If I Can Do It, So Can You! by Ian Blaskey

Author:Ian Blaskey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2019-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

India 2017

And so here I am back in India. While looking forward to the adventure for several months, 48 hours before leaving, I woke up feeling ‘Why am I doing this? What am I doing?’ – self-pity which I had not had for a very considerable time. Fortunately, it didn’t last long and had disappeared before the journey began. However, I did notice as I started my journey that I was walking constantly with my arms crossed in front of me, something I didn’t normally do, so presumably a comfort or self-defence reaction that happily vanished as quickly as it appeared.

A night in Delhi followed by a 10½-hour bus journey and then an hour or so in a four-wheel drive before arriving at Haidakhan Ashram; nothing had changed in the 12 months since my previous stay – nothing, other than me.

The journey through Delhi’s northern suburbs started from the elegant Lutyens, designed and beautifully laid out green areas in the centre but before long, we were driving through its teeming, dirty, dusty northern suburbs – order rapidly turning to disorder. Traffic seemed to come at us from all angles, size counting for nothing – buses, trucks, tuck-tucks, cars, bikes; they were everywhere and in different directions. Trucks carrying goods, others carrying people, men, children, women in brightly coloured saris all holding on for dear life but it was their way of life! Throughout the entire journey, the countryside appeared to be lovely and green and lush but every town, every village was chaos in every way; it was unclear what was being knocked down and what was being rebuilt or was time standing still? If we came back in 10 years, would it have changed? The sun was scorching but the pace of life didn’t change or faze anyone. The only noticeable differences were that we noticed was the produce at the vegetable stalls along the way changed with more diversity from one area to the next. In some areas, the population was a mixture of Hindus and Muslims – there the ladies were covered from head to toe in black with a full veil. The diversity was fascinating to see.

On arrival at Haidakhan, we were given the same accommodation as last year and were told that the routine would be the same, so much so, it felt like we had regressed 12 months! On registration, Sabine asked me how the last year had been for me, and I said how happy I was with the changes that I had made. She then said how much better she sensed that I was and certainly how much better I looked. When we left the previous, year she had said that when I came back, we should take part in a ceremony in which you honour any ancestors in your family have that have passed on, and so I asked if we could do it. It was arranged and our group of 8 sat with a priest on the stones along the dry part of the river bed while he performed the lovely ceremony.

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