The Things We Don't Leave Behind

It has been just slightly over three weeks since I left India, and I am still not sure that it actually happened.

I look at the pictures, I watch my videos, I see the sundry items in my apartment that I brought back for myself, my daughter, and for others. They are physical, tangible objects, so how could it not be real? Right?

But, what really of India is left for me?

What of anything of my life, prior to writing this sentence is left? One could say the obvious, that is, memories, but that doesn’t seem to cut it for me any longer. Memories are transparent, fleeting, and can easily be manipulated if I put even a modicum of effort into deluding myself that one thing was better or worse than it actually was. Our most convincing lies are usually to ourselves.

I made my favorite dish from India, or at least my comfort food dish, that being Chili Parotha (there are about 50 ways to spell this word...), which is a doughy pancake, made with a swirl of dough, looking much like a cinnamon roll, at least the Tamil version, as each region does it differently. Then, the parotha is torn up into little pieces and stewed with a tomato-based chili sauce.

I found a store here in Antwerp that is run by Tamil Nadu people, so I am able to get all of the “right” ingredients for my dish. But, as anyone knows, it just ain’t the same when you do it at home as compared to in situ. Don’t get me wrong, my vindaloo-level chili sauce was spot on for comfort and the parothas, despite being deep-frozen, were surpisingly good, and, yet...

Yet, what? Why was it not as good? I bought the same ingredients as I would have if I had been in Madurai, cooked it the same way, and my taste buds are the same, but what is missing?

The full-on assault of the other senses in the case of India, at least. The power of the environment is an impressive force upon our consciousness and it does seem to impede us from enjoying the moment at times when that nagging voice says, “yeah, but...” The “yeah, but...” is a deadly phase, not lethal in that sense, but can kill a perfectly good moment or event when the naysayers begin to chant that mantra.

Had I never been to India, there would have been absolutely nothing wrong with my dinner. On the contrary, I may have thought it was one of the best things that I made. Instead, my mind wandered to the various places that I had my beloved Chili Parotha: at Eliot’s Beach in Chennai after visiting the Theosophical Society Grounds ; in a small roadside restaurant in the middle of nowhere-ville, Tamil Nadu, with the Bishop Sargent crew after a 14-hour day of shooting; with my good friend Tess and Handel in Tirunelveli; or, on the rooftop terrace alone at the Park Plaza Hotel, overlooking the Meenakshi Temple complex in Madurai on the last night of my placement.

My life has been forever enriched by the experiences that I had in India, and they come back in moments, as dramatic flashes even, or sometimes as prolonged, patient sonnets of imagination in my solitary thoughts.

My life turned a corner in India.

There are things we leave behind in life.

There are people in my life that I may never see again, for various reasons, from various parts of my various lives. I know that once I turned that corner. In turning that corner, there is much that I leave behind. And, there is much that I have brought back with me, puzzling through which I am recomposing my life, with a view towards which I have edged, on the turning away. 

India Abides

I don’t think it is any stretch of the imagination to be fairly confident that at least one person from my past has uttered such a sentence in the past year. I can think of a few in particular in writing the following:

“Robert, yeah, great guy, love him to death, but ya know, he always seemed like kind of a lost soul...and now, going off to India...”

I personally don’t believe in the concept of “Lost Souls,” however, so I have been thinking about my experience in India, in both anticipation of such questions and/or statements, or just as mere reflections now that I have been back in Antwerp for a week.

What is it that I learned while in India? Was it worth it? Did I find myself?

Instead of responding to such meaningless questions, I rather am un-asking the question. Too often such situations are the proverbial, “so, are you still beating your wife?” scenario. There is no possible answer that does not implicate the person’s innocence or guilt, regardless of the situation. These are loaded questions that serve no purpose in arriving at anything resembling even an approximation of the Truth.

Instead of answering questions, I have come up with a few statements about how I feel now, having been back from India for a week, allowing the experience some Time to digest, to ferment in my Mind’s Eye, to see what I have in my life.

 India complemented me.

Does this mean that I was lacking? No, again, I’m un-asking the loaded question. The “It” of what I got from India was always in me, it just needed to have a face put on it, to complement what was already there, not to add something or to fill a void. I don’t believe that I have ever been “lost,” though have lost sight of the path, as I did when I swam out too far once in the Ocean, but there is quite a difference. As such, to discover something about one’s Self is literally to dis-cover, or to remove what is blocking the view towards which one is moving. In Dutch, for example, the literal equivalent is te ont-dekken, likewise, meaning to remove an obstacle, or a cover in order to see what was already there.

There was no “God-shaped hole” in my life.

In fact, there was no hole in my life, (despite my joking about there being a “hole in my culture” elsewhere). How many of us are walking around with either the thought that “if only I had x, then my life would be perfect” or “thank God, I have y in my life to make me complete.” And, what if in the former, the x never comes, or in the later, the y is lost? Then what? Forever incomplete in the first case, broken or damaged or scarred in the second? One situation is despair, the other in constant fear of losing what you have. Neither is complete. Both are lacking in some respect, either in expectation or anticipation. There has never been a lacking of a God/Higher Power/Atman/fill-in-the-blank in my life, but rather a breach in correct perception and gratitude at Times, nothing more. I believe that the Universe has more important things to be doing than to bother with making my life difficult at times. That is sheer delusions of grandiosity to think as such.

I did not find Religion in India.

I wasn’t looking for Religion, nor did I “find” it. I saw a great deal of reverence and devotion on a cultural scale that I doubt I will ever see in any other place, but it was not part of my personal experience. I did not go to learn how to "pray," I know quite well how to do that. I did not go to seek a form of a God that was pleasing, foreign, or exotic, I have an image that suits me just fine. One would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind as Tommy to not bump headfirst into Religion in India at every turn, so the thought of going there and finding it is ludicrous. Going to an Ashram in India surrounded by other white people makes as much sense to me as buying deep-frozen pasta in Bologna.

I did not “find myself” in India.

In order to find something, once again, it has to be lost or missing. I was never lost. The pathways that I have taken in life have not always been the straightest and at times, some might say that I “wandered” off of the traditional pathways, and would be correct in saying so, but was never lost. Perhaps, lost my way, but not lost. I re-learned what was important to me in my life, and re-connected with some very important aspects of my life, but did I find a new me? Hardly. More like the same old me...again. Funny how that can happen.

Most of all, I re-confirmed the need for Gratitude in my Life, and for all that I have, and not grieving for what I do not.

India gives boundlessly and selfishlessly.

India Abides, and one learns in turn there how to Abide.