Journey to India

I don't think anyone can "fix" anything in India, or "help" in some way that is simple and satisfying and efficient. We can take little steps here and there, and plant seeds of ideas and give some encouragement here and there. It's not that change is not possible, or that good people aren't doing good things. There are millions of good ideas. But it's always quite complicated. It's like a large derelict castle that needs fixing, a castle with inner holds and villages next to it within the caste walls, within the moats, and all of it in shambles; not just a quick reno job on an old house.

I was in Prince Edward Island last year with Mehdi, and there was a huge cathedral-like Catholic church for sale. It was only $60,000. It recently had had a $60,000 roof repair. The facade needed a $100,000 face lift and the whole building needed perhaps $1,000,000 to make it in good condition. But in good condition for what? There were not enough parishioners for a congregation - that's why it was being sold. I wanted to buy it but didn't have that kind of money. Even if I wanted to fix it while living in that section behind the altar, a sort of half circle bowl shaped room, I wouldn't know where to begin fixing things. If I fixed one thing, it would look great for a little while and then the next thing would look ridiculous next to that. My idea of fixing it as majestic as it used to be is a vain and silly notion. But somehow I couldn't stop dreaming about fixing up that beautiful old church, as homage to what it once was. That church serves no function anymore, and no financially accountable developer would turn it into condos as it is just too far out in the countryside, away from the marketable oceanfront. Its time as a beautiful church has come and gone.

There are many such things in India that are not worth fixing. I am not talking about buildings only, but those too. So many mechanisms, structures, social and personal, are no longer of any use here. They get left behind readily by Indians looking for a better life. Why hang on to some old custom or tradition if it no longer serves a purpose? Why be sentimental? No one wants to be a rice and corn farmer, slogging and toiling in the fields and at home, threshing corn and leading cows from one place to another, and barely be able to eat at the end of the day. No one wants to adhere to cumbersome rituals and work in order to make pretty photos for academics and tourists to show off.  Well not no one. Some do, but given a chance, most of us would trade that life, restricted by taboos and traditions and superstitions, for an easier one, trading in difficulty for ease. We would not be interested in maintaining a culture for its own sake anymore than we would spend our money and our children's money to renovate a majestic church for esthetic reasons. Much in India simply doesn't work and has to be thrown out. Much can simply not be renovated and is not worth renovating. Archaic religious customs that don't deliver what they promise, hopelessly lazy bureaucracies, mindless schooling systems, corrupt policing organizations, mind numbing political rhetoric. As an evolutionary process, tihngs change, they always do, and as I honour that which has been, I also release my attachment to it so that it may disappear happily, making room for new rituals and ceremonies. Some institutions will resist change, but it si futile. The tighter it hangs on, the harder it falls. India will be reborn, again and again, but not according to the plans of politicians or intellectuals or fundamentalists of any stripe. India will be reborn as it sees fits, in ways that are inscrutable to any of us. This may mean that the structure and form of the old, that which we are attached to, has to crumble in its entirety or perhaps only partly, maybe keeping a facade or an aspect or two, and then take on a form that is useful, affordable and hopefully still esthetically pleasing and uplifting for our spirits.