Perspective is always nice to have and I would want to put some upon my friend's drives to Chennai as he continues to bring aid to people in that city after the recent flooding.
Because what my friend is going through as he moves through not only the challenging terrain of
southeastern India but also a wondrous terrain of potential and hope is something that I truly believe is not only a great thing, but a great thing within massive challenges.
I only have a small perspective into one of the many challenges - the drive itself. But I believe and hope that providing some perspective into this one aspect will hopefully allow others to have a little bit more of an understanding into what this one little challenge entails.
Because when he had handed his keys to me, and I had asked
if there was anything I should know about driving in India, all he had said was,
“Keep moving, and expect anything...”
There is a manic translation of
movement into every moment’s intensity of not knowing anything about the next
moment. You go around a corner and there
it is – a pile of shit, a cart being drawn by an ox, or a cow, or a camel, or
an elephant, go figure, it’s all within the realm of possibility, or there’s a
pile of hay right there in the frigging middle of the road, or a dead pig surrounded
by what looks like a whole village of humanity basing that next moment upon the
attentiveness to innertness as you try to skirt the whole issue of why the heck
you are right frigging there in the middle of it, or maybe there’s a motorcycle
coming right at you with two people and you name whatever comes into your head
there somehow balanced between them, a goat being taken to slaughter, or that already
slaughtered pig that was there on the road just twenty kilometers back, or
maybe a basket of fruit, two baskets, three baskets, four baskets, five baskets
being balanced by the driver’s mother, or maybe two baskets of wood and on
towards what seems like a darn whole chord of firewood, or maybe a year’s worth
of blankets, a ton of towels or trinkets, or axes, or swords, or maybe there’s
a huge truck taking three quarters of the usable road coming straight at you,
which means that you have one quarter of the road left for your car, which means
that half of your car needs to go somewhere else, which you hope is to the
left, because you are driving on the left, and the steering wheel is on the
left, which means that when that half of vehicle goes off the road there you
are, in that half, off the road, taking on whatever is there on the wayside,
which, again, can be anything that you can imagine…
And there’s something about driving around those hairpin
curves just taking on speed and desire and rampant ease, yes, despite the contradiction,
ease, of just going with the flow, and flow has a lot to do with what you are
listening to and Ram has a darn good arrangement of music that just grabs you
and has you want to just move into the distances like you’re taking on your
dreams with a courage and conviction that you never knew was possible even in
your dreams, because this is a whole new dream, they say, this is India, they
say, Incredible, they say, Amazing they say and there you are driving right
through the blood and guts of it and you need to be attentive, astute, aware, and
then when night falls it moves into a whole new mental and emotional landscape
and you get a taste and breath and sense of what you may never have thought to
be possible in taste and smell, the fires, the food being cooked, the piss and
shit and sweat so close within the masses of humanity as you move into the
night… And you emerge within a sense of everything being part of a whole world of entwined beauty, as in so many other places, people being nice, and helpful, just as within so many other distances, but in India, the distances are different, just as everywhere, the distances have their own unique sense of being, and that sense of being in India is... wondrous...
Ram has been moving through all of this amazement and wonder, intensity and ongoingness day after day now for who knows how many days now bringing together not only people and supplies but also entwining those supplies with hope and people with people. As has been his life, he is moving through so many levels of awareness.
Onwards :)
Ram has been moving through all of this amazement and wonder, intensity and ongoingness day after day now for who knows how many days now bringing together not only people and supplies but also entwining those supplies with hope and people with people. As has been his life, he is moving through so many levels of awareness.
Onwards :)
