I went on my annual holiday back home to Chennai, India a few weeks ago and wanted to share a few insights from the reprieve. India as always hits you like a ton of bricks the second you step off the plane, the humidity, smell of musty carpets, the noisy chatter. Once out of the airport and your head is soon reeling with the sounds of traffic, neon lights and your body is working overdrive to cope with the heat. India is one of those countries steeped in heritage and tradition but strangely enough not a lot of that is visible at a first glance anymore. One of the fastest growing economies at the moment! and believe you me, it shows. Every direction you turn there are signs of western infiltration, wealth and development. But you get the feeling of chaos and the sense of an old country that had been blissfully lost in meditation being rudely broken from the trance and thrown head first into the murky waters of economic progress. Hey don’t get me wrong….it fills me with pride that Indians are finally seeing the light of day and yes that everyone can now have a mobile phone - and an iphone at that probably, right from the newspaper delivery boy to the lady who sells flowers at the street corner. But who’s to say what darkness is and that this is light. It’s relative and relativity can be as fickle as the cloud cover over London.
Bring on the idli ,dosa and inner peace! Strange combination indeed but then again this is India we are talking about, the country that gave the rest of the world the sacred treasures of yoga, meditation, and astrology and the country that was years ahead of its times centuries ago but too nonchalant to even flaunt it, populated to the seams, where road traffic breathes a life of its own, the land of software engineers galore, a spiritual warehouse, a conundrum, a question, possibly the answer....I could go on for a while. Bottom line is she is all that and more and yet in a weird way beautifully so.
Sitting on the sandy shores of the marina beach, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that India was changing beyond recognition and it scared me what she was morphing into. But almost as a comforting sign from the cosmos at every stage, I saw the faces of the people that I used to feel a kinship with - the boisterous boy selling sundal from his tin box, the cajoling screams of the lady who sells the mulaga bhajis from her stall, the priest at the temple who always manages to remember you, the neighbours and family who come to greet you and insist you must come home for a bite (yeah like your stomach can possibly take anymore food). The people are still the same.....more flashy perhaps but still the same.
The sun was setting and everyone seemed to shut up but for a few seconds to enjoy the scene. It was a truly unique contradiction - on one side of the horizon the wild waves, a glorious sunset and a sense of tranquillity and alignment with nature akin to ancient India and on the other side the lights and sounds of the city that seemed to never sleep, screaming out the sounds of a country kicking and fighting its way into the new world. And it dawned on me then that change is the one thing that never changes and home may not be what you remembered or cling to in your heart yet it is still home and that oneness you feel with the people around you will hopefully always retain the glorious hues of that setting Indian summer sun no matter where you live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Inci3dF-fQ&feature=related