More about transforming experiences

What do you think you would do if someone offered to expose you to the worst kind of poverty and suffering you could ever imagine? Add to that exposure the worst, most indigestible food, death, flies, mosquitos and racism? How would you feel?

In 1972 with an offer of just those things my friend Sue asked if I would like to go to India with her to visit the communities of Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier in order for her to get material for a book she was commissioned to write. Naturally, I said, ‘Not on your life’! However, less than 24 hours later, knowing however faintly, that this was one of those life-changing decisions and knowing that, however frightening it would be, it was something that I must do, I phoned her and said ‘yes’, I would go.

Years later Sue said that she had no idea what possessed her to ask me because we hardly knew each other. The moment she had raised the question, she said to herself, ‘what on earth have I done?’. But of course, it was too late for her to take the question back and in fact, too late for me to have said ‘no’. So we, and a young woman who was to take the photos were irrevocably committed to this life-changing adventure.

In March of 1972 (I think it was) we boarded a plane at Toronto airport. Outside, there was snow and indeed, the treacherous remains of an ice-storm. Many hours later - I have forgotten how many - after stops at Rome, Cairo (my first experience of being frisked) we landed in Mumbai (it was still Bombay at that time). Here, we changed planes and began a flight across India to Calcutta.

About half-way into our flight there was a stop. I cannot now remember the name of the place but I imagine we were meant to be there. This was long before the kind of security we know so well at airports but none the less, it was my first experience of the new life into which I was entering for the next few weeks. The plane landed on a tarmac but not at a terminal. We were allowed to get out and stand on the tarmac if we wished - which we did. I pulled out my camera and began to take a photo of this new kind of hot and dry country. Almost immediately, there was a very frightening and very large, gun being pointed at me and words spoken which I of course, did not understand. Finally someone suggested I put away my camera - that was the offending activity. Needless to say, I very quickly did as asked and all was well. I have no idea what it was that I should not be trying to photograph but it was the beginning of some very new lessons in the art of survival.

Finally, more or less on time, we arrived at Calcutta airport. Here again, we had to cross the tarmac (this was also before the time of those lovely gizmos that get you right into the terminal). The heat - especially in contrast to what we had left behind us in Toronto was intense though not unbearable. Once we had found our luggage and enquired about transport to our hotel we began the next stage of this amazing journey.

The bus that took us from the airport was, like much of the transport in India at that time, a bit old and a bit ricketty but it worked. Here, as we drove somewhat erratically through the streets of Calcutta we were assailed by a world I could not have imagined. We drove through streets past families who clearly were living on the pavement, past buildings whose poverty I could never have imagined, we inhaled a smell which I found throughout the areas we visited which I now identify as cooking fires (from these same street-dwelling families). There were people everywhere, walking, riding bikes, driving incredibly old cars. There was noise such as I had never experienced before: cries, talking, selling wares, children shouting and animals - mostly mooing. The animals were of course,  cows. These bovines are sacred, cannot be interfered with so they might just stand in the middle of the road until they chose to move. Cars whipped around them, often enough onto the other side of the road into oncoming traffic until they could move more or less back into their lane. The driving was, altogether, breathtakingly dangerous and yet, I gather, not particularly fatal.

Finally, the buildings we passed became a little less poor though many had a rather neglected look. Many were relics of the time of the Raj and simply had not been kept up. Then, as we got close to our hotel we found ourselves on broad boulevards with all the modern shops you might expect to see in any major city. The bus eventually drew up to the Grand Hotel - a hotel which in fact, lived up to its name. It was elegant, old India, even air-conditioned and much appreciated by us. For by now in an amazingly short time, we had been assailed with sights and smells and noises and heat as if we had landed on another planet.

Why you might ask were we staying in the Grand Hotel when we had come to experience the poverty, death, disease and general dark side of India? It had been Mother Teresa’s suggestion because she, rightly, understood that we would not be able to cope if we lived with her.

The time we had in that amazing city was full to the brim with the contrasts of our world: deep unimaginable poverty and suffering and great wealth such as we experienced in our hotel. It was a shock to the system of course but all the better for that because that sadly, is the world we live in isn’t it? Like the story of Lazarus and the rich man in the bible as Lazarus lived against the wall of the rich man’s property and was never even noticed. There were Lazarus’s everywhere we went.

I will not write in detail - I will save that for another time but I want to try to explain the transforming effect of this journey. For the first time in my life I touched a literally awesome combination of desperate suffering and joy. Joy? How could that be? I do not know exactly but I do know that in the midst of the suffering: hunger, disease, lonely death on the streets, abandonment of children - in the midst of that we met amazing human generosity and and care. We met people sharing out of their meagre possessions in order to help another who had less. We met hospitality and kindness. We also from time to time met people who did not like us because we were white. The first time I had ever experienced the kind of prejudice which black people and Indians had faced constantly in our world. What an experience that was and it opened my eyes to yet another human reality that was never any real part of my life experience.

I do not want this to make light of the suffering which is real and horrible but I knew that one of the most transforming parts of this journey was that I learned first hand some of the wonderful goodness of human beings in the face of terrible adversity. This was the beginning of a transformation in myself and in the direction I would take with the remainder of my life. I learned something of what the poor have to give to the rich and about the real richness of life. Time and again we met people whose misery should have crushed them and it did not. It deepened my faith and my hope and made me want to spend the rest of my life trying to find that core of joy.