As your plane descends upon New Delhi, a soft orange haze engulfs you, drawing you in. A cascade of shanty-towns drift below, clogged arteries of traffic dividing the landscape into innumerable scattered shards of populace. If you land in the evening, the haze throbs over the country with a dull glow in the speckled city lights. If you land in the afternoon, then the haze is a giant mass of incomprehensible dust — some amalgamation of smog, smoke, dirt, and fog — and no matter how far away you go, or how far you get, you never completely escape it.
I have been to 40 different countries. Yet India made the most indelible impression of any of them. And not for all of the right reasons. Frankly, it’s not a pleasant place to be. Anyone who tells you otherwise lacks perspective. India’s full of contradictions: horrors and delights, achievements and atrocities, often on the same city-block. And despite the immense history, the monuments, the spectacular sites of human ingenuity, one can’t help but ask themselves repeatedly what they’re doing there.
The first thing that strikes you about India is how dirty it is. In a word, the place is disgusting. All of it. The entire country. Never before have I seen mountains of garbage the size of a small house stacked on the side of a road, in broad daylight, in the middle of a city, repeatedly. Dumpsters tipped over and overflowing. Mounds of trash — wrappers, cups, papers, napkins, strewn all about, mixed with sludge from the soda and urine and spit coagulated from thousands of daily passersby.
Like the dust, the garbage never ceases. And along with the garbage, there is an unending stream of humanity. It is impossible to spend a full day in the middle of a major Indian city without lobotomizing yourself trying to figure out where the hell all of the people come from. I’ve been to Hong Kong. I’ve been to Manhattan and Beijing. I’ve been to Mexico City. And the swarm of humanity crawling through India’s cities is unparalleled. There’s no comparison. Many streets more closely resemble a bee hive than a functioning human society. When I flew into Mumbai, there were homeless people sleeping on the tarmac. Take a moment for that to sink in: the city is so crowded and disgusting that people decide they’d rather sleep on the airport runway.
And that is the second thing to strike you about India. The poverty. It is legitimate take-your-breath-away poverty. Like the kind you see on TV charity ads but far worse. And far more real. Limbless men stewing about in their own feces. Emaciated children playing on a piles of garbage. A man with his leg literally rotting off to the bone, maggots and all, laying on the curb. It’s everywhere. The amount of suffering is indescribable. And it is unceasing. After a couple days, I was excited to hire a driver to go to Agra because I figured I’d be able to see some countryside and escape the stench and horrors of the city. But no. The entire four hours between Delhi and Agra was an unending stream of people, garbage and cars, with billows of dust drafting in our wake the whole way down.
My initial reaction the first few days was pure shock. But it quickly evolved into anger. How could a place like this be allowed to exist? How could normal people walk around with a clear conscience with so much shit and squalor festering about them? I felt indignant. Where was the social accountability? Where was the charity? Where the fuck was the government?
For the first time in my life, I finally grasped what inspires people to drop everything and move to a dirt-hole in the middle of Africa and start feeding people. When confronted with that much suffering, it seems insane NOT to do it. People like Mother Teresa or Princess Diana or Bill Gates didn’t seem like such foreign actors anymore. I could feel what they must have felt, even if just for a moment. With my driver taking me on a full-day trip to Agra, I watched the endless poverty scroll by like a demented video game. I had an overwhelming urge to stop at an ATM and withdraw 25,000 Rupees and start handing money out to people at random. I started doing the math in my head. That’s roughly $500. I could hand out $25 to twenty people. $25 could probably feed these people for almost a month. How much of my monthly income would I be willing to give up to feed 20 people each month? At what number would I no longer be willing to do it? At what dollar-amount did my morality begin and end?
The numbers began to make my head swirl. I was calculating my personal morality. I felt pathetic. And powerless. Like Oscar Schindler at the end of Schindler’s List sobbing that his gold ring could have saved one more Jew, self-pitying yet noble at the same time. That Big Mac I had in the airport could have saved one more Indian! Damn you, value meal!
Things only got more surreal from there. At a security checkpoint a kid brought up a real live cobra to my car window, scaring the living shit out of me and my fellow passengers. He then asked us for a rupee. We didn’t give him one. In another scenario, a Swedish girl in the car with us mentioned she should have given some starving boys her box of cookies. When we asked her why she didn’t, she calmly replied that little boys shouldn’t be eating cookies, that it’s bad for them.
In a Pizza Hut, every table had its own waitress. When I ordered hot wings as an appetizer my waitress duly congratulated me on making such an excellent culinary decision. Seriously. That’s what she said. As I looked around the restaurant, I saw each table occupied with fat, well-dressed Indians. I was reminded of the line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
“He must be a king.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He doesn’t have shit all over him.”
In Pizza Hut, the Indian people did not have shit all over them, therefore I assumed they were kings. That and they all conspicuously had their Blackberry’s out for one seemingly nonchalant reason or another, silently bragging to one another across the restaurant between garlic sticks.
Meanwhile, out the window in front of the restaurant, a homeless boy (covered in shit) was attempting to pry open a boarded-up hot dog stand, presumably to find some scraps of food left inside. Stray dogs licked their open sores nearby. Trash milled about, blown by dust. And we, the fat, rich kings of Pizza Hut had our appetizers congratulated by personal staff. The mind boggled. The contradictions mounted. My cognitive dissonance flared. When the manager came by to ask me how I was enjoying my meal, my first thought was “This is fucking Pizza Hut. What’s wrong with you?” But I didn’t. I smiled and said “Fine, thanks.”
But the bizarro world of India didn’t always lead to anger. It could be charming as well. At the Taj Mahal, I was approached by an Indian guy my age who asked me to take a picture. I said sure and reached out to take his camera, assuming he wanted me to take a photo of him in front of the monument. But instead, he stepped away from me, pointed the camera at me, and as four of his friends surrounded me and draped their arms around me, snapped a photo. Minutes later, a small family of four requested the same. And then another family, but this time just me kneeling with their kids. Then a group of teenage boys who wanted a picture with my tattoo. As a tourist, I became part of the tourist attraction myself. Here we are at the Taj Mahal. And here we are with a white person. And here’s little Sandeep flexing his arm next to the big white man. Soon a crowd had gathered. Many of them hung around, nervously trying to speak English with me. Some of them simply stared for minutes on end. All of them beamed smiles of excitement.
The dust pervades every city and town, some with a smoggy golden hue, others with a gentle grey haze. It cakes the cars, the streetlights and the dead stray animals. It scratches at your throat and turns your snot black.
Indian culture itself is quite disorienting. The people can be incredibly warm and hospitable, or cold and rude depending on the context and how they know you. The conclusion I eventually came to is that if they already know you, or if they’re somehow benefiting from you, then they can be incredibly warm and open people. But if they don’t know you, or if they’re trying to get something out of you, then they are a prickly, conniving bunch.
The local I got to know the best was Sanjay, the 20-something year old who ran a hostel I stayed in. He had studied in London and been all over Europe so he was fairly westernized. He and I would stay up late together drinking cheap vodka regaling each other with our travel stories. There was little else to do after nightfall in India but get drunk. And little felt more appropriate.
But what Sanjay told me about Indian people is bizarre but true. He said Indians will rarely, if ever, resort to violence. As a foreigner, you never have to worry about being robbed, or having a knife pulled on you, or getting beaten up by a gang of thugs and having your kidney carved out of you. And this is true. I’ve been to many shady parts of the world. But never did I once feel unsafe in India. Even late at night.
BUT, Sanjay said, an Indian will lie to your face. He’ll say anything to get what he wants from you. And most of them don’t see it as immoral or wrong. So on the one hand, they won’t stick a gun in your face to take your wallet. But they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord.
And I have to give them credit, they’re really convincing salespeople.
In Agra, our driver brought us to a handcrafted rug shop. Inside the shop I immediately knew what was coming: a “tour” of the rug factory where we would be cornered (literally) and pitched to buy one. I had seen this before in other countries and here I saw it coming a mile away. Yet the man came across as so unassuming, so genteel, so incredibly polite, it was impossible to not be won over. He showed us the individual thread counts of the rugs, how the rugs are meticulously woven by hand. He showed us how they design the patterns on elaborate grids and then translate them to their wooden weaves. He then took us downstairs, gave us beverages and launched into one of the most impressive sales pitches I’ve ever heard in my life. The man should be selling luxury cars in the United States. By the end of it, I was busy deciding which rug my mother would like the best. After some gentle bargaining, and some friendly gestures, I made the purchase and arranged to have it shipped to her in the US.
It was about an hour later in the car that I realized what had just happened. The elaborate setup. The way packages with American addresses had been set out just right for us to see. The pictures of “satisfied customers.” I knew what they were, and they were good. My stomach dropped. I’d been had. My mother would never see that rug.
But with only a couple hundred dollars lost, I got away fairly unscathed. An 18-year-old Canadian kid staying in our hostel got taken for thousands of dollars. A couple Indians stopped him on the street, and with perfect English convinced him they worked for a travel agency. They then led him to their “office,” where they handed him “brochures” and “planned” out over a month’s worth of traveling and lodging, telling him the entire time that they were getting him the best deals and that they would pre-arrange every relevant tour. By the end of the hour, he had spent close to $2,000 and felt good about it. By the time he got back to the hostel his face was white. He realized what happened. He asked Sanjay about it and Sanjay told him to immediately call his bank in Canada and cancel the card. Tell them it had been stolen. There was no trip. No lodging. No travel agency. Just two Indian guys with silver tongues.
The scams aren’t limited to high-end tourist items either. Pirated DVD’s that don’t work. Taxis that let you off at the wrong place. Hotels that add suspicious “fees” at the last minute. You get harassed constantly on the streets: vendors following you for half a block trying to hock their useless shit to you. Luckily, I learned long ago the perfect remedy to street touts: iPod + sunglasses. Crank that shit up to 10 and just keep walking. What you can’t hear or see can’t bother you. Would-be harassers and hagglers bounce off you like flies.
But, to be fair, many Indians will go out of their way to be honest with you. There were multiple times where I thought the guy had asked for 50 Rupees when he had actually said something else, and instead of taking the extra money he gave it back. Or like the time a taxi driver offered to show me a famous Minaret for free, for no other reason than because he was Muslim and thought I should see it. Or the kid in Gaya who rode me all the way back to my hotel on the back of his bike, for no other reason than he was excited to practice English with me. Or Sanjay, who on our third night drinking together, surprised me with an entire home-cooked meal made especially for me. Or my tour driver, who after dutifully driving us around for over 13 hours straight, teared up and hugged me when I gave him a 50% tip.
Like anywhere else, Indians aren’t all good or bad. You simply get more of each social extreme. It’s unpredictable. Not to mention emotionally draining. The constant need to be on-guard is taxing on one’s psyche.
In Bangalore, I snapped. My taxi driver from the airport “forgot” to turn on the meter. Realizing this, I watched his odometer and counted the 30 kilometers we traveled. When we arrived, he tried to charge me for 50 kilometers. A shouting match ensued. I threw the money for 30km at him, grabbed my bag and walked into my hotel. He followed. He began pleading to the hotel clerk that I had refused to pay and that his price was the appropriate price. Now, with four people watching, I pulled out my laptop, connected to the wireless network, loaded Google Maps, and showed him that it was, in fact 30 kilometers from the airport to the hotel. My hands were shaking with anger by the time it finished loading. Luckily, he took my money and sulked off. At the door he turned around and said, “But you need to sign the receipt.” I shouted back, “Go fuck yourself.”
I moped into my room, frazzled and bitter. After almost three weeks of dealing with such nonsense, I was reaching my wit’s end. I would not be surprised if I ended up punching someone over something menial soon. I lost it with the taxi driver. And when I did the math in my head, it was just $4. I freaked out over $4.
Luckily I was leaving soon, heading to Singapore in a few days, back to civilization. I laid out on my bed, took a deep breath and opened my laptop. In the inbox was an email from my mom: “Thanks for the rug, I love it!”
In the northern foothills of the Himalayas, the dust morphs into an awkward haze. It sticks to the horizon. Trash still permeates the small villages, although in smaller heaps, many of them charred from their daily burnings. The beggars seem less down-trodden. Cows sprinkle the roadways in between tuk-tuks and overflowing caravans. For the most part, the crowds have dissipated.
India attracts a wide variety of spiritual-seekers, lost western souls criss-crossing its geography in search of meaning or of themselves. India is the cradle to two of the oldest major religions in the world: Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which, unlike their western counterparts, focus predominantly on a first-person perspective of spiritual development. Having been interested in Buddhism for over a decade and having spent much of my college years meditating and attending retreats, my interest was piqued by the plethora of ashrams, gurus, and Dharma groups available.
The reality was a let down. There’s no other way to describe the phenomenon other than what it is: spiritual tourism. Which is somewhat of an oxymoron, especially in Buddhism. And also disheartening as it falls victim to the same scam-inducing practices as India’s other tourist markets. Scattered around places like Bodhgaya and Goa, flyers are shoved in your face, street peddlers try to convince you that they can take you to the best ashram in town (as if there’s a “best” way to do yoga). Some even promise enlightenment… for 10,000 Rupees a week. Now, I’m sure there are legitimate and profound retreats and ashrams in India. But the whole process felt cheap and inauthentic.
Children tried to sell marijuana around yoga retreat centers. And it was apparent why: the dreadlocked, tie-dyed, mid-life-crisis’ed Western clientele who streamed through enthusiastically buying from them told you all you needed to know about the scene. Two westerners I spoke to in Bodhgaya, where I considered sitting in on a retreat for a couple days, told me that they had never meditated before and were excited to learn it in India. When I mentioned that one could learn to meditate in 10 minutes at home to see if they actually liked it, they replied, “Yeah, but it’s so much cooler to do it in India.” My mind’s eye could just see The Buddha face-palming at that statement.
One girl tried to brag to me that she had had visions of Krishna in the northern mountains and that she thinks she may convert to Hinduism. When it came out that she had been smoking local hashish every day for weeks on end, I pointed out that these two things may not be a coincidence. She didn’t like hearing that.
Perhaps it was my own arrogance, but it saddened me. My belief has always been that spirituality is something that is experienced personally, not measured, compared, or quantified. Meditating on a loud bus in Chicago can be just as profound as meditating under the Bodhi Tree itself. In a religion whose whole belief system revolves around impermanence, unattachment to the material world, and equanimity, making a 4,000 mile pilgrimage to a tree in the middle of Nowhere, India, for bragging rights seems, well… counterproductive. I can see the interest historically, and perhaps emotionally, but spiritually, there’s not a whole lot of difference. And so as I passed the flyers, and the hippies with their braids and skullcaps, it became harder and harder not to be a little bitter. I understand that pilgrimages and capitalizing on your most holy site are pretty standard for all of the world’s religions. But I guess in my mind I held out hope that Buddhism was different. And actually, Buddhism IS different. Its the followers who aren’t.
(Or maybe I just don’t like hippies.)
But I can’t help but feel that the volume of poverty in India is related to the solipsistic tendencies of the religions based there. I also can’t help but feel that foreigners regularly mistake being pushed so far out of their cultural comfort-zone as some sort of spiritual experience. When the human mind is presented with paradoxical conditions, it usually reacts with inexplicable feelings and often invents a supernatural explanation for them. And India is rife with paradoxical conditions.
The most beneficial effect of traveling that I’ve found is that it forces you to become more confident and independent in a million, tiny, unnoticeable ways that add up to a great, noticeable whole. The more difficult and exotic the culture, the more it challenges you, the more it engages you on an emotional level, and the more you grow in intangible and personal ways.
Perhaps there’s nothing inherently “spiritual” about the sub-continent, it’s just the most extreme cultural experience a westerner can subject themselves to and as a result grow from.
Every country we go to, our natural inclination is to search for some kind of greater meaning. “China’s finally making the leap,” or “Latin culture is exceedingly passionate,” or “Corruption dominates Russia,” — all of these trite little platitudes that we bring home with us and spill amongst our friends and loved ones to show that we did something significant, that we learned something interesting. This is where I went. This is the meaning. All in one or two sentences.
There’s no single sentence for India. The place is a fucking mess. And it’s the only country that I’ve ever been to where I left more confused than when I arrived. My search for meaning came up empty time and time again.
One day in Bodhgaya, a small town of maybe a few thousand people, I ate at an outdoor restaurant in the town square. Beggars, shirtless children and cows littered the square, along with a few assorted street vendors. I had just returned from touring the temple built for the place The Buddha had become enlightened. Looking out over the town square from my large plate of curry, I watched the beggars stew about, completely ignored by the townspeople. By this time my search for meaning in this land had become frantic, and my emotions fried. I looked at the mound of food before me. It had cost $2.50 US dollars and could feed multiple people. I called the waiter over and ordered another one.
The two nearest beggars were an old man and woman together, huddled on the ground, clothes tattered, white hair and beard matted and dirty. They looked up at me with their emaciated arms outstretched in cups, the same cupped hands one would use to drink from a river. Their eyes sank into their sockets. They seemed to look beyond me. I put the second plate of food down in front of them like a pair of dogs. They looked at it wide-eyed for a moment, and began shoveling the food into their faces as fast as they could.
Curry dripped from the man’s beard. Rice mashed into his black fingernails. Bits of chicken spattered on the ground below them. I stood there watching for a few seconds, expecting something. What? I don’t know. But I wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel like there was some purpose to all of this. That I could walk away with something important from my whole experience.
But instead I felt helpless. It was like I had just put a band-aid on the Titanic. He’s going to go digging through garbage again in a couple hours. He didn’t even look at me. What’s the point?
Obviously, I’m no Mother Teresa. And it’s just as well, Mother Teresa couldn’t save this society from itself. Sometimes human systems become so large that they hurt people, not by design, but by inertia. And it’s beyond any of our ability to grasp, let alone control.
The townspeople had seen what I had just done. And within seconds, a boy approaches me and asks me to buy him a soccer ball. I tell him no and begin to walk away. He follows. Then another man comes up wanting to sell me pirated Bollywood DVD’s. I also tell him no. He gets upset, “You give food to a beggar, but you won’t even buy a DVD from me? Why not?” He felt like I committed some terrible injustice against him.
A crowd was beginning to form around me, looking for handouts. I quietly put on my headphones and sunglasses, turned my iPod up to full blast, and walked through the dust.
Poignant article Mark. Even moreso given the fact that my country finds itself in a similar albeit less extreme situation. I really like the way the site is headed.
Regards from sunny South Africa.
I was meant to be there for two weeks. I stayed there for two days. After arriving in Delhi, from my comfortable western life, my thoughts were, fuck this, its dirty, polluted, hot, loud, busy..And then you add the hassle and all the people try to scam you..and it becomes too much.
I would like to go back there I guess..As much as it has its negatives, it is interesting. The shit you see in India in two days, you won’t see in the western world in two years, if ever.
“The shit you see in India in two days, you won’t see in the western world in two years, if ever.”
Absolutely.
I felt the same way after the first day. I had planned the entire day for sightseeing but returned to my room after a few hours. I couldn’t take anymore. I totally get why you (or anyone) would leave.
*Fawning comment*
Wow!!! I actually had to read this article three times for the magnitude of your words to wash over me correctly. First, I’d like comment on the great writing style. I’ve read from many different authors, but Mark your writing is amazing. Rarely have i inspired by pieces of writing, but wow, i can’t even think of words to describe it.
2) This post’s concept was great. Since you’ve traveled to alot of countries, if you could write more articles along this theme; that is your experiences in other places that would be extremely helpful.
3) Such poverty is really hard to stomach. I grew up in Ghana, and for the first 5 years of my life i remember being homeless with my aunt and now i’ve had the experience to go to boarding school and college in some of the most affluent towns in this country and the dichotomy between the two civilizations is sickening. How can one group of people be so happy while another has to endure so much suffering? Its a rhetorical comment really but kinda makes some of our problems, ” whats the best opener” seem a little dumb. Thanks for sharing.
P.S im currently a college student and even though i’m only in school for finance & accounting i’d like to become a better writer. Do you mind sharing some of your tips, plus writing process that produces articles of this caliber? Thanks.
Thanks for the kind words.
Re: writing better. There’s no secret to it. Read a lot and write a lot. But read good writers. Don’t read trash. Pay attention to what makes great writers great to you. When you come across a sentence you love, try to figure out how they came up with it.
Write regularly. Write for fun. Write about stuff you’re passionate about. Then go back periodically and read stuff you wrote months/years before. Make notes on what works and what doesn’t.
It sounds like you got a lot of spirituality and Buddhism from India after all. Supposedly, it was witnessing the same suffering and injustices that motivated the Buddha to develop the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path in the first place. Perhaps you got exactly the insight you were looking for…
This is a pretty well written article. The level of description is sufficient for me to picture in my mind what you’re going through.
So, what was daygaming in India like?
Just kidding, I enjoyed the article. I have been to India several times for religious pilgrimages and for family, and it’s exactly how you describe it.
And that is the reason why the average Indian is apathetic to suffering. When it is so rampant, you tune it out. It doesn’t exist anymore.
It is also true that if Indians (I’m guessing like the Chinese) know you, they will be extremely hospitable and kind, going completely out of their way. But if they don’t know you, forget it.
Good article. It’s nice to read a western perspective on these things. When my Polish friends wanted to honeymoon in India, I warned them not to. They did not heed my warning. While they didn’t hate it, they would have liked it much better elsewhere. Newly weds would enjoy the serenity of the ocean much better than the dust and poverty.
BTW, regarding Pizza Hut. In India, Pizza Hut and McDonalds are the equivalent of an expensive French restaurant. Every time I go back to India, I have a big laugh thinking about the contradiction between the perception of McDonalds in the US and India.
The irony is, of course, that the local Indian food is fantastic.
Just as meditating in the U.S. is just as meditative as meditating in India, so is realizing that there is terrible poverty and suffering. You see it on the news every day and there are a million charity websites out there you could visit.
I don’t really like this article, and that you are angry, and that you are angry AT INDIA. You knew this was how it was before you set foot in the country. You make a big deal about your moral outrage and you engage in a thought experiment about handing out money, but don’t actually do it.
India was just stuff you already should have known put right in your face, and you didn’t like it because it makes your whole life (Or the life of anyone from an industrialized country) seem childish and selfish.
That was why you were more confused when you left than when you went there. True suffering makes all of us comfortable shits feel like what we are, comfortable shits. It only has meaning if you decide to change your life and become part of the solution. There is no way to turn it into a hip pocket lesson that makes you feel better.
No, it makes you feel worse about yourself. That isn’t confusion, it is the beginning of self knowledge. The ugliness isn’t India, it is that we all knew it was like this all along and never cared to do anything about it. Actually visiting forces this realization, and there is no real way to rationalize it away.
I know that we all have this blindness to how things are, but what I don’t like is the way you try to appropriate some sort of moral high ground for yourself. If you want to spend your days teaching people new lifestyles, fine, do it, but please don’t preach about how horrible Indians are. We all share the responsibility for the state of the world.
If you got the impression that I was blaming Indians specifically as a race or as a culture, then I didn’t mean to give that impression.
“Sometimes human systems become so large that they hurt people, not by design, but by inertia. And it’s beyond any of our ability to grasp, let alone control.”
Really?
“The first thing that strikes you about India is how dirty it is. In a word, the place is disgusting. All of it. The entire country.”
“How could a place like this be allowed to exist? How could normal people walk around with a clear conscience with so much shit and squalor festering about them? I felt indignant. Where was the social accountability? Where was the charity? Where the fuck was the government? ”
“When I ordered hot wings as an appetizer my waitress duly congratulated me on making such an excellent culinary decision. Seriously. That’s what she said. As I looked around the restaurant, I saw each table occupied with fat, well-dressed Indians. ”
“You get harassed constantly on the streets: vendors following you for half a block trying to hock their useless shit to you.”
“When the manager came by to ask me how I was enjoying my meal, my first thought was “This is fucking Pizza Hut. What’s wrong with you?” ”
“But I can’t help but feel that the volume of poverty in India is related to the solipsistic tendencies of the religions based there.”
There’s more of these, but you get the point. I know you think following up with positive statements about Indians somehow erases these statements, but it doesn’t really. But anyway, that wasn’t the main point of my comment.
I would make those same statements regardless of what country I was in. Every country has bad things about it, US included. Some countries have more bad things than others. You seem to be equating my judgments against the conditions in the country with a judgment against the people as a race or a culture. And that’s not true.
Your assertion that I am angry “at India” is false. I’m not mad “at India.” I don’t even dislike India or Indian people. It’s just that many of the experiences I had there made me angry and confused. That’s not their fault. It is what it is. And it’s another part of traveling.
You can sit here and say I “should have known” what I was getting into. But knowing something exists and then going and seeing it are two completely different experiences.
Excellent job, in my old-guy opinion, Mark. I could quibble with this or that but I’m not a critic or instructor, just a reader and I enjoyed this a lot.
The coolest thing for me is that you put yourself out there fearlesly in writing it – that’s why no-nickname is so offended. I have not been to India but I have been in the townships in South Africa a number of times, and as much as I want to see myself as a “good guy” who is enlightened and embodies a moral outlook, well, I was often disgusted and all my human feelings overflowed in terror and disgust. Many of these people lived (no, subsisted) in…”sub-human” ways. I knew I was “not supposed” to feel like that, but I did. It was the idea that my genetic equals were not behaving in ways I was programmed to “know” humans behaved. And violence was a heartbeat away, too. Serious, flaming, lethal violence. I enjoyed that you told your story the way you experienced it, not how it is supposed to be.
I read this story as one chapter and a point along an arc of personal growth. Two years ago you would have had a different experience and two years from now the same trip would be something else as well. Keep going, I say.
Thank you, Mark, for this extremely well-written and eye-opening piece. I was born and raised in China and immigrated to the US. Sometimes I forget just how good I have it here, and things like this immediately take me back.
Issaka, my husband worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana. The questions you’ve posed are difficult ones. It’s difficult to know how to reconcile these things. People have fought and died over these very questions.
Maybe this world of suffering, as the Buddhists call it, can never be changed.
I really enjoyed the article. To me it was clear that you were describing things as you experienced them, in a very genuine way.
Great article man, I loved how it had nothing to do wiht pickup. I’m not being sarcastic, I fucking loved it.
liked that one.
For Im planning a longer trip to South-America, is there any chance youll come up with a similar article concerning your experiences there??
cheers
Pontius
Damn Mark I read your blog and then get all insecure about my own…haha.
Did you ever consider a career in journalism?
I never got to finish your book because I’m reading a dozen others, but it’s really good of course. It’s just really hard for me to read another pickup book. But honestly I think I would read anything you wrote.
Mark, when I first started reading this, I had no idea it was you. I just noticed Mike put it up on FB and I clicked on it to see what it was. I thought this was some long time published author writing. Around the pizza part I realized it was you. This is absolutely brilliant writing. I’m blown away. -Nick
Thank you for such an interesting and informative article. I am forwarding it to a friend whose daughter wants to study meditation and yoga in India, and I’m hoping that she will share it with her. This is a real contrast to the advertising campaign “Incredible India” that has been on TV. …now if I could be convinced that Columbia was a good choice, I’d feel a lot better!
It’s a poignant reminder of just how good the average American has it, even as things have grown steadily shittier.
My daughter spent a few months in India last year and stayed in an Ashram in Northern India. She had a good experience only because she had connections and and was in a protective area.
I agree that traveling on your own without knowing anyone is a very different experience. It is for people with strong stomachs to be able to witness so much poverty in deplorable conditions. A doctor friend of mine found it deplorable to see so many sick people since he knew that many of the ailments were easy cures for the people and they were just getting worse without them.
Glad your Mom received her rug. I enjoyed your article and hopefullly it will turn things around for my daughter who wants to go back on her own.
My ex-girlfriend spent two weeks in an ashram in southern India and also loved her experience. My brother’s current girlfriend spent two months with an NGO in the cities, contracted parasites, became seriously ill and hated it. The consensus I’ve been getting is that the ashrams really are kind of secluded tourist experiences. The equivalent of going to Mexico and staying in a resort in Cancun. You’re kept arm’s length away from everything/everyone else and the experience is quite different.
Fantastic food though!
I travel a lot by myself and love it, however going somewhere as crowded and chaotic as India is daunting even for me.
This article still makes me want to go just to experience it, thanks for writing it, and I’m glad your mom got her rug.
Thank you for describing a microcosm of India. Though some of the issues you describe carry weight, I feel that you have simply described a purely western view of the East. I could imagine the same article being written by some Lord from the yesteryear BRitish Raj.
In any case, your opinion is your opinion. Just as the world has its opinion on the obesity (thanks to McDonalds) & the ignorance (thanks to Miss. South Carolina) in America.
What does America have to do with India? Oh we have bad things! You have bad things too! So there! As an American I seem to be a lot less of a “homer” than you are personally. That’s probably the case a lot.
> your opinion is your opinion
his observations based on his rexperience
> an unending stream of humanity.
My belief is yet strengthened again that India’s official population count of 1.2 billion is very far off. My guess is between 1.4 and 1.6
This might give you some perspective about India:
http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Osho/osho/Osho-on-Poor-India.html
As an Indian, I can vouch that a fair bit of things you’ve spoken about is probably true. But there is nothing new here, any third-world country is bound to have problems like this. What did you expect, really? You first-worlders stink with ignorance of what happens elsewhere in the world. And when you’ve had a chance to get small whiff of the pungent reality (pun intended), you see it fit to complain with the ‘born with a silver spoon’ attitude. I chuckled, really. Chucked hard. And please, I’ve lived in the both the US and in my home country long enough to see that you really are no different. I’ve offered a homeless person on a sidewalk in Chicago, and I saw him gorge the food down like I had offered him ambrosia.
And then, you have your half-baked hippies come over with some expectation to find meaning for their existence and what not. I only hope that they get a dose of reality and wake the fuck up.
I’ve been to over a dozen third-world countries. I’ve seen poverty. What’s so shocking about India is the magnitude and density of it.
Obviously every country has problems, and many of the problems are the same, just under different guises. This piece is simply an observation of my reaction to India’s.
I don’t understand why so many people seem to be getting upset and yelling at “first worlders” instead of saying “yeah guys, some people need some help let’s figure that out”. It seems like a whole bunch of pride is being defended instead of an open honest discussion about some things that we could all as human beings work together towards improving.
> your opinion is your opinion
I have seen this time and time, Indians can be pretty “sensitive” to external criticism. But to give them credit: they can be downright vicious when they themselves are doing the criticizing at their *own” India.
Bullshit, Latin American third world countries are far better off then India or any place near. I would venture to say there are even some sub-saharan african states that are far better off. Fact of the matter is that your culture sucks ass, were the Japanese complaining and saying shit after they were nuked or the Germans? Hell no, they’re industrialized and became first world countries and they didn’t cover up shit. Indians love to complain that someone else is to blame for all their poverty, guess what? A lot of fucking countries got fucked over by other powers but they managed to recover from it as I just provided the examples of, its the inherent shitty Indian mentality that’s the problem.
Mark, if you are interested in understanding why India is the way it is and why Indians overseas lie about it becoming a first world country read these blog posts, it has everything to do with the minds of these people.
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/india-is-a-shithole/
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/india-hell-on-earth/
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/the-hindu-work-ethic-by-dota/
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/the-glory-of-brahmin-caste-eugenics/
Nice article. Being an Indian, I understand and can see through the words. Truth be told, societal obligations and real life drama is very high in my country ( there I said it ). Life is hard. There are 1.2 billion people in the rat race to nowhere ( ok, not 1.2 Billion literally but a few hundred millions). We are people who can adapt or should I say are brought up to adapt.When we see so much poverty, hunger and filth around it disgusts us. *But* the same filth was our day to day encounter when we were growing up. We never felt the disgust. Why? The answer lies in the very fact that we adapt. we moved from filth to a good paying job and adapted to it. So for few years I suddenly felt awkward revisiting the filth but then I adapted to see through it, pretend like it is not there.
I know it is damning but we have ourselves to blame and to some extent the social setup here, which is pretty darn screwed up. No matter how much Ashrams, sages or thinkers we produce, we cannot deny the fact that the shit back home needs attention.
Keep writing!
You are right about almost everything. I don’t know why Indians always take it personally. Yes we are poor, let’s fucking accept it and work to get rid of poverty.
First world’ers have worked their ass off to reach where ever they are today. The problem with us Indians is that we are not willing to work. We are lazy people who will die of hunger to escape doing any work.
Being an Indian I will say majority of Indian mentality is shitty. They have caste system in open and they cry about racism. Its fucking ridiculous to see them not accepting the facts but instead are stubborn about why westerners call them poor ( even though that they are poor). I personally am sick and tired of this country and politicians. ( blood suckers).
Very interesting indeed
, I am an indian, have travelled a bit, but lived in India all my life. We are a land scarce country, but we are poor for last 300 years only, if any of you pick up global GDP, till 1600 AD India and China were the number 1 and 2. So that we were poor always is basically factual ignorance . Europe before the renaissance was in similar situation and so was Britain – a lot of its afflunce latter came from India. US was not very different some time ago, may not be very different if the financial crisis repeats once again.
Is India dirty, welll only if you visit cities and slums ( we have five metro which are where most of people visit), but I drive 50,000 KM every year in India and a lot fo what was described in the article is very alien to Indians also ( not everyone of the 1.3 billion live in five cities in India.
Do Indians like you coz they know you? Sounds very logical … I have been to most western countries and it has been very difficult to even have polite conversations and very easy as well. I have never formed an opinion about a country by spending few days
, think the author loves making deduction easily. I have received warm reception in Western world and been made to feel very welcome amongst well educated people … have been taken for a ride and been told how uncouth I am because i did not know low customs … all in countries with less population than a single metro in India and yet i never generalized my reception.
I do not think I have any dispute with what you say, coz we all have our image of countries – A lot of Indians have very interesting views on the western world .. does not make those right or wrong.
I would end by saying … the article does come across from someone who has travelled but I guess his ability to imbibe the contrast the world has to offer from perspective other than his appears limited .. these are the people who would never understand how Aid has destroyed a lot of countries and that India despite its grime and challenges remains the worlds largest functioning democracy!!
vineet
Vineet, excellent comments. Mark, you may travel the world but your perspective is very narrow. Of course nothing anyone here says will change your mind. They say you either love or hate India. I don’t agree. Did I love it? Nooooooo….. Well maybe sometimes. Did I hate it? Occasionally. But it is probably the most compelling, intriguing, frustrating, colorful, (fill in a dozen more adjectives) place I have ever seen. It’s a mistake to judge India by your own cultural values.
Well as a guy who posts on your forum and one who has chatted with you before. This article did kinda touch me. Funny how I think chance is against me but if chance hadn’t been against me, I would have been one of those people starving on the streets.
It did aid my insecurity which has been haunting me for quite some time. I mean seriously, getting out of all that poverty I think the last thing an Indian guy would be concerned about is getting a lot of women. Unlike an Italian guy, an Indian guy does not have that comfort to worry about women and doing good with them and I am slowly starting to see why.
I know I did not have to be in the US, luck brought me here for a reason. Your post moved me and I know that whatever little I think I may have here is a lot compared to any of my ancestors or those who were not fortunate enough to come here.
I’ve just returned from a month in India, my third visit, and your writing very much expresses how I felt about the country this time around. Such eloquent writing, wish I’d written it myself!
What I found most disturbing this visit was the even bigger inequities that urbanization & globalization have produced since my last visit 8 years ago. Like you, I kept asking myself why was nothing being done for the vast numbers of urban poor when there was clearly unbelievable wealth in a city such as Delhi. It is not just the 300,000,000 middle class, but an equally thriving black economy, in a country where corruption is endemic across every level. I met Europeans living in India who were gobsmacked at the amount of cash the black economy generates.
And yet there seemed to be more people living on the street, in stairwells, pocket parks & countless other public places than my last visit. The filth and garbage is totally out of control. With such a large population of urban poor, why not employ some to keep the streets clean as happens in cities such as Beijing?
There are appealing aspects of India which have kept me returning – I’ve met some great people, seen beautiful & diverse regions and cultures, but these are diminishing for me. This time I saw the disturbing growth of the worst features of western culture – selfishness & greed. The thing with India in comparison to other countries is that everything is writ large.
What you describe is the massive cultural shock that one gets as a Westerner when first exposed to India. I have lived here for more than a year now, and the first few months seemed close to what you have written. It simply takes a lot of time to be able to even deal with what one sees without distancing oneself from it, be that in the reaction of simply not being able to deal with all the poor people who want something from you, and ignoring them, or being filled with the urge to help everyone, and the frustration at one’s lack of ability to do so. People do live like this, and they lived like this before you saw it. Yet, they too have their daily routines, their belongings, their worries. They are not so different. I know people who live in the slums who are a lot happier than most Westerners I have met. These things are not obvious at first, though. It is a different pace of life here, more focused on family and relationships than in the West, particularly the US. Someone who visits the country for a short while will not see so much of it, for the simple reason that they will interact a lot with the usual salesmen who congregate around the touristy spots, and who tend to try to rip you off in one way or another. (By the way, negotiating hard, standing up for oneself when tricked, and just laughing at the people who try to pull it off, starts coming more naturally after a while.
) Finally, it is a good thing that there is so much inequality here right now. Let me clarify what I mean by this. Previously, there has been a lot of inequality in the world in the sense that the West had a lot of money and India did not have so much. When that is the case, there is not so much chance of a poor Indian working his way up, or benefitting from the rich. So, the sharp contrast present today in the bigger cities may look obscene, but it also seems to me like an unavoidable step towards a better future for everyone here.
I just returned from a two-week trip to India, and I agree with much that you have written. I’ve been to other third-world countries, too, but have never seen the scope of poverty that you see there. My experience wasn’t quite as raw as yours. I was on a tour which I believe protected me at times through sheltered hotels to stay in and a big bus to travel in. I had some wonderful experiences — seeing the Taj Mahal and other Moghul sites, and also having my photo taken with Indian people. Also being part of a wonderful religious ceremony at Varanasi, where no one tried to sell me anything or even noticed I was there. But as you said, the mounds of garbage are there, with pigs and dogs and monkeys eating out of them; the shrouded forms of homeless people wrapped in blankets sleeping against walls and on train platforms; the maimed beggars and dirty ragged children imploring you for handouts. And the wealthy overfed Indians ignoring it all (as we would do in our country too, to be fair). I also found India to have many contradictions and I felt confused by the time I left. I cannot seem to answer the question my friends ask me, “So, did you have a fabulous time?” Thanks for sharing your thoughts so honestly.
Fantastic writing. I would love to see more work like this.
I can’t say because I’m not Indian, but it seems that a lot of the angry Indian posters who are coming here are being a little touchy. All of our countries have their problems. There is suffering everywhere. Some places have more than others, but there’s no such thing as a perfect place. I don’t see anything wrong with just pointing out what’s bad or shocking about a certain country. These guys act like you’re raacist or something for saying it.
You might find this blog interesting – it’s one by an Australian girl married to Indian guy and living in Mumbai. It touches a lot of different topics like living in India, inter-cultural relationships and lots of other stuff –
http://www.whiteindianhousewife.com
This is a very interesting post. As a guy who was raised in India and lived there for half his life I sometimes am puzzled at how much westerners desire the “Indian experience”. The plains aren’t anything special, although there are things I miss about India(delicious Indian food and the train rides. Go there with an Indian friend so you have someone who can take care of you.
I tell them all to skip the plains and instead travel to the Himalayas or other remote places. Skip the guided tours, find an Indian friend who you can trust and have him take care of arrangments. Go hiking, visit some monasteries, and enjoy nature and Tibetan food. Life up there is at a different pace and there are far less people out to scam you. I’m talking about the really remote places in Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh. Most people make the mistake of going to the big cities. Indian big cities are horrible, smaller mountain times are better.
Also, if you are in the plains go for a train ride. Traveling by train is truly the best way to see India. You don’t have all that smoke in your face from the roads and its relaxing to stand at an open door and watch the countryside race by.
Limited natural resources: Unlimited human needs.
Mark – if you die, you will make sure that 1 persons worth of everything that you consume will be enjoyed by somebody else. So instead of writing the piece of shit above go do something about those roiling in shit. You are directly responsible for causing hunger in the world by not dying immediately which implies that by having not sacrificed each and everything you consume in the world. Maybe before writing the article you were ignorant – but post your visit to Indai you are enlightened (see you did achieve enlightment) and you should immediately kill yourself to stop the pressure on the limited resources god endowed us with.
Though my this small comment might not make any difference to the world or your wretched mentality, but I would still do it because my morality is not subject to the material value of the results of my actions but driven by the selfish pleasure in the perennial hope of seeing a better world as per my lenses. Unfortunately the bad only that you saw in India is because your parents have only taught you to blame the victim for its poor state. Your heart aches and hand goes out to help only to the one who hardly needs, and when it comes to the overwhelmingly deprived, your heart is well trained to find an excuse – “oh! what good can i do to the state of the world”. Your hand gets crippled which is otherwise full of joy masturbating in the name of paying the taxes: what difference does it make to your governments booty, to cast your vote: does your 1 vote elect the president; then why this fucking apathy towards doing good to the beggars of India or the world – because you are that same white skin mother fucker bastard who had raped India for 200 years to bring it to the state you see today. And I am an Indian. And even the greatest morals I believe I have crumbles to think about the devastation your ancestors have caused to India. At least you can kill a few of your grandfather’s generation if they are still alive.
I have rarely read a comment this deluded, hateful or disgusting. What an imbecile.
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Mark, your article gives such an honest and unadulterated insight on India, on what it really is. Few capture it so well.
India is unfathomable to those who haven’t experienced it, so don’t give notice to these 2 cent chauvinist Indian commentators. You’ll be surprised how many of them there are. They are in denial or involved in a culture of victim hood. Maybe it’s the only way for them to remain sane amongst the chaos. A chaos which may partly be accounted to the Imperialists, is also something everyone in the Indian society is responsible for.
Thanks for reminding me of the stark reality. It is something I had grown apathetic towards.
“But I can’t help but feel that the volume of poverty in India is related to the solipsistic tendencies of the religions based there.”
If that were the case Hindu and Chinese civilizations combined would not have been the most productive and prosperous in the world at one time.
India’s problem lies solely in its explosive population size. Going on 2 billion people crammed into an area that is smaller than the continental United States.
If you want to escapte the dust I suggest tropical South India. Kerala is absolutely stunning, as are the 7 Sisters Northeastern States.
And cut to the chase – were you able to pick up any almond eyed Indian girls?
This piece really captures a lot of the most important things one feels when one goes to the sub-continent. For me one of the most elusive but important feelings is the one you start off with: the vague but definite sense of moral outrage about the mere fact of extremes of wealth and poverty. That’s something that has never stopped giving me trouble since I first went (when I was 15).