The recent terrorist attack on India took me back to my first visit to that country 15 years ago. India remains embedded in my mind as a land of contrasts, a land where everything happens in extremes. I hadn’t expected to see a major terrorist strike there, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. Although I like to think of India as a peaceful country, the media reports ongoing quarrels with Pakistan, its Islamic neighbour. And although I have personally experienced Indians as peace-loving and gracious people, Hindu extremists in the province of Orissa have launched a major persecution against Christians. It’s almost like finding that a dear friend has a dual personality.
After that first visit, I recorded the following thoughts on the contrasts and contradictions I experienced in India.
I gaped at the white marble domes and minarets of the world’s most famous tomb. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a memorial to his great love, Mumtaz Mahal, who died at age 39 while giving birth to his 14th child. What a great love he had – a love that produced a work of art so beautiful it continues to captivate people centuries after the deaths of the lovers.
In Agra, I met the descendants of the craftsmen who decorated the Taj Mahal. They have kept alive the skills their ancestors used in binding semi-precious stones so tightly to marble they virtually become part of the whole. Today, they craft beautiful objects for tourists. A neighbouring embroidery shop displayed a masterpiece – a tapestry with tiny stitches that looked like real brush strokes. The manager explained, “It took the artist 30 years to make it. Now as an old man, someone has offered him two million dollars, but he refuses to sell it.”
The beauty I encountered almost always co-existed with ugliness. A tourist saw the body of a dead child in the river flowing behind the Taj Mahal and hurried to find a policeman. The officer expressed disinterest. Referring to a local tribe, he said, “Those people abandon their dead. They just throw them in the river.” When pressed, he agreed to send someone to remove the body, but he appeared to have difficulty understanding why the death of a child would upset foreign visitors.
I experienced mixed emotions as I visited the Old Delhi market. There I saw streets crowded with pedestrians, rickshaws, bicycles, and a variety of motorized vehicles. People, wearing everything from business suits to rags filled virtually all the free space on the narrow streets. Hundreds of shops with fronts gaping open served multitudes of shoppers, testifying to the economic vibrancy of the city.
However, beggars with outstretched hands accosted me constantly. One with twisted legs and spine walked like an animal on all fours, holding a brick in each hand to act as hooves for his front feet. Appalled, I looked away, but my eyes fell on the narrow back and thin legs of the middle aged man pedalling my cycle rickshaw. I guessed that he weighed less than 90 pounds: small for a man doing the work of a horse.
India: a land where beauty and ugliness walk arm in arm down every street. Is India unique? Maybe the paradox I saw in India occurs in every part of the world. Possibly, this ambiguity has more to do with the condition of man than his culture or country.
Let’s all hope and pray that India reacts to this terrorist attack from its beautiful side, in a way that doesn’t result in another war the world doesn’t need.