An Assault on the Senses?

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.