Reflections on India

We went to Chennai to teach some Indian Christians in Apologetics for one week this month. It was my (Brian)first visit to India, and it was quite fascinating. The first thing that I noticed were these cool little old cars they had. They are an old model of Hugh Morris cars. I believe these are English cars, so Americans may be unfamiliar with them. They are quite quaint looking, and are very common. Most taxis are Morrises. I do not know what year they are from, but if there is any similarity to the styles of American cars, I would estimate that the model comes from the 1950s or 1960s. According to our friend Cyril in India, they were the standard car that was used in India’s socialist era, and hence is regarded today as a symbol of India’s socialist past. Well, I feel a bit ambivalent about that, since I despise any expression of socialism, symbol or not; at the same time, however, I love anything that smacks of history. In the new dynamic era of India’s growth, the Morris still has the retro cool look to it. We rode to and from the Chennai airport in a Morris. The SUV we were driven around in the remainder of the week was much more comfortable, but the Morris was a cool experience.

Driving around in India was an interesting cultural experience. I must say that I was never scared—only because we had a great driver the whole week, and I had complete confidence in him. This allowed me to just look at the traffic and marvel. The first thing that you will notice is that most of the intersections don’t seem to have traffic lights. There are many traffic circles. But at most junctions, the cars just sort of keep going through the intersection without hitting each other. On all roads but freeways, there are no lines—people just drive wherever on the road. There are cars mixed in with buses, autos (3-wheeled taxis like tuk-tuks in Thailand, if you know those), motorcycles (often with entire families on them—husband, wife, and one or two kids!), bicycles, and even an occasional cart pulled by cows (!) in the “slow lane”! The drivers beep the horn all the time. It is not used primarily for warning or expressing anger like in the US. People beep constantly, apparently to let other drivers know where they are on the road: “Beep beep—I’m coming up behind you. Beep beep—I’m trying to get past you; move to your left a bit so I can pass.”

One thing that I noticed about Indian drivers, though, is that they do not seem to be aggressive or ambitious. They are very calm, deferential drivers. They all seem to yield to one another, and they drive fairly slowly. I guess that’s the only way this crazy traffic system could work. With most countries I have been to (particularly the US, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia), with all of the aggressive and ambitious drivers, there would be car accidents and fatalities on every street every day if the traffic system were like India’s. I was never scared riding through Indian traffic with Indian drivers. (In contrast, when I was in Bali, I was terrified. The Indonesian drivers will just pass right in the face of oncoming traffic and just get back in the lane in time. I could swear that on some occasions the only reason we didn’t wreck was because I gasped and the driver swerved at the last second. This wasn’t the case in Jakarta because there the traffic just doesn’t move at all. The freeways are like parking lots. So traffic jams or death races—I’m not sure which extreme is worse!).

Crossing the street on foot was quite an adventure. “Cross in faith, brother!” our Indian colleagues said. The trick is that you stand “in the shadow” of the more practiced person and start to move when he does. However, there are times that they start walking, and you think, “Are they crazy? There’s no way they can fit through that gap in traffic!!!” Well, I am used to crossing in some busy traffic, so I did OK. The Indians remarked that same night that apparently, my faith had grown.

There is also a lot of poverty in India, and you will see people just sitting or laying on the sidewalk or ground. Now not all of these people are beggars. Some of them are laborers, fruit hawkers, and vendors of various knick-knacks. Regardless, they will just sit or lay on the sidewalk (and these are dirty sidewalks), and it doesn’t seem strange to them.

There are also a lot of animals roaming around. There are stray dogs like in many cities. (I didn’t see any stray cats like in Singapore, though.) And then, there are the cows. There are many carts pulled by cows, and you often see cows standing on the side of the road, or eating, or bathing in a lake. These cows are bigger than the typical American cow, and their horns grow in a more vertical curve from the top of the head (as opposed to the horizontal curve out from the sides of the head of American cows).

Another thing about India is the heat. Oh my gosh, the heat. It is typically about 40-42 degrees Celsius there (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I guess) at this time of the year. So if you’re an Ang Mo (Hokkien for “white guy [or gal]”) like me, in the daytime you just try to stay in the air condition as much as possible. However, the humidity is nowhere near as bad as Singapore, so I’m not sure that India’s weather is actually less comfortable. When the late afternoon begins, the weather gets much less severe. It is not bad in the evening and at night. (Below is pix of me trying to cool down my body and calm down my stomach with some young coconut water)
The food in India is quite nice if you like Indian food—and I love Indian food. The food at the academy where we were teaching was absolutely delicious. But you do have to be careful. In India, you always drink bottled water, and you don’t use even use ice. At our hotel, unfortunately, the food quality was not as good. Sometimes it tasted OK, but not at other times. I did get a case of diarrhea from the hotel, and so did I’Ching on the same day (and she’s got a stomach of iron)—even a few of our Indian colleagues got the bug from this hotel! Most nights, some of the Indian teachers took us around for dinner to different restaurants to try different kinds of Indian food, such as Kerala food (from the Indian state of Kerala), Indian Chinese food, and others. I learned a few kinds of Indian food that I had never had before, and will look for them in Indian restaurants in Singapore.

Now it seems like many of the things I have said are negative. I’m not trying to sound negative—I’m just describing the things about India that are really different that can really give Westerners a culture shock. If you go to India, you know one thing for sure—you’re not in Kansas anymore! All that being said, India is a fantastic place. I would find it hard to live there, but I really enjoyed my visit, and look forward to going again. It is a dynamic, diverse place, with people hustling and bustling everywhere. It is a lot of fun to shop there (and having lived in Singapore 2 years, I can be a bit kiasu and say, “So cheap, lah!”).

There is amazing religious diversity in India as well—Hindus (many different types), Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. In Chennai, there is a large Christian population with a really amazing history. I would like to learn more of that history. The remains of the Apostle Thomas are buried in Chennai, according to tradition, and I intend to visit his memorial the next time we go.

It was a joy to see our Indian colleagues again, and to meet some of them for the first time. The work occurring at RZIM India is encouraging. They have a great new facility. I was envious of the great library they have—many old, but high quality books that are no longer in print—I was like a kid in a candy store! The new Academy of Apologetics in India is off to a great start, and it was a real joy for I’Ching and I to be a part of it. It is amazing that they could get 20 or so students to take off for 3 weeks to do an extensive course in apologetics. The students there are hungry to be equipped, and were so pleasant to I’Ching and me. They are very gracious people, and highly motivated to learn. It seems that many Indian Christians love ideas, debating, discussing, questioning, etc., and that makes them both fun and challenging to teach. This is very different from the Southeast Asian context, where there is a more pragmatic spirit, and less interest in more theoretical matters (regardless of the fact that these matters can be crucial to our faith, or to the dialogue between our faiths and other faiths). Of course, the Indians, like all of us, have their own cultural blind spots, but it was refreshing to deal with a different set of cultural “pros and cons” than the ones we usually face in our own context.

I’Ching and I will be returning in September to teach for a week. We really look forward to it. One thing that will be different is that we were a bit underprepared before the previous trip, so we had to do a lot of prep-work in the hotel after teaching. The next time, we will be fully prepared so that we can use our free time for more fellowship, shopping, and sightseeing. It is a shame to have to stay inside the hotel working when visiting such an incredible country, and we don’t intend to make that mistake twice!