Guest guest Posted December 24, 2006 Report Share Posted December 24, 2006 I am inspired by Shri Devi Bhakta's posting of the excellent article from Atlantic Monthly. am reproducing extracts from a book by Sarah MacDonald " Holy Cow". She deals with her experiences in India as a Journalist and girl friend of the ABC' s South Asia correspondent.These extracts are from the concluding pages of the book where she summarises her experience(I hope I am not infringing copy rights. Moderator may pl check this). -------- The ABC has found a new correspondent and now it is time to leave for Australia and let the tide of a billion lives ebb and flow without us..... In Sydney I rediscover my relationship with nature. The ocean becomes my temple and my Ganges......I walk through the pristine quite of the suburban bush of my childhood as fluorescent orange streaks across the sky...Gleaming cars zoom fast on empty, wide and clean roads. A couple bent double laughs with hysterical abandon at a cafe table. I delight to see such open joy and such easy lives, yet at times the luxury and space sit uneasily. My country and I want it all - to be part of a war and not to face its consequences, to be part of the global community but not a port for its refugees. The city rants religiously of real estate and fashion.......The worship of land ownership, the body beautiful, self-help and self obsession for beings blinded by option over load is strangely unfamiliar. I went to India for love and that country tested that love to a large degree....We now both have a new view of our so lucky lives, yet our innocent optimism has been sucked from our hearts.The overall feeling about our adventure is positive though. Jonathan's career has taken off and I have gained much in my karma chameleon journey. I am reborn as a better person, less reliant on others for my happiness and full of a desire to replace anger with love. Plus I have gained another home. For, I have two spiritual homes now - the quite empty lands of my birth and the cataclysmic crowded land of my rebirth. When I remember India, I think of its ability to find beauty in small things - the tattoo of circles on a camel's rump, a bright silk Saree in a dark slum, a peacock feather in a plastic jar, a delicate earring glinting by a worn face and a lotus painted on a truck. I miss the sheer exuberance of a billion individuals and their pantomime of festivals. ........... India is the land of the profound and the profane: a place where spirituality and sanctimoniousness sit miles apart. I have learnt much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life while Islam taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me to the power of music. Here is to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength. I thank the gurus for trying to pierce my ego armour and my girlfriends for making me laugh. And most of all I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine...... Yet, I have brought back something even more important than sacred knowledge. A baby is growing inside me. A baby conceived during our last weekend in the country. This child will forever remind me of the land I lived in and what it took and what it gave. And this baby made in India, will always remind me that India to some extent made me. --- Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Messenger. Download Now! http://messenger./download.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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