Reconnecting With India
“it’s been an exhilarating, eventful, funny, head-scratching and memorable experience already and we’ve not even scratched the surface of this colourful, crazy and cricket-mad country.”
If you have been following my blog, you might recall moving to India was a culmination of following through on my wife’s and my vision and a flash of insight I had during one of my meditation sessions – India is warm, colourful, and while chaotic it has insatiable youthful energy bursting to find form. It would give me a great platform to apply my leadership experience and make an impact at the grassroots level. To top it all this will provide an amazing opportunity for us as a family to experience India from a very different lens than how we experienced it growing up in middle class families in the 80’s and 90’s.
Not surprisingly we had our anxieties - how will we handle the chaos, the pollution, the traffic, how will Zayden (our son) cope, how will we maintain our liberal and multicultural lifestyle while respecting India’s somewhat conservative approach, will the day to day challenges pour water on our dreams and what will we do if things don’t work out.
What helped initially was the Youtube channel by Karl Rock, a Kiwi who has made India his home. His vlogs about India are extremely honest - show both the good and the bad in equal measure, but more importantly shows parts and people of India we had never experienced before. They also helped us to think of India beyond Delhi, the city where my parents live and where we usually returned to every 3 years or so while living abroad. We heard from other foreigners who had life changing experiences in India and slowly but surely we started internalizing we need to unlearn how we see India, be curious about what makes this country tick and indulge more in what it has to offer - its spirituality, resourcefulness, simplicity and streetiness (a word Zayden came up with and I am sure you get the meaning of even if it is not in the dictionary).
Previously whenever I returned to India, I had a negative reaction the moment I got out of the Delhi airport. This time, interestingly and without forcing myself, I was ok - not super happy necessarily about returning to India, more like a hmmm I am returning to my country of birth and I am open to letting the next phase of my life unfold here. We’ve been in India for over three months now and while we are still figuring out how to make a viable life in India (so the anxieties do come back now and then), it’s been an exhilarating, eventful, funny, head-scratching and memorable experience already and we’ve not even scratched the surface of this colourful, crazy and cricket-mad country.
Our travels have taken us to polluted and crazy cities, the most pristine villages I never thought existed in India, natural and architectural beauty unparalleled in this world, $15/day stays to 5-star luxury, Zayden eating vegetarian food completely alien to him by hand on a banana leaf sitting on the floor in an ashram 3 days straight, being rushed to an emergency ward where I had to wake up people and ask the paramedics if they are ok before they could treat Zayden, all of us having stomach ‘system failure’ at various times and then giving up all inhibitions to savour amazing street food, playing Chinese Whispers with people who do not speak a word of Hindi or English, meeting the sweetest and welcoming people who have opened their doors and hearts to us, eating in an all organic restaurant serving authentic keto/paleo/Thai/Greek/etc. food opened by an IT professional from Bangalore just outside a village where I bet no one has any clue about these foods, enjoying pristine beaches and water in Goa and making this piece of paradise our temporary home…well I can go on and on but will stop here as this post is not about India’s magic but about how to connect or rather reconnect with it and participate in one of the oldest cultures that is pushing to finds it rightful place in the 21st century.
I Don’t Know where our India journey will take us or how or when it will end, what I know is that it will change the trajectory of our life for the better and is an adventure we will look back with fondness whenever we reminisce.