What exactly is an assault on the
senses? My senses certainly felt assaulted as I dashed through the backstreets
of the city near the Shrine of Nizamuddin, very much focused on what I was
doing, which was leaving where I was. The prospect of being killed has a
tendency to sharpen your observational powers. I took in everything, but I had time to
process none of it.
Afterwards I could mull over my
experience, remembering the shouts of shopkeepers in the alley, the fragrant
purple petals strewn over the green Tomb of Amir Khusro, and the funny blue pen
I used to hastily scribble down my name on the record of donors, more out of immediate
necessity than any charitable spirit. But not in the moment. Right then I was
overloaded with the cacophony of sounds, the brilliant spectrum of colors, and
the feel of people pressing in from all sides, all swirling around like a
vortex. I wanted none of it.
Michael
Wood, an eminent English historian and adventurer whom I idolize, is the first
person I ever heard use the phrase “India is an assault on the senses.” He was
not the last. Along with Slumdog Millionaire, the “sensory overload” concept
has become so associated with India that it is the first thing many people
think of when India is mentioned. I would have great difficulty recounting the
number of people that came up and warned me about the assault on my senses, in
one way or another, before I traveled there. A quick internet search will turn
up a dozen blog posts and a half dozen more movie quotes that relate to this.
Clearly it has been deeply ingrained in society by those who have traveled to
India and returned to tell their tales. Thus, my point is not to drum into you
that India will leave you feeling dizzy at times—it will. Instead, I want to pose
a question about the supposed assault on the senses: is it actually true?
This is
not by any means a new sentiment. The first Western traveler to reach the heart
of India was Megasthenes, an ambassador of the Greeks that followed Alexander
the Great. Upon arrival at India’s great imperial city, Patna, in the fourth
century B.C., Megasthenes and his fellow Greeks were awestruck by the splendor
of India. “I have seen the great cities of East,” he wrote. “I have seen the
Persian Palaces of Susa and Echbatana, but this is the greatest city in the
world1.”
Many
Western travelers today, though, are struck by disturbing images and chaos, rather
than beauty and splendor. However, that does not mean that the underlying cause
is not the same. India is perhaps not as much an assault on the senses as on
the sensibilities. Fresh travelers from America and Europe are shocked by how
different and distinct India really is. Thus I personally do not think India is
an assault on the senses—that implies an attack from the outside. India is
simply so foreign that it is easy to be swept away. Perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that India yanks the rug out from under you. It is an attack
from the inside.
There is
joy to be found in the chaos. If I was ever overwhelmed by India, I found it
helpful to remember that there are 1.2 billion people who live through it every
day. Certainly if they can do it, I can too. It takes a bit of getting used to
at first, but the good traveler eventually becomes accustomed to the extremes
of India as well as its quirks. There is joy to be found because I think the
only way to truly appreciate India is to step right into the middle of it. India
is not the only place where there is still old world craziness—for me,
Jerusalem and Cairo also come to mind. But there is a special charm to India—something
that suggests it can absorb everything it finds useful while still maintaining
an identity that is uniquely its own. That special kind of chaos is truly
Indian.
