Scouring pad

I wrote this post two weeks ago before going on a meditation retreat. It felt too negative at the time; it isn’t in that it reflects my mood then.

India is like a scouring pad.

The dirt the dust.

Litter cast uncaringly – except in Pondicherry, as if to show it is deliberate everywhere else.

The highest ambition of the government cleanup campaign is to end public human shitting. By 2019, in this space faring nation.

India scours your flesh down to your bones.

Pavements are irregular motorbike park marketplaces. Walk the edge of the tarmac, dodge the buses.

Horns blare long and loud, rickshaws and articulated lorries warning that they’re undertaking.

Buses and their stations have labels only in the local language. No English, no Hindi – a different alphabet for each state.

India scours your ego down to your soul.

As if not enough, the Government suddenly withdraws 86% of cash.

Every transaction now a game of will to keep the balance of paper money you hold.
When you think you know any rule, it twists and turns spinning you off the foolish notion of a course.

Eventually the strange Indian sideways tilt of the head in conversations, a twist and back, makes sense.

Nods and shakes are too definitive. The way the world is – chaos joy – is the truth.

India scours you to anger, to impatience.

You can’t hide your lack of equanimity, not even from yourself any more.

Maybe this is why it’s from India so many people became enlightened, so many religions are spun.

India scours you to meditate.