The Elephant that is India

THE ELEPHANT THAT IS INDIA

Looking down a narrow, crowded street in Pondicherry, a small city on the southeast coast of India, I saw the head of an elephant, a real one. For a weekend explore of the area south of Chennai, two friends and I had hired a car and driver and it was from him that the answer came to this puzzle and many others like it. He explained that down that street was a Ganesh temple. In Hinduism, Ganesh is a god with a man’s body and the head of an elephant. He is the son of Shiva and his consort, Parvati. When Ganesh lost his head, his mother replaced it with that of an elephant, the closest one handy. Ganesh is the god of wisdom but more popularly revered because of his powers to remove obstacles, in all things sacred or profane. People pray to him at the initiation of any endeavor, even an ordinary work day. Ganesh temples that are wealthy enough have their own live elephant in addition to many beautiful sculptures and shrines inside. I scrambled out of the car and proceeded to break one of the common sense rules of travel: If you’re not quite sure what’s going on, stand back and watch the locals for awhile. Had I done that first instead of later I would have seen that worshippers pass by and place in his outstretched trunk either food (which he immediately eats) or a small bill (which he passes to his handler). He then places his trunk on the believer’s head and they go about their day confident in his blessing. Rushing up to him, I ignored the rule and the kindly old guy must have decided to bless me on credit – he plopped his trunk right down on my head! Startled but wiser I went off to explore the temple.

My encounter at the Ganesh temple reminded me of the old fable, retold in a recent Global Studies class, about a group of blind men first encountering an elephant. Each one catches hold of a different part of the animal and argues adamantly about the characteristics of this new creature. The blind man holding the tusk remarks as to its cool smoothness while the one patting its side insists it is warm and wrinkly. The guy who grabbed its tail asserts that it must be like a snake while the one trying to reach around its huge legs will have none of that comparison. Our entire shipboard community ventured out to explore the elephant that is India. We returned with a multitude of sundry, colorful and energetically defended reports. Comments I’ve heard have ranged from “I couldn’t wait to get out of India! I am SO over it,” to “I felt incredibly comfortable in this country. I’m definitely coming back.”

People who never left Chennai formed conclusions that sounded like the blind man who had ended up around back and stepped in fresh dung. While there are many interesting things to see in Chennai, the situation at the harbor where we docked combined with the normal, Indian overwhelming assault on your senses to produce what most people agreed was quite an unpleasant experience. In order to go anywhere except onto a tour bus, we had to pass through two Indian immigration inspection stations showing two official forms and two pieces of ID, walk several blocks along a road filled with huge trucks carrying cargo and across three active railway tracks, and then face our nemesis, the auto-rickshaw drivers and their touts. With very few exceptions and no matter how firmly you gave your instructions, they always took you to at least one and often three shops that paid them a commission for delivering customers. I had been told to ask for the Connemara Hotel in the central shopping district, instead of a particular store which would label me as a shopper, but that rarely worked either. They lied, they cheated, and they pulled off onto side streets and demanded more money. They are clearly organized because the first day all the vehicles that left from the harbor entrance at the same time ended up at the same store, which was the destination of no one. The uniformed harbor officials are no help; I heard several stories of their various ploys to extract bribes for passing through the gates. Walking is not a solution because the harbor is far away from where most people want to go. Walking a few blocks into the city to escape the rickshaws at the harbor is hazardous due to the traffic and lack of sidewalks and anyway the rickshaw driver you hail will probably not speak English or be able to read a written address. The buses are unbelievably crowded and confusing; there is no other mass transit. Arranging a private car and driver that would pick you up beside the ship was really the only viable solution. Even though it was quite inexpensive for what it was, most students felt it was outside their budget.

When you do finally get out into the city in an auto-rickshaw, you white-knuckle it through traffic that makes downtown Saigon look like a country lane. Indian drivers love their horns and hate to have anyone in front of them. The air pollution is atrocious; I wiped black soot off of my arms, legs and face after every trip out. You quickly learn to watch ahead for the approach of the bridge over the Cooum River so you can put something over your nose or hold it. Our biology professor told us the river was considered dead and it certainly smelled like it; it is a huge open sewer.

Now imagine yourself on this auto-rickshaw ride, stopped at a traffic light, and suddenly you get a whiff of the sweetest scent you’ve ever smelled. Inches away, a motorbike has pulled up beside you and on the back is a beautiful girl whose raven hair is draped in long garlands of creamy white jasmine flowers. That is India. As they say, for everything that is true about India, the exact opposite is true as well.

In sharp contrast to Chennai, beauty was all around us on our trip to Pondicherry: emerald green rice paddies, breathtaking temple decorations, cool forests (where we watched a movie being filmed) and the calm waves on the post-tsunami seashore. We stayed at a delightful and very inexpensive guest house in the middle of town, right on the water with only the seawall and the main street between. I think it was that wall that saved the city from too much tsunami damage. Early one morning I sat out on my balcony and watched people taking their morning “constitutional,” as my grandfather would call it. We visited the famous Aurobindo Ashram, the local market and a paper-making factory. We were fascinated by the low tech process that produced gorgeous paper in many colors and containing many natural materials. They explained that they did “one color, one day” and lucky for me the color of the hundreds of sheets hung up to dry that day was an exquisite peacock blue, a feast for my eyes. In contrast, we saw working conditions that would give an OSHA inspector apoplexy, like women sorting small pieces of cutup rags amid a cloud of cotton dust you could barely see through; only a couple of them had masks. The beauty and the horror that is India.

On the way down to Pondicherry, we passed several relief camps for tsunami victims near the highway so we stopped at one on the way back. I wanted to try to talk to the people there and see how they were doing. We asked for the village leader but were told, through our intrepid translator/driver, that he was away for the day. So we plunged in and started asking them questions and letting them tell us about their life. We were taken down through the part of the village that was not too badly damaged to the pile of rubble on the shore that used to be their homes and boats. Large, brightly painted new boats, enough for one for four families, had been donated by Rotary and sat unused on the beach. We asked if they were fishing again. They said that they had been promised compensation by the Indian government for their losses but that they had not yet been paid. They felt that if they went back to work they would not receive the payments. Such is often the dilemma of aid. As I walked through the camp with its crude lean-tos, thatch shacks and even North Face style tents donated by the Brits, my heart ached for these families who had so little and lost it all. I tried to find the words to tell them that the whole world cared about them. They are human so they talked of being jealous of other camps who they felt were getting more. Our driver said that actually he thought these camps were doing relatively well because they were so near Chennai but that camps south of Pondicherry were less visible and still needed help. We left them some cash with a strongly worded request that it be used for the benefit of the whole camp. The survivors told us about relief agencies that came and went but praised World Vision, a large international NGO, as the one that was still there, still helping. I told them I would tell you that.

There’s one more experience I want to share – a visit to a hospital dedicated to several Eastern medicines such as Ayurvedic, homeopathy, naturopathy and Unani which is practiced by Muslims. As most of you know, I’m a nurse and a dedicated defender of Western medicine. I’ve been able to intellectually understand that other systems of health care probably have valuable practices but, in truth, they scare me. I worry when people depend on naturopathic remedies when I think they desperately need antibiotics. I worry when high profile celebrities turn down chemotherapy and treat cancer with diet and massage. But I went on this FDP to try to open myself to what was being offered there. It was a stretch but I was amply rewarded – I finally got it. Indians, like Chinese and many other Asians, are quite selective in which philosophy of health care they choose for their various illnesses. Unlike some Americans not raised with these choices, they know the value – and limitations – of each. We talked extensively with the head of the Ayurvedic section. His facility could have been run almost entirely without electricity. There were massage tables, magnet belts, water baths and rooms where yoga and diet were taught. I thought my long held skepticism had been vindicated when I saw a poster that proclaimed in several languages, “Germs do not cause disease.” He later talked about why they had individual steam cabinets instead of steam rooms, that people in steam rooms could make each other sick. I was confused so I asked him about the germ sign. “Ah,” he explained, “we know that germs cause TB, which we don’t treat here anyway, and that patients can catch it from each other. What we believe is that it’s a person’s immune system being weak that is really the cause of the disease, the reason why one person contracts it and the other doesn’t. That’s what the sign means.” I thought of the germ soup that most Indians live in and the emphasis in Ayurvedic medicine on healthy living through exercise, diet and yoga to prevent disease and promote wellness. I got it. Western medicine emphasizes killing germs and combating disease and Eastern medicine promotes healthy living so you won’t succumb to the germs that are perhaps more of a given in their world. We learned that the patients in this facility were mostly stroke and arthritis patients who, I now understand, might benefit from the types of therapy offered. Patients with TB or needing an operation wouldn’t come there and they wouldn’t be treated if they did; the Ayurvedic doctor enthusiastically endorsed Western medicine for those problems. In another part of the hospital, the head of homeopathy explained that they use the products of disease, in very small quantities, to treat the disease. Where am I familiar with that principle? Sure, vaccinations and allergy shots. I asked her what illnesses she treated. She said that the large majority of her patients were there for allergies. Another light bulb moment. One of the medical staff members from the ship who was also on the trip offered the final illuminating idea to me at just the right time. When I was mumbling about “alternative medicine,” she said, “You know we really don’t call it that any more. Now we say ‘complementary medicine.’” Exactly.

On this my second visit to India, I felt as if I got to explore more parts of the elephant. In many ways, I’m still as much in the dark as the blind men. The vast complexities and contradictions of this country boggle my mind and challenge my attempts at understanding. The difficulties are mine. India stands wise and benevolent, and ignorant and corrupt. But like the elephant at the temple, she freely bestows upon me the blessings of rich experience.