INDIA IN THE FIRST PERSON (II)

HOW EVERYTHING STARTED?

Or

NO ONE IS READY TO BE BORN

I actually feel like putting dates into this. I think it will help understanding the whole situation a bit better.

At the beginning of July, I didn't have any clear plan about what to do during the summer. I just had come back from probably the most unexpected and funny week of the year. I had been in a European project in France led by one of the worst organizers I have ever known, President Ignace. We are still waiting for the money. Anyhow, among some of my possibilities, I wanted to do a meditation retreat, a yoga training or something like this, just in order to have a fruitful summer and don't get stuck in Valladolid.

During the second week of July, I was searching different yoga teacher trainings. Then, I found that a Spanish training cost almost 2,000 € while some courses in India cost 800€. Then, I took a decision. Why spending such a big amount of money in Spain when, for a similar price, I can get flight tickets to India and make the course there? Numbers don't lie.

Then, I realized that my passport was expired and that I didn't have any of the requirements needed for such a trip regarding hygienic, medical, or basic knowledge about the country. Nevertheless, I was lucky I had prepared a trip to India two years ago that it couldn't get accomplished. I made some calls and got a clear perspective of what I needed.

The 19^th of July, I came back to Valladolid for getting a new passport. The 20^th, I was in the office in Madrid handing my documents for getting the visa. The 21^st, I had tickets to come back from Mumbai to Madrid on the 5^th of September. The 22nd, I bought the ticket from Madrid to New Delhi for the 25^th of July. The 23^rd, I paid the yoga training. The 24^th I hired the travel insurance, looked for host and read a bit of the guidebook. And somehow, the 25^th I was already running in the airport of Moscow, in a half hour layover, trying to catch on time the plane that would take me to Delhi.

In any case, the days before the trip were strange. It was like if my brain hadn't had enough time to internalize and understand what was going on. Today, I can re-read a letter sent it to a friend the night before leaving where I share how fast everything was happening, how little time I had to realize that I was actually taking a plane next morning. Somehow, in the depths of the letter lays a dark fear that never leave me completely. The feeling of coming back from India, or wherever, and facing the uncertainty and vulnerability of so many of us, youngsters that are lost in this capitalistic world. A world that forces us to be productive as soon as possible. A world that scares us with the importance and necessity of success and mastery in all the areas of our lives. This fear that I escaped by fleeing to Denmark two years ago. A fear that is embodied in so many unpublished texts.

These practical ideas about life always derive into more philosophical and transcendental ideas about how important is the life of one human being, or the lives of all of them; what is the impact of one individual; or the amount of people that have died anonymously without the smallest impact in the future. Some of us may call this anxiety.

Already in the letter, I mention how I was living with the feeling of living through. Living Through is a constant depersonalization made-up by a continuous succession of moments. Being here, and then there; and a while later, here again. Like a continuous life of solitude interrupted by definite scenes of company. But the real continuity, the line that is linking all this moment is the pointless, the selfhood and the loneliness.

Actually, I can think that all these ideas are a byproduct of an alternative functioning of the brain. We are not ready for situations when there are so many changes going on. Probably, our brain didn't evolve in an environment that changed so much in that small period of time. Therefore, this may be only a strategy of defense against some conditions that we are not ready to experience. And indeed, after this reflections, the letter mentions the necessity of finding a meaning of life, a sense to all of these changes that allow us to make coherent the incoherence of existence.

So, this was my state of mind when I was heading to the biggest trip I have done in my life. On the other hand, my personal style is also about facing, about trying not to think that much and just act. As I answer to another of my friends when he asked me about the trip:

-Do you think you are ready for going there, alone?.

-I don't know. I am going there to figure it out.

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