Suddenly becoming fully awake

"Be here now."  - Ram Dass



The plane skidded down, to land me in a truly foreign place. My first time in India. It was so different, it was other-worldly. Hot, baking, pungent, mad, colorful India. My twenty-one year old heart was fluttering wildly. We stepped out of the airport, into chaos.

The first thing that bombarded me was the heat. I had never felt so hot before. It was like stepping into an oven that you couldn't turn off. The sweat instantly started running in a river down my back. People, everywhere. Noise, din, motion. It wasn't like stepping back in time, it was like stepping into an alternate reality.

I couldn't stop smiling, my third-eye filled with pure wonderment.

The shock was like suddenly becoming fully awake. We were bustled into mini taxis, with our backpacks and shiny white faces. We went speeding down the freeway of chance. In India, traffic rules are more of an after thought. It is sheer, crazy, dangerous, toxic delight to be driving on a freeway in India.

Motorcycles are jam-packed with families of four or five, babies in front! Three-wheeled, mustard bright tuk-tuks are wreathed in garlands and stuffed with tourists and truth seekers.
Old, rejected cars of every make, model, color and year are cheek by jowl with  massive semi-trailer trucks. The trucks have 'Praise the Lord' painted on their windshields in bright gouash, and ganash dangling from their rear-view mirrors. All are honking, all taking the right of way at the same time, all zig-zagging in and out of each other.

And then I saw it out of the taxi window: an elephant. 

One's first time seeing an elephant is startling at the best of times. But an elephant on a freeway in India is something else altogether. It was resignedly walking in the slow lane, on the side of the road. Painted, and carrying locals.

 At that point, I simply had to surrender. To the madness of India. To feeling fully awake because my experience completely took me out of the reality that I had always known. I melted into this living dream. I let myself go to the suffocating heat, the incessant honking, the babble of voices, the smells, the spices, the colors, the magic. There was nothing else to do.

I wonder if I could do that in my every day life, too?