When you think of India, a host of pictures rush into your mind. Vibrant colors sprinkled and splattered as a gesture of communal celebration. Trinkets on pretty women who carry earthen pots through a muddy village countryside. Children playing in pools of water in the theppakulam (a large bathing tank found in a temple complex). Silver streaks streaming down the majestic Himalayan mountain range. Sumptuous, savory, gourmet street food. Raags and thaals (Indian melodic patterns). Saffron-clad men taking a holy dip on the river Ganges.
This resplendent country is the artist’s canvas for the imagination. This is the country that I come from and that God called me and my husband back to. God did not send us back to India for its beauty; God sent us back because of her lack of beauty. Spiritual beauty. India is predominantly pagan, with less than 2 percent of its 1.2 billion people professing faith in the one true God. All her God-given resources are made into little gods that her people worship day and night. I wish I could stamp her flag on my chest and sing her anthem with zest, but I can’t, because India does not know her Creator.
What ails India? you may wonder. I want to take you on a journey to help you find the answer to this question. I want you to see the sting of sin that keeps India ailing, weeping, and seeking out a Savior. This is the journey of our new beginning in India.
My husband was recently ordained as a missionary pastor of the RPCNA to the Indian heartland. We didn’t think of our calling precisely as missionaries since we were returning to our homeland. However, returning after three years did make us feel alien and helped us see our once-familiar world through a new lens.
On Aug. 15, the day of India’s Independence, we set out from the shores of America—the timing for seeking out India’s spiritual freedom surely wasn’t ours. In the wee hours of our arrival, we caught a glimpse of our national flag, unfurled and flying high, majestic, so poetic. We were here at last and ready to serve. The smell of filter coffee and vadas (savory Indian donuts) made me feel at home; so did the familiar sight of stray dogs and the sound of incessant honking.
Our first month was a rude reverse-culture-shock. Grocery prices seemed to have skyrocketed. I remember coming home from shopping one evening, having paid half a dollar for bags (which shops no longer provide for free), carrying half as much as I would have carried from Aldi but paying just as much, and weeping over the size of the onions (I hadn’t begun chopping them yet, by the way). It hit me then that we had been gone for three years during a time when Bangalore suffered under stiff prices and inflation.
Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India; it is one of the largest exporters of IT and IT-related services to the world. Being a confluence of affluent migrants from around India and the world, Bangalore has become the consumer’s ire. In late 2013, the currency inflated to an all-time high of nearly 11 percent, and the country is still recovering from this hike. From KFC to McDonald’s, from Snapfitness to Spar Hypermarkets, American and European companies have flooded into a new and growing market, thanks to the elites in the city who can afford such living. Meanwhile, the middle and lower income groups and the local population gape at the skyscrapers and wonder what their garden city is turning into. A concrete jungle, for sure. The buying power of a few has spiked the overall standard of living; and the poor, the aged, and those working in other sectors are paying the difference. As I spoke with auto drivers and housemaids, I realized that lower-income folks live on meager supplies to keep themselves afloat. My brother-in-law put it well, “Greed is sinking this city!”
Another economic woe was revealed to us when we set out on a DIY house-painting project. You must understand that high-caste folks and those on the upper echelon of the socio-economic ladder don’t take up painting jobs. Such a thing would be preposterous, according to this culture. This is blue-collar work. We braved this new work, not because we thought of ourselves as ace painters, but in order to break the neck of the caste system. In three days, after priming and puttying and painting a coat, we fell ill. We had to turn over the work to more able painters and focus on recovering from our illness and setting up our new business. In order to do the latter, we had to open bank accounts. Unfortunately, both these projects were cut short by a statewide protest demanding water. Water? Yes, water.
Karnataka (the state where we live) and the neighboring state, Tamilnadu, share a river called Cauvery. Karnataka controls the amount of water released to Tamilnadu, as decided by the federal government. The two states have had disputes for the last few decades over this river. Instead of trying to resolve a problem amicably and finding alternatives to the growing water crisis, the two states will occasionally erupt in mass agitations and hooliganism. This time, it happened within the first month of our return.
What economic consequences did this protest have? Our painters vanished for a week. Civilians were burning buses and trucks on our streets. Any car that bore a registration number belonging to the neighboring state was vandalized and the passengers attacked. People were afraid to walk on the streets.
The state called for a curfew for four days following this vandalism. We had to stay put in my parents’ home while this first woe passed. Until the painting was finished, our home could not be set up, nor could we embark on the family vacation we had planned a month before.
Our banks had to close too. This meant that we could not open accounts for business, or transfer funds from another country. We simply had to wait it out. For a whole week, grocery shops, pharmacies, banks, schools, and offices were closed. Nothing moved, except the thugs. Taking a walk around the neighborhood, I was able to see what a Sabbath rest would look like in this pagan city. The air was clear; the noise disappeared. No business whatsoever. But it also showed me what an anarchy would look like, especially a slack one. A company of men who did not want to work or let other men work. Rabble-rousers. I cannot help but wonder if the price inflation and civilian unrest and anarchy were feeding into one another. When a country breaks the fourth commandment, she has sounded her own economic death knell.
If there are two things that India is infamous for, it is trash and traffic. My husband has been praying with a neighbor for the trash situation to improve in our apartment complex. The caste system has widened the divide between the upper and lower classes, between those who talk about cleanliness a square-foot distance from them and those who dump trash in the open, far from an eye that would see and feel disgust. The educated class care only for their homes to be clean, while the working class don’t care as long as they dump the former’s trash outside their homes, even if it is by the neighbor’s home. It’s a pitiful situation. My husband and I are thinking of practical and simple ways to “own up” and solve the trash problem in our apartment; for, as the apartment goes, so goes the city. The place where we live is a classic microcosm of our culture, and the infiltration of Hindu thinking, even in the minds of Christians, is evident.
On our second day back, we ventured out on our dusty, rusty ol’ two-wheeler, and I rode eyes shut for the most part. Don’t worry; my husband did the driving. We had to traverse a famous junction that connects four neighborhoods. It was a familiar sight to us three years ago, but now it was a nightmare. No traffic cops. No traffic lights. All the traffic rushing in together from all directions. It was like an apocalypse. It’s a miracle that people survive it!
And then the dust. Since returning from the U.S., we tried to wear nice clothes whenever we went out. After my first week out on our motorbike, I began to wonder if it was worth it. I showered, dressed nicely, spritzed some perfume on, and within a 10-minute bike journey I would be laden with dust from head to foot. Not that you can notice it, but you feel it. Dust bags, we. I don’t despise sitting on my dusty, rusty ol’ bike anymore.
Then there are the rising pollution levels. In order to cope with the dust and the vehicular pollution, I started to wrap a scarf around my head, face, mouth, and neck, leaving a wee space for my shades. We learned that “pollution masks” were sold in the market to solve the problem. Or skirt the problem, shall we say? There’s another way they do it here. Uber. This has been a great new addition to the city, beating the prices of three-wheeled auto-rickshaws by half. And every time we ride the Uber, we get to enjoy some cool, pollution-free air as they turn on the air conditioner. From the comfort of the car, I sit snugly and watch women scrub the dusty roads, a broom in one hand and a pan in the other. They don’t have the benefit of pollution masks.
This is how we have been solving problems in India, all these centuries. It broke my heart.
Politics, pollution, prices, traffic, and trash aside, we have also had to manage the missing faces in our life. During the first month, I would wake up every morning, stare at the ceiling fan, and weep. Weep for friends. Weep for ease. Weep for rest. Weep for what seemed like a closed chapter of our life, never to be opened again. Never. That bothered me. Can I never go back, turn back time? Can I never experience those times except in my memory? In heaven, yes, but cannot earth hold more of heaven’s joys? Can people I used to behold face to face only remain as reflections on the shifting waters of my mind? Is this all there is to three years of life, love, and laughter? In one moment, in the wee hours of morning, I felt like someone had pulled a rug from underneath us. In one flight, all we knew to be familiar vanished and a new context beckoned us to “fit in and live.” Uprooted again, where do I put my foot now?
You may be thinking that life in India must be pitiful, lamentable. It is. It will be anywhere in the world without Christ. This is India weeping. Some of the people learn to get drunk in their sorrow, to buy cars and flat-screen TVs while their family drowns in debt. Others weep night and day on the street corners waiting for mercy to flow, from somewhere, anywhere. Most people find their refuge in stones and sticks, fashioned with human artistry and propped with human pride. In the midst of this doom and gloom, Christ is yet shining hope.
Let me come back to our story. Christ who pulled the rug from under us showed us compassion. In those initial weeks of adjustment, He sent familiar friends to our home each day. They supplied the joy we missed from communion with the saints abroad. Christ’s way of comfort, I realized, was not to remove the thorn from the thicket, but to supply Himself in good measure amidst the thicket. Pain and joy are blended. Sorrow and love flow mingled from the cross.
Our home is now cleaned up, repaired, and well painted. Our business is all set up. We have six clients signed up and six projects steaming ahead. We have begun ministering to our neighbors and have started a Bible study on Colossians at our home. About 15 thirsty souls have been attending in person, on Google Hangout, and by all sorts of means. It has been a much-needed refreshment for me, singing the Psalms together and delving deep into the Word of God. Eyes sparkle each week as my husband delves into God’s Word. It’s still a marvel to see God’s grace at work in lives. God is faithful. We still have trash, traffic, politics, and pollution. But we are also gaining more of Christ. The weeping wilderness is receiving new beauty in the Lord Jesus Christ. Mourn for her sorrow to turn into joy, will you?