There is something about India which belies and defies everything. In fact, everything said about India now-a-days harps on this aspect unfailingly. A land of brutal-lovingness; a haven of evil necessities; a reflector of life, death and sundries; a place of assault and assimilation; a contrast within contrasts. No oxymoron or figure of speech can describe it.
But as everyone says, you have to feel it to experience it. My recent India trip was nothing short of repeated amazement about it. The Delhi airport elicited a shaming comparison with the other posh airports of the world. But the very next hour, the buzzing, improving and promising life out there gave the proverbial optimism I haven’t experienced anywhere else. The clogged streets, the jammed roads, the interminable queues in offices, banks, hospitals, the Naxalites violence, the drought and flood, the poor people begging on the roads etc– all are too mean and maddening to frustrate and deflate you to the core. But simultaneously there is also a stable working Government and the Prime Minister, rapidly-improving economy, Nobel Prize winner, youth-exhorting Rahul Gandhi, IT companies, world-encompassing Bollywood, improving Cricket and Sports, mangled but happening Commonwealth Games. Add to the list - Diwali, the family, aam ka achaar, dhaba ki chai and paranthe, the ultimate beautiful and cultured girls, the sobering temples. You have everything that life can give, torture or inspire in you. India is everyone’s life story.
Moving from a cozy life-style to the rigorous one is never easy, but as years grow by, one realizes, demanding life only, is the real and pleasing thing in the end. India definitely needs me, but I think, for now, I need India more than that.
But as everyone says, you have to feel it to experience it. My recent India trip was nothing short of repeated amazement about it. The Delhi airport elicited a shaming comparison with the other posh airports of the world. But the very next hour, the buzzing, improving and promising life out there gave the proverbial optimism I haven’t experienced anywhere else. The clogged streets, the jammed roads, the interminable queues in offices, banks, hospitals, the Naxalites violence, the drought and flood, the poor people begging on the roads etc– all are too mean and maddening to frustrate and deflate you to the core. But simultaneously there is also a stable working Government and the Prime Minister, rapidly-improving economy, Nobel Prize winner, youth-exhorting Rahul Gandhi, IT companies, world-encompassing Bollywood, improving Cricket and Sports, mangled but happening Commonwealth Games. Add to the list - Diwali, the family, aam ka achaar, dhaba ki chai and paranthe, the ultimate beautiful and cultured girls, the sobering temples. You have everything that life can give, torture or inspire in you. India is everyone’s life story.
Moving from a cozy life-style to the rigorous one is never easy, but as years grow by, one realizes, demanding life only, is the real and pleasing thing in the end. India definitely needs me, but I think, for now, I need India more than that.
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