domingo, 7 de junho de 2009

Travellers' perspectives on India

I've been hearing all sorts of things about India:
- from people who visited the country as tourists for 15 days (or from someone who knows someone who did)
- from those who did actually manage to make it through a longer and/or less conventional stay
- and finally from those who have been watching the Brazilian soap-opera on India that is now being broadcasted on a main-stream channel in Portugal (but these don't deserve that many more words in the context of this comment).
And as about no "vacation spot", I hear the most contrasting feelings and contradicting opinions about the INCREDIBLE INDIA. But not necessarily categorized as above: people vary, so do the reports.
The truth is that mentioning that you lived there, and the country itself, usually leaves no one indifferent.

The ones who haven't visited India, they usually have it either as:
- their dream destiny
- or think they could never take it, that they wouldn't be able to bear the crude reality of the country.

But many many among the ones that did get to do such an exotic trip: many of these western travellers (some friends among them), they simply didn't like it.
Some even gave up out of shock in the middle of the journey if they had longer stays previewed; the others say they will never go back or if so only in 50 or 60 years. This is mostly because they saw so much garbage lying all over or just about thousands of skinny living people or wrapped up dead bodies being burned in Varanasi, or simply because they were subject to the worse smells, bugs and tummy problems ever!

What I don't always get to tell them is that I think no profound shift can be foreseen for India if a dramatic change of mentalities doesn't take place among Indians.

The ones in between were shocked with some things and delighted with others and in the end "rather liked it". Most of these will confirm to if you ask: they did the same old journey between 5 star hotels in Rajasthan, Delhi and of course: Agra, and got cheated some dozens of times in what later they just laugh about and label as a cute cultural feature.
Others are fans, fanatics, true appreciators of India.
They love what the country has to offer in vast and diversified experiences, namely the cultural, spiritual and the aesthetical/ artistic.
They are also looking for a sense of "seing the world", of finally getting a glimpse of true exoticism (these were definitely some of my drives).
But there is also some sadistic idea that you will broaden your views and value life more by contacting with human misery (by pure coincidence in a far distant country where you have the comfort to think that you don't have the power to do much about it).

Anyway... the ones who love(d) the Indian experience, they talk of its colors, of its smells, of its tastes, of its peculiar habits and rituals, of its wonderfully diverse environments and ancestral heritage: natural, architectural, artistic, religious, spiritual, etcaetera.

Afterall I haven't heard of a country with more revisiting, or with longer stays of travellers. For many India is the experience of a lifetime (it was for me). That's because it is such a distinct and challenging country for western globalized views, plus it offers and relatively harmoniously embraces and welcomes such DIVERSITY inside!

But India is not for anyone, that's for sure.
Not everyone can let go of their comfort zone but most of all their mind frame and human principles to cope with what you face in that country - especially if you get deeper into the HOW's and WHY's.
After 10 months, I didn't want to anymore.

For a "firangee" (* foreigner in Hindi) who was a resident in India for some time, the feelings are mixed as this blog testifies.
But I know none that would want to actually live there again, as I hardly know any Indian who wouldn't like to leave his country.