What is your India?

 

I am traveling back to India for a duration of three weeks. A project that has often crossed my mind is to document the response of friends and strangers to the question:

What does India evoke?  What is your India?

What does the word “India” inspire? How do you relate to her personally? I am deeply interested in your perception, reflection, reminiscing, rumination… on India. I am deeply interested in how you connect to India’s culture, history, politics, landscape, people, geography, art, food, music, philosophy, science… you name it!

 To get started, let me offer a few questions you may wish to include in your response:

1. What is your first memory of knowing the word “India”?
2. What was your first exposure to India?
3. What is your strongest attraction to India?
4. What is your strongest repulsion to India?
5. Have you been to India? Which part? If not which part would you like to visit first? 
6. What is it you value most from the Indian subcontinent?  (food, music, culture, religion, spirituality, dance, philosophy, language… ) 
7. What is your strongest connection to the country (yourself, spouse, friends, family…) 
8. If India was a person, what’s his/her personality to you? 
9. If India was undiscovered,  and you just discovered it, what would you like to say in a short column? What are the surprises and what are the common grounds? 
10. What’s one event you would like to erase from India’s history? 

India to me is also a “place I cannot revisit”. The town at the foothills of Himalayas I credit my formative years to is a different town today. The Himalayas still offer those enchanting allusions to a grandeur undiminished with growing years. So many things seemed so tall when I was little, both figuratively and literally. Only the Himalayas continue to remain as tall in my perception. But India has shrunk and expanded, like an amoeba engulfing the detritus of time. Perhaps I am trying to understand, with your help, what I do and do not recognize in that transformation. What my biases are. What my deification is.

 

You can submit your note at whatisyourindia@gmail.com. That’s “what is your india” with no space. You are free to include photographs. You are also free to request the note to be anonymous. All notes will be posted here! Let’s begin a conversation!