Song of India - II - Song of India

Before I begin my travels let me tell you something of India, for I did find the India that I loved.

Above all India is an ancient land, like stepping into a storybook that has come alive. Immediately you slip back 1,000, 2,000, years in a sea of time, immersed in the past, lost in the centuries.

Elaborately carved stone temples tower massively above, their long steps dotted with bearded robes and alive with colored, barefoot saris hastening with offerings of flowers and cocoanuts for the gods. The gods too are brightly colored – red, yellow, blue – with wreaths of flowers around their necks and offerings of fruit and flowers by an oil flame in front. They are the most ancient gods in the world.

You wander among her streets rich with humanity – beggars, prophets, seers, all are there. The women in their graceful saris move with ease. Usually they are barefoot, but sometime wear small leather chapels or sandals. The shopkeeper in his Hindu hat and long, loose white shirt with draped white cloth underneath is seen here and there. The servant boy wears a faded undershirt and small cloth or dhoti wrapped about his thighs. He looks disheveled and somewhat grimy. The religious men wear long saffron-colored robes, with long hair and beards and beads. They beg or mingle with the people. A few of the younger men wear shirts and trousers Western style.

The shops along the street are all one story and made of wood and cement. The foundation is several feet off the ground so that the merchants sit cross-legged among their wares and talk directly to the customer standing on the walk. The buildings are rough and worn, and the walks covered with layers of dust. The streets except in the largest cities are made of dried yellow earth. Stall after stall opens directly on the street, with no front. The cloth merchant sits among his piles and piles of cloth, for cloth is clothes here, wrapped and draped, and it is already ready-to-wear. The hardware store has metal pots and pans, strings of tin cups, and odds and ends of all sorts of merchandise. Fairly often, the tea stalls are there, with their long wooden tables and brick stove in the corner where you may buy cha served in a glass with boiled milk and sugar for an anna –six Indian cents or about a penny.

In the streets and the ageless bullock carts of bound bamboo with their heavy, creaking wooden wheels, a tiny figure curled up half-asleep in front between the two hulking, bony rears of the placed beasts urging them on. It is a scene centuries old that has not changed. The carts are loaded with rice or straw and the half emaciated beasts plod on among the throngs of people. Their pointed horns are variously curled in, out, up or down. And so slow is the pace that it would be faster to walk.

Bullock carts, bicycles, buses (in the cities) – the centuries are mixed. Seven thousand years and more live side by side. Today is but a drop in an ocean of time; this century but a ripple on so deep a sea. You change your pace, walk slower. What is the hurry? A day, a year, a century more or less makes no difference. You relax and stretch out into time – time which becomes peace and seeps into your very being.

For this is India, ancient India, in a scene repeated endless times over. Daily life in the village, making rice and dahl and curry morning and night thru the year over a fire of dried cow dung and tiny sticks. Oxen plowing in the fields, gathering the rice and wheat by hand. Mud huts with thatched roofs in the villages. These are the scenes of India.

For India is village India. Outside of a few big cities which are but drops in the sea, India is hundreds of thousands of villages, 100; 200; 1,000; 2,000 in size. The same as it has been, on and on. That is why Gandhi worked in the villages, because that is where the people are.

Even in the cities are mud huts and thatched roofs, and thousands homeless living in the streets and in the doorways. Scarcely outside the boundaries of the cities electricity ends, and there are the tiny ancient oil lamps, or perhaps nothing at all. At night the village is dark and the moon picks out the palms and gray walls and shines over the paddy fields in silence.

Inside, the huts are almost empty. In one corner is a mud ring, several inches high with a hole in front and this is the stove. Usually there is no fuel so they use cow dung which is pressed into large flat patties and dried in the sun. Everywhere you see it plastered on the walls drying – even on the sides of temples. Then it is burned for fuel. Often I wondered as I passed a doorway what was within but houses are almost empty.

Even water is not to be taken for granted. Digging wells is a modern project. Most villages have a large rectangular earthen pond which they call a tank. During the monsoon it fills with water and then steadily diminishes month after month until the next rain. It is used for everything - drinking, bathing and even washing the cows and water buffalo.

Food too is scarce in a land plagued by drought. After the monsoon and one growth of rice, the earth on the great plains becomes hard and dry as the rain holds back month after month. The earth splits and cracks and grey powdery dust puffs up behind the bullock carts on the road. Most of the people are lean and one never sees a fat bearer or servant boy. The people live on rice and dahl (boiled lentil-like pulses), or in the north, wheat pressed into large flat pancakes called chappatties. But rice with hot spices is the staple diet. Even this is not always to be had as the dry earth refuses to yield. Many know only hunger. To my question they replied, “live on what?”…Air…sun…we cannot imagine. It is a living death.

Yes, India is a land without things. And in India nothing means nothing – no silverware, toilet paper, fuel, shoes, even toothbrushes. It is a land of bare essentials. The people eat with their fingers. The right hand is for clean things and the left for unclean. For toothbrushes they use their finger or a stick. Instead of toilet paper they use a cup of water, which works quite well. This is the way of rich and poor alike. Yes, nothing means nothing in a way we do not know.

Again and again you will hear the refrain, “We are poor people”, and indeed they are. There are virtually no rich. Even land owners live simply by our standards. And many of the people have even less than Gandhi – no shoes or house and not enough to eat. It is indeed a land without things.

This is the lean side of India, the poverty, the hunger. Where is her song? For India is a land of great beauty as well as sadness, and everywhere she sings in your heart.

The song of India is an endless melody weaving on and on, even as her tabla (drums), sitar, esraj fill the air with their music. Morning songs, evening songs – life is the intricate and subtle variations of a day, the rhythm of heaven and earth, the pulse of life which links us thru the centuries in an endless chain of being. Now faint, now clear, even sadness and the minor keys: all is beauty in the spell of life.

Yes, her song is melody, the individual voices standing out clear and weaving on and on in minute variations. It is not heavy and ponderous harmony despite the great masses of people. They have no symphonies as we. But it is beautiful and delicate and clear, and the infinite and complex variety of rhythms is almost more than one can imagine. There is nothing more beautiful than the clear sound of flute played on the road to work in the early grayness of morning or evening. Nothing sweeter than the delicate melodies of the esraj.

It is a land not geared to "progress" or "accomplishment”, but where life is the steady living of a day, the subtle and endless variations of a day. It is a land relaxed and peaceful, not pressing into the future but content in itself. It makes us realize that our present is but a wave on the surface of the sea of time. It is geared not to the present but to eternity. It is easy to feel time, and slowness, and eternity…the steady flow of life serene and calm. How deep I leaned into India’s stillness. The truth is, if we are perfectly happy we want time to stand still.

The people too, have the qualities acquired with age. They are natural, simple, informal. About the only social rule is to say “Namastee” when you greet someone. It is said with hands pressed together like a prayer, indicative of their respect for each other and all people. Other than this, one goes by the feeling of the situation and not by formal rules. Everywhere people are treated with dignity.

The people are tolerant and accepting of all people, including we who travel in their land. They never act rejecting of accuse you of doing something wrong – rather they are accepting – and soon you begin to relax and feel the inner warmth and peace that they do. I was especially surprised at this because it was so soon after freedom and I thought the resentment against the Westerner would be there, but I didn’t find it. Instead I found only graciousness. On trains and buses they were anxious to find a seat for me, offer tea, etc.

The hospitality is tremendous. Everywhere, after meeting people for only a few minutes on the trains they would offer you to come to their homes and stay with them. It is said that anywhere you may knock on a door and be accepted and welcomed. And the people treat you as they would their own brother or sister, and consider that it is they who have the honor of you as their guest. There is another saying that the guest is god, and they certainly do their best to make it that way.

The people are natural and genuine, deep, not superficial. This too is a quality of age. They were simple and informal and relaxed, ripe with the wisdom of age and life. This in spite of circumstances, (outward things), for true civilization is in the heart and requires an external assets. Thus I found the culture of India in the graciousness of her people.

How I loved to walk the streets and watch a life there to be seen nowhere else in the world – to watch faces, expressions, life to be found only here. For the people live more openly and outdoors here, and in fact many live on the streets, so there is endless diversity there – people washing at the hydrants in Calcutta, cooking a meal on the street, talking and laughing children playing their games. Everywhere endless fascination.

For it is a land of endless diversity. Only with the coming of freedom was the land nominally united for the first time. Even the British never ruled the entire land, and in fact left most of the villages untouched. Thus though there is similarity in appearance and dress, each part of the country or “princely state” is different than the other. There are fifteen major languages and 215 dialects. Dress, custom and food vary. An Indian traveling in his own country may feel as lost as a foreigner due to the different language, etc. Thus one may be at home speaking English which is used by most educated people in conversing with each other. The union of India is difficult to achieve because of acceptance of great diversity.

One of the great characteristics of the people is acceptance. In fact their acceptance is so great that they accept everything in life including pain, dirt, disease, suffering. They accept things we reject. There are no artificial separations or boundaries between food and floor (they set their plates or mats on the floor to eat), manure and fuel, bed and floor. In a land without things one cannot separate function.

They also accept pain and suffering in a way that we don’t. We fight it with all our strength, but perhaps of necessity they accept it as part of life. Sadness and pain perhaps must be accepted. The poverty and suffering are great and endless and one must live with it from the moment of birth till death. Even men may cry and the heart remain xxxx and warm. And in the living with sadness is a dignity that sometimes we deny ourselves. Instead of running away from sadness in an effort to remain eternally young and happy, they accept it with dignity.

This acceptance and lack of organization goes to the point we would call total lack of organization. For a Westerner accustomed to efficiency ever to inquire the air mail rate to a neighboring country may be an agonizing experience, for the clerk will get out his books and pour over them and there will be much conversation and discussion. Accustomed as we are to quickness occasionally one is driven to distraction.

Religious tolerance is also one of her great characterizations. In the shops pictures of Christ are sold along with those of other Hindu gods. Sometimes of course, she is not true to herself, as in the partition with Pakistan where she broke her age-old tradition of religious tolerance. Some say it was due to the British policy of divide and rule; that they searched for a Moslem leader who would yield to their whispers of a “land for yourselves” and fomented the great struggle. It was against all of her traditions.

This land of diversity permits development of the individual, and India is the land of the great man, like Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, Ramakrishna. Like the melody of their music, the voice of the individual man stands out. India today is waiting for another great leader. Nowhere is the spirit of a new India that one would expect with the new freedom. Rather there is a continuance of the old ways. The India of today is waiting for another great leader to lead her into the development of the new land. Now that freedom is won, the great need is for economic development.

India is like a few people pulling a heavy load up a great hill. Everywhere the few are trying to uplift the masses and overcome at least part of the **** of the land. But they are barely equal to the task, and their work is almost lost in the sea of people. But they continue on, pulling India to new ways.

But the true meaning of India is an inner one. It is she who will sing of the is and the true meaning of life. As we have shown before, India is not external: shi is a land without things, a land of inner value. Neither is she yet lost nor confounded with today. She is an ancient land not geared to today or tomorrow but to eternity, and her meaning stands clear and timeless as the plodding bullock carts, the barefoot and saris are forever India. It is a privilege to see the meaning of life peaceful and timeless even as it is in our hearts. The true meaning of India is in her heart and spirit. It is in inner values.

It is because she is not external that it is easy to see the inner values. In a land of bare essentials the inner meaning stands out the more clearly. Only a piece of cloth, a cooking pot, water and rice suffice in a land of sun. Thus her humanity stands out the more clearly.

There is a spirit on the land that can be felt everywhere among her people – a flame that burns even in suffering. But the darkest dark only makes her eyes glow the more liquid and soft with radiance and light. There is an expression, the eyes of India, and it is true there are eyes nowhere in the world like them. They are luminous with an inner light.

India herself is always Mother India, indicative of the soft, tender qualities of a land emphasizing inner values. Everywhere you feel its compassion and warmth. Indeed, women and the whole feminine principle of existence are included in the culture in a way that they are not in the West. It is woman herself that stands for the whole inner principle of existence, not the external accumulation of the West.

The whole concept of woman which is so dim in the West is shining and lovely in India. And the simplicity and peace and slow temp of eternity set her off to ther best. The women do not have much to do with the external world for that is a man's job. they are outwardly hidden and protected by cherished in the heart.

In the very philosophy of the West we have omitted women. We have male gods and a male principle of existence, outward and external. In the New Testament, which is said to be Eastern in its origins, there is an attempt to emphasize the inner values of love, but it is never clearly recognized as feminine, and leads to endless confusion in our thinking. Is not mother love womanly?

In India the gods are always in pairs, male and female. The principle gods married with their wife by their side. Their different aspects as father, mother and lovers are equally revered. Here we only have male gods, and the other aspects of being or left out entirely.

The Hindu gods are the most ancient gods in the world, their origins lost in antiquity. They stand, huge stone statues starring mutely. What do they know with these closed eyes, meditating thru the centuries? In awe you stand and wonder. Neither are they in xxxxx as the sifting Buddha of Japan, but have with movement and dance. For Indian dance is religious in origin, and xxxx continues in his cosmic dance, atxxxx xxt all forms of illusion. Some of the gods too are painted blue to indicate their heavenly nature.

Western civilization primarily recognizes the father-god or mail principle of existence, but this too largely in its outer form – power, strength, and competition economically, militarily, socially and in personal life. This leads to war, not love and acceptance, and the trampling of the weak by the strong. But true strength is like also inner, of character and principle and conviction. India values this kind of strength such as gained nor her independence thru strength of principle and courage of conviction, without hatred and bloodshed and violence. This is true strength.

The woman stands for the inner principle of existence and for mother love. In India woman is first respected as a mother, and for exemplifying the qualities of a mother. The female, motherly spirit is respected and worshipped. There are many goddesses. Woman is not thought of as the sin or downfall of man, or is she a plaything for man as they sometimes think we treat her in the West. Rather she stands for motherly love, to love regardless of the worth or merit of the loved – to love regardless. This is really the love of the New Testament which is feminine in nature and ought to be clearly recognized as such. Naturally God as spirit has all aspects.

Thus the culture of India is motherly as well as fatherly, and woman are a basic element of life there. In all the land you can feel her spirit. There is acceptance and respect of woman, even in the furthest reaches of religion. India is a good land for woman, and one in which she can reach her height. The concept of woman is a lively one which may be seen to its fullest there.

The aspect of the gods as lovers, or the concept of lover-love (besides father-love and mother-love) is also entirely lacking in the West. This is basically a principle of unity – of unity in love. They recognize not only the masculine and feminine principles of existence but also their unity, even as the gods are in pairs.

The unity is symbolic Oneness, not only of men and woman, but socially of all people and spiritually of all with god. It is the inner or spiritual significance. This unity is first of all between man and woman, second spiritually between the individual and god, and thirdly socially between all people.

In its first meaning, in India when a couple are married they are considered as one being. The man takes care of the outward things and economic necessity and the woman the inner things and the home. And the woman’s husband is considered next to god. They are united in true spiritual union.

In its second meaning, the essence of lover-love is spiritual oneness. In the West we have father-love and mother-love but lover-love has never clearly been sanctioned as part of the fabric of life. We have giving-love and doing-love but not so much the love of something for its own sake. Our religion is the love of a child for its father, a love between non-equals. But the concept of lover-love is that of identity, where the worshipper strives to become god-like or identical with the thing loved. It is to become a part of what is loved. In India, men strive to become godlike.

This principle of identity is true of the saint, scientist, and artist alike. For example the great artist gives himself to the truth of beauty. He is one with it in mind and heart and it is his life and soul beyond success or failure, joy or sorrow, life or death. It is this kind of identity love which is meant.

In the Hindu religion there is one god, Krishna, who is always playing on his flute, and this is to lure or entice us to beauty or meaning or god. He appeals not to force or duty but to the pure love of the heart, to what we really love with our whole heart. And what we truly love is our god and whole desire. It is in this way that the saint and artist and scientist love, and become one with what they love. This kind of unity or oneness with god is not in our religion as it is in theirs.

The third meaning of unity is that between all people. In all her history India has stressed the unity of people basically different. Perhaps unity has been so stressed because she is such a heterogeneous land whose Aryan invaders were of a different race and mentality and religion from the native Dravidians of the south, and the numerous primitive tribes. The problem of India was to unite these different people, and then the qualities of tolerance and acceptance were developed. Long ago they eschewed force and decided on a course of unity of the different elements, and peace.

The prayer of Mother India is that all her many children may be one, and one in spirit; that all colors and differences may be blended into light, in a spirit that is warm and ever-expansive as the sun itself, and ends at last in radiance and joy.

Thus is the outer face of the land united with inner spiritualness. The symbol of the people of India is this: a figure reduced to the strength and endurance of bone, but where the eyes flame in inextinguishable spirit.

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