Shanti, Shanti

In Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, Buddha boasts of three survival skills: thinking, fasting and waiting. While I understood the value in the former two (conscious thought and minimal sustenance), I never quite grasped the latter skill until my trip to India.

I’ve spent much of my trip waiting: waiting for buses that run hours late; sitting in a local cab for over 3 hours in Mumbai’s horrid afternoon traffic; for reception on my phone, for the power to come back on, for my order to be served or my bill to arrive, for meetings that never seem to happen or at least never on time. India seems to do its best to defy time, hover above it, and frustrate those who are trapped in time.

I have found India finds her way to teach her lessons. I initially thought this was a personal one: a karmic revenge for all those times I’ve kept others waiting, but then I realized it had little to do with me. In fact, the only way to survive India without it being a frustrating experience involves the realization that we have little control on the environment but full control over our perception of it - Shanti, Shanti is the lesson of the day.