the end of india

9th December 2011

Mammalapuram

                      So here it is. My penultimate day in India which serves to signify the end of this particular chapter in my world wide journey. The past few days I've spent in  Pondicherry and now Mammalapuram, though enjoyable, have been fairly uneventful as I've had the distinct feeling that this leg of my trip is unfortunately drawing to a close. A close which will soon be reopened however once I set foot on the airplane tomorrow night to continue my travels over in South East Asia. Tomorrow morning I head back to Chennai to catch the midnight flight which will whisk me away to Bangkok where round two of this big old adventure begins! So in the meantime and as the name of this blog is "thoughts on the road" I thought I might spend some time committing to the world wide web a couple of thoughts that serve to summarise my feelings about the past two months i've spent in this wonderful country. If however, you've read the rest of my blog you'll know this is no small task as an awful lot has happened but i'll give it a shot!

To begin, I think i'll let you in on a very special conversation I had one night at the Gopi guesthouse in Hampi with a remarkable woman named Andrea. Remarkable for many reasons, but for the purpose of the point i'm trying to make here, she was remarkable because of the stories she told me. One story in particular struck me as profoundly poignant and as this is my space I would like to share it here. The reason being is that I think it perfectly encapsulates many of the feelings i've developed about this - to use the same adjective to excess - remarkable country. Andrea was from Switzerland. At a guess I would say she was in her mid-thirties and with her long flowing brown hair and elegant manner she was both eloquent and beautiful by nature. This was actually her seventh time in India although this time - for the first time - she was making the three month trip accompanied by her five year old son Talin. That night we talked until the last customer had left the resturant and on into the early hours of the morning. We talked about many things that night and her attitude towards life struck me as incredibly inspirational to the extent that in those hours we spent together I feel I somehow learnt a great deal from her. One of the obvious topics of conversation which came up, among many others, was why she kept on coming back to India time and time again and the story she told me in order to explain her reasons - which i'll humbly attempt to replicate here - was to my ears astounding. It summed up for her (and upon later reflection myself also) why India is such a unique country.

Years ago, whilst traveling through the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, she was walking along a street and came across an elderly lady lying face down on the ground who appeared to be in considerable distress. As she approached, it became depressingly obvious that this poor lady was crippled by the late stages of leprosy. The highly destructive disease had reduced the woman to little more than a corpse as her limbs had significantly perished away due to lack of treatment whilst her rib cage was so heavily infested that dead flesh could be seen protruding from the poor woman's withered torso. The instant reaction to such a sight was understandably extreme horror which soon gave way to incredible sadness and reduced Andrea to tears. Upon closer inspection to see if any help could be offered, she noticed that the woman, instead of crying out in pain was in fact singing. Singing with the most beautiful voice Andrea had ever heard which seemed to almost transcend the suffering that had corrupted the woman's body. This immensely powerful image seemed to encapsulate for her all that India is. To use her own words, she thought that this woman represented the 'fine balance' which exists in India as a whole. The country, she continued, is a nation finely balanced between extreme hardship and suffering at one end of the spectrum whilst amazing beauty and positivity occupy the opposing end. The two of which serve to counterbalance each other and every traveler who visits the place undoubtedly encounters this contrast at some point in their trip. To my ears, the point of the story was that within all the disease and death which is prevalent everywhere in India an underlying theme of natural beauty can always be found and this whole concept for Andrea was encased in this poor woman's diseased body. In her opinion no other country in the world (from the many she has visited) shows this contrast so starkly and in such a finely balanced way. This she told me was why she hated India yet loved it at the same time, was why she kept being drawn back so many times and why she wanted to expose her son at such a young age to a country which has so much to offer. Now i've met many other travelers and every single one of them has told me that their are days when they can't stand the place and long to return home. In most cases however they don't and instead move to a different city where something amazing happens that pushes them to prolong their trip by a few weeks or in some cases a few months! People love and hate India, yet I have never heard why people oscillate between these two emotions expressed in such an eloquent and poetic way. Now I appreciate that this is someone else's story but if you've read any of my previous posts I think that much of my trip falls into this idea of India. From my day spent in the Jaipur slums where I saw some awful things that will stay with me forever to the beauty of seeing the sunrise from Hanuman's hilltop temple in Hampi, I completely understand where Andrea was coming from and that's why India, for me at least, is such an incredible place.

Anyways it's all very well for me to sit here philosophizing about the suffering which occurs in India as I don't have the faintest clue of how hard life is for some people here. I have however seen a little during my two months in this strange land and thought it was an interesting concept worth mentioning. I also fear I may well be teetering, or have already fallen, from the precipice of pretentiousness so I'll end India here.

Next?

THAILAND

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