Brendan, from Parachute Music, just returned from India on his trip with World Vision. He seems to have been powerfully impacted by India.
He says: 'Chennai (and India) was a circus' and 'India was a sensory experience' that cannot be communicated via photo and conversation. There is the sight and smell and the engagement of the senses, or the morality of where you stand as a human being when you see beauty and ugliness shoulder to shoulder as it is in India.
He gets that bang on.
We went through photos he had taken: beautiful people, kids, holy men, men in their occupation, rivers, temples, streets, homeless people, empowered women in spice business, social workers, chaotic traffic.
It opened the trap door in me again, that trapdoor of my sometimes contradictory, sometimes sensible, affections for this country that I was born in. The India that Brendan talks about isn't of the Taj Mahal or the curry. I think that he somehow gets the essence of the nation.
And like I said, the essence of India cannot be communicated via a blog entry (try as I might!) or a youtube video post or anything else I can do. Trust me I have tried.
I believe..
A nation and its people cannot be afford to be disillusioned for it to rise from the ashes. A good amount of awareness and positive talking will go a long long way to take India out of the rubble it is in at the moment.
Ben Ning, Creative Practitioner