Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 F I R S T M O O N 06deities with a divinity of shifting forms and a thousand names. Longafter the Aryans, the Greeks had inched in, thought better of it, andreturned to more manageable philosophies—she captured some oftheir generals and made them into Indian kings. Iranians and Afghansand Turks and Mongols had stormed down this plain to grab and plunder—shehad swallowed and digested their cultures and languages.Emperors had marched up and down—Alexander, Ashoka, Kanishka,the Guptas, Harsha, Babur, Akbar, and, in absentia, Victoria—theremains of their visions were still crumbling into separatism and ethnicconflict. The land had borne millions of farmers, traders and administratorsoccupying one of a thousand subcastes and clans; a hundredthousand saints, pilgrims, and yogis following one of a thousand gods,gurus, prophets, or scriptures. Here Mother India murmured thehuman fugue in a hundred languages. No wonder Indian scriptures andepics assume that all the world is contained in this land.There was a thud of wheels, a slow turning and then the clank of thestairs connecting to the hull. The midnight transit through customsoffered a last moment to step back and cast a cool eye on circumstance.Then, with a friendly nod from a Sikh customs man, we were in andmoving.N I C KIt was when we got outside the airport building that we really knew wewere in India: we were immediately in a crowd being hassled by taxi drivers,beggars, and young men promoting different hotels; it was warmalthough it was midnight; and there was that distinctive urban Indiansmell, somewhere between spices, incense, and stale urine. Followingadvice we had been given by a friend, we escaped our assailants, skirtedthe yellow ambassador taxis and the shiny airport coaches, looking forthe cheap option, the ex-servicemen’s bus into New Delhi.There were four of them, battered oblong metal boxes standing side6