I Wonder If I Know Him: Losing Your Self In India
As I am preparing to go and live in India for 6–7 months starting this October, I am revisiting articles which I wrote regarding my various trips to India. I’ve been to India a total of 13 times by now, with yearly visits since 2009, with one interruption. I originally wrote this article in 2014, after a journey to the East Indian state of Odisha (or Orissa, as it was formerly called), a state with many holy sites and ancient temples, which was followed by a stay in Kolkata during its most prestigious religious festival, the Durga Pujas. Finally on my stop-over in Mumbai before my flight out, I caught the end of the Durga festival on the beach in Juhu. As such, the original article circled around religion, spirituality, and the connected photos. However, I’ve updated the article to include more personal reflections, and how I come to think of the reasons I keep going back to India: there I can lose myself.
During that particular trip, I was taking black and white (and some colour) Polaroid photos, which illustrate this article. They are not incidental to the story. On that particular journey, they became a part of the narrative. More on that later. All photos are © by the author, that is me, of course.
In October 2014, I returned to India for what was my tenth trip to that country. While revisiting familiar places such as Mumbai and Kolkata, I also spent time in a corner of India which I haven’t been to before, namely Odisha. This Eastern state lays claim to some of the oldest temples in all of India, if not the world — temples up to 2000 years old. For all that, it is not really a tourist destination — at least not a place where western tourists flock to. As such I saw but three westerners during my stay in Bhubaneswar, and while Puri and its beaches attract a number of backpackers, they are vastly outnumbered by the Indian tourists and pilgrims. Puri is home to the large 12th century Jaganath temple, one of India’s four holy pilgrim sites. Bhubaneswar is home to a range of temples, some of them dating back to BC, including the imposing Lingaraj temple with its 54m high tower. Other holy places include the caves at Khandagiri and Udayagiri, hewn out of the rock by Jain priests in the second century BC, and a more recent Buddhist pagoda in Dhauri, honouring the warrior-king turned pacifist Buddhist, Ashoka. The largest temple in the vicinity is the Sun Temple in Kornarak, dating back to the 13th century.
Odisha is not as spectacular as, say, Rajasthan or Kerala, it lacks glamorous, photogenic palaces and colourful ancient cities. Odisha certainly has magnificent landscapes, but in the end, the State seems to be very much about its holy places, and thus about religion and spirituality. Obviously, India is by nature a very spiritual country, or should I say, Indians are a very spiritual people. Not all, of course, but many, even those who are not outright religious, consider themselves to be spiritual. This is reflected in their outlook, their customs big and small, their food, their adornments (which are never just adornments but always symbols of something), and not to mention the many religious festivals held throughout the year. Odisha, with its high concentration of temples and pilgrims, and its lack of worldly attractions, seems very much like an epicenter of Hindu spirituality; and indeed, there was not a single person from Orissa who I met who didn’t, by word or by deed, display their affinity towards, or veneration of, all things religious and spiritual.
Religion is not something I generally think highly of. I believe it is at the root of most evil perpetrated in the world, as it constitutes the greatest single cause of hatred and intolerance; and certainly India had and still has its fair share of strife caused by religious intolerance – and indeed, sectarian violence has been on the rise the last few years. Yet it is very hard not to be charmed by the outlook on life which rises out of the beliefs of many of the Indians whom I met over the years. For starters, their attitude is generally a very inclusive one, at least with regard to visitors (whether or not that same tolerance is granted to family members, close friends or neighbours is a different discussion). It’s also very life affirming and optimistic. And it even produces effects that you wouldn’t normally think – such as the fact (as a Kolkatan friend of mine claims) that the preponderant veneration of the goddess Kali in the city of Kolkata leads to women in Kolkata being generally more empowered than in other parts of India.
This makes India a good place to visit as the people you meet are open and welcoming, tolerant of one’s quirks and differences, curious in a good way and ready to become friends. Visiting India is more about meeting people than it is about seeing great sights.
The spirituality of the country, of course, has always been very much an attraction to Westerners. Songs have been been composed about it (hello Beatles), books have been written about it, from E.M. Forster’s master piece to trite like Eat Pray Love; movies have been made of those books, and more besides, multiplying the clichés for the masses. And the topic, always, is about finding yourself in India.
Or rather, finding your self. It’s a very Western approach to Eastern spirituality, whether it’s Hinduism or Buddhist or Tao: corrupting those philosophies, which in general abhor the “I”, the ego, to make them all about finding your self, about confirming your ego. Turning these philosophies on their head to search for that which is inherently at the center of all Western thinking: me, myself, I.
I’m neither a great spiritual person, nor a philosopher. I certainly don’t go to India to do soul searching, or worse, to find my self. Rather, I go there to lose my self. I shed my history, my self importance, my opinions, my routines, my place in society. I lose myself within the multitudes in Indian cities, I’m just one more sandcorn being blown along in a disintegrating mandala. Yes, I’m an outsider, trusted or not, accepted or not, ignored or not. I am but one sandcorn, I am not at the center of things, I hope I represent nothing of importance, no country or religion or outlook. I want you to ignore me. Or not. I don’t want to be a new me, I want to be … nothing. No-one.
(And yet, you do represent something. The jeans can be frayed, the T-shirt worn out: you’re still the pale-skinned one who can afford intercontinental flights, a shiny camera (used or not), and a hotel room to withdraw to when you crave privacy. You’re also male, another privilege not easily discarded. That is one skin you cannot shed. But you try to make the best if it, hoping that if you ignore it, they will too. But of course, the world doesn’t quite work that way).
But despite the strangeness, the foreignness (mine, not theirs), I find myself within, not without. And from that place, I can observe, not myself, but those around me. I can make connections. With those curious enough to stop to say hello and exchange a word or a question. Those willing to take me into their lives. Those who want nothing but give a lot. And sometimes, those who give but also expect something in return, sometimes a little, sometimes more. You’re never free of that.
I’ve fallen in love in India, I’ve had my heart broken and I’ve broken hearts. I’ve made friendships which have lasted over 30 years, and some which dwindled away as lives moved on. Because that is the nature of this: you come, you partake, you leave at the end of 3 weeks or a month. You’re always arriving, and you’re always departing.
And then there are the photos. 90% of the photos I take in India are portraits. People in India are mostly happy to be photographed, all you need is ask. I asked pilgrims and priests, strollers on the beach, passers-by on the street. That particular trip, I didn’t even need to ask as many asked me to be photographed – that was the attraction of the Polaroid camera. I was often asked by families to take their photos – I never ask families, or mothers with babies. But they asked me, and here I am with photos I would else never have taken. The result is an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life. Using Polaroids, I was able to share as well: I generally took two exposures, one for the people I was photographing, one for me.
(This led to one incredible scene on the beach in Puri where at some point I was encircled by a group of about 50 people wanting their picture taken. As I had run out of film, I literally had to flee the scene.)
So, at this point I’m curious what it will mean to stay longer, half a year or more. While I discarded the Polaroid a few years ago, I am thinking of taking an instant camera with me. But that is a story for another day.
Finally: the title of this article is based on a poem by the Kolkatan writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore, a poem very much about losing yourself:
I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This ‘I’ beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This ‘I’ is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the life of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself –
The ‘I’ that reaches everywhere.
I Wonder If I Know Him, by Rabindranath Tagore
(Translated by William Radice)
