Karma

It would be dangerous to live a virtuous life only for the sake of advancing one’s karma. Acts of kindness out of love for God, others and the self should always come from one’s heart. To give because you expect a karmic reward is not the right reason. And to refrain from hurting someone because you fear the consequences of bad karma is just the same. This is not to say that these are bad justifications for behaviour. Many could lead noble lives by this way. But the truth is that it is not out of genuine integrity for acting. Many follow the laws of society only because they don’t want to be punished under the law. For example, when filing income tax, how many people tell the truth only because they fear an audit?

But there are many things that the law doesn’t cover. These things don’t go unnoticed. God sees all. But your reasons for living up to Her standards should always be pure.

Karma is something that occurs over the lifetime of the soul. It is not something that can be predicted, nor forced. So to do something only in order to receive wealth or good fortune in this lifetime is elementary. It should be understood that the desire to help others or simply to do the right thing should come from adhering to universal ethics; and because you want to make kindness and love the order of the day.

There is simplicity and truth in this philosophy.

Reinforcing the Blonde Stereotype

It had been a long day. Tears unexpectedly appeared with pressure behind my eyes like an unexpected and unwanted guest persistently ringing the doorbell. I froze in front of my laptop, I leaned forward slightly so that my hair became a long, shaggy, blonde curtain; allowing some privacy. It was near six and I was sitting at my desk, the one next to my boss’ desk. The very last thing I wanted was for Sundeep to see me so close to tears.

I didn’t really know why I felt that way, or where the tears had come from. Sometimes events accumulate. They collect inside you, stacked like dominoes until the tension is too great—and then they exit your body as tears.

I didn’t cry today. Instead, I went shopping. A little retail therapy is always good for the soul of a woman when she’s not in the best of moods. So I took a rickshaw to Sarojini Nagar Market.

Amidst the chaos, I was there with purpose. I needed to buy clothes, new clothes that fit me. I’ve lost weight since I’ve been here in Delhi, and my pants are ridiculously large. My legs hide within the baggy elephant legs. I walked past the real stores, trying not to look, as I knew everything behind their polished glass retail fronts would cost more than I had in my wallet.

I saw one stall with some newish looking corduroys on the racks. So I stopped, stood at the rack and began leafing through the layers for some pants that were all together cute, sexy, fitting, and absolutely “me”. I will only buy something if it makes me feel gorgeous. That’s my rule. If I’m not completely in love with something, I won’t buy it.

So I made my way from the front of the store to the back, and I found a pair of jeans that looked like they might fit the above criteria. But I kept hewing and hawing to and fro with the sales man. He wanted to sell them to me. But I didn’t want to take them without being perfectly sure that they fit.

"Can’t I just, sssssshhhwissssshhh?” I asked, demonstrating a quick slide on of the jeans, as though I were pulling them up.

“This is a public place…” he said.

“Um, please?” Eyes transformed into two glass pools of pleading.

“Well, perhaps you could change back there. We don’t normally let customers do this.”

“But what about that man, is he going to look?”

No, of course not.

I’m sure.

“Well, maybe if you could just hold up this scarf as a curtain, no, higher, that’s fine, then I’ll just try these on.”

I took off my scarf, a big blue sarong I’ve had since the debacle with Peter, and he held it up as a curtain while I slipped on the jeans. I tried on three pairs. Bingo! The last pair fit! I paid for them with a smile. He even gave me a better deal than what he gives most. Though after all was said and done, I realized how foolish I had been.

I had pushed the envelope, an aspect of myself that is always trying to break barriers, step beyond bars, and reach out to and connect with people’s humanity, the side that will break the rules, just this once. This is the side I always try to reach. But this time, I didn’t feel elated, I felt cheap. Cheap and blonde. No Indian woman would ever do what I just did, regardless of leaving the store with a perfectly fitting pair of jeans. If they aren’t doing this, then what am I doing? Doubts began to catch up with me.

However, I still needed more retail therapy, so I kept walking, kept shopping, and I left the market with some beautiful clothes. With articles of clothing that I would wear, and that I would feel beautiful in. It was a good journey. And I left with a lighter heart. Retail therapy.

As the rickshaw pulled away from the market into the dark, crowded, Delhi night, I laughed quietly to myself.

“Way to reinforce the blonde stereotype, G,” I thought to myself, with a snicker.

soul impression

First impressions, for most, are a paramount facet in any relationship. Given my own experiences with the diverse and unique souls I have come to know, hindsight has shown me that yes, my first impressions were indeed acutely accurate.

Do not confuse my reference to impressions with anything superficial. This is an instinct. A whisper soft knowing beneath my skull, smack dab between the eyes, and lower still—a feeling in my heart, in my gut. It’s this sweet whisper, ever so quiet that tells the truth. It isn’t intrusive, and it won’t try to dominate the other voice of consciousness, in your mind or wherever it may reside…for those whose consciousness lives in your heart I put my two weary hands together in applause for you.

This is something that must be approached with humility. Stop trying to think you always know what’s best. Surrender your voice, and the egotistical mode of thinking you know what’s best at all times, and just listen. If you’ve ever stopped to listen to a child without judgement, or to the gentle summer breeze that blows between the red waxy heads of tulips planted with care in rich garden earth, then you will find that listening to your voice within is a like experience. It’s not about reliance on logic but rather letting yourself be guided by a higher power, one that once you come to trust, will never misguide you.

A while back, when I lived in Peterborough, I often walked the twenty minute route to east city—crossing the wide Otonobee River on the Hunter Street Bridge. There is a health food store on the other side of this bridge where I used to shop for all kinds of delightful products such as vitamins, minerals and rice noodles. I knew the staff fairly well because it was a shop that I frequently appeared in over the course of a few years time. On one particular day, I entered the store looking for an iron supplement. I stood staring blankly at the hundreds of bottles of vitamins in search of my iron tablets…and though help would have been appreciated a salesman whom I’d never previously seen in the store appeared and began to aggressively sell me on his products. He stood very close to me, his six-foot-something frame towering over mine, and I have a clear memory of the way my gut dropped and the urge I had to run away immediately when he approached me. I left the store without my vitamins, dropping an excuse about having to make an appointment. The next time I passed by the store I saw him standing behind the glass store front window, and although I still needed to buy my vitamins, I chose to wait until he was not working.

Six months down the road, after designing a website for the owner of the same health food store I learned that the aforementioned salesman had recently been released from prison shortly before he had been hired to work in the store. Only a few weeks after my own experience, he abducted a woman who was shopping alone in the store. He bound her with duck-tape, took her into the back of the store, and raped her.

It was not a whisper-soft voice that told me to mistrust this man, but a scream. It was a reaction of my entire body, every cell recoiling from this man, pleading to persuade me to leave the store. It was so strong that I had but one choice and that was to listen.

But not all first impressions are so strong. It’s the times when I sense that someone has a controlling factor in their personality that I wish I’d listened more. Yes, these people might not cause direct harm, but do I really want a person in my life who will try to dictate and dominate? (Of course the answer is no).

And of course there are those where love is. Where being together is no less than heaven. In every relationship, there is always an element of risk. But to be brave and to refuse the ones who will harm, in order to embrace those who will love is the greatest way of life.

street clothes

A constant frenzy of action best describes India’s economy. It moves and swirls in an undeniable force that will pick you up and move you, like the undulating motion of the sea. There is the satisfying shear of scissors cutting through material. The delicious aroma of food pulled through air currents from the large aluminium vats on red hot coals where men hunched over—quickly stirring, quickly frying, prepare the goods. And there are the sweepers, moving the dust; and the labourers pounding brick into ash.

This is speaking from a “grassroots” level, literally. From the young boy who sits in the clouds of exhaust on the roadside before a giant mound of marigolds, to the shoe repair man planted firmly on the ground amid his assortment of shoes, and the children who sell issues of Vogue and other superfluous articles, it is all the same.

One more day of work, is equal to one more day where hand meets mouth, for one who is balanced every so precariously on the wire above complete loss and destitution. This threshold I tell you of now is so much lower in India—where people have nothing but a threadbare scarf that holds within its fibres a tiny frame, full of life and resilience. Any skill, or service is put to work here. Nothing is worthless, or inadequate. Anything, will do, for survival.

I have been there before. When I was sixteen, living on government welfare, without support from my mother, I became quite creative in the ways to earn money. And for those who don’t make the connection, money is life. There are those who have money, and those who do not. And there are those who will do anything for a shiny coin. It’s a means of survival.

Because I’ve lived that way (and yes, I begged for money, and sold everything I possessed), I can see things from the point of the ones here in Delhi who ask me for money. It isn’t easy saying, “no” when I see a tiny little child run towards me with both incredible hope and desperation. I want nothing more than to give them my entire purse and let them run away with my money. I treat them kindly though, and I don’t yell at them the way I’ve seen Ben^* (a male Canadian volunteer) do so. Yelling at the children only dehumanizes them. I meet their eyes, and I tell them no, tell them in way that doesn’t hurt.

I believe that a universal purpose of life common among every living individual, is to leave this world a better place. We are here to leave a trail of love, compassion and kindness. If we can exit this world having done more good than harm, then we have fulfilled the base purpose common to all of our lives. It is possible to go about each day without leaving anything less than a footprint of kindness.

It is not my place to try to change this country’s problems, but perhaps if my heart is receptive to listening without judgement, I could see the greater picture, and understand the complexity of life, here in Delhi.

^{* name changed to keep the identity private}

In Transit

My flight was delayed 6 hours after my original flight because the plane was “BROKEN”?!? So I took the midnight plane to Heathrow International. I located my seat, and was a little dismayed to see that it was in the wheelchair accessible seat. But upon inquiry I was to learn that oh, no, this was not the wheelchair seat, it was the EMERGENCY EXIT seat. The stewardess must have seen the expression of fear on my face as I inspected the flimsy plastic panel covering a hole which I resisted opening, and the old carpeted panelling covering the EXIT. She bent down and asked me, “Are you sure you are comfortable sitting here? Because you’ll need to open the door like this”:

And she did a fake demonstration of pulling down the lever with great force.

“So basically, if the plane crashes…,” I said.

At which point the man sitting behind me stands up and says, “OK, I think everyone is feeling very comfortable with this conversation,” and then starts speaking in rapid tones to the stewardess. She asked us if we wanted to change seats, and of course the answer to her question was yes. I wanted to sleep in the empty row beside me anyway.

What was even more bizarre was that on my next flight from Heathrow to Delhi, I was again placed next to the EMERGENCY EXIT. This time, it was beside the wing. So, basically, upon hearing the words, “This is an emergency! EVACUATE! EVACUATE! EVACUATE!” I was to yell, “Open your seatbelts, and take nothing with you!”, open the door, CLIMB OUT ONTO THE WING, and wait for further instructions from the stewardess. Ok, I’m not exactly sure how well I would have been able to follow through with this, but I’ve seen enough James Bond and Wesley Snipes movies that I’m sure I could have pulled it off.

Thessanoliki

I was pretending to be reading instead of sleeping when the security guards approached the benches. They had already given my fellow bench sleepers warnings. Luckily, I had decided to sit up to drink some water when the guards approached the first time. Earlier, when I arrived at the benches, no one else was laying down. I was the first. I've always had a rebellious streak.

I made the decision that it was more important for me to lie down and close my eyes than it was to be concerned about the other people strangers that I would never see again in my life seeing me sleep; curled uncomfortably on the wooden pews, using my backpack as a pillow. Five minutes after I lay down, an older man moved over to a bench near me, and followed suit. Then an older couple, a man with no front teeth, and a dark haired woman wearing bright red bloomers and navy blue pantyhose arrived. They lay down too, with their heads leaning together, both resting on their luggage. When the security guard came to give his second warning, I saw him coming and pretended to be reading in a strange half laying, half sitting crouch.

Yes, this is the way I normally read.

But this time he came to tell us that we all had to leave the station between two and five am while the building was being cleaned. I'm not sure why he chose helped me. It could have been my new blond dye job and cut, or maybe it was my adorably cute smile. Or maybe it was that he had actually heard me when I told him that I'd already been to the cafe across the street, and that a creepy man had harassed me there.

Whatever his reasons were, he stopped me as I slowly dragged my backpack towards the door and told me I could stay. Just like that. He didn't give me a reason, but I don't care. I'm just so grateful for the gift of protection and shelter that night.

Oh, and Greece has oregano flavored Ruffles. I discovered this between two and five am between naps and listening to the guards play poker.