incoherent, but the best i could do...

diu--> palitana--> amdbd (i promise the vowels are only an english affectation)

amdbd (ahmedabad) is... well, whatever it is, there's a LOT of it. after the delicious desolation of the rest of gujarat this has been a slap awake. no more dreamy, sky-eyed wanderings because i would die. literally, i would die. in this place, i am completely convinced, no longer vaguely suspicious as in other parts of india, that people have NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. i asked directions and the response was a circular wave. "o, so you want me trace the circumference of my asshole (to quote jarrad in oregon)?" yes. yes they do. i crossed the same intersection from every direction (of which there were six) and eventually got back to where i started and got on a bus. and don't take this as an idle complaint- every stage was at the risk of becoming a splatterly natterly. i don't know how people can live like this. but they do, and most of them are pretty friendly and happy. how?

a) indians are incredibly good-natured

b) indians are very good at ignoring things that might upset them

c) indians are insane

d) all of the above

e) none of the above

so. this is the land of the great soul? i spent most of the day at gandhi's sabarmati ashram and i didn't know what to think. i don't contest that gandhi was a great man, a compassionate man, a wise man... but i can't help but wonder if he was too much of an idealist. driving past the huge, nasty salt refineries in the desert i often wondered if gandhi could have anticipated that when he picked up his handful of salt in dandi. looking out from gandhi's prayer ground on the new bridges and factories lining the river i wondered what he would think of this india.

marco polo wrote of india that he had never seen a nation so proud of its own filth. 500 years later and i can't say that he was wrong. as i said in my last post, indians are who they are and i don't think anything can change that. maybe not even a mahatma. what can you do when the majority of the people are happy to say, "that's the way it is, so why fight it?" and indeed, if people are happy why do you need someone to come along and point out to them that they shouldn't be? and despite everything that i find abhorrent here i can't tell people that they shouldn't love their country because somehow i love it too.

people worship gandhi like a god, and maybe that's what troubles me. many people have told me they are hoping for a new gandhi to lead them in the 21st century. what good is so much sitting around hoping when you could be doing something for yourself? that's what gandhi taught, after all.

on the other side of my dilemma is young india, who seem to be rejecting gandhi entirely: abandoning spirituality for materialism and rejecting their own identity for their ideal of the west. why be a second rate united states instead of being a first rate india? i'm not arguing for india to remain "undeveloped" or culturally stagnant, i just wish that the country would have the guts to stand up and do things on its own terms. so many young people i meet seem to think that "the west is the best", but then i have to ask them, "if the west is so great, why are so many of us coming here?"

this has been a bit of a long rant, and as i'm sure you can tell, i'm not sure where i'm going with any of this... i guess my main point was that gandhi was a great man, but instead of worshipping his memory i think people need to think of ways to make his teachings relevant to the current age. independence is no longer the fight- dealing with interdependence is the new challenge. the world is getting smaller and smaller and "east" and "west" are getting more and more blurred. anyone who is west of one thing is east of another, anyone who is east of one thing is west of something else. people from the west are turning to eastern spirituality in droves as we start to feel that maybe we are more than just our bodies. people from the east are turning to western economics and business in droves as they start to feel that maybe they are nore than just their souls. will we be like to rivers flowing into the same ocean or will we simply muddy each other and disturb the other's banks?

on the horizon

kutch--> dwarka --> junagadh--> somnath-->diu

i awoke this morning, too early, from a neurotic dream. the light had just started and i laid in bed looking up. voices, and "how much this room?", and scuffling feet came next as people arrived on a night bus from somewhere. then sadhana, distracted by the sounds of peoples' arriving, the eating of breakfast. i ran some errands, went to a beach, ran a vague spiritual errand for someone at the temple there, sat around and made pictures from the things washed up on shore, jumped around in the water, drank a coconut, and told myself stories about my own life. watched some foreigners wander about the beach and thought they looked weird. watched some indians wander about the beach and thought they looked weird. the day passed like a dream, a hazy cloud on the horizon...

so many days now of wandering around, speaking very little, watching waves, watching birds, picking up snake skins, climbing in caves. between over- zealous germans, lying bastard australians and boring english people i haven't had much patience for foreigners. they may know english, but we're still speaking a different language. the indians are what they are, and i don't think that will ever change. i'm somewhere else right now, not caught between, but in some different realm entirely. i was happy to talk to people but after a few days it all seems so flat and lifeless. i feel more energy and excitement sitting alone and looking at the horizon.

fighting windmills

i just finished reading don quixote, the book that has served as my only constant companion in the past month and a half. the idea to read it had occured to me long ago but i was always "too busy". finding it in pahar ganj at the start of my trip seemed a conclusive way to end my excuses. at times its 760 pages felt tedious, or at least heavy on my back, but it was with tears i let it end.



perhaps don quixote's madness has seemed dear to me, as it is the madness of a delusional traveller. i often wonder if what i'm doing is romantic, ridiculous and indulgent. maybe i am the victim of too many indiana jones moves, kipling books and lonely planet tv shows, just as don quixote was a victim to the tales of knight errantry. perhaps i empathised with him as people made sport of his love and suffering because in india i am always the butt of some joke that i don't understand. if only they knew what it was like to be completely out of what they know and constantly conspicuous at every moment. i belong to this place no more than don quixote was a knight- but why must our true selves be confined to the time and place in which were born? although the don's actions were foolish and mad one cannot deny that his heart and bravery were true.



i think that in the western world, in our current age, the deluge of choices and lifestyles presented to us causes great confusion and difficulty to properly belong anywhere. we have more supposed freedom but less certainty, less comfort in who we are. if you can choose to be anything, what do you choose? how can we determine what are windmills what are giants that need to be fought? perhaps the importance lies not in what we fight but the spirit in which we fight.