Why I am here Part 2

'So tell me about India'.

'India,' she took a sip of her hot chocolate, and looked at me with her big eyes. 'What do you want to know?'

'I'm going there in a few months, on my way home', I answered a bit nervously. 'I'm going to study there for a month. To be honest, I'm a little frightened of the place. It's so, ummm, hardcore compared to all of this...'

It is a few months into the new millennia. I am in a cool and relaxed coffee shop, at one end of Bondi Beach. Outside it is everything you might imagine in an Australian Summer afternoon by the sea.

Opposite me is a beautiful girl with honey and sand coloured hair. She is mischievous and funny and a bit naughty, like fairy. We had met a few days earlier, and drunkenly kissed the night before. Before we had gone back to our different hostels, I had asked her on a date. To my great surprise, she had accepted.

'Well where do I start. I was there for 8 months. Mostly partying!' She grinned at me and tapped out a cigarette.

'It is overwhelming. You love it one minute and hate it the next. You'll get tired of all the poverty one minute, and then overawed by the old architecture. You will get sick of the people always wanting something from you, trying to rip you off or beg from you, then a poor person with absolutely nothing, will share something with you and show more generosity than you can imagine'.

'Is it the south you going to? Yes? Well Goa...' she trailed off then giggled. 'Well its as you imagine. Beaches, parties, travellers, hippies, dancing all night the sand under your feet, the stars above your head. I loved the life of Goa, but its not the best part. Living simply by a beach, a hut, a hammock, a small restaurant...

'You are going inland, to Bangalore right? Well not far from there is a place called Hampi. It has these amazing ruins, they go on for ever. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old. Its exquisite. And there is a strange race of people living there - rat people. They are small and have hair all over their faces, like rats. Even the women.

'But if you go north... I mean Bombay and Delhi, they are a bit rough going, but once you get into the mountains.. Manali, Dharamsala, Shimla.... the Himalayas. I remember once climbing for hours in the night, really high, climbing up through rocks and forests, for a party. Dancing all night and then seeing the snow capped mountains in the early morning sun....

'Or the deserts. If you go to Rajasthan, the forts in the deserts, so old and beautiful. But it was the women there I loved - so fantastically dressed and covered in bangles, chains, nose rings, toe rings. I was a bit obsessed with them to be honest. Couldn't stop taking photos of them. And the doorways... I don't know why, but they are just amazing'.

'Am I sounding a bit over enthusiastic?'

'NO!' I sat entranced. 'Carry on, it sounds amazing'. She had a real passion when she spoke which was entrancing.

'Ok then. Well the travel, erm, fun. The mad bus drivers, the tuktuk drivers and the taxis all fighting together in the streets. If you go on the long bus journeys, there's goats and chickens and people being sick. And breakdowns, and delays. It gets to bad you just have to laugh about it.

'The food is amazing. The dhals and rices in the south, and the breads and the meat in the north. Peas and pannier.. I still dream about that. And the mutton, you cant get it here. I love the bones, sucking all the juice out!

'But its hot, dirty and smelly and shit too. You get ill. Three days I spent once in a dirty bathroom. Had to sleep on the tiles, honestly I thought I was going to die'.

one ciggarette after another had burned down as she had spoken. She lit another, and looked at me through the smoke.

'But look, all of that, doesn't matter really, thats not what its all about. It has something else, I'm not sure how to describe it. Soul, spirit, I know it sounds bullshit, but its true.

'I'm not sure exactly what I want to do with my life. But I know I want to be wise. Thats all. If thats all people said about me then I would be happy.

'India is a place that makes you wise. Maybe you find it in the drugs, or the religions out there, or maybe you just find it in yourself. India is a place that makes you wise'.

The afternoon had drifted into a beautiful evening. The hours had passed like minutes. In that afternoon, I fell in love with the naughty fairy girl with the honey and sand coloured hair.

And I fell in love with India too, even though I had never been there. I did go and study there a few months later, but I was in a developed and westernised city studying Computer Network technology, so I never really experienced the India that she had described.

India is a place that makes you wise.

She exhaled, stubbed out her last cigarette. 'I think you will like it'. And we walked out into the hot Australian night together.

India is a place that makes you wise.