There are cows on the beach. This is India.
I laugh to myself. The waves are crashing in the background, they sound thundering,
no lagoon protects this coast as it did in the Pacific, in the oceans of my memory.
There is nothing subtle, nothing soft spoken about this land. Even the waves are in-your-face.
I was attempting to reason a feeling that I had the other day in Bombay, a feeling I have not felt before, a feeling of being in the middle of complete maddness, and though it was brief, I have been thinking about this feeling since it occured on the local railway in the biggest city in the subcontinent. Gregory Roberts, in his amazing book Shantaram which I am currently reading,
experienced the same rush, the same crush, in the same city, some years before...
"Bellowing threats, insults and curses, he thumped a path through the choking throng. Men fell and were pushed aside with every lift and thrust...people shouted and screamed as if they were the victims of a terrible disaster. Garbled, indicipherable announcements blared from the loudspeakers over our heads. Sirens, bells, and whistles wailed constantly. "
Me, getting onto a train, every man using every ounce of his strength to push, pull, wedge, and fight his way into the already overcrowded car. The intensity of the looks, shouts, made the car charged with energy. I, too, pushed, pulled, and fought, a second notice to my being a foreigner not being taken. When the doors closed, a calm politeness took over the railcar like a sedative. Heads nodded side to side, and courteous men ensured that I was aware of my stop. Then, the doors open, and pandemonium breaks out once again, like clockwork. The terror and politeness, crazed emotion and then civility and serenity, worked over and over again, as a microcosm of Indian life. Just enough of each to ensure that things continue on is such a land.
