I am struck by the constant streaming motion through all the streets I have traveled along thus far in my journey, in Delhi and in Lucknow, and I expect in every future place I am privileged to experience here. Rushing, pulsing traffic of every imaginable kind of vehicle and creature are all thrown together in their earnest efforts to get where they are going, carrying whatever needs to go there. Teams of people are, more often than not, crammed into the three-wheeled rickshaw carts, perched atop bicycle handlebars, on horseback, on mo-peds; women in saris and burqas sit side-saddle on rear fenders of bikes and motorcycles, a tiny child squeezed between the driver and the handlebars. This evening, a passenger on the rear of a motorbike was holding a 10- or 12-foot piece of pipe or tubing with some kind of fabric rolled around it, holing it up like a flagpole as the bike rushed down the street and in and out of bottlenecks of cars and lorrys and buses. Rickshaws appear out of nowhere piled high with huge loads of boxes, packages, and sacks stuffed to bursting, all held precariously together with a series of bungee cords, while the driver stands up to pedal the bike-cart, in order to gain enough leverage to move his load. And everyone managers to avoid the cows, standing placidly in the middle of the busy street, jaws working but feet fixed in place, oblivious to it all.
So, the crowds rush by, and occasionally you see, for instance, a small girl of 10 or so, dressed crisply in a navy blue and white school uniform of skirt and blazer, pedaling a bicycle against the traffic flow off to one side of the street, with posture erect and a perfect aura of unhurried calm about her, purposeful in her progress but not frenzied or hurried, remote in her spirit, not turning her head but fixing her gaze straight ahead, seeming to know that she will arrive at her destination at the fated time, no sooner and no later, while all around her the frantic honking of vehicles attempting to assert their right-of-way raises a chaos of sound filling the atmosphere. Such an island of calm in the floodwaters of humans in zealous pursuit of their purpose presents an odd juxtaposition that I’ve seen again and again here, personified in a variety of forms.
People who decide to stop moving forward for whatever reason, often seem to freeze into a low crouch, at whatever point on the globe they have determined to be their place of rest. Often they crouch so low to the ground that they seem to be emerging from it, as if the earth opened up just wide enough to allow the head, then shoulders, then most of a torso to rise up above the surface. No further motion is apparent then, as if all progress has come to a halt, suggesting a people only partially born to our planet, rooted to the earth as a plant might be, destined either to thrive or fail there in that very spot. Rarely have I witnessed an individual arise from such a crouching position. I suspect that this is perhaps because they are most often seen when I am actually rushing past them, carried along in the rush of traffic, so that my view is necessarily fragmented and spliced together as my head turns back and forth to take in as much as I can, while other vehicles first block my view and then move out of the way.
Fragmented, frozen, rushing, teeming images clashing and complex, as hard to follow or make sense of as Joyce in high form; the only solution is to sense, just to sense. Open the senses and let the stream run through, nourishing a primal joy.
