You have no idea how excited I am to be back in India.
India is the motherland, the place where it all began for me. The air sits ripe with the smell of a billion bodies, heavy with the smog of a thousand cities, burning with the smoke of a million effigies, incense paving misty trails into air so thick with smog you can literally feel it’s embrace. Thousands of colors flutter by in a kaleidoscopic myriad, as you drift dreamlike to the cadence of every beat under the sun. Music is always playing. Something’s always moving, always breathing, always pushing on in a frenzy of life so frenetic and relentless you’re carried away before you’ve fully realized where you are.
India stole my heart two and a half years ago, and I found my heart here again, right where I’d left it, amidst the food and the lights and the colors and the people, people, people, so many people.
I made a New Years Resolution to live harder, breathe deeper, see Him clearer, to live each day as a full celebration of the culmination of everything He’s brought me through. No more waiting, no more passivity, no more allowing myself to be swept along. Him and Him alone, nothing else. I vowed at the beginning of this year to live every day so that by the end of it I could honestly make the claim, “this was the best day of my life.” I had been praying for God to wake me up. Wake me up. And He brought me here, where nothing ever sleeps, life so full you find your whole being breathing in time to the palpitations of the heartbeat of this vast, strikingly beautiful subcontinent.
We spent debrief on the far-reaching outskirts of Mumbai, the red sun rising over the futuristic megalopolis in a haze so thick, you can’t make out it’s fiery body until it sits 15 degrees in the sky at nearly 9 o clock. And the entire week pulsed with an expectation of being overwhelmed, 20 million people just out of reach before us, a prelude to the 1.2 billion people beyond, one of the largest most electrifying cities in the world.
We woke up before 6, walking in the black of anticipation to a bus stop in what felt like the middle of no where, finally packing all 8 of us into a rickshaw that normally squeezes 3, making the train right before we were caught in rush hour, buying tickets in a line that knew no courtesy, running to catch a train car that we were allowed in, pounding into the hazy grey morning in a storage car, smaller than most bedrooms, 20 men and all their morning produce piled on top of each other, Hindi and Marathi shot off scathingly, jokingly, as bodies bumped, boxes were rearranged, enormous platters of fruit and vegetables hefted up and down, in and out, the entire world waking up at once.
By the time our feet found the solid cobblestone street of Mumbai proper, the sun had cast the entire city into a golden haze, the towering onion domes and chatris of British colonialism glowing in morning monumentalism. Everything was ahead of us, and everything was from Him. We moved with the excitement and worship that comes from knowing His face in every face we passed, in every screaming edifice, in the Kingdom we proclaimed and the Kingdom we passed. The earth is the Lord’s.
Sweet smells of bread, every fruit, every spice, every vegetable, every curry, mixed in the morning haze above our heads, incense, sweat, dung, animals, trash, sweet smoke, every foul and beautiful fragrance churning in an overwhelming salutation. And the gate of India, shining gold in the morning sun, a memorial to our embarkation, issued the relief; ‘you’ve made it, you’re here’. Finally.
We passed the pigeons and the food vendors, the women selling giant balloons and stalls selling sugar cane juice. We passed cab drivers and morning businessmen, families, hawkers, beggars. We got lost quickly in the winding streets, the allure of the next shop or stall erasing memory of the path you’ve already traversed. And there was Leopold’s just like I’ve read about a hundred times in Shantaram, and heard about from friends, site of a terrorist attack in 2008, alleged eating place of every mob boss, local, ex-pat, higher up, hopeful – and in minutes we were sweeping through the city streets in two cabs, every corner revealing another unfamiliar cityscape, the unending series of towers and homes receding into the horizon well beyond comprehension, every shop, every soul, every family passing by in a blur.
We had arranged to drive by the world’s most expensive house before we got out at Asia’s biggest slum, the disparity and contrast exciting our consciences and our Spirits in a frenzy of activity. Mukesh Ambani’s house loomed over us in a brilliant glare, a 60 story skyscraper belittling the neighborhood around it in a lofty display of extravagance that made the enrapturing maze of slum streets all the more enticing, all the more real. On a bridge over the train tracks, we took in the vastness of the slum, an ill-constructed fantasyland of brown brick and dusty trash, the farthest end lost on the edge of our perspective. We disappeared into it as if plunging into an enormous living organism, amidst twisting trails and a labyrinth of shadows. And within seconds, my foot disappeared from under me into a poorly-covered sewer, sunk nearly to my waste on the ground, my foot nearly cemented beneath me. And pulling it out with a grunt, the stench overwhelming, I found that my entire left foot and sandal, from the ankle of my jeans down, was covered in sh*t.
I was overwhelmed with laughter, of all things, the experience of everything throwing me into a fit of joy. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. This whole day had been every bit of experience I had ever dreamed of, every beautiful sight and horrendous smell, all packed into one. I began to wipe off my foot with a scrap of newspaper, before being ushered into the home of someone watching amused, allowing me to wash off under a spigot of water. We spent the rest of the morning running around after beautiful children, kids playing cricket in the streets, families almost as overjoyed to see us as we were to see them. We got welcomed in and shown around, allowed to hold the kids and asked questions in limited English. With lunch in our bodies, we sat on the train ride home with nothing but contentment, sharing the Gospel with those we sat next to, curious as to our smiles and songs, the whole day passing in almost dreamlike unbelief.
Praise to the Lord, for everything You’ve ever created, and the precious gift of allowing us to experience it.
Love,
Danny
