George Harman

Q.   Do you think you will go back there?

 

This is the question that everyone I have talked to has asked me. I have never been able to give a straight answer because I have yet to decide on it. However, with time to think to myself and nights to reminisce on our journey that began nearly 2 months ago I can put in words why I loved this place and what I have learnt.

 

The country has so much to tell and there is never a second where something is not happening. From the first step out of the airport into a taxi we were immediately put into chaos. Driving with the accelerator put to the maximum, we weaved in and out of cars moving in every direction, coming as close to crashing as possible. Something about the Indians is that they seem to not fear life. To me this seemed like a good way of approaching life. Not the fact that they are narrowly avoiding crashing into the back of another taxi and not fearing death, but rather that they are taking the front seat in their journey of life. They take their chances, and even with the little that they have, the smiles on the children’s faces prove how much they are loving life. I realised how many of them took their opportunities and tried so hard to make them count; because in a country filled with well over one billion people, there aren’t many given out. Whether it was the hundreds of kids practicing cricket, or the teenage girls who are nursing the elderly, they are all trying to make a difference.

 

But a question has been stuck in my mind for some time - ‘What happens to all these smiling boys and girls when they get older?’

 

It seems as though they disappear into an unhappy man on the side of a street, or into a woman peeling off the shells of shrimps with dozens of other ladies around her.  Then one question after another question begins to roll in. Why do they deserve to live like this? Why can’t they live with the freedom they had as a child? It is so unfair that they can try so hard to become something and then come away with nothing. Why does this happen? Yet, one thing I know is that as long as they have family they have enough. For I have taken away with me how important the value of family is.

 

When I walked round the 5m x 5m slum houses, a simple block that housed 10 people, I was immediately shocked at how people could live in such a confined space. It was then that something clicked in my mind; they, our hosts, just did not seem to worry in the slightest. Instead they had smiles on their faces and they showed you around because they were proud with what they had. They had their family and friends amongst them and the whole slum acted like a big family for everyone. It was this reality that made the smiles appear on their faces; not forgetting as well that they can go down to the nearby Maidan to just enjoy life at any time.

 

It seems funny how we can complain over the smallest of things and that we want more than what we really need. Now I can understand to appreciate the small things in life. People always say to appreciate the small things in life, and I used to, but it isn’t until you have been to India, until you have seen India, that you can really appreciate the beauty of life and the small things that make it up.  Now, I cannot believe how after 18 years I hadn’t realised how lucky I was living in New Zealand. We have far more opportunities given to us than those in India, we have next to no crime in comparison, and our living conditions could not be much better.

 

For one month I was completely immersed in the Indian culture. Not just going around sight- seeing, but walking around the streets, chatting to a random person walking by, laughing with an Indian, and putting a smile on a child’s face.  It is true that just making a person smile can go a long way; it can make their day.

 

A poem called ‘I Want to Know’, given to us on the trip, stays with me and will be pinned up on my wall. The words I felt connected most with me are:

 

“Let the ecstasy (of joy) fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

Without cautioning us to

be careful

be realistic

to remember the limitations of being human”

 

and        “I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day.”

 

There are so many questions still to be asked and I still don’t have answers for them, but as the years go on the answers may slowly unfold themselves to me. So, I am coming to terms with the notion that I do not have to know how everything works in India because that is what makes the country so extraordinary. As Mr Skeen told us, “It’s alright not to know.” There will always be questions to ask of the place and although there may not always be answers, “the teaching will go on.”

 

As for now, this is the simple answer I have formulated from my question at the beginning:

 

A.    I’m not sure when or if I will go back to India but I know I would like to.