The Art of Noise

If there was one thing that I have to say about India, it is that is a purely visceral, non-stop, undefatigable assault upon the senses, all “six” of them. In addition to the five senses that are under constant siege, your sixth sense develops dramatically, for if not, you will never even be able to cross the street, but you will instead be left standing on the street corner, mouth agape, eyes cross-eyed, ears ringing, taste buds wondering, nostrils expectantly wrenched up, and in a sense, you will be paralyzed if you do not cultivate a sixth sense of diving into the melee and going forth uninhibited.

However, there is Time for all of that.

Today, I was focusing upon the sounds that are omnipresent and as varied as one can imagine. Currently, sitting up in my “quiet” room in Madurai, I will just jot down the next sounds that I hear in the following couple of minutes:

Crows cawing

Children calling out below in the street

A persistent jingling noise from a vendor’s cart

Simple, friendly beeps from motorists

The call to prayer at the local mosque, today is EID, a very important Muslim holiday

The ceiling fan

Loud, annoying scooter horns

Laughter

A bird whose song is the most unique I have ever heard, but have not spotted it yet. It sings every morning at dawn as well, but proves to be elusive.

Fireworks (for EID I am assuming)

Long, frustrated-laden blast of a horn

Large truck horn that is more like a mix between a cow and a foghorn

Dogs barking back and forth

Whistling

Vespa and Tak-Tak engines           

Two loud backfires from a truck

Sound of a mallet and chisel on stone

Funky Tamil music from someone’s loudspeaker. They are scattered around the streets.

This is on a quiet backstreet in Madurai.

On a busy street, however, at first, it is nearly impossible to penetrate the wall of noise that encapsulates you, but slowly, if you listen, you begin to discriminate the sounds, realizing that it is one, huge paradoxical cacophonic symphony of noise and, it is a symphony.

The first two days, I had quite a pounding headache by the end of the day. Probably enhanced by being still jet-lagged from making the jump from America to Antwerp, Belgium, to Mumbai within a few days time, but also from the unrelenting wave of noise that had engulfed me and inundated my aural capacity to being full and truly unable to listen to the din of the streets any longer.

Because of this noise, I found it beyond absurd that on any major, busy street in Madurai, you will find yellow public phones on a wooden stand, outside. Not that anyone seems to use them anymore, but it seemed like an exercise in futility. However, having been here for a bit now, I see that your hearing takes on a new level and you are able discern many sounds amongst the multitudes. I am now able to understand the vendors when they tell me how much something is, whereas the first couple of days, all that I could hear was the noise, noise, noise. The Grinch would have had a heart attack here.

I thought that all Indians were just deaf after a bit, but they are much more adept at filtering that I can ever imagine. No noise seems to phase them, which is what initially lead me to think it was endemic hearing loss, but then I see them having conversations with three of four people at once, and there appears to be no loss of communication as everyone leaves the situation more or less satisfied as far as I can tell. But, this is again, amongst the breakers of enormous sonic tsunamis all around. When I learn a bit more Tamil, I am hoping that I will be able to break yet another sound barrier and to actually be able to distinguish real words in the interminable flow of Tamil buzzing through my ears.

I remember having a conversation with one of my Indian students in Antwerp a couple of years ago and we were talking about living in Belgium. The topic of traffic had come up as Antwerp can become quite congested and Belgium has had up to 900km of traffic jams (file) on its roads. Considering the entire country is only about 300km across, that should give one pause. However, those traffic jams are one car behind each other, not seven or eight vehicles, cows, Tak-taks, bikes, buses, trucks, and scooters abreast in a two-lane road as you will see here. I remember Harsh just shaking his head and laughing at me when I mentioned how much Belgians use their horns. Now, I fully know why he was laughing politely at my ignorance about the usage of horns.

I imagine that to pass a driver’s test in India, there is an entire section on the proper application of your horn, though I have no idea what that might be. And, yet, it still seems like an art that everyone understands. There are various levels of honking, and what I call the Flemish Blast that I had complained to Harsh about is actually the least used. The Flemish Blast is perfected with a scowl on the face and a blue streak of curse words that makes the vitriolic father from A Christmas Story look benign. Moreover, to properly apply the Flemish Blast, you must put your entire body weight into pressing the horn, your blood pressure must shoot through the roof, you have to be more important than anyone else on the road, drive a bigger car with a fatter engine, believe in your own supremacy over all other people, and the person in front of you must have done something really, really, really awful, like perhaps having the light be green for more than a fraction of a second before taking off at warp speed for 50 meters to reach the next stop light, where everyone will fume, curse, and be poised for another application of the Flemish Blast, which is also usually followed by driving at warp speed x 2 around the person, yelling at them and telling them what idiots they are, then both stopping in 50 meters for the next red light, truly feeling absolutely no better and will need to talk about the event to everyone you meet for the next two hours. So much for the Flemish Blast.

I have maybe seen that three times here in India, that being in Mumbai. There is a “light” version of the Flemish Blast here that is rather common, however, and that is used almost exclusively by very annoying (as far as their attitudes seem to be reflected in driving, that is) people who drive large SUV-type vehicles (usually “auspiciously” white) with various official-looking (“looking” is the operative word, they are not) flags and large variations of a silver or golden danda, or rod mounted phallically on the front grille. They would do well on Flemish roads.

For the most part, however, honking the horn here is nearly a reflex, and is actually usually a friendly “beep” to let the person know you are there. Usually it means, "Don't move! I see you, you don't see me and I will go around you." In fact, all trucks and various other transports have a sign painted on them on the back saying, “(please) sound horn” or some variation thereof. The action itself is nearly pointless at some point because the result is everyone is beeping and in truth, no one really pays attention to it. Or, at least it doesn’t seem like it. What is truly remarkable is that with all of this congestion, weaving in and out, massive violations of any perceivable traffic rules (I don’t think they really exist here), I have not seen one collision, or even a scratch. Near misses every second, but, as I say above, the sixth sense has kicked in and is phenomenal to watch. Tak-Taks careening wildly around with up to 12 school kids with their backpacks on top, or six or seven full-grown women in flowing saris is not uncommon to see dodging in and out of motorcycles with entire families of five (that is not an exaggeration), white Brahma bulls with painted horns and bells on the tips pulling carts, wandering cows, buses, and foot merchants pulling oxcarts of bananas, coconuts or large silver canteens, with everyone beeping their horn continuously, while no one bats an eye. (Unless I walk down the street, that is.)

Then, add to that the interesting jingle-jangle horns that the vendors' bicycles have, which is a curious device in which a clarion bell with lots of quoits on it is suspended underneath the main lateral cross bar of the bikes frame and activated by a rope strung taught under the handle bars, making for a very curious sound. In addition, carts pulled by humans and/or animals will be strung with jingle bells that jangle in rhythm to the plodding along of the cart. Tak-Taks, motorcycles and scooters have a range of beeps, going from the tradition metallic “meep-meep” of normal scooters reminiscent of the Road Runner cartoon to fancy tunes more like the Dukes of Hazard’s “Dixie” horn to old-fashioned ooga-ooga horns that they perilously squeeze constantly with one hand while careening through traffic with the other. The bus horns are the most curious of all because they really sound like a cow that has swallowed a foghorn, and is coughing up a giant fur ball.

I don’t want to say that I no longer notice the noise, because I do, but now, picking apart the individual sounds is really like going to a symphony and watching the musicians during a frantic finale of Mozart and seeing that little, mousy woman in the very back of the orchestra, with every so much care and enthusiasm, ting the Triangle spot on with pure eclat, for without it, the symphony would be incomplete and no longer a work of art. It would just be noise.

Blankets of Flowers, and Piles of Shit

I have been doing quite a bit of walking during my few days here in Madurai, and given that I have only seen perhaps a handful of other "white people" since I have been here, and given that this town has a population of roughly 3 million, I have actually turned quite a few heads walking the dusty streets. And, this is the paradox. The fact that I turn heads is absurd when you see what I have seen during these walks, but it shows the unmistakable and undeniable power of perception and what we are used to. Because, what one is used to seeing on the streets of Madurai is hardly "normal," but when that is your "normal," seeing a six-foot 190-lb. white guy walking the streets might as well be like seeing a ghost.

The other day on one of my walks, I was going down one of the typically unpaved side roads and was taking in the various sights of neighborhood street life, when I came upon a very large pile of excrement, the source unknown as it seemed to be quite a bit and might have been a reserve dumped out. Meanwhile, kids are running around happily in the street, barefooted as is the norm here for most people, and various animals such as goats, chickens, and cows are walking along as well. Perfectly normal.

Three blocks down or so, I turned onto one of the more major streets leading to the temple area and there was a religious procession in progress. On that day, across India, statues of various deities are brought out on hand-pulled carts and smothered in the most amazing smelling flowers and shrouded in clouds of divine-smelling incense, while they are lead to the river, or ocean depending on the city's water proximity, and the images are launched out in the water to be "drowned" to the Sea to begin the festival. The procession is very colorful, replete with chanting and music and flowers are strewn everywhere, literally blanketing the streets with their petals and their aroma. It was indeed intoxicating after the scents of the less-than-desirous odors from just a few streets before.

But, neither of these two sights nor smells is out of the ordinary here. That is truly what you see and smell everyday. Near the school were I work there is a row of shops which only sell these massive garlands of flowers and large globs of incense paste for people going to the temples. It is on an incredible busy and polluted road, so when you walk away from the stalls, that is what you smell, yet when you are close by, it is bliss. That is the experiences that I have had here, one moment the shock of the poverty, the next moment some of the most "beautiful" sensory experiences that I have encountered.

I have not been able to take pictures yet. It is an odd feeling, but one that I think happens when you are confronted with such a disjunct of your own reality. I saw an old man, probably about 80 or so, sleeping on a rusted out bed-frame that was more or less in the middle of a trash heap, in rush-hour traffic, but there he was sleeping. I had my camera, but I was not able to comprehend taking a picture of this scene. The sounds, the smells, the surrounding piles of shit and blankets of flowers were not there in the picture, it wasn't the whole scene. There is no way to capture that. Although I know that I will eventually take pictures, for now, I am mostly at a loss for even words, something that I consider to be my profession, so yes, India challenges you to your core.

I saw on the CNN website a photo special on the "trash land of Mozambique." Before coming to India, I would have read that article quite differently. The author said that he has met some of the best people ever who literally live at the dump. The pictures show them smiling in the most absurd situations. The smell of the place is not possible to describe, nor can you hear the noises. I have smelled that smell now, and seen people on such trash heaps, and guess what, they are indeed smiling. I cannot begin to explain how mind-boggling that is.

It is a mistake to make the ideological leap that "poor people are happier" or "poverty makes people better," for that is just not true. But, I have already met many people that seem to be quite happy and they have absolutely nothing. The house that I am staying in is quite nice for these standards, but is surrounded by poverty-stricken homes. The doors of our house aren't locked most of the time. I was walking up here to the Internet Cafe just now and there was a "block party" going on in one of the houses. They had been cooking in the streets all day and the smells were amazing and there was laughter and singing in the air. As I walked by, the kids were all playing games and the families were involved in quite a bit of mirth and chatter. None of these homes even have furniture, (except for the ever-present TV, more on that later), but there was joy. And yet, two days ago, in the same street there was a major, hour-long argument amongst the same ladies of the street, with much screeching and yelling, dogs barking, children crying. So, no, poverty doesn't make people "better," but I have seen amazing triumphs of finding what is good in life, the blankets of flowers, in spite of and in the midst of the unavoidable piles of shit.

At the Table, Indian Style

For my stay in Madurai, I am living with Pradeep and his family in an adjacent building to the main house where other volunteers for the program live as well. Pradeep informed me that this was his parent’s house and that he was the tenth of eleven children, who amongst them have twenty-one grandchildren and that every Christmas time (Pradeep is actually one of the minority Christians in the Shaivite-dominated South), the entire family gathers in this house.

By European and American standards, it is a modest home, though by Madurai standards, it is palatial I am sure. Just a couple of homes down, however, you will see families living in abject poverty, with no real furniture, limited water and electricity and a great deal of trash in the streets. There is no division here between the have’s and the have not’s with regards to location.

Part of the benefit that I in this privileged situation is that Jacintha, a middle-aged spinster who is physically deformed in her right leg, thus preventing her from being a desirable bride and is thus fated to remain a spinster, lives with Pradeep and his family and provides home-cooked Indian meals for us. She was very glad to hear that I love Indian food, especially spicy, as many of the volunteers from the UK and elsewhere cannot get used to the food here. Upon arrival, for example, I was speaking with Alex, a twenty-year old kineseology student from France, and they were going to get pizza that evening as he was not able to deal with Indian food any longer because of his stomach. So, I definitely have made a friend with Jacinthe.

One of the many things that I had read about particularities with Indians at home is that often you will be the only one eating while everyone else sits there and watches. This is not an urban legend. Today at lunch, the table was spread and plates were put on, Pradeep and his wife sat down, and I was served, but noone else was going to eat, but rather just sit there. Pradeep said that he was going to have a later lunch and his wife had eaten. OK, so I dug in, though used a spoon for today. However, the tradition is to use thing fingers as Pradeep explained how and said that the rice and food is not supposed to touch below the lowest finger joint and into the palm. Though he said that certain Indians will use the palm.

I ate a wonderful lunch then, alone, while they looked on and conversed at times in Tamil about me, which I figured out as Indians insert quite a bit of English into their language, be it Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, or whatnot. When I was done, I was going to get up, but Gitesh and Alex, two other volunteers come in and sat down. Alex was not eating (had his leftover pizza earlier), though Gitesh did. And, so did Pradeep. So, Pradeep had just waited til 2 to eat, despite that we had already been sitting there with the food and plates, and them watching me. So, then it was my turn, and I sat there and watched them eat. But, now I saw Pradeep’s technique of eating with the fingers, which I will incorporate next time.

Eating at an Indian table is very similar to being in Italy. In fact, I am beginning to see quite some similarities between the two cultures, strangely enough. Family connections are extremely important to both, and the first-born sons are obviously treated vastly better than anyone else, especially daughters. Commercials for food products are also similar to Italian ones with the grandmother cooking a special dish for her grown-up favorite grandson while the entire family looks expectantly on while he takes his first bite and then bursts into dramatic joy when he approves.

The table itself is also similar. For the most part, what is considered “family style” in Italy is quite similar in India, save for the fact that not everyone eats at the same time as in Italy. You will have several pots of various curries, chutneys, and kormas, along with one or two types of rice, vegetables and some form of bread such as dosa, oothapam, naan, rothi, or a variety of others which are used, as in Italy to scoop up the food. In Italy, it is used for scappare, which means to sweep up (as well as a less PG -rated meaning in Bologna). In India, this makes it easier for eating with the fingers as well.

So, when in India, I have found that the food is indeed, finger-licking good, but that I will also need to get used to having a table full of friendly Indian faces watching every bit that I take.

Being Human

This is my second day in Mumbai, but I feel that it has been quite a bit longer. Had a very full day of seeing a full range of daily life from communal laundry washing in the slums  to a very tony Jain temple ceremony in Malabar.

There is a T-shirt that I have seen being sold and worn here, which reads "Being Human." I could not think of a better slogan for what I have seen in Mumbai in the past 48 hours. This city literally embodies the entire range of the human experience within it's physical boundaries.

Here, you will find nearly all of the world's major religions represented in some way or another, and most of them both on a casual, quotidian basis, but also on a full-blown extremist level. Poverty levels that defy explanation, but it also the city from which the richest and most glamorous Indian upper crust hails. The streets are teeming and swarming with people, animals, vehicles, and trash everywhere. Next to an extremely expensive luxury-item boutique you will find an abandoned building with people sleeping on muddy heaps of refuge, or a cobbler's hut the size of a phone booth, with the cobbler inside, hammering away at homemade shoes. Shacks and lean-to's butt up against the Bentley showroom floor. Bankers are buying a Pani Puri's from men who return to the slums in the evenings.

I have tried to keep a small stash of 10 rupee bills handy as one is approached on a regular basis, one who looks like me that is. The experience of begging and alms giving is always difficult. On the one hand, you want to help everyone, but then, after several approaches to just me and avoiding all of the Indians for hand-outs, you begin to feel some very uncomfortable feelings. Uncomfortable because they begin to challenge yourself about how you feel about yourself.

The encounters I have had with begging and alms, both before and especially now, runs the gamut of sadness, despair, to hope and self-righteousness to guilty and shame to downright resentment and nearly anger. That is a pretty broad spectrum, but if you have been in the position as this, you may know what I mean. With some cases you feel an overwhelming sense of urgency, that you must help this person, but that feeling is replaced with despair at times because you know that tomorrow will be the same story, and the next day, and so on, with literally billions of people in that situation. Other times, I feel a sense of hope that, yes, I am making a difference, which can easily lead to smugness and false piety. But, other times, when I have just spent 10 dollars to go see the rock carvings at Elephanta, supposedly enriching my soul, and then I don't give every person I see just 10 rupees, I feel guilty or ashamed.

Finally, when at dinner, I was sitting outside, and a man "walked" by on all fours as his back legs were bandied out of commission, he caught my eye and proceeded to sit outside the railings of the restaurant, continuously asking for my attention while dozens of wealthy Indians passed by unflinchingly as well as two parking attendants sitting right next to him on their cell phones. But, I seemed to be the only one who was supposed to react and I had a feeling of resentment and even approximate anger, and yet I was spending a veritable fortune on this meal compared to what he and millions of others were asking for. It is a paralyzing feeling, and no poorly intended pun meant there, but it does leave you bewildered rather quickly.

I have tried to reach a happy medium by carrying the change around with me, but it never fails to prick, whether in a good way, or negatively. In addition, as I have walked a couple streets around the hotel, I recognize some of the "locals" on their beat and you seem the do the same spiel over and over, with apparent sincerity, until the mark's head is turned, and it just feels absurd at times.

But, it is the human drama and the human comedy all at once. Mumbai wraps that up and places that so-called "gift" of the present squarely in your face, wrapped in garbage and tied with a diamond-laced ribbon.

From what I have already seen, and I will be moving on southwards to my home-base of Madurai tomorrow morning, there is no place I have ever been where it is this impossible to ignore what it means "being human."

Compassion

Perhaps my most cherished aspect of Buddhism that I have come across is the concept of compassion and empathy for all sentient beings embodied perhaps by Avalokiteshvara, one of the Boddhisattvas. Packing yesterday and this morning to go to Mumbai this evening, I was listening to Moby's "Everything is Wrong" CD, which is excellent packing music BTW, and on there he has several things that are "wrong" with the world, and there is a lot. I know that I will be seeing a great deal of inequity on a human level that I have never yet experienced. I will be challenged to limits I may not know I had.

However, I try to keep the image of this statue that I have in my backyard in my mind when I am confronted with such challenges in my life, being reminded that there are figures in this world who have done great things, in the face of everything being wrong.

Compassion and empathy for me are the highest forms of emotional "intelligence" in people. I admire greatly those who possess both and I try to learn from them, especially when I falter in those two areas. I have been presented with challenges in life and have presented others with challenges as well. Life does not have "bad patches," but it is just that, a challenge.

Avalokiteshvara, the so-called epitome of the Boddhisattva, and known as Kuan-Yin further to the east, is a peaceful image of compassion and empathy. I have heard that if you are having trouble praying to God, imagine your child's eyes, which works quite well for me. With those eyes, I often see Avalokateshvara. I am not saying my daughter is a Boddhisattva (not saying she is not, it is not my lot to tell if one is or if one is not), but not all of us have children, so perhaps this face in the picture above can work for you as well when you find yourself troubled.

The Boddhi-sattva literally means, "one who has awakened to the truth," but is one who still walks the Earth out of compassion for still living creatures, prolonging his/her entrance into Nirvana and Supreme Bliss, or the condition of Paramananda until others have learned this compassion. It is the ultimate act of compassion in Buddhism, to teach/guide others instead of reaping the benefits of a "good" life on Earth.

I believe that I have encountered some such people along the way in life and they have provided me with great guidance and teachings that I try to implement in my own attempts in life, and it is in their homage that I try to better myself on a daily basis, sometimes moving forward, other times stumbling out of step, but always striving. This is not to place anyone on a pedestal, as I have oft been mistakenly accused of doing (though I do not, but believe that praise is often due at times), but rather to acknowledge that indeed, there are, in my mind, truly higher virtues amongst us, and compassion and empathy I count as such.

Ava-lokita-ishvara, means, more or less, "the lord who gazes down upon us." On Moby's CD, there is a rendering of the biblical phrase "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters," which a beautiful piece in his arrangement. For me, the face of Avalokiteshvara is the face of God, and when I am flying over the waters to India upon approach, I will have this face in mind.

Namaste

Face-to-Face with an Elephant

In about 48 hours from writing this post I will be taking the train from Antwerp to Zaventem Airport outside of Brussels to board a plane bound for London, connecting to Mumbai, India. Three countries, three land masses, three different languages, and three different worlds in a span of less than 24 hours. The modern world.

I have just returned from a trip to the United States with my daughter for about a month traveling in the area of the Texas Panhandle, Northern New Mexico, and Southwestern Colorado. Those memories of people and places are still swimming in my head as I now try to wrap it around the fact that soon, quite soon, the reality of being in India is about to materialize. A trip that I have been preparing for, whether consciously or not, for the better part of my life.

Currently I am wrapping up some things that I need to take care of with regards to my life in Belgium that has been my focus for the past few years before I make the mental and physical stride to India. Perhaps this weigh station is a type of Purgatory, preparing my soul for something that is beyond my capacity to even imagine. I can read guide books til I am as blue in the face as Krishna, but nothing, truly nothing will prepare me, that much I know. I have spoken to too many people who have been to India, and the message is always crystal clear, like a diamond bullet to the forehead, "nothing can prepare you for the reality of India."

Flying into Mumbai has one purpose for me at this point, to leave from the Gateway of India on Mumbai's Harbor and go visit the Caves of Elephanta of the port of Mumbai on the Island of Gherapura, known colloquially as "Elephanta" for the small elephantine statue found on the island's port in conjunction with the caves. It is an auspicious image as Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity is the guardian of ports and liminal spaces to transverse, so I would like to pay homage to his island namesake upon arrival to India.

There is but one attraction at Gherapura, the rock-hewn cave sculptures, most notably the gigantic Trimurti (three visage) Shaivite sculpture. Why does Shiva have three faces? To understand that is to understand quite a great deal about the tenets of Hinduism.

Shiva is most popularly seen as a dancing god, dancing the dance of Creation, the creation of the universe. Nietzsche pays homage to Shiva in an allusion to the deity in his Also Sprach Zarathustra with an oft-quoted line: Jetzt bin ich leicht, jetzt fliege ich, jetzt sehe ich mich unter mir, jetzt tanzt ein Gott durch mich. (Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself below me, now a God dances through me), (and, which is incidentally the epitaph I chose for my novel, Instant Karma Koffie....))

But, back to Shiva and his three faces.

One face is the face of the dread god Bhairava, or the angry Shiva as Destroyer. A second face is Vamadeva, or Shiva the Creator. Finally, there is Mahadeva, Shiva as the Supreme Preserver. One deity, three faces, three gods. A Ensorian trinity of masks.

A danger when talking about different religions is the assumption that when you use the same term for different manifestations, the mistake can be made of false comparisons. While Shiva is a trinity-entity, he is not to be confused with the Christian Trinity, though comparisons can be made, though I will leave that for another time. For now, I am more concerned with how this trinity speaks to me.

Shiva creates, destroys, and preserves. A contradiction? If you think so, it may be tough to accept the answer that "Indian" philosophy will give you. There is no contradiction for there is no distinction amongst the three. To create, destroy, and to preserve are merely illusive manifestations of the Universal Atman, the Universal Soul.

Theodicy is the attempt to explain the presence of "evil" in a world created by God. How can there be Evil at the hands of a supreme, omnipotent, omniscient God? Was it a mistake? But, if God is perfection, how can it be a mistake? If not a mistake, then it was intentional, meaning that Evil was the intent of God, so how could that God be the Benevolent Preserver as well?

Shiva's trimurti reflects the Hindu conceit that there is no division between Good and Evil, but that there is something greater than both. In other words, the hang-up is on the division, but that is not going high enough. Nietzsche also borrowed this concept with his landmark work, Jenseits Gut und Böse, or Beyond Good and Evil.

What then, is beyond Good and Evil? I believe that for me, at least, this has been the most important question that I have asked myself for many years. It is the question that I have kept at the forefront of my mental, philosophical, and religious quests.

I look forward to seeing the physical embodiment of this question face-to-face in the Caves of Elephanta, for I have found certain answers already for myself in my life. I am not going to Elephanta to find those answers, nor to India for that matter, but to see how others have answered the question for themselves.

Namaste