day of extremes

Friday was travel day. We had completed our time in Delhi and it was time to move on to Agra, site of the famous Taj Mahal. In the morning we sat with Bilal, our newly discovered travel coordinator. He had set up a package so we would have a driver to drop us off and pick us up from our rail and train journeys, as well as drive us to various site. Bilal gave us some advice for the train station, which would prove to be our most difficult test yet. He told us that people would approach us outside and try to confuse us and tell us that the train was cancelled and try to take us to hire our own taxi. Yeah, that did happen.

But first, our driver pulled up to our hotel door about 15 minutes late. He wasn't as smooth with his old van as Dinesh had been the past two days. He jerked the van through the crowded Old Delhi streets. These were the streets we were not brave enough this trip to walk through. They were crowded with people, motorcycles, cars, rickshaws, animals, shop fronts, and lots of trash. It was a chaotic mess we weren't ready to traverse.

He dropped us off at the train station 1km away. Sure enough, just as we are approaching the security gate there is a young man kindly trying to help. He seems to know our train number, which is an easy assumption given our arrival time. He points up to the reader board and says the train has been cancelled. He reassures us that he wants no money, just trying to help. The reader board is flashing quickly between Hindi and English, with some confusing information. From a quick glance it seems that our train is only delayed by an hour. The station is a mass of confusion, of people pushing in lines, of predators and prey. We did not want to be prey. I knew this guy was trying to bilk us somehow. I thanked him and told him several times we did not need him.

I wrapped my arm around my wife and we huddled to make a plan. We spent a few moments trying to understand the reader board, but really needed to talk to someone official. We tried talking to some security guards, but they were not interested in helping us. We went over to the service desks. In the first line we stood for several minutes waiting to ask a question, or change our ticket. There was a man standing there and he asked if I was from Sweden. It must have been my pale complexion. "No, I'm from the US", I said. "The greatest and most powerful nation in the world", he replied. I shrugged. People were trying to get in front of us and the man turned kind. He encouraged us to push our way up to the front and not let anybody get in our way. Audrey turned into bear mamma and barked a few people away. It was working. We finally got to the front and the woman pointed me to another line. Window 61 to be exact, the "Inquiries" line. Okay, so we hopped over to that line and fought our way to the front. I started to ask a question, but the woman was counting a wad of money. I patiently waited. When she stopped she looked at our papers and told us the train was merely delayed by about an hour. Okay, that solved, we knew the first guy was a shiester.

We made our way to the main platform, just past the security gates. The security was pretty shoddy. They had a machine to run the luggage through, but no metal detectors. As we were putting our bags on there, people were trying to shove their own bags in ahead of ours. I went through first and started pulling our bags. Audrey started to panic because she didn't see her purse/pack coming through. You know, the one with all the travel documents and passport?  It did come through, but was delayed by the other bags. That was a learning moment. We decided we would stand on both ends of the machine next time to make sure all our bags were in and out and in our control.

We started to calm a bit. The people on the platform were all passengers, and the predators seemed to be only on the outside. We started to absorb the environment and try to understand which car we would be on. We wandered over and stood next to an old, friendly looking, Indian couple. The woman was short, and wore elegant colorful clothes and beautiful makeup. Audrey and I both realized these people looked trustworthy so she leaned over and started asking the woman questions. She immediately turned helpful and looked at our ticket info, explaining how the train boarding process worked. She also consoled us about the shiesters outside. It seems that many Indian people are embarrassed about the way people are preyed upon. She spoke with us for a few minutes and advised we move down a few cars and wait for the seat assignment papers to be posted on each car. We asked her about whether we should buy chains for our luggage, and she explained when and why we would need them.

We walked down to the car we would likely board. A few minutes later she returned to check on us. She said she found a place to purchase a chain and she would help us get it. We walked down with her to a little storefront. I gave her the money and she spoke to the clerk, buying it for us and giving me the change. She was a truly kind soul and seemed to remind me of someone. I later realized that this lady was much like my grandmother. She too was short, punchy, and always taking care of people.

After over an hour of waiting on the platform, the train finally started to come alive, with service people going on and off. Eventually the seating assignments were posted. We went and talked to the conductor who pointed us to the right car. We squeezed ourselves along the narrow isle ways. This was a 2nd class sleeper car. When we arrived at our birth there were some westerners already there. Ahh, familiar faces. We quickly got to know them. The were Londoners, a father and son. As we waited for the train to start, we talked India, travel, and both British and American politics. It was a refreshing and comfortingly familiar interaction. They were assigned only the top bunks, but we offered our side seats to them as we took up on the other side of the isle.

When the train finally started moving and we left the station area, a whole difficult world was revealed to us. What we had seen in Old Delhi was only a mere foretaste of the poverty that lines the railways and outskirts of the city. What we saw were shanti towns, where each "home" was made of whatever scrap material could be found. There were people cooking over open fires, children playing games like "hit the rock with the stick" and hopscotch. People were lounging in makeshift sofas by the rails. Cows and goats and pigs were walking around. Garbage was everywhere. Whole areas of waste plastic and paper, and who knows what else. Flattened cowpies could be seen drying in groups in different places. I saw satellite dishes on many of the huts. We had seen this in Israel too with the Bedouin camps. We saw mile after mile of this extreme poverty which leaves many questions in your mind. This is something I'm still trying to process.

The "Express" train made many stops along the way to pick up extra people. An Indian man came on after awhile and was seated across from us. He seemed fairly wealthy and well educated, but his English was not that good. The train ride was a few hours. We were supposed to arrive at 5pm, but got in around 8pm. The train stopped without warning, and we were told that this was our exit. We scrambled to get our luggage and got off the train. The station was pretty dark. We looked around for some guidance. A trustworthy young man motioned us to the exit. We made our way outside and our driver was waiting with our sign. "Mr. Jason and Audrey" it said. Another savior with a white car.

We got in, buckled up, and made our way down more crazy and chaotic streets. The drive was fairly short. We arrived at "The Grand Imperial" hotel. And it was just that. The service here is quite a few notches above the hotel in Delhi. They put flower wreaths around us when we arrived and got us up to our room. We had been upgraded to a suite. The room was huge, with a sitting room to the side. The ceilings look to be about 12-14ft tall. The outside hallways are a colonnade of arches. Audrey was in heaven. We were both in heaven.

We settled for a few minutes and then went down to dinner. There were many servers and I was a bit uncomfortable being doted upon so much. They seated us and served out our meals on our plates. Then... they said they would have live music. Audrey asked, "when", and he replied, "just wait!"  A few minutes later a sitar and tabla player took their place just in front of our table. The sitar player did all the talking. He was a well spoken and educated man. My wife mentioned that I had both a sitar and tabla and that I was learning, so he shifted over into teacher mode a bit. They played a few ragas and folk music, and it was divine to sit and eat and drink and absorb the music we had grown to love.

It was a surreal end to a surreal day. We experienced the worst of people. We experienced the best of people, those with gentle, kind, caring hearts. We saw the poorest outcasts of society, and were at the end of day basking in the luxury of great space, great food, and great music. I am not sure yet how or why this all came to us on the same day. It's more to process as we explore this place of extremes.

one country, many faiths

Sitting in the B'hai Lotus Temple yesterday, in the echoed silence of the vast space, I realized what makes Delhi such an amazing place. Whether Hindu, Muslem, Budhist, B'hai, or a Jew, it is a place where most coexist peacefully. We live our own lives as we were made, or as we ourselves made, and learn to coexist with each other. Just take a ride through the crazy intersections of Delhi and you will experience the chaotic harmony of all these people living together. The merging and constant honking of the cars seems like an apt metaphor for all these people organically finding harmony together, despite their differences.

And yet, though I have observed many who can coexist peacefully, this place has a sad history with peace makers. On that day we also toured through the residence and memorial of Indira Ghandi. In part, she attempted to carry on the legacy of the country's 20th century founding father, Mahatma Ghandi. He was murdered. Indira was murdered by her own guards. Her son took over his mother's office, and eventually he was assassinated too.

Though I see at a personal level, people can learn to get along and look past differences, at a national level the struggle realizes itself very differently. Power and pride always seem to so win the day, but I am grateful for the kind souls who I have met on this little journey.

no one follows the rules

"In India, no one follows the rules", said our driver for the day. This was the beginning of our first full day in India.

We had been dropped off the previous night at our historic hotel in Old Delhi. Another patient fellow had waited at the airport for several hours as our plane, delayed after an overnight stopover in S. Korea, had finally arrived. He was young and had a sweet, patient and kind soul. He drove us through the dimly lit streets of Delhi, hazy with smoky smog, to our old city destination. The ride was chaotic. Even at night there were cars, and buses, and pedestrians, and rickshaws, and bicycles, and stray dogs coming from every direction. But the calm soul behind the wheel took every movement in stride. He understood how to navigate the chaos of Delhi's streets. Somehow, I just trusted.

With all this chaos, I was still calm. With all the anxiety that I experienced leading up to the trip, we finally came to the point of experiencing everything unexpected, and I was completely calm. Was it my previous experiences traveling in Israel, in Palestine, in Vienna and Ukraine? Yes, maybe. The rest of the world is not as orderly as suburbian Seattle, or Upstate New York. Not by a long shot. There is something about finding calm amidst the chaos. It's liberating. Normally the smallest perturbations of peace in my life set me on waves of anxiety.

Morning came and I walked down several floors to ask about getting a driver for the day. I was waved over to a nice gentleman who was sitting in the lobby. He told me he worked with Booking.com and others to help people tour the city. We spoke for awhile, but jumped quickly into Indian and American politics. It was a fascinating and whirlwind discussion, but I was anxious to arrange for our day's trip. I brought my wife down and we met our driver. For only $30 per day, he would drive us to all the sites we wanted and wait while we soaked in the experiences. I couldn't get a half hour drive from home to the airport for that price.

I'll leave the experiences to another post, but let's address what I observed during the drive. Our driver had a pristine car. He wore an orange sweater the whole day (it got well into the 70's that day). He was clean cut and another kind, patient and caring soul. Like the younger driver the night before, he navigated the chaos with grace and a well timed honk of his horn. The melody of the horn is the music of Delhi's streets. I would imagine we'll encounter this in other cities, but suffice it to say it is the music of the symphony played out on Delhi's transit ways.

The horn can mean many things. It means I'm here, hello?, stop being stupid, I want to fit in that space, I want to turn left while you're turning right, you can't fit in that space, you're too slow because you only have legs for a motor, you're riding between the lanes, etc. It's funny, because in the pacific NW, it is politically incorrect to use the horn. I think by law we are only supposed to use it only in a life or death situation. My wife and I struggle with this because we are ex Upstate New Yorker's. You can take the New Yorker out of NY, but you can't take their horn away. It's hard for us not to honk when the guy at the new green light is looking at his phone for 200 milliseconds and hasn't hit the gas yet. We once were awakened in Jerusalem one morning at 6am by a cacophony of horns and we thought we were home. Anyway, you can understand why the horn thing makes us chuckle.

The first thing our driver for the day said was, "In India, no one follows the rules." When I heard this, I turned inward and philosophical. Back home we have rules and most people follow them. We stay in our lanes and don't run the red lights. The police actually care about the rules and enforce them. In India, there are rules that everyone ignores, but I have observed on this day that there are rules that emerge out of the chaos. After a day of travel, seeing every kind of moving obstacle try to converge on the same point in space, I have to say that Delhi has figured out it's own rules. They are not written down, but they are effective. I did not see any collisions today. No one was injured. We sought out to go to our destination, and a million honks later, we arrived. The traffic is a constantly adjusting organic flow of souls. Despite the traffic rules, they have found their own system to allow for their movement. They ignore some rules, but the body of people self organize and create their own code to move by.

This revelation on the first day still sits with me. In fact, three blog posts later, it has truly inspired me. The reluctant yogi is not too reluctant tonight. Day one of India was a success. Rules or no rules - that is the question. It seems like the answer to that question is Yes.

planning to cross over

Early in the summer of 2015, after a long grueling project where many had put in hundreds of hours of overtime to get a new product out the door, my manager came to me with an important request. They needed a team of 6 engineers to put off their summer vacations to work on finishing some important regulatory work that needed to be cleaned up before the FDA visited us again. They offered to give us generous vacation packages to use at a later date. I was one of the 6, and would lead the group. The prospect of a nice vacation with my wife was attractive enough to agree.

I sent a Skype message to my wife about vacation plans.  "Dream big," I said. We discussed where to go. Italy? That had been our dream for our 20th anniversary, but college expenses made us put that off. India? We had met so many kind and loving souls from India over the years, and her being a Yoga teacher who had experienced Bali made this a strong possibility. Bali? Would I join her in Bali at her next yoga teacher training?

Soon after, her scheduled training in Bali was canceled. This sealed the deal. We decided to make a trip to India. It was a destination that many couldn't understand, but for us it seemed like a long held desire had become fulfilled. Many of our co-workers had been to India on work related trips. They didn't understand why we would want to go there for a vacation. It's a very crazy place. You've seen "Slumdog Millionare," right?

India is a complicated place, full of contradictions. It is the physical intersection of many faiths. Extreme wealth, and extreme poverty. It is an intense place, always full of surprises. My wife and I are not sit-a-the-beach vacation kind of people. We have observed that our life requires important "crossing over" interludes. When we get stale, in a rut, and we see that we are not growing emotionally and spiritually, it's time to stretch ourselves in a new way. Without struggle there is no true growth. India? Sounds like the best place to drop ourselves into.

So, she planned out all the trains, planes, and automobiles. We settled on our first trip being to the northern "Golden Triangle". We spent months getting ready to be gone for three weeks. Then, we waited to cross over.

wobbly no more

The reluctant yogi has been just that for many months. I've been quiet, but here's where I'm at.  I've continued with my weekly yoga practice, which has successfully helped reverse the bodily stresses that a desk job imposes. I even made the break from my chiropractor, who had been correcting my body for 20 years. What I've noticed though is that although chiropractic is healthy and good, it is a strong correction to the spine all of a sudden. What my chiropractor did in 5 minutes was a drastic correction, and only to a few of my problems. Yoga has done much more.

Yoga has taught me to breathe - really breathe. I return to this during the day when I need to. When I'm distracted, or stressed, I return to the breath. The asanas reverse the pull of gravity and bad posture. My body gets stretched in ways that sitting or walking never could. I feel better. I'm not wobbling when I walk anymore. I have the grace and balance again. As a man in his mid-40's, I have found that sitting at a desk for 20 years has not helped my balance. I found that I was wobbling when traversing the twisty walkways in the gardens around my house. No more. My feet know where to go to balance the twists and turns of my body and life. Hmm, there must be a metaphor there somewhere.