I resisted traveling to India last month. I wondered why anybody would want to visit a country requiring a suitcase full of pharmaceuticals to treat everything from malaria to dysentery.
I felt uncomfortable about bearing witness to unspeakable poverty, while spending my nights in comfortable hotels. As a woman, I was leery about going to a country known for its misogyny.
I planned this trip to celebrate my husband’s birthday. For him, visiting India has been a lifelong dream, so I agreed to leave my comfort zone to spend three weeks traveling from the north to the south of India.
India was clearly one of the most challenging places I have visited. I grew weary of the long bus rides on rough roads lined with garbage, the challenge of getting across streets filled with motorbikes, cars, wagons, tuck-tuck taxis, pedestrians, buses, and of course herds of cows, and the hordes of people trying to sell me souvenirs, mostly made in China, and of course unwelcome “Delhi belly!”
At the same time, there is a strange and wonderful calm amid the chaos of this overpopulated country. Until I visited India, the only time I used the word “Namaste” was as a concluding ritual in yoga classes. In India, it’s commonplace to greet strangers and friends alike with a reverent bow, and a “Namaste,” which means, “The divine in me honors the divine in you.”
Indians view guests as gods. Whether entering a hotel or a family’s home, I was treated with reverence. Strangers, regardless of age, waved, smiled, and always stopped to pose for photos, often asking us to be in their selfies.
On one of our last days in India, our group of 21 took a walk around a remote seaside village. A young woman stood outside her home and greeted us. She was joined by her father, a lawyer, who invited us to his backyard to see a tropical garden of tamarind trees, bananas and squawking chickens.
His mother waved to us from the door, as we learned that his daughter is an engineering student, while his wife is currently a professor in Oman. This kind of hospitality was the norm in India.
The Hindu notion of karma motivates people to do good in order to positively influence their existence in their next life. Feeding the poor is commonplace in India.
Sikhism is a religion in India that believes god resides in everyone. Sikhs are expected to feed the hungry. I visited a Sikh temple in New Delhi, where enormous pots of food were being prepared by mostly male members of this Sikh community, who feed 25,000 hungry people each day.
This generosity of spirit permeates everyday life in India. Despite the traffic congestion, accidents are rare, and road rage even rarer.
In a country where atheists are almost nonexistent, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others co-exist peacefully in India, living in religiously integrated communities. I was amazed by the number of young people I saw at a Hindu temple in Jaipur, and learned that Hinduism is flexible enough to accommodate anyone’s religious practices.
Flexibility has enabled Indians to adapt to modernity while maintaining fundamental traditions. I had dinner at the home of a wealthy family in Jaipur, whose 27-year-old daughter is a practicing environmental lawyer. When asked about marriage, she was clear that she preferred an arranged marriage.
Arranged marriages are focused on making sure both families are compatible, so that the family can be a support system for the married couple. Couples are carefully matched for compatibility using a number of parameters, including astrology. Parents use a mediator to find an appropriate matrimonial candidate, but the young lawyer I spoke with told me that her parents were giving her the right of refusal if she didn’t approve of the husband selected for her.
Seventy percent of India’s population live in rural villages, where traditions die hard, yet women are being educated everywhere. At the same time, caring for elderly family members is viewed as an honor in India that continues to keep extended families together.
Our guide’s new wife is getting a doctorate in computer science, but she has followed the tradition of moving in with her husband’s family, where she and another daughter-in-law cook for the family and cover their faces in the presence of male in-laws.
Our guide shared, however, that he and his brother and their spouses go out to dinner together with their unveiled wives. “Everything is changing,” he told me.
I am not trying to whitewash the sig nificant challenges of a country one-third the size of the U.S. with three times the population, where government corruption runs rampant.
However, India is also a vibrant country, filled with color. As I return to the Valley’s monochrome winter, I will remember the hot pinks, purples, and deep oranges of India’s brilliant fabrics, the smell of jasmine flowers adorning women’s hair, and the warmth of India’s people.
We can learn a lot from India’s people. Namaste.
Sara Weinberger, of Easthampton, is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.