Reflections from India

October 19, 2002

First impressions last longer than we may want them to sometimes. We arrived at the port of Chennai (Madras), and went ashore for an afternoon of exploring and trying to find a couple of places I had known about. But before we could even get a cab or auto-rickshaw, I was pretty much overwhelmed by the extensive and extreme poverty that we were confronted with, not only filth and horrible living conditions, but beggars of all kinds throwing themselves at anyone who looked like a tourist. Driving through the city in our three-wheeled, open air, auto-rickshaw, the pollution, overcrowded conditions, and poverty became as close to unbearable as anything I have ever experienced.

India is a land where opposites converge. Its sacred traditions have intrigued me since my early study of comparative religions, when I had first dreamed of visiting this spiritually rich and alive soil to experience first-hand its ancient practices and ceremonies. Yet Hinduism is the world’s religion most committed to inequality. Of its more than one billion people, some 200 million are Dalits, or Untouchables, of the lowest caste. Despite my first impression and the current reality of India, I looked to our excursion the next day to Varanasi (Benares), Delhi, and Agra with great eagerness and anticipation.

Benares, as it was known when I first learned of it, is one of the oldest living cities in the world, the holiest of Hindu pilgrimage destinations. Nearby, is Sarnath, equally as holy to the Buddhists. We stopped first in Sarnath to visit the ruins of the ancient city where Buddha preached his first sermon 25 centuries ago, and then the new Buddhist temple where a sapling of the original Bodhi Tree, his place of enlightenment, now stands as a huge sheltering tree, a focal point for both the monks of the temple and its many visitors.

The next morning we got up well before dawn and boarded a paddle boat to take us down the Ganges River where we witnessed one of the oldest rituals still practiced today. Pilgrims of all castes come to the Ganges at dawn for their ritual immersion into the holy water and to offer prayers for their atonement and release from the cycle of rebirth. All along the west bank of the Ganges have been built up over the centuries a series of ghats, or stone steps leading down to the edge of the water; there is a long string of ghats for the bathing ritual, and two “burning ghats,” or funeral pyres where bodies are cremated, a practice carried on today as it was centuries ago.

How can I say what it is like to walk through time? How can I explain the experience of timelessness? Bringing with me my present time perspective, I entered into a dimension where time nearly changed places with eternity. Not even walking through the old walled city of Jerusalem did I have this feeling. In Benares, all the centuries come together in the present moment, all of time flows together, as one endless moment. It is one of the oldest living cities in the world, but all around it and all through it, everything, except the brand new hotel we stayed in, is like going back 2, 8, 12, 20 centuries. The dire poverty and filth is the most striking, but it is extremely difficult to find anything anywhere in this ancient city of light that is a clear sign of the present time – with perhaps one exception.

After walking up one of the ghats, and stopping at the platform above one of the burning ghats, where we observed the final preparation for a cremation – the corpse covered in silk garments, placed on a pile of wood timber, with oil and sawdust sprinkled over it, and then lit underneath – we walked back through the ancient city’s winding, narrow oppressively dirty alleys, too narrow for anything but walking, and time again played another trick on me. Amidst the many hand painted signs on the walls of the buildings crowding the alleyways (“Benares Yoga School” etc.), one stood out among the rest, clearly the most out of place. On a corner building was painted “Internet” with an arrow pointing down the alley. Benares, a city I could not have imagined before being here, is still a center for Sanskrit scholars, students, pilgrims, and tourists alike, but it is also still one of the poorest and most backward areas of India.

That afternoon we went to Delhi, and Cynthia and I experienced another highlight of the voyage. We visited the Baha’i Temple, known locally as the Lotus Temple because of its unique shape. After meeting with the General Manager, we were afforded a special tour of the soon to be opened Information Center, which was as much a finely appointed museum. The Temple itself is magnificent in its elegant simplicity, and after it had closed for the evening, we had a few precious moments alone in the large, silent hall.

The next day, we went on to Agra and its many sights. The Taj Mahal is the Taj Mahal, even more imposing and beautiful than any of its photographs can ever tell, the most exquisite, elaborate tomb in the world.

India cannot be contained in a few pages, and I did not see India in five days. I was given a glimpse of a land and a people that are way beyond any simple description. Someone said that for anything that can be said about India, the opposite can also be said. This is the case for its people as well as its vast, complex mosaic of cultures, religions, languages, time periods, and economic conditions. Words, even experience, cannot begin to explain India. I feel like my quest to understand and appreciate India has just begun.