Butterflies are free

Lhamo and Ama Adhe at Art Refuge

It was the love that got me. Ironically, I wasn’t prepared for it.

I landed my volunteer job as an Assistant Art Therapist with Art Refuge more than a year before I actually arrived in Dharamsala, India to begin. To get the coveted position, I had to fill out an extensive application form, write copious answers to numerous essay questions, supply several references and have a long-distance telephone interview with the volunteer coordinator, located in the U.K. It was a long process!

Then, on my birthday in March I got the news – I was accepted, and scheduled to start the following April. I felt elated, both because I had a wonderful adventure to look forward to and because I felt honoured: I would be working alongside program manager Ama Adhe to help newly arrived Tibetan refugee children acclimatize to their home in India.

Ama Adhe is a hero to Tibetan people. She survived 27 years in a Chinese prison for helping Tibetan freedom fighters and, after escaping from Tibet on her release, traveled with the Dalai Lama, speaking up about her ordeal, and on behalf of Tibet’s struggle, at every opportunity. She also wrote an inspiring book called The Voice That Remembers. From her home on the rooftop of the Tibetan refugee reception centre in Dharamsala, she runs the Art Refuge program for children. Her warm, compassionate and feisty spirit was never broken; not even dented. I was (and remain) in awe.

So, I had a year to prepare myself for this prestigious assignment. I talked to teachers and children’s therapists, read books, copied lesson plans and brainstormed ideas for art therapy games and exercises. I was a trained Gestalt Therapist, a creative person (writer), yoga teacher and former art student, but I had never worked with children. I was nervous. Would the children like me? Would I know what to do? What if a difficult emotional situation arose, would I handle it well?

Finally, the day came when I was to report in at the Tibetan reception centre in Dharamsala. I laboriously climbed the four flights of stairs to the rooftop. I had been sick and was also unused to the thin air at this altitude – Dharmasala is several thousand feet above sea level, high up on a mountain in the foothills of the Himalayas in north India. It was a hard climb, past cavernous, bleak dormitory rooms, towards the unknown.

When I got to the rooftop terrace, I sat down, winded. Immediately, two tiny Tibetan girls, sisters, ran towards me, jumped on me and started hugging and kissing me. They spent the entire morning draped over me, allowing love to flow openly, generously and completely. I had prepared myself for difficulty, not for love. In the face of this outpouring, I simply melted. And by softening, I knew what to do.

I spent the next month, each morning and afternoon at the reception centre, playing with the children, loving them, allowing them to love me and just being there for them. It was love they needed – not art, not therapy. They had been ripped from their homes and families in Chinese-occupied Tibet, and sent to live in exile, in India, in hopes of a better life – a life where they would get an education, opportunity and the chance to openly live their Tibetan culture and religion.

But first, they needed love to set them right.

The children seem shell-shocked and unwell, when they first arrive in Dharamsala. They often have bad colds and skin sores. And it’s no wonder. To escape from Tibet, they have to walk for many days through vast mountain passes, facing cold, starvation and gun fire from armed border guards. They arrive first in Kathmandu, Nepal; and from Kathmandu, they are sent to Dharmasala.

He started smiling after telling his story

When I started volunteering at Art Refuge, there were about 20 children in the program. I remember one boy, about 12 years old, who seemed vague and a little angry – a rare emotion among peace-loving Tibetans. His skin was red, sore and peeling from the change in climate and he was sick. He didn’t really engage in any of the activities and seemed to lack confidence. I felt worried about him, but one day Lhamo and I sat with him and helped him to write his story. Lhamo is a young Tibetan woman who helps run the program and acts as translator between the children and the volunteers.

On the back of a drawing he had done, we helped him write about his family, his journey and his feelings. In the days afterwards I noticed that he began to smile, to play and to enjoy himself for the first. By the time I left at the end of the month, he seemed like a normal boy, and was ready to go to school at the Tibetan Children’s Village on the outskirts of Dharamsala. He just needed someone who cared enough to hear him. He needed to feel loved.

We tried to do this with all the children who arrived from Kathmandu. To be able to express themselves freely, with love and support, helps them to emotionally adjust, and gets them ready for school, the next step. That’s the mandate of the Art Refuge program, and it works.

We made butterflies together

While I was there, it was butterfly season in Dharamsala. Suddenly, the fresh mountain air filled with all sorts of butterflies. Hundreds of tiny white ones twirled by, like clouds, and large colourful ones floated up from the valley below. Shira, the other volunteer, and I taught all the children to make butterflies out of coloured paper and pipe cleaners. They really enjoyed themselves, and it was fun to watch them, as each decorated their butterfly in their own unique and creative way.

When they went for lunch, Shira and I hung all the butterflies from the ceiling. The children’s eyes lit up with excitement when they came back and saw their butterflies dancing in the breeze. Reborn, free and happy.

“Catch this point!”

When my teacher, Swamiji (Swami Brahmdev of Aurovalley Ashram, Rishidwar, India), says something during satsang that he wants to underline, he says, “catch this point.” It’s a great example of a non-native English speaker using the language in a particularly creative and effective way.

I have been back in Canada about six weeks since my latest trip to India, where, among other things, I spent time at Aurovalley Ashram — my favourite place on earth — learning the wisdom of integral yoga and feeling inspired by Swamiji’s complete commitment to transformation of consciousness.

So I am now home, facing a difficult life situation, and trying to “catch this point.” I am trying to process, integrate and put it into action everything I learned from my recent two-and-half-months in India. In some ways the journey begins when you get home. You realize what you’ve learned, how much you’ve changed, and how differently you now see the world.

The main points I am trying to catch are;
1. I am largely, if not exclusively, the creator of the difficult situation I now find myself in. The fact that some of the decisions I made that led me to this place were largely unconscious, and driven by fear and/or grief, does not let me off the hook. I am responsible for my life.
2. The “answer” to my dilemma will not come from outside; it must come from within, from an increase in my conscious awareness.
3. This situation, though it is causing me to suffer, is a gift; it is a chance to learn, to grow to become more aware. The appropriate — and most positive, useful — response is to be grateful for this opportunity.

In other words, instead of buying and downing the expensive ice cream bar last night, I came home and lay on the floor and did some deep, conscious breathing. I allowed myself to breathe into my fear and anxiety. Then I fell asleep and dreamt I was trying to cross a busy street with no streetlights or barriers of any kind, and cars were rushing towards me in the gathering dark with their headlights off. Almost halfway across, I ran back to the safety of the curb. It seems like as good a metaphor for the activities of the subconscious as any!

Awareness is the key

Every good teacher I have ever known teaches awareness. Last night I saw a man wearing a T-shirt that read “There is nothing that beer can’t fix.” My T-shirt would read, “There is nothing that awareness can’t fix.”

As always, I did a lot of healing and becoming more aware when I was in India. For one thing, I have a new awareness of myself as a middle-class person. I realize I was born a card-carrying member of middle-class Canada. It’s like being in an exclusive club — a bubble. You get a lot of benefits along with a deeply etched worldview about how things should be. You expect a lot from society and the world at large, and use your status as bubble insider to protect you from the harsh realities of life.

But my travels in India, the recession and my own current life situation have served to pop the bubble — or at least, make it a lot more transparent. It’s very hard for me to actually imagine what it’s like to face the world without a family, three good meals a day, a safe and comfortable home, a credit line, a university degree — all of the props of middle-class life. Like so many others, I have been essentially living beyond my means, certain in the assumption that my middle-class world will support and rescue me. And this is something I now have to face.

Life outside the bubble

But what do people do when they don’t carry the middle-class card and don’t have all of its exclusive privileges? How do they live with no recourse to credit or hope of landing a well-paying job?

It’s not easy to travel in a place like India where you have to confront poverty, social inequality and disparity. It’s not easy to be a “conscious tourist.” It’s not easy to not let it affect you. In fact, I would feel a lot worse if it DIDN’T affect me. I am glad it is changing me and making me more conscious and I hope more compassionate, empathetic and responsible. That’s the reason I go to India, really. I learn as much about the process of self-discovery from travel in India as I do from studying yoga at the ashram with my guru. And that’s as it should be.

And I’m not the only one who thinks awareness is the key.

I am looking forward to reading a new book by Austin, Texas-based author Shelley Seale called The Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India. Shelley and I met online, and I participated in an online Q&A she did last week with the Voluntary Traveler on Facebook. You can read the transcript here.

Shelley has traveled extensively in India, researching her book and volunteering at orphanages run by The Miracle Foundation. With this book, she hopes to give voice to the many children in India who are homeless, abandoned, orphaned, poor or in some other way lost between the cracks of society.

Someone asked Shelley what can we do? She answered: “There are many things that people can do, from really small and easy to the big things. I think sometimes these problems seem overwhelming, insurmountable really, because they seem so huge and anything we could do seems a drop in the bucket. But Mother Theresa once said that each of us might just be one drop in the ocean, but if that one drop wasn’t there, it would be missed.

We can’t all abandon our entire lives to go work in the slums of Calcutta, but there are lots of little things that are easy to do, and if enough people did them, would make an incredible difference.

The first step is awareness, and everyone who is on this discussion or reads it is already there, and I thank you. It’s a huge thing, just right off the bat, for ordinary people who aren’t affected by these things directly to simply CARE. And spread that awareness on to other people.”

Another project I learned about recently on the Internet that also stresses awareness was started by Amanda Koster. Salaam Garage “leads trips that combine cultural immersion travel with citizen journalists (that means you) collaborating with NGOs around the world.” She is leading a trip to Jaipur, Rajasthan, India in September. It’s a great idea.

Sharing India’s wisdom with the world

While I was in India this winter, I read an article by Dr. Deepak Chopra in the Times of India (March 29, 2009) entitled “Over to India,” about what India can teach the west. In it, he says that the modern era is characterized by “a headlong rush into the arms of science and materialism.” Both, he says, are deeply flawed for solving the human dilemma. “The late Robert F. Kennedy put it pithily when he said that the gross national product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.”

The human dilemma — which is really about the path to happiness society, and each individual in it, takes — will not be solved by external means, e.g. more oil , a better missile defence system. “If the path to happiness is external, disaster will eventually ensue. This is what Indian spirituality discovered thousands of of years ago.”

Dr. Chopra believes that in spite of India’s infatuation with the west, India “possess the seeds of a viable answer to the human dilemma. A single concept plucked from the the teaching of yoga, ahimsa, fueled massive political change in the Gandhian era.”

He says that “for 20 years, I have sustained myself on the belief that that the ancient rishis were the Einsteins of consciousness. This shift in perception implies a revolution in how we live our lives.”

“Whoever shapes reality shapes the future. What India offers is the breakthrough idea that reality is shaped in the mind… Aham Brahmo Asmi means I am a cell in the body of the universe… The universe thinks, acts and perceives itself through me… It responds to my intentions. Could any concept be more radical, more Indian?”

In the article, Dr. Chopra explained that any form of constraint can be overcome through inner transformation. “To be transformed, you must extricate yourself from the idea that externals define you. You are defined by who you are inside, by your level of awareness.”

Chopra believes that the world could be transformed if people followed the ancient wisdom of India, the teachings on inner transformation. “India reigns supreme in the area of consciousness. It holds out the best hope for reinventing the world by reinventing our inner aspirations.”

I completely agree with him. This is the premise of yoga, the reason I go to India and what I want to dedicate my life to understanding and sharing. Each of us is much more powerful than we realize. We can change the world by looking inside and changing ourselves.

The Indian masters have long known that we, each of us, manifest our life and our destiny largely through our thoughts, words and deeds. It is indeed worthwhile to bring more awareness and consciousness to what we think, say and do.

Life is perfect

Pushkar Lake at sunrise

I have lately  returned to Toronto from India, again, and I am currently in the throes of dealing with reverse culture shock. Here are some spontaneous observations from my first few days back:
- The people of Toronto seem so big. And white. (Mind you, it is the waning days of winter and everyone has been stuck indoors for six months, eating.)
- The waters of Lake Ontario seems so vast (I spent a lot of time in the desert state of Rajasthan).
- Toronto smells like a parking garage. (I am missing the smells of India, even Delhi: The flowers, incense, cooking fires, animals, sewage, etc. India doesn’t always smell nice, but it always smells like something.)

But these are casual and superficial observations. The biggest thing I notice in Toronto is a fundamental difference in attitude between east and west. In daily conversations, overheard snippets, newspaper articles, book titles — in short, everywhere — I hear the voice of complaint and discontent. Middle class people in the west enjoy the highest standard of living the world has ever known and yet it doesn’t seem to make them happy.

Underpinning the middle-class western world view is a set of assumptions about how the world should be. Middle-class western people seem to think they have a god-given right to a certain standard of health, employment, living conditions, family situation, etc. And, god forbid, should anything happen to cause a deviation from that standard — such as disease, bad luck, the bankruptcy of their travel agency while they are on vacation, global economic recession, death of a loved one — it is taken as a tragedy and self-righteously trumpeted as Something That Should Not Have Happened.

In fact, this idea — that life is supposed to be a certain way — is a sure-fire recipe for unhappiness, if you ask me. As well as being completely unrealistic, even childish, it ignores the fact that the only thing we have any control over is our own minds, and how we choose to respond to life.

I find that, generally, Indians don’t have the same attitude. Perhaps it’s because of the circles I travel in — I spend a lot of my time in India with people who are spiritually inclined — but I find Indians show more equanimity in their response to life. They seem to be more accepting, happier and less discontent. They seem to realize the power of choosing to be positive in thought, word and deed.

In India, there is a spiritual idea that everything is as it should be. Even if something”bad” happens, it was meant to be — and the best thing you can do is see the event as a teacher. What can you learn about yourself, your expectations, your judgments and biases, etc. My teacher, Swami Brahmdev, says “we are here to discover ourselves.” And the truth is, we learn more from the difficult and unfortunate events in life. Swamiji also says that suffering is a gift.

When you travel to a place like India, where poverty, overcrowding, and a serious lack of infrastructure (such as water, sewage and power) are the norms, things just don’t seem the same back home in our middle-class bubble. At least not for me.

One day recently, while I was in Pushkar ( a small, sacred town in the middle of Rajasthan), I woke up early and went down to see the sunrise on the ghats (steps) that line the sacred lake. I had a lovely time at the water’s edge with the other pilgrims and worshippers. The sunrise was sublime and I felt very satisfied as I walked back, in the early light, to have breakfast at my beautiful haveli-hotel.

On the way back, I noticed a work detail of three young men. It was their daily job to wade into the gutters that line the streets and shovel out the thick, black oozing sewage — shit, basically — into a small waiting truck. There is no efficient, modern sewage system in Pushkar. Each morning these men have to deal with the stinking, germ-ridden effluvia. That is their job.

After being exposed to these sights, I find it hard to come back to Toronto and listen to people complain if the foam in their cappuccino is not perfect. It is even hard to listen to people complain about the economic downturn. In my opinion, we have been living way beyond our means in the west; way above what most people in the world experience. Only about 8% of the world’s population is middle-class. Most of the rest don’t get enough to eat on a daily basis. It is hard to imagine what would happen if the 1 billion people of India all started living like the average Torontonian — with all our excess consumption and waste.

I do not intend to make people, myself included, feel guilty for winning the lottery of life and being born in middle-class Canada. We are the luckiest people in the world, and we should be grateful, definitely. My point is that you don’t need to have two cars, a flat screen TV, a huge RSP, and a perfect life to be happy. Happiness is a choice. It is a path. In fact, happiness is probably the best path towards spiritual awareness.

A.R. Rahman, when he won the Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire (I watched the show in Delhi) said that all his life he had the choice between love and hate. He chose love, and that’s why he was there, on that stage. It is the same for all of us. Each moment, we have the choice between being positive and being negative. And that is how we manifest our lives.

To Jaisalmer

When I was a child I painted huge colourful murals on my walls – always something I considered exotic and oriental like genies coming out of bottles and turret-topped palaces and stone fortress-like cityscapes. Imagination was more important than reality, and I stoked the fires of my imagination with fabulous tales from the Arabian Nights, incredible stories from the Greek Myths and any other magical tales I could get my hands on.

I sensed there were worlds hidden within the known world; things were not as they seemed. I stared beneath the surface of the lake at the cottage and watched the swaying seaweed and the crayfish swimming backwards and the choreographed schools of small fish. In those moments I felt I disappeared, and only my attention on the secret underwater world was real.

Real life has its allure and can trap even the hardiest seer with distractions, heart break, loss, struggle. But what happens when you look up; when you look beyond. You can see the world as you did, if you’re lucky, when you had the innocence to see clearly.

You can find a place that, impossibly, looks like your bedroom walls. A place with stone turrets, an ancient fort and a wide open expanse of desert that contains worlds within worlds. Barren beauty is perhaps the most beautiful of all because you have to actively look for it. It draws you in with its subtlety and suggestions, it’s quiet power; and it rewards you with a jeweled night sky beaming love and life.

With the right sight you can see the beauty around you, the face of God in nature, in an elephant-headed diety, and the golden eyes of the sun reflecting back towards you. And for some short time you can feel the truth of love, that we are in nature’s embrace, we are all connected, all one. Imagination and the right attitude can open up the world, open up your heart, and let you see with the heart’s eyes.

And when you see with the heart’s eyes, you will again see like a child.

Empire of the soul

I am “borrowing” the title of this post from writer Paul William Roberts. It’s the name of his book about his travels in India and I think it just perfectly describes how I — and so many others — feel about India.

I haven’t been writing lately (holidays blah blah blah) , but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been immersing myself in my subject. Au contraire. I am leaving for my third trip to India in 17 days (January 30, 2009), and am completely immersed in figuring out my itinerary, getting ready, and getting excited. Also sending out as many query letters as I can, to newspapers and magazines and radio shows — hoping to write about my trip: a one-month train journey around India’s heartland.

And, as usual, I am always on the lookout for movies, books, shows, articles — whatever — about India. Here are two I recommend

Recommended

First and foremost, the PBS series airing on Monday nights, “The Story of India,” is really terrific. Host Michael Wood, a British historian, is knowledgeable and genuinely enthusiastic. He is so understandably bowled over by attending rituals that have performed in the same way and in the same place for 1,000 years. The two shows I have seen so far have covered the periods from about 150 BC to about 400 AD, but it’s not dead-and-gone-history, the kind that bored most of us to distraction in school.

This is one of the amazing things about India. Ancient history is alive and well in the architecture, culture, traditions and rituals of modern India: The sea routes and trading practices of the ancient Greek and Roman traders; the story of Rama; the Gupta dynasty in the north; the Cholan empire in the south (which is the world’s last remaining classical civilization — Wood interviewed a descendant of the great Cholan King Raja Raja). All of these were brought alive under Wood’s careful observations.

Maybe this is one of the reasons  India stirs my soul so much. The cultures of India have evolved unbroken for centuries, and the stories and values of the past are just as important as they ever were. It is both a wisdom culture and a soul culture.

Also enjoying Mark Tully’s new book, India’s Unending Journey. Tully was the chief BBC correspondent in India for 22 years (and he was also born there, in Calcutta). In the book, Tully traces his own journey from rigid Christian to someone who is “certain about uncertainty.” He takes an introspective look at religion and spirituality and how Hinduism and India’s pluralistic approach has deeply influenced him and his own views. I also enjoyed one of Tully’s previous books, No Full Stops in India, and plan to read more.

Itinerary

The holidays for me were overshadowed by my need and desire to create a journey for my trip to India. I really threw myself into the creative process of thinking, reading, researching and weighing various factors, which included time, money, interest, feasability and … what would make a good travel story or stories.

In the end, I got my inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and Slumdog Millionaire. In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, the two young brothers jump on a train to escape Bombay and ride around India, using their wits to survive. Watching this part of the movie reminded me about how much I like train journeys in India, and also reminded me of another great movie, Gandhi, and of course of the man himself.

The first “tourist” spot I visited in India, back in 2005, was Raj Ghat, the place where Gandhi was cremated. It is now a large and peaceful park by the river Jumuna, which runs through Delhi. I was moved by the simple marble slab and eternal flame that pays respect to this incredible man. Later, I spent an afternoon at Birla House, also known as Gandhi Samadhi, the place Gandhi lived when in Delhi — and also the place where he died by assassination.

So, I decided to take a train journey that would allow me to visit both of Gandhi’s ashrams in India — Sabarmati in Gujurat and Sevagram in Maharashtra, as well as Jaisalamer and Varanasi, my top two wish-list destinations. I am buying a one-month train pass and in early February I will travel from Delhi west to Rajasthan; then south to Ahmedabad (Gujurat) Mumbai and the Konkan coast; and then inland to Sevagram ashram, Kanha and /or Bandhavgarh Naitonal Parks in Madyha Pradesh (for tiger spotting); and finally a week in Varanasi; then the overnight trian back to Delhi, arriving the day before my birthday.

If anyone has any tips, advice, must-see places or invitations to dinner (hahaha), please let me know!

packing for India

We all have small secret areas of expertise, and one of mine is packing for India. While I have only actually packed to go from my country (Canada) to India twice, I am claiming this expertise based on two facts:

1) I did a LOT of research before I left on my first big, six-month trip to India — and brought a LOT of stuff I never used,

2) I have packed for about a dozen domestic trips within India in the many months I have spent in the country.

So, if you will accept my qualifications, you can confidently print this list before you go. Even in the few years I have been traveling to India I have noticed you can get more and more of the things we North Americans have come to depend on. But there’s still a few things you probably want to have in your backpack — yes, backpack — just in case.

• A backpack. It doesn’t matter if you’re basically middle-aged and your motto is “mid-range” — unless you are going 5-star all the way, you will be happy you can carry everything you brought on your back. There are going to be times when the taxi can’t get closer than a 10-minute walk to the train station because of the crowds and you have to get out and hup it.
• Very comfortable sturdy shoes. India just doesn’t have the money to spend lavishly on infrastructure. The roads and sidewalks are a jagged obstacle course, and there is often an open sewer spilling its gruesome contents across your path.
• Flip-flops. For the beach, in the shower, around your hotel and in other predictable settings. Don’t go barefoot in India.
• Small bottles of hand sanitizing gel and small kleenex packets. I don’t walk out the door without these in my bag. You will find out quickly why they’re both integral.
• Deodorant, hair conditioner, tampons, sunscreen, Deet mosquito repellent and condoms. I don’t know why, but I can never find these in India (not good enough quality versions, anyway).
• A sheet sleeping bag. For the train and questionable hotels.
• Good quality suitcase locks and cable. You will need to be able to use the cable to lock your bag to your train or bus seat.
• To keep as healthy as possible on the road, take heat-resistant probiotics (one per day), either oil of oregano or GSE (grapefruit seed extract), rehydration salts, tea tree oil and homeopathic remedies for digestion and respiration issues (Indian cities are highly polluted).
• Get professional advice regarding vaccinations, antiobiotics and anti-malarial medication.
• Earplugs and music player, such as iPod. You will need them, take my word for it. Don’t forget your electrical adapter.
• Digital camera. Ditto electrical adapter.
• Quick dry towel. I found 101 uses for this. Also useful is a sarong or piece of cloth.
• Money belt. I didn’t use it a lot, but I was glad I had it.
• A daypack and/or a small-ish bag you can carry very safely. Here in Canada, MEC makes one that’s got a wide strap and  fits under your armpit and it’s perfect for crowded situations such as bazaars and railway stations and, well, just about every where in India is crowded!
• Water bottle and small thermos cup.
• Mesh laundry bag.
• Underwear. Ladies, I do not like the bras in India. I will always make sure I have a lot of comfortable cotton bras to choose from when I go. And let modesty be your guide.
• Modest clothing. It is not really a good idea to wear scanty clothes in India. I know some people do it, but I personally think it is unsafe and disrespectful. When in Rome and all that. In fact, I recommend bringing very few items of clothing and making a beeline for Fabindia (the Gap of India). Indian clothes are inexpensive, colourful, comfortable and they suit the climate and the culture. Indians will appreciate your attempt to bridge cultures and show respect and they will be even more open towards you.

top 10 books on India

Just before the news broke about the terror attacks in Mumbai, I was going to write about my favourite Indian books and books about India. Ironically, one of my top picks is Maximum City by Suketu Mehta, an incredibly well-researched and well-written book about Bombay. Having recently read that book, I felt much more in-the-know about the city, and especially the local politics. Which are very tricky.

So, here are some of my favourite books on India, about India, by Indians …

1. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. He’s like a cross between Charles Dickens and The New York Times. He’s a great investigative reporter, but his real strength is in telling a story and making the characters come alive. If you have any interest at all in Bombay / Mumbai, read this book.

2. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. This was the book that got me started, way back when. It is essential reading for understanding the current conflicts between India and Pakistan, and it will give you a lot of background and insight behind the independence movement in India, partition, colonialism, the creation of the world’s largest democracy and Mahatma Gandhi’s role in the whole thing.

3. City of Djinns by William Dalrymple. He does for Delhi what Mehta does for Bombay. And while Delhi and Bombay are very different cities, so are these books. Dalrymple’s emphasis is the history of Delhi — which must be one of the wrold’s most historical cities. But he weaves in scenes from his own year in Delhi, which are often hilarious. I am determined to find out if the International Backside taxi stand really exists. I’m going to look for it (behind the International Centre, naturally) next time I’m in Delhi.

4. Out of India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. You may know her name as the screenwriting partner behind many wonderful Merchant-Ivory films. She was a European who married an Indian architect and lived the rest of her life in Delhi. The introduction to these short stories — in which she presents herself as a foreigner living indolently in India — is one of the most well-written pieces I have ever read. She nails the cultural divide, which I experience on a daily basis. She’s one of my favourite writers, anytime, anywhere.

5. My Experiments with Truth by M.K. Gandhi. For my money, this ranks with Memories, Dreams and Reflections by Carl Jung as a truly honest and interesting autobiography. The title says it all, and says so much about a man who just seems to be made of different stuff than you or me.

6. The Ramayana by R.K. Narayan. If you want to understand the heart and soul of Hindu India, you have to read the Ramayana and the Mahabharat. R.K. Narayan wrote abridged versions of both of these epics (the Mahabharat is, I believe, the longest book ever written).

7. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. It was years ago when I read it, and I don’t even own a copy, but it really left an impression on me. It is the fictional version of Freedom at Midnight. If you don’t know, India was granted independence from British colonial rule at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. Nehru gave his famous “tryst with destiny” speech from the Red Fort in Delhi and the rest is history. This book is about a man born in India at the exact moment of independence.

8. Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts. PWR was just another youthful seeker backpacking around the subcontinent in the 1970s. The difference is a) India really got under his skin and he had some amazing spiritual experiences and b) he can write. He has his own style, which I know for a fact has made a tremendous impression on at least one blogger. (Hint: she’s on my blogroll.)

9. Chasing the Monsoon by Alexander Frater. Like Dalrymple, Frater is an English journalist with a passion for India. (Actually, neither Dalrymple nor Frater was born in England … I just mean they are of English or British heritage …) The documentary based on this book, same title, stands as my all-time favourite documentary. Frater goes on a sometimes profound and sometimes whimsical journey to follow India’s monsoon to the wettest place on earth, Cherrapungi in the Indian state of Meghalaya.

10. What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh. The partition of India in 1947 led to the greatest mass movement of people in history as millions of Muslims left India to move to newly created Pakistan; and millions of Hindus and Sikhs left the part of Punjab that suddenly fell on the Pakistani side of the border. The violence that was unleashed was massive and devastating. This book is a novel about a Sikh woman who is a young bride at the time of partition — living on the wrong side of the border. The personal narrative makes the history very real.

Oh, boy, I like lots more books so I guess there will be a few more Top 10 lists … Maybe in one I will highlight Indian writers; maybe another will be about travel books. Then there’s cookbooks. Yoga books. Yikes, the list goes on and on …

In the meantime, I would love to hear from others about book you have discovered and recommend.

certain psychology of terror

As I write this, police, hotel staff and and various specialists are combing through the wreckage of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai looking for casualties, evidence, survivors and possibly terrorists in hiding. There have been so many shocking images coming out of Mumbai over the last three days. Bloodied bodies. Flames and smoke billowing from an historic and important landmark. Survivors climbing down drain pipes. Paratroopers repelling down ropes onto the roof of Nariman House.

I found the most chilling image to be that of a smiling young gunman, toting an AK-47, as he goes on his murderous rampage. His smile seems so out of place, so remorseless, so certain. It’s the terrorists’ certainty that scares me, more than anything else. That certainty springs from a mindset deeply rooted in the dualistic notion of right and wrong.

Dualistic thinking can lead you to think that you’re right, and the other guy is wrong. Period. Anything your mind can conceive, you can believe. You can believe it’s okay to open fire on civilians, strangers, as they are eating in a restaurant. It can lead you to think it’s okay to fly airplanes into skyscrapers. To plant bombs in markets and amusement parks.

Someone once said George W. Bush would rather be certain than right. His certainty, especially about the Iraq War, is just as chilling.

But religious certainty seems to be the most deadly. Looking back over world history, untold numbers of people have died in wars, holocausts, inquisitions, crusades — all in the name of certainty. My god is the only god.

I have been very lucky and very privileged in my life to be exposed to ideas, philosophies and practices that teach a non-dualistic approach to truth that is based in felt experience. I breathe in, I can feel my breath in my body, sense my heart beat, feel that I am alive. I can hear the chatter of my busy mind — and gain some distance from it. (Interestingly, in light of the Mumbai carnage, most of these beautiful ideas originate in India, dating back to the time of the ancient masters.)

The human mind is a marvel. It is very creative and can think up incredible ideas, like open-heart surgery and central heating and penicillin and yoga and vitamin-fortified milk. But it can also think up religions and political systems and convince people that theirs is the right one. The only one.

Talking about god and spirituality in the western media is basically a taboo — and partly because of a recognition that religious psychology tends to be so dogmatic and rigid. But I think that espousing and teaching a non-dualistic spirituality that helps put people in touch with their own divinity and engenders a deeply rooted respect for the divinity of ALL living creatures can help counter the certainty mindset.

For myself, I would rather be alive than certain.

Jai Hind

I am writing this from the comfort of my quiet home in Canada. My cat is curled up beside me, purring, the heat and electricity are running, I have food in the ‘fridge, I can hear the heavy steel-on-sreel rattle of the street car. The world outside my window seems to be safe, predictable and ordered.

But my mind is not here. My thoughts and feelings are tied up with the chaos and terror in Mumbai. Bombay. I have never been to the city, though I had plans to visit this winter. I don’t really know anyone there, except the India Tourism officer who was posted there after leaving Toronto last year. But friends of friends are there, relatives of friends, bloggers whose sites I have visited, who knows who else. The world is indeed a small place.

It is made even smaller when you love. I love my boyfriend and his family, who are Indian (and who live in the capital, Delhi), and I love India herself. And when you love, you are very vulnerable. You feel for the person or place. You are emotionally entangled, engaged. So it can be very hard to be halfway across the world and watch images of murder and mayhem — bloodied people being carried from posh hotels, historic buildings in flames, police firing, people in chaos and turmoil and grief. People suffering. People who are causing the suffering. For this was no act of god, but an act of man. And that’s the hardest part.

The part of my heart that is suffering the most is the part that knows these are fellow humans who inflcted this terror and carnage on Mumbai. People who think they’re right. It’s inconceivable that people with working brains and hearts could think this is a good thing to do. I feel faint when I think of it. My courage quails.

But I feel heartened by the response of the police and authorities in India, who have shown amazing bravery and dedication. There are so many people in this world who run into burning buildings, who storm hotels held by gun and grenade armed thugs, who risk their lives, and give up their lives. It’s an amazing aspect of human nature, too.

I have complete faith in the spirit of ordinary and heroic Indians and Mumbaikers to overcome this act of terror, to retain their humanity, their belief in god and the innate power of goodness and love.

I am sending as much energy as I can to the people of Mumbai and India, in the form of prayers, good wishes, positive energy and love. I wish I could do more, but actually think this is a lot. The more people who stay focused on the positive, the better. If you become too angry or afraid, or despair or give up, the terrorists are winning.