In recent years, it has become increasingly hip for restless Americans to travel to India in search of spiritual awakening. Most of us leave home with rudimentary understandings of Eastern religions, some newly acquired yoga moves, and the expectation of connecting with something fabulous and profound and worthy of a memoir before the end of the trip. We return smelling of curry and jasmine, with strings of sandalwood beads around our necks, henna all over our hands, and little amoebae swimming around in our stomachs.
When I boarded a plane to Hyderabad, India, in the fall of 2006, I was concerned more about losing my faith than finding it. The fact that religious pluralism initially triggered my faith crisis made a trip to the most religiously diverse country in the world seem more like a form of shock therapy than a vacation. But my sister, Amanda, had been in central India for three months, working with various ministries and nonprofit organizations there, and had invited me to join her for a few weeks as she transitioned to a new post in Bangalore. She needed the company, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to add an exotic stamp to my passport. We planned a cross-country trip that would take us from Hyderabad, to Delhi, to Agra, to Haridwar, to Rishikesh, and back to Delhi.
How folks manage to meditate in India is simply beyond me. From the first plaintive cries of the morning call to prayer, to the rhythmic swoosh and sigh of thousands of brooms across thousands of kitchen floors before breakfast, to the midday cacophony of cows mooing and roosters calling, vendors shouting and customers haggling, motorcycles roaring and bicycle bells chirping, to the distant beating of festival drums in the evening, the place never really quiets down. I spent the first few days dizzied by sensory overload, India’s collage of colors and scents and sounds overwhelming me. I threw up a lot.
But as the days went by, my vision sharpened and I began to drink in the details one at a time: the way my sister’s skin smelled like spices, the woman I spied brushing her teeth in the Ganges, the way the mist clings to the Himalayan foothills just like it clings to the Appalachians, the comfort of soft, sticky rice between my fingers, the pungent smell of garbage and excrement caught in a passing breeze, the gnarled hands of an old beggar on a crowded street, the way my rupees clinked when they fell into his tin cup. In India, everything is a picture. I took more than six hundred of them.
We spent the first week in Hyderabad, where Amanda taught English at a small residential school for children affected by HIV and AIDS. There I woke up every morning to the sound of dozens of little feet pattering on the floor above me and the sound of a woman named Laxmi making chapatis in the kitchen. Laxmi served as a caregiver at the school and a housekeeper for the Christian family that ran it. She rose before sunrise each day to make breakfast and wash the children’s clothes. She rarely finished her duties until after dark. Slight, but not frail, Laxmi had a shy, dimpled smile and playful eyes. Although she spoke little English, she felt strangely familiar to me, like someone I knew as a child but couldn’t quite place. Amanda and I learned to have conversations with her using only hand movements, facial expressions, and a few Telugu words. In all of my pictures of her, Laxmi is wearing a bright yellow sari with colored flowers around the edges, smiling demurely, shy of the camera.
Born in a rural village, Laxmi married at the age of seventeen and moved to the city, where she worked as housekeeper in several neighborhood homes. Soon after the birth of her third child, Laxmi’s husband suddenly took ill, and tests revealed he was suffering from the advanced stages of HIV. This ostracized the family from the community and forced them to live on just one income. Before long, all five family members showed signs of severe malnutrition. Laxmi recalled overhearing whispers about how she and her youngest, little Latha, would certainly perish.
The Christians, who were native Indians themselves, took notice of the situation and offered to help Laxmi and her children get tested for the disease. Laxmi wept when she learned that both she and Latha were HIV positive. Her husband died a few months later.
Through a translator, Laxmi explained, “As a widow, especially an HIV-positive widow, my standing in society changed. I had no money, and I feared that my little daughter might not live to the age of five. At one point, I considered suicide. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to give poison to Latha and take some myself, but because of my concern for the other children, I put that thought behind me.”
The Christian family provided housing for Laxmi and her children and enrolled the little ones in school. Soon HIV patients from across the city and nearby towns were flocking to the home in search of help and advice. When the neighbors complained, the family held a public meeting educating the community about how AIDS is transmitted and prevented.
In India, children affected by HIV and AIDS are often denied an education, and widows are left destitute. Inspired by Laxmi’s story, the Christian family opened a boarding school and offered widows job training and respectable positions in their ministry. When I was there, twenty-five children were enrolled in the school. Now there are more than thirty. All three of Laxmi’s children attend, and thanks to sponsorship, little Latha receives the care she needs to stay healthy. Laxmi, who was raised Hindu, converted to Christianity. In between chores, she studies the Telugu alphabet, trying desperately to overcome illiteracy so she can read the Bible for herself.
By all accounts, Laxmi and the children at the school got completely screwed by the “cosmic lottery.” If anyone has a right to complain, they do. It wasn’t their fault that they were born in a country still heavily influenced by the caste system. It wasn’t their fault that their husbands and fathers went to prostitutes. It wasn’t their fault that they suffered from a disease so stigmatized and misunderstood that their own families often cast them out into the streets. And yet the widows and orphans I met in India were actually less angry with God than I was. In fact, they loved him in a way I couldn’t quite understand.
Laxmi told me, “When I remember my life before HIV and compare it with how I am today, I am thankful. Were it not for my HIV, I never would have met Jesus. I never would have found salvation and hope.”
For Laxmi, meeting Jesus had little to do with a transfer of information or a statement of belief and everything to do with outstretched hands offering food and shelter. In India, the gospel makes the most sense among the “untouchables,” so many Christians choose to live in slums and among people suffering from leprosy, to take in the HIV-positive and the disabled, and to give generously to the poor. They subject themselves to poverty and earn reputations for associating with the lowest castes. They remind me of Jesus.
James, the brother of Jesus, once said that true religion is caring for orphans and widows, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when my first religious experience in India happened in the company of widows and orphans. About thirty of us were packed into a fifteen-passenger van, windows down, speeding down the streets of Hyderabad on our way to a church in the city. The kids, ranging in age from five to fifteen, were dressed in their Sunday best and were piled on top of one another, singing as loudly as possible and with no inhibition songs about Jesus in English and Telugu. My eardrums rang. My stomach lurched with every sudden swerve of the van. My lungs ached from inhaling pollution, and my head pounded from the heat. But I hadn’t felt that close to Jesus in years. I felt certain that he was crammed in there with us, singing along.
In India, I was introduced to the kingdom of heaven — not as it exists in some future state but as it exists in the here and now, where the hungry are fed with both physical and spiritual bread, where the sick are saved from both their diseases and their sins, where an illiterate widow taught me more about faith than any theologian ever could, and where children from the slums sing with God. In India, I learned that the gospel is still special. Jesus still matters and can make a difference in people’s lives.
I guess that’s close enough to spiritual awakening.