Memories and Takeaways of a Voyage to India

1994

Almost thirty years ago I experienced one of the most incredible trips I could make as a young woman. I was accompanied by a group of twenty people, all of us going to visit the ashram of Satya Sai Baba (more on Him another day).

The group

It’s very, very important to know well whom you’re travelling with. I only knew superficially my companions. Many of them had been participating in the same praying meetings which took place to celebrate the teachings of Sai Baba, like he’s friendly called.

In the real daily life, each person reveals aspects you can rarely notice during a couple of hours ceremonies.

That was the bad and the good of the relationships within the group.

Some of us went through some tough arguing. Couples got separated. Believers became more doubtful. Non-believers gained faith.

A whole world mixed up to earn a different order.

That’s what happens in India, someone told me. Especially when you go on a spiritual journey.

Many years later I could better appreciate the statement, while watching “The best exotic Marigold hotel”. The screenplay, written by Ol Parker, is based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things by novelist Deborah Moggach. The 2011 British film is directed by John Madden, starring an incredible Judith Olivia Dench, my favourite British actress.

Colors and environment

Most of all, I remember the suffocating air of the big cities. A humidity so high that, as an European, you can hardly survive without air conditioning, unless you find yourself far outside the big urban agglomerates.

The heaviness of the air has a rough contrast with the vital colorful natural and artificial aspects of the Indian life.

Pollution is exaggerated, but your eyes wander lost in the beauty of this multicultural country. The markets, the people, the religious buildings…everything is talking about a balance you recognize in the opposite aspects of this colorful land.

Richness and poverty

My best insight in India was the confirmation that everything is as it should be.

I know it’s hard to believe when you see extreme poverty beneath richness. Or when you see horrorous things next to angelical beings. How can you think it’s allright?

And I’m not going to question here organizational aspects of society based on “castes”.

I’m just trying to describe you a feeling I had about everything being OK the way it was, because I experimented it.

I had read a lot about India before reaching this country. The reality overcame my expectations.

Spirituality

I think there is a spiritual reality permeating an immense part of a continent.

You can experiment it with the utmost intensity there, but I’m sure you can find many other places on earth gifting you in the same ecstatic manner.

Spirituality is what keeps this big widely, intrinsecally contradictory nation, on the path of balance.

It was a spiritual journey for me. It was not only the ashram of Satya Baba in Whitefield, south Kerala. It was the tissue of a whole nation who was talking to me about the importance of spirituality in one’s own life.

Even if what I found was just the beginning of a personal yet developing personal research, I think it represented a milestone in my spiritual walk as a human being.

I’ve got such an enriching experience deriving fom my trip to India that I am still extracting juice by it.

I think I’ll have to say more on this further on.

In the meanwhile, I invite you to go and find out what you’re looking for, whatever the place will be, however far it will be. We are spiritual beings walking the earth.

~Namaste

Follow The Orange Journal so you don’t miss a post. Do you love to write about self-improvement and personal development? Learn how to be added as a writer here. 🍊