"In India, nothing is as it appears to be" Lars explains to us at orientation.There is a saying among Westerners here that is so well known it is an abbreviation- T-i-I- “This is India.” It is the brief answer to every mystery that defies what you have always taken for granted and for what you have always understood to be the base line of reason and logic.
Everything in India is an allusion to the Western mind.
As an example- we in the West are trained to think on a linear plane. I will prove it to you by having you finish the following sentence:
“The quickest way from A to B is a ___________ _____________. “
If you are thinking “straight line” right now, it is only because you are not from India.
In India you would fill in those blanks, “circle B”.
The first thing you have to get over here is your linear thinking. Circular thinking affects the very way the nationals go about conversation and philosophy and the way people drive. Streets are lined out in circles, driver’s drive in circles, people think in circles. Even art, poetry, literature and religious expressions are laid out in circular equations.
Lars explains a typical conversation with his Indian staff:
Lars: “How are things going?”
Staff member: “It is very bad.”
Lars: “What does ‘very bad’ mean”
Staff: “Well, it is maybe not so good.”
Lars: “What does ‘not so good’ mean?”
Staff: “It’s not so good… but, it is all good.”
Lars: “So you are saying it is good?”
Staff: “No it is very bad”.
It is a circle. The real answer is found somewhere within it. It all makes perfect sense if you get over your linear thinking and understand that even reason is an allusion here.
I am finding that my mind is succumbing to dizzying circles already complicated by my 72 hours without a decent nights sleep. One learns that you cannot trust your natural instincts and biases. You learn that everything is up for change and recalculation.
One is not always sure here that what you think you are seeing is what you are really seeing.
Did that motorcycle that just came within inches of our side mirror really have a family of four with a baby on the handle bar? Did we just pass a cow? Was that a monkey? Was that a bicycle cart carrying a huge wok with the bread frying in the middle of it as he is dodging traffic? Tell me I didn’t just see our driver avoid a traffic jam by merging into the opposite lanes on a major interstate.
It’s not so good. But it’s good.
Our first full day of travel within India provided amazing examples of circular reasoning. We show up at the airport terminal only to find out that the departure gate had been changed and that we now had to drive another 30 minutes to another terminal (There are three- all set out in a kind of semi-circle a few miles away from one another).
This important information was not relayed to passengers until they arrived at the wrong terminal. So we drive to the other terminal, which of course is like driving in a big circle.
We learn after going through the very strenuous Indian security check and waiting on the plane for 40 minutes that the airline has now decided to change planes. We don’t really know why- but the nationals on board seem perfectly fine with this. So they take us off that airplane, make us go back into the terminal and circle back through security check (Did I mention that every ticketed passenger in India receives a ticket that has fine print, “all passengers subject to frisking”?)
Before going into the check-point again, we are told that we have to have another paper stapled to our already checked boarding passes and to follow an agent to get a new one. The agent walks up to a desk- you know the kind that most ticket agents stand BEHIND, - and instead stands IN FRONT of the desk with his back to us forcing everyone to gather around him in front of the desk so that he can hand out tickets not as he is facing us but instead handing our newly stapled tickets behind his back and to his side. Mind you it is not a line forming behind him, it is a CIRCLE- more like a clump of outstretched hands and bodies pushing and shoving toward the newly formed human apex reaching over his shoulder.
Now that we have our newly stapled tickets we are free to move toward the security checkpoint again. But wait- our bags all have stamps saying they have been checked already by security (Which of course is what we had done just about an hour before when we first started this circle)- this will not due, all of our bags need to have tags without stamps (I’m not making this up). So we have to circle back to get tags we have already filled out and have already been stamped so that they can stamp fresh tags on our already checked and examined bags.
From there back to security, onto a bus that takes us back to the very same plane.
You guessed it – we just did a great big circle in the middle of the Delhi International Airport terminal.
Why? There is a simple explanation- T-i-I. Apparently in India, they don’t just want to catch would be terrorists trying to get through security check points, they want to completely spin their heads around and exasperate them.
Sure enough, it was all just an allusion. We just THOUGHT we were in the right terminal, on the right plane and really had our bags checked and through security. We just THOUGHT that the closest way from point A to B was a straight line. What our Western minds could not embrace was the bliss of circular reasoning.
The India way is a kind of parallel universe. You learn that there is no need to go in a straight line when you can go in a circle. Why would we want to take up more space when we can share the same space? Why have only one air terminal on a scheduled flight when you can make people drive thirty minutes to another? Why would we want to form lines when we can form circles? Why only put two cars in two lanes when you can fit cars and cows and trucks and busses and tuk-tuks and ox carts and dogs all going different directions into those two lanes?
The first few times our driver plays chicken with oncoming busses, Michael and I look at each other in dazed shock. But now after three days of this kind of thing happening over and over again with amazing regularity, we have become numb to it- it seems strangely normal. We have decided that the term “near miss” is relative. In the states, “near misses” are measured in feet and yards. In India they are measured in millemeters.
It’s all good. But maybe not so good. T-i-I.
Sergai, who is himself from a third world country struggled for English as he tried to describe India. He held his hands on either side of his brow as if holding his brain in his hands and said,
“It is like rain for the mind”.
Update: I have just come back from an amazing experience in the village. I can only tell you at this late hour that Sergai was right. My mind has been sufficiently blown by an incredible orphanage at the edge of the jungle.
Lars: “So you are saying it is good?”
Staff: “No it is very bad”.
It is a circle. The real answer is found somewhere within it. It all makes perfect sense if you get over your linear thinking and understand that even reason is an allusion here.
I am finding that my mind is succumbing to dizzying circles already complicated by my 72 hours without a decent nights sleep. One learns that you cannot trust your natural instincts and biases. You learn that everything is up for change and recalculation.
One is not always sure here that what you think you are seeing is what you are really seeing.
Did that motorcycle that just came within inches of our side mirror really have a family of four with a baby on the handle bar? Did we just pass a cow? Was that a monkey? Was that a bicycle cart carrying a huge wok with the bread frying in the middle of it as he is dodging traffic? Tell me I didn’t just see our driver avoid a traffic jam by merging into the opposite lanes on a major interstate.
It’s not so good. But it’s good.
Our first full day of travel within India provided amazing examples of circular reasoning. We show up at the airport terminal only to find out that the departure gate had been changed and that we now had to drive another 30 minutes to another terminal (There are three- all set out in a kind of semi-circle a few miles away from one another).
This important information was not relayed to passengers until they arrived at the wrong terminal. So we drive to the other terminal, which of course is like driving in a big circle.
We learn after going through the very strenuous Indian security check and waiting on the plane for 40 minutes that the airline has now decided to change planes. We don’t really know why- but the nationals on board seem perfectly fine with this. So they take us off that airplane, make us go back into the terminal and circle back through security check (Did I mention that every ticketed passenger in India receives a ticket that has fine print, “all passengers subject to frisking”?)
Before going into the check-point again, we are told that we have to have another paper stapled to our already checked boarding passes and to follow an agent to get a new one. The agent walks up to a desk- you know the kind that most ticket agents stand BEHIND, - and instead stands IN FRONT of the desk with his back to us forcing everyone to gather around him in front of the desk so that he can hand out tickets not as he is facing us but instead handing our newly stapled tickets behind his back and to his side. Mind you it is not a line forming behind him, it is a CIRCLE- more like a clump of outstretched hands and bodies pushing and shoving toward the newly formed human apex reaching over his shoulder.
Now that we have our newly stapled tickets we are free to move toward the security checkpoint again. But wait- our bags all have stamps saying they have been checked already by security (Which of course is what we had done just about an hour before when we first started this circle)- this will not due, all of our bags need to have tags without stamps (I’m not making this up). So we have to circle back to get tags we have already filled out and have already been stamped so that they can stamp fresh tags on our already checked and examined bags.
From there back to security, onto a bus that takes us back to the very same plane.
You guessed it – we just did a great big circle in the middle of the Delhi International Airport terminal.
Why? There is a simple explanation- T-i-I. Apparently in India, they don’t just want to catch would be terrorists trying to get through security check points, they want to completely spin their heads around and exasperate them.
Sure enough, it was all just an allusion. We just THOUGHT we were in the right terminal, on the right plane and really had our bags checked and through security. We just THOUGHT that the closest way from point A to B was a straight line. What our Western minds could not embrace was the bliss of circular reasoning.
The India way is a kind of parallel universe. You learn that there is no need to go in a straight line when you can go in a circle. Why would we want to take up more space when we can share the same space? Why have only one air terminal on a scheduled flight when you can make people drive thirty minutes to another? Why would we want to form lines when we can form circles? Why only put two cars in two lanes when you can fit cars and cows and trucks and busses and tuk-tuks and ox carts and dogs all going different directions into those two lanes?
The first few times our driver plays chicken with oncoming busses, Michael and I look at each other in dazed shock. But now after three days of this kind of thing happening over and over again with amazing regularity, we have become numb to it- it seems strangely normal. We have decided that the term “near miss” is relative. In the states, “near misses” are measured in feet and yards. In India they are measured in millemeters.
It’s all good. But maybe not so good. T-i-I.
Sergai, who is himself from a third world country struggled for English as he tried to describe India. He held his hands on either side of his brow as if holding his brain in his hands and said,
“It is like rain for the mind”.
Update: I have just come back from an amazing experience in the village. I can only tell you at this late hour that Sergai was right. My mind has been sufficiently blown by an incredible orphanage at the edge of the jungle.
The mayor of this Muslim village just threw a party for us to 
celebrate the end of Ramadan. They lavished us with food and sweets and Dezee Chai tea; they sang to us and played instruments and served us and stared at us through bright smiles.
In the end, our Christian brothers from India stood and invited everyone there to join us in prayer. We prayed boldly in the name of the Lord for the peace of the village and the prosperity of a new Christian school and orphanage and medical clinic. The prayer was translated into Hindi and English and Russian.
I thought to myself as we were sitting around the arbor made of bamboo and wire, that here we are, gathered together in a circle of Christians from around the globe encircled again by hundreds of Muslim villagers all gathered around us in fascination as we prayed to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
I would write more tonight, but my linear Western mind is in a downpour.
celebrate the end of Ramadan. They lavished us with food and sweets and Dezee Chai tea; they sang to us and played instruments and served us and stared at us through bright smiles.In the end, our Christian brothers from India stood and invited everyone there to join us in prayer. We prayed boldly in the name of the Lord for the peace of the village and the prosperity of a new Christian school and orphanage and medical clinic. The prayer was translated into Hindi and English and Russian.
I thought to myself as we were sitting around the arbor made of bamboo and wire, that here we are, gathered together in a circle of Christians from around the globe encircled again by hundreds of Muslim villagers all gathered around us in fascination as we prayed to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
I would write more tonight, but my linear Western mind is in a downpour.
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