Ahh… India!

Sensory assault – that’s India for me. It is cows, temples, festivals, Hinduism, Gods, arts, architecture, incense, colors, poverty, rickshaw, spices, tea, dirt, grease, and overloaded trains. It is all these things combined, and more, that confronts you when you step in Indian soil.

The richness of colors, sounds, smells, textures and tastes that is uniquely India has made me fall in love with the country, the very same reason why some people don’t want to go back to India.

In these times when people have become very obsessed with the fast life, when the desire to make more money have ripped relationships apart, when technology have made intimacy and closeness a thing of the past, and when apathy is the norm, India is the ultimate test of the nerves, of one’s senses. It reminds me that I am human, and how it is to be one.

For me, India would always be a place of paradoxical metaphors, of dreams and nightmares, of the attractive and repulsive, of the mundane and outlandish, and of life and death. It is where you can experience life in its raw form. India exudes that unrefined energy that reminds you of your mortality and your relationship with nature.

That’s the thing about India. Against the onslaught of modernization, beneath the veneer of civilization, there lies the primeval energy that is undeniably perceptible to any mortal soul that steps on its soil.

Either you’ll love it or detest it. As I said earlier, India is an assault to the senses. Needless to say, I fell in love with India.

And because of these, I would always want to go back to India. Not to live there. It is too rich for me. It is too full of life that it is both invigorating and draining. The energy around can be overwhelming and humbling, but never calming.

And so, my love affair with India would always be an intermittent one, for fear that a daily dose of it will just make me burst out of my own skin.