple living during the ‘off-season’.

India is not the place you could go to unprepared. Like Stef, the German girl we met seeking refuge in Goa, you could very well stumble upon the chawls and slums of Bombay upon landing, then seeing a head separated from its body on a railway track. Or the multitudes of other first-timers, fresh off the plane from the First World, let loose into Delhi or Bombay or Calcutta, scratching their heads and wondering what the hell they’re doing there. Why are there poor people? Why are poor people not working? Why are there cows shitting on the roads? Why are there sprays in toilets instead of toilet paper? How can the people of Delhi tell auto-rickshaw men flat out that they can’t talk to them because they’re beneath them? Why is there a caste system?

The only way to enjoy India is to stop asking questions that have nobody has answers to. That is, most questions. This is the point where I put on my best Hinglish accent and say, Just shut up, Oooo-kay? There’s enough noise as it is in this country of one billion. I don’t know what it is I’ve been looking for but I’ve known for a long time that it’s here. On this recent journey, my second pilgrimage there, I don’t know any better, haven’t picked up any Hindi (I keep getting sidetracked by the Bengali and Konkani and the Nepali all these boys want to teach me), still pay way too much for rickshaws, and haven’t found myself a Tata to marry. You simply learn there are no questions, because there are no answers. You get past the filth, the air, the beggars, and embrace this magnificent country that is the embodiment of order in chaos, or chaos in order, depending on which angle you look at it, and where you’re standing.

I didn’t think homecoming would be this sweet, but sweetie, it just is. Maybe because I stopped asking questions that can never be answered. And dare I say, clarity, is the best gift travel bestows. Aku nak apa? You know it, and I know it.