Beyond the Outer Limits – India

Beyond the Outer Limits
India

I once travelled all over the world without ever leaving bed. It was a kind of recipe-for-the-bone-idle-couldn’t-be-bothered-to-travel traveller. And it didn’t cost me a penny (or rupee). It was, of course, a dream: a strange kind of dream, really.

I was dreaming that I was in the English Lake District, walking along some desolate mountain path, with the biting wind swirling and the rain lashing my face. The smell of grass and soil filled the air and I was alone. Splendid solitude. Every now and then a gap in the mist appeared, giving way to a magnificent view of Coniston village below, or some craggy peak above; a feeling of being at one with nature.

I was on that ancient forgotten mountain path in England, yet thinking of India. I thought of Varanasi: a place teeming with life and soaked in death. I was suddenly transported to a room in that city, listening to the mellow sound of the santur – a stringed instrument of North India. I recalled a Spanish girl, Rosa, whom I once knew. Rosa, with her long black hair and gentle smile. The sound of the santur was as beautiful as Rosa was sweet. She played it one evening for me in her room. The thing with the santur is that if you do not know how to play it, it is still possible to make lovely sounds. And the thing is with Rosa you did not really have to know her to see that she was someone special. Rosa and the santur were made for each other. Watching and listening to her play was a beautiful moment and I was reminded of an authenticity that can never be diminished or destroyed. It is timeless; it is inspirational. And Rosa was part of it.

The lilting melody of the santur faded and in the dream I was transported a few hundred metres away to the banks of the Ganges: a place of quickly constructed funeral pyres and timeless ritual; a place of pilgrims and New Age traveller-types from the West; a place of believers. People who believe in something that transcends the human condition and who believe in a better tomorrow. A place of holy men and hippies; where eastern mysticism meets western post-modernism. And as I sat looking at the Ganges, surrounded by burning ghats (steps on the river bank where cremations take place) and cleansing souls, I began to think about life and death, and somewhere else.

My thoughts took me to a hilltop fort in Rajasthan, surrounded by sandy-lands and Rajput warriors from yesteryear. I sat in some rooftop restaurant in Jodphur under a clear blue sky, enjoying the early morning chill of a December day, and gazed across the rooftops, then thought of a far away place.

The place was a city, a thousand miles away. Not any city � tropical Chennai (Madras) – that unique mass of humanity situated in South India, the land of the temple elephant. I was walking past the dingy Emerald Chicken House on Triplicane High Road. The Keralan proprietor serves the best chicken tikka. And across the road is the Maharaja Restaurant where they sell the best vegetarian meals. After eating at one or other place I was drawn onto a nearby hotel rooftop to watch the sun set over the soaring minarets of the Big Mosque. It was magnificent. And I recalled the splendour of long gone New Year’s Eves and fireworks that once cascaded across darkened skies. I was standing where I had been before; where I greeted the dawn of 2002 and 2003; where I had once stood and pondered about what had been, what was about to be and what should always be.

I looked out over Chennai and the setting sun drew my thoughts across South India, to the opposite coast and to some golden beach in Goa. The waves crashed upon the shore and a red sky sunset prevailed. I looked out to sea and thought of Europe. And I thought of familiar places and faces, and of times gone and of memories now fading. As the sun disappeared over the horizon, a tapestry of stars filled the night sky, and, as I looked up, I was reminded of the timelessness of the universe and my own mortality. The darkness engulfed and I felt my solitude once again. The same solitude that I had felt on that lost mountain path in the Lake District, and the same solitude I had felt while pondering about life and death on the banks of the Ganges.

Beneath the canopy of a million galaxies I wondered about the spirit of the human condition – that yearning for freedom: to roam, to explore, to think, to escape from pain, hardship and suffering – to escape from one’s own mortality. I looked up at the sky and thought about my own significance in the grand scheme of things. I also thought about my constant need to travel through the world and my own thoughts; my almost constant need to be somewhere different, somewhere better – somewhere else.

I looked up and thought to myself, “It is out there in the vast universe” – inspiration, love, hope, and emotion: truth. All of those things that make us human; all of those things that are within us all come from “out there” but are hard to define. Whatever it is, it is out there. Some call it God, shroud it in mystical ritual and belief, and inscribe it with ultimate values. Others call it the Big Bang, construct technical theories and dress it up in rational science. Whatever it is, it lies somewhere between the two: between reason and emotion. It defines both. It is greater than both. It transcends both.

Whatever it is, this thing that makes us what we are, I see it everyday � in the faces of a hundred dusty beggars and in the eyes of those who throng each and every temple. I see it in the mass of humanity bathing along the ghats in Varanasi and in those selling their wares as they squat on pavements. I see it in Calcutta among dark-skinned soap-lathered men who wash at street stanchions and among poor migrant workers, living and dying in miserable conditions. From the ubiquitous tea-boy to the pavement artisan � I have seen it; I have felt it. What is it? I cannot define it. But I know when it is present – and I know when it is absent.

It is absent when people act like machines, void of empathy and feeling. It is also absent when people run away and reject reality and do nothing but romanticise. To love somebody is not enough and to hate somebody is not enough. Pure emotion without reason is insufficient as is pure reason without emotion. The former leads to a retreat from reality while the latter leads to man-made hell.

That path in the English Lake District is jagged and twisting. It is well worn. And it is well worn for a reason. It is the best route to take despite it neither being straight nor smooth. If it were straight and smooth then it would take me to where I want to be quickly and comfortably. But in many ways it is the only route to take: as it is, and not how some think it should be. I have walked along that path many times and the journey elicits both pleasure and hardship, but it eventually gets me to my destination. Certain things possess an authenticity, which cannot be trampled on in a futile attempt to make shortcuts. It took me many journeys and years to appreciate this. It can be a long and often arduous path from Europe to the ghats of Varanasi or to the eateries of Triplicane. But it is worth it in the end.

These days, the Americans send probes from Earth to Pluto and beyond. Let’s hope they find a fraction of what can be found on any earth-bound journey. Perhaps one day humanity will reach the edges of the universe; maybe then, and only then, will it realise that the authenticity for which it craves has been in front of it all along � in the hearts and minds of one hundred dusty beggars and one million toiling tea-boys.

So after humankind has grown sick and tired of trying to bend things out of shape, and grown weary of self-inflicted hardship and crying, and living and dying, perhaps then there will emerge the haunting sound of a single distant santur and visions of what can and always should be. At that point, it may then finally learn that truth will always live. Its spirit will always flicker no matter what, even in the darkest of times – within a billion hearts and across a thousand galaxies.

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Colin Todhunter is the author of Chasing Rainbows in Chennai, which reached No.3 in the bestseller list of India’s largest bookstore, Landmark. This piece is an extract from the book. All of the other chapters can be found in the India section of BootsnAll.