Six months later...

James Cameron described India as a “tormented, confused, corrupt, futile and exasperating place”, yet could not explain his love affair with the subcontinent to which he continued to return for more than 25 years.

I cannot even fathom the thought of leaving India right now. It's become an addiction. My love for India is unconditional. I mean, come on, it would have to be. Before I had left, I'd heard people say that you will either love it or hate it. Yet I must admit that not only do I love to love India, but I've also loved to hate it: Your train has been delayed another six hours; when it arrives it chugs at 20kmph for the first eight hours; you've asked 10 people for directions to the same destination only to be given 10 different answers; nobody knows where the postoffice is; you made a reservation and they have no record; the rickshaw wallah has decided to charge you double for no apparent reason; the exasperation you feel at the powertrips of pen pushing minor officials when you queue for an hour to fill in a form, wait another hour for a different clerk to stamp it, another to staple it and yet another to check it, until finally, you are told that you filled in the wrong form and need to wait in a different queue...

But what I have learnt is that to give way to anger is to surrender. What's more, despite how testy India can get, like a lover making it up for doing you wrong, she can also make you quickly smile again, charming you with scents, colours, beauty; with the hybrid that fuses rich, ancient mythologies and spirituality with daily living; with her ruins, temples and fascinating monumental architecture that tell stories of lost civilizations.

It's the place where the smell of incense mixes with burning cow dung as the waft of frying onions and a concoction of cumin, corriander, tumeric and saffron engulf your nostrils. It's the place where men and women distribute garlands of marigolds and jasmine for no apparent reason; where villagers take to the streets in celebration of a marriage, the groom on horseback preceeded by a brass band and proud young men throwing shapes they've seen in Bollywood movies as they dance ahead of the procession.

There is no other place like India. It is the birthplace of Ayurveda - The Knowledge of Life that is said to alleviate physical, mental and spiritual suffering; of mantras, mandalas, meditations and the asanas and prayanamas of the great sage, Patanjali. It is the birthplace of great writers and poets such as Ravindranath Tagore and R.K. Narayan, the scholar, G.V Desani, not to mention the world-acclaimed filmmaker, Satyajit Ray and the legendary composer and musician, Ravi Shankar.

It is also a country where even the most diverse groups of people will make a stand against the injustices that offend their beliefs and rights as human beings. As the writer-journalist Gita Mehta says, “Where else would a hundred thousand naked sadhus with matted hair break off their meditations and descend from their mountain caves to scale the towering gates of the Indian Parliament determined to breech the nation's citadel and ban cow slaughter....” and “where else would a mass of hermaphrodites and eunuchs march on the capital to demonstrate against family planning – on the grounds that it would statistically lessen their odds of being born?”

This is India!
This is the India that has delighted me, cajoled me, bounced me up and down on her knee like a mother does a child; it is the India that has had me tearing out my hair, had me in tears of frustration, driven me crazy and tested my tolerence in a hundered different ways. The heat, the people, the traffic, the chaos, the corruption, the propaganda, Bollywood and the mafia that runs it; the epic journeys that find you amidst the clouds and ice of mountains one day, and the scorching heat of a holy city the next ... Characters you attract, the reflections in their faces; the places you run to and the ones you run from, because once again, it is not the place you're running from, but yourself... It's a crazy world is India.

Six months more...
Six months later, I've got myself six months more. Like a cat on springs, I've landed on my feet at the shakiest times, so not only have I survived India, but India, to the great surprise of my comedian of a friend, David, has also survived me!

It's been a journey of the heart, mind and soul that's also brought haunting times as you face yourself and the things that you've spent the best part of your life trying to run from. Mother India gives you a good dose of tough love, taking you kicking and screaming on an emotional rollercoaster, bringing you to ask a million questions about yourself and about where you are going in life.

Spiritual Beings...
I was searching for a spiritual master and I found not just one, but a fair few of them. I once read that “The Supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine.” We all possess it but we don't all realise it because it's not the easiest thing to find. I mean, how does one go about discovering the so-called Supreme-Self? Do we need to go to hell and back in order to discover it? I met a handful of what I can call “spiritual beings”, and it seems some of them have been to hell and back. Each one had a special characteristic that made them shine. Some of them possessed a conscious connection with the non-physical world. This is why India is so special. It helps you, you, you, you and you, see very clearly, your own true identity.

Learning...
India has felt a bit like a process where a scheme of things happen in order for you to learn a few things. I can say that I have learnt a few things about myself. For example, I, yes, that's me, Anu, have learnt a degree of self-discipline! Speech for example is something that I know we should all control. In the movie American Gangster, I remember Denzel Washington as Superfly, tell his brother, “the one with the biggest mouth in the room, is the weakest one in the room.” It's because speech happens to take up so much energy, which reminds me of something that I read: “Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words, instead of serenity, peace and bliss.”

Special friends that I met on travels informed me that I am a Blue Crystal Storm on the Mayan Calendar – a source of self-generating energy, that I bring art to the world and that I am a people connector. Sounds good, eh? But on the flip side, I also have trouble directing that energy in the right way and at times, it can come out all wrong when I try to do everything at once, or when there are too many people and I try to please everyone and forget about me. These are some of the things that I have realised about me.

Selfish in a good way...
But there's one thing that I've noticed about being in India: That it all ends up sounding a bit like me, me me. India has made me think about me and my life so much that it's almost selfish. In fact it's probably selfish of me for making you read this about me right now.

Yet while coming to India can be seen as one of the most selfish things a person can do, it's a kind of selfishness that can only be beneficial to the world (change yourself, change the world and all that malarky), and the people that you love. So on that note, I think my friends and family will be relieved to know that I'm going to spare them of my presence for a little while longer!

Dreams ... visualizations... realities...
Monitor my personal development over the past six months and you will see it ricochets up and down in the violent motion of the zig-zag pattern. I'm now aiming to sustain a living in India without sacrificing my personal freedom. To be free is the ultimate dream and I've met many inspiring characters that have given me the boost I need to never stop trying to achieve that dream.

I ain't through yet!
So I'm not through with India just yet. In fact I don't think I will ever be through with India. Others I've met are ready to move on to pastures new such as Thailand, China, Mongolia even, but me, I'm happy to stay here and suckle on the bosom of Mother India for as long as I possibly can.

Mother India has already taken me a good length of the way to the place I'd like to be. I've come so far, so there's no way I'm ready to stop and turn back around. Not today, not tomorrow. Maybe it could happen the day after, but it will take something very special to tear me away from this land of love.