I can’t describe India. It is like nothing I have ever experienced before. At best my descriptions and recollections are fragmented pieces of everything I encountered. While I was there, I was sure this was a place I would NEVER want to return to. But now, I realize there were some things about living in India that really began to grow on me. . . .
In India, while one’s surroundings are desolate and impoverished, the women stand out like shimmering gems against the bleak background. The women in India are BEAUTIFUL. Their slender, exotic features, ebony hair, and bronze skin wrapped in brightly, bedazzled sarees and salwars cause them to shine. I loved walking through the market place or standing on the subway watching the elegantly clad women come and go. Each and every woman embodies the royalty she was created by Jesus to be in those vestments.
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At night we would walk the streets of Calcutta, usually on a run to get samosas or paneer rolls, our favorite Indian street cuisine. Paneer rolls are chapatis loaded with sautéed paneer (a type of cheese), onion, peppers, then squeezed with lime and covered in a wonderful spicy sauce and ketchup. I loved these runs.
On our walk back to the hostel we would usually stop at the corner and spend 3 rupees on a hot cup of chai. Chai stands are places for social gatherings. Everyone stands around them with their cup of chai and life just stops as conversations begin.
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The children love to laugh and they soak up love like a sponge.
I remember walking through a shanty slum along the railroad track. A crowd of children immediately ran to us holding out their hands to shake ours. Soon we had a following. We stopped in front of one family’s home. They offered us a seat on the tracks in front of their “house”. Our contact began speaking with them in Bengali. I noticed a little girl looking at me from behind her father’s leg. I motioned for her to come over. She immediately jumped at the opportunity to sit on my lap.
It was Sunday.
My hardest day in India, you can read about it here:
(I just denied Christ three times)
I had just left the dying man by the side of the road and my heart was heavy . . . no, my heart had been obliterated. I had been pleading in my heart all day, Jesus I need you!! The little girl came over. She sat on my lap. I looked deep into her eyes, and in the words of my favorite hymn:
And then a little light from heaven filled my soul, my soul. It filled my heart with love and it wrote my name above, and just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.
“Here I am.” Jesus said to me right there on the tracks. I hugged that little girl and she hugged me back. In that moment, I needed her embrace more than she could have ever imagined.
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India is a spiritually dark and heavy place, but in the midst of the homelessness, the slavery, the oppression, and the poverty there lies a beauty. It is the same type of beauty that is alive in Cambodia, which I described at the beginning of this journey. It is a beautiful chaos. At first, it can be overwhelming and sometimes revolting, but the more you live and be among the people, the more this beauty seeps into your heart and begins to grow into something not so terrible. Many of my teammates and I found ourselves saying throughout our time there, “Am I going crazy because I actually think India is growing on me?!”
Don’t get me wrong, I will be forever grateful to the Lord for His call to Cambodia and not India, but there is something there, that is not so terrible . . . it’s beautiful. And I will go back. I will walk the streets of Sonagachi again. . . . someday.
