An empty box from India

It was an assault. There was simply no other way to describe it. An assault on her senses and it was unforgettable... intoxicating, energising, magical and terrifying - all at once.

She discovered quickly that this dichotomy was in fact the entire essence of India. Perhaps of Life itself.

Welcome, to New Delhi

She strode confidently through the bustling terminal. She had done this solo travel thing often enough to know how it worked.

Make-up less and sporting a fake wedding ring, she had meticulously clothed herself from collarbone to knee in a somewhat laughable attempt to blend in.

“Do not stop walking until you see your name!”, she commanded herself as she marched past the money exchange booths and into the sea of fluttering greeting signs.

She looked intensely yet briefly at the names, never meeting the Indian men in the eyes. She knew, though, that this didn’t stop those eyes from looking at her.

Typically this girl loved attention but she hated this kind. It made her feel completely disarmed and vulnerable. She’d be damned if she’d show it though.

She couldn’t even blame them for staring. She was one of the only westerners in the place.

This 23 year old Australian who seemed to have so many burning questions about life that there was simply no way for them to be answered other than to travel halfway across the world, alone and on a whim.

First world problems

It was your typical ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ storyline - “Young, privileged westerner questions her relationship and career and seeks answers to the meaning of life by travelling overseas”.

The published story of course tells of a woman who spent a year between Italy, India and Bali.

This girl’s itinerary however, was slightly different: Thailand, Vietnam, India and Bali.

Truly, this all just seemed an elaborate excuse to escape her relationship and career for a while. Simply some time to think.

The poor girl, through no fault of her own, had always felt this urge to run and to explore seemingly greener pastures.

It seemed her destiny to spend her life searching, and a trip to India was a seed planted well before she was conscious of it.

From a small village in Japan...

Back when she was just eight years old, she moved with her parents and brother to a small village north-west of Tokyo, Japan.

There she and her brother spent nine months at a local primary school where they were somewhat of celebrities with their blonde hair and green eyes; a stark contrast in a sea of black and brown. Perhaps this was also the time where she became so accustomed to receiving attention.

Then suddenly that trip seemed to finish just as quickly as it had started, or at least in her malleable young mind anyway.

Before she knew it, her parents were separating, and she and her brother were being flown back to Australia to live with their grandparents whilst her father stayed on in Japan and her mother travelled alone through Bali, Nepal and … India.

In fact, it seemed to her only now, that her mother was indeed the original pioneer of the ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ synopsis.

Came a marble box from India

Her only memories of her mother’s return, aside from her braided and beaded hair, were her gifts from India.

The most magical pink bracelets with tiny silver gems that glistened and sang as she shook her small wrists; beautiful bindis that made her feel like a princess; and a small but magnificent marble box from the Taj Mahal adorned with long-stemmed flowers of red, orange and yellow. She imagined all the trinkets she could fill it with like only a young girl could.

She knew from that early age that there must have been something magical about India.

Surely, if her mother had gone through such an upheaval and still she returned with these precious, shimmering treasures, then India must be a place of salvation.

Back in the airport

Her driver wasn’t waiting inside for her as she’d expected. This made her nervous.

She had no way of using her phone yet and was too proud, or perhaps too nervous, to seek help.

Keeping her head high, she continued marching with suitcase in tow and hoping that nobody would prey on her rapidly diminishing sense of confidence.

“Do not stop walking until you see your name!”, she repeated to herself.

The terminal doors opened and there it was.

Life

Pure, unadulterated, unforgiving, Life.

It smacked her dead in the face like a scorned ex-lover.

“You wanted something different? You thought you’d be better off somewhere else? Ha, here you go then sweetheart… Take this!”

Explosions of sights, sounds and smells coming at her like a barrage of abusive blows.

Wham! Colours!

Colours like she’d never seen them before in all of their blinding intensity. Sari’s dancing upon women’s bodies as they excitedly greeted loved ones, glistening jewellery, bindis, red dots on foreheads, chains of flowers hanging around necks and car rear vision mirrors. She could even swear that multicoloured powders seemed to spontaneously explode like fireworks in the air.

Ugh yes, that air! Her nose hairs scorched with each objecting breath.

The humidity was both exhilarating and draining, as the sweat began to drip from her tightly pulled ponytail.

Smack! The stench!

The sweet smell of delicious incense mixed with body odours, cow shit, exhaust fumes, sewerage and cigarettes.

Kabam! The sounds!

She had never before heard such a cacophony of joy and chaos, all orchestrated together so deafeningly at once.

Whoosh! The eyes!

The smiling and innocent eyes of young children seeing white flesh for the first time. The lascivious eyes of grown men mentally stripping her naked through each layer of clothing.

This simple act of being, of merely existing, within this space and time was all too much.

A sign

Somehow, amidst the madness that seemed to swirl around her as she stood suspended in time, she found her sign.

Or perhaps, her sign found her.

She wasn’t quite sure, but she knew she felt great relief to see her driver.

She sheepishly followed him to his van, now rather embarrassed at her initial bewilderment and still trying to process the sheer intensity of all that was India.

He started the van and green lights flickered as the fare meter started. Even that was too much.

She let her head rest back and closed her eyes to shut out the world.

She thought of her mother.

She knew at that moment that it didn’t matter what those next few weeks in India would bring. She had already found her answers right there, upon arrival.

Emptiness

Like her mother, she had been straight to the source; the place where all the splendours and ugliness of Life itself were palpable. A place where you see, feel and hear the world’s energy as if on some enlightening psychedelic trip, simply by stepping foot on to this magical land.

You stand, consumed by the presence of something so much greater than yourself... God, perhaps. You can witness His work all around you yet still, no salvation is in sight.

There is beauty, yes... undoubtedly so.

So too is there mayhem, madness and molestation.

Perhaps there is no answer, she pondered.

Perhaps Life’s meaning was simply akin to that beautiful marble box her mother had brought back for her all those years ago. Lustrous and inviting on the outside; mere emptiness within.

Yet unfortunately for the young recipient of any such empty box, comes with it an unavoidable inheritance; the endless desire to fill it. A condemnation to spend one’s life fleeing about with burning desire to seek answers to unanswerable questions.

From that, it was now clear to her, there is never any escape.

She felt ready

She lifted her head and slowly opened her eyes to peek out at the streets of New Delhi.

Bam!

Tangled messes of electricity cables, piles of decaying rubbish and dilapidated buildings of pink, blue and green tauntingly smirked back at her.

Vibrant ghoonghat of every colour covered the women as they ghoulishly floated past with scrawny cows trailing alongside them.

To her, these sacred cows might as well have been raging bulls, their horns poised to deliver her next attack.

Only this time, she felt ready for the blows.