>This go around it’s my last day in India and I am walking through Chennai’s largest shopping “mall,” if you can call it that. Alone now, on a trip that was not about shopping, I take a couple hours to browse, barter and buy those pretty, unnecessary souvenirs that will sparkle against my wrist and warm my collarbone when the a/c is too high at the Angelika. I’m pretty much done, a bit tired and food deprived; my “over it” meter is approaching maximum, so when a shopkeeper shouts out to me, “Madam! Madam!” I don’t even glance to see where it’s coming from.
“Madam! Madam!!” He is insistent. I arrive at officially “over it,” and give him the international ‘no thanks/give it a rest’ gesture, walking, my behind to him and the back of my right hand up, as if to say, “enough, dude.”
He is running down the hallway, barefoot. He’s followed me so long that I think, “What’s up with this guy?” and turn to look. As brazenly annoying as some of these merchants can be, no one has yet to be this determined; a pitbull with a tilaka.
“You don’t look, you miss the best ayurvedic natural shop in the plaza! Please, madam, you come, you look.”
Ok, he’s right. I didn’t look and am actually interested in this, so I go to follow him.
When we sit (they always make you sit down in these stores) he looks at my tulsi mala beads, worn as a bracelet, and he pronounces the name of the guy I came to India to hang about, in question format, as if to say, “Your beads, they are from this guy?” I curiously answer, “Yes.” And I see him gesturing to a picture, prominently placed, clearly designating him as that guy’s Guy as well.
“You see, it is meant!” He smiles enthusiastically. The Guy is famous in these parts, but not so famous that everyone around here would know who he is and even a picture of him would be rare. It is the first one I have seen.
“You are supposed to meet me.” He underlines, satisfied. I smirk back at him, thinking the same thing. He knew I would think it.
I know you rationalists are going to surmise this is a little wack, but you know that already, so bear with me.
It’s not just that I literally had asked the big Guy for a way to clear up my “India spots” as my friend so gently coined them. It’s that everything has been so in-the-flow since being here that it’s hard to dismiss these seemingly small synchronicities/signs and ensuing intrinsic insouciance. I asked. I kinda thought I’d miraculously wake up one morning with no pimples. Instead I got a small barefoot Indian man chasing me down a mall hallway. Grace comes in every form.
There are other little incidents. Being the last of a 100 to leave for an outing, unhurriedly, everyone else stressing to scurry early, and then getting the blessing of road-tripping with a female monk. Going to see another holy lady, placidly pushing the minutes to get there to a really small window, and walking in to find the last three perfect spots open in the second row. She daintily shuffles in, petite and seraphic, so right behind us, someone might have thought we all shared a rickshaw. There are larger signs as well, things that have nothing to do with seating for sages, but these examples (For you and I, both) are more easily digestible.
I could interpret this level of ease as a feeling of being guided, or some kind of peace, thinking and knowing that it’s all going to be all right. Being comfortable with what is. That’s been present and building for some time, but it’s the newfound speed of it that is almost comically quick. A less secular way to describe it could be just following your own intuition, but having an unshakable faith that you know what’s right for yourself and those things popping up. But I’m talking about at every moment. Especially in the “ugly” ones. It’s easy to be grateful when all is well or when we think we’ve made it through a rough spot. And there is a world of difference between intellectually thinking it and believing that in our core when the sh** hits the fan. But if we’re thinking it, the good news is, that means it’s en route to the core.
I’ve had phases, passing fancies and flirtations with this “guidedness.” This time around the bend it might be due to a larger understanding, but I don’t want to get so deep that I lose you just yet. And perhaps this is just still an Indian haze and I will go back to a lower rung of development as soon as I hit Manhattan’s sidewalks? Maybe I think the guidedness is here to settle down, when really he’s just a player, and in the morning I’ll wake up, mascara smeared from the red-eye, walk-of-shaming it from JFK to my apartment. Totally possible.
“Margaret, seriously, I mean move away from the incense and the voodoo and snap back to reality please. I read that facebook post about you eating a papaya like a monkey— time to get out of India and back to the city. In this world it’s every man for himself. Life is what you make of it.” This is the catch 22, that strange juxtaposition, because both are true. How can both be true? How can everything be taken care of and at the same time you need to work for it? Sorry, but I can’t give you a reasonable answer for that. Let’s not go there yet. In the hours upon hours of philosophical discourse with my friends, we often wrap up with, “Don’t act like an enlightened person, if you’re not enlightened… Chai?”
What that means is, there are other levels of this universe we are not privy to, and you can call that spiritual or scientific or pure common sense, but I think we can all at least agree to stuff going on that no one can explain. Until we get there, it’s useless to ask why. And we don’t need to act all noble, peace-like and selfless along the way, because really, we’re not that way. We’re human. Even enlightened people get pissed, by the way. My own personal big Guy has a rep for being what some have dubbed as ‘too passionate.’
We have to deal with what’s in front of us, and that will always run the whole gamut of emotions, but what happens is we start to let go of the suffering attached to it. There is joy, but no attachment to that joy as “mine.” There are tears, but they do not send us into a 3-day tailspin where the only people we see are the deli and liquor store deliverymen. When we experience what’s in front of us, for reals, that peace descends. Maybe one day (hopefully, fingers crossed, pretty please?) for good.
How does this relate to a barefoot Indian chasing me down in a shopping mall? Did I get absolutely hoodwinked and was my previous wish for an ayurvedic herb to help cleanse my kidney just a total, random coincidence? Have I completely gone over the deep end, and those close to me secretly (or not so secretly) think I’m living with fuscia colored glasses?
Perhaps.
I’m not saying I’m right. I could never know that for sure. But you know what? I’m happy. I’m at peace. And everything is happening with super efficient, effortless ease. If that means I’m out of my mind, I’ll take it.
