Tara Paul: Reflections on India
Through travel recommendations, language barriers, simple inquiries, and safety tips we are each coming up with a different concept of what Indian culture is through the clouded vision of an outsider. The information gathered and filtered internally impacts our ideas on how to travel, what to eat, and what time to come home, whether or not to commute solo, how much to spend for the sake of comfort and safety, the list is unending. In the end, we each take India as it is presented to us and then strive to understand where and how we fit within it. The truth is all of our perceptions are correct to some degree. But I’m getting the impression that it’s impossible to understand the complexity of India without giving consideration to every piece and without admitting that there is so much more we don’t yet understand.
There is an old Indian fable that describes the experience well: Five blind men wanted to discover what an elephant is like. After being led to the animal, each one approached form a different angle and felt with his hands that part which was within his reach. The man who felt the trunk said the elephant is like a snake. The one who felt the body disagreed and said the elephant is like a great wall. The man who felt the tusks further disagreed, asserting that the elephant is like a spear. The fourth man felt the tail and insisted that the creature is like a rope, and the last man having touched the leg argued that the elephant is like a pillar. They continued to argue, each certain that his own experience was the reality. Finally, a wise man intervened. He told that each man was right but had expressed only part of the truth. A true understanding of the elephant comes after discovering the whole beast as a unity of disparate elements. [Gitanjali Kolanad, Culture Shock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette: India 2 (2008).]
All nine of us are like the blind men, and the elephant is India. We sort of fumble about while trying to understand what Indian culture is and how to receive it. Initially, we latch on to one concept and proclaim, “That’s it! I’ve got it now!” That one aspect is enough, for the moment, to inform us how to carry on and how to fit in. Eventually, we realize that it’s not one but innumerable qualities that define a culture, and the cycle of discovery starts all over again. Like an elephant to a blind man, India is complex and baffling. It would take much longer than two months to figure it all out, but the process is a journey and India makes for an incredibly unique experience.