Memories of India

These past few days, in between working on my website, painting and taking care of Tara (!!!)...I have been sorting through things. I came across my India pics...When I turned 30, I spent 4 months in India, travelling by myself. I was born in South Africa but am of Indian descent. This was my first visit to the land of my ancestors...of mySELF. It was a pilgrimage that continues to gift me, even today. How can I even begin to describe what it all meant to me. How this experience changed me, blessed me, strengthened me and nourished me. This experience brought me face to face with mySELF. India was a mirror held up to me, reflecting everything I am. The first month was horrible! A mixed-up jumble of thoughts, sounds and smells, pollution and noise, blazing heat and confusion, malaria pills and adjustments. I felt a rage of emotions-guilt, frustration, confusion, anger, distaste, contempt, misery, euphoria. I realized that the ugly monster of mental colonization lived inside of me. I had to learn how to love India, learn to let go and trust the Universe. Then one day , suddenly, I fell in love with India! And once I did, I saw the whole of life unfold...I saw how life is mixed with death. I saw that change is the only constant; everything is in flux, non-permanent, in transition. Marigolds mixed with dung. In India, everything is surreal. Life is lived in the streets, out in the open, in technicolor. Humility and arrogance, temples and blaring music, ancient stone statues and Sanskrit chantings, stultifying poverty and the blazing sun. When I stood at the tip of India with Lanka behind me...I saw the whole of Mother India before me. This is where India begins...this is where I begin. I fell in love with India that day and in the process...with myself too...Here is the picture-I remember it as if it were yesterday.

(me at the tip of Mother India-Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu-1999)