Real and Revealing

One of my favourite Friday afternoon or Saturday rituals here is cleaning my place. It gives me such a sense of satisfaction to put on some music and take my time mopping the floors, scrubbing the bathroom and making things feel clean for at least a brief period of time. Because, the reality is that cleanliness only lasts so long here. I can spend an hour cleaning and then open my windows to smoke from a garbage fire burning next door or a dust storm that quickly covers my marble floors with grit once again. While this teaches me to let go of expectations of the ever changing outcomes and enjoy the process, recently it also symbolized how India reveals all.

Just last week as I was finishing up cleaning my place, the last job was to disinfect the bathroom floor. Bob Marley was playing from my iPod and a warm afternoon breeze was coming in through the windows. I was nearly resting in the satisfaction of cleanliness when the main drain of the shower came loose only to reveal a whole mob of cockroaches. Lovely.

Now, I could have suspected that they live in the drains and while a few tried to get free from the retches of the Indian sewer system it dawned on me how symbolic such an experience was to me.

Most often in our lives we try to cover up the bad or the evil or the grit or the dirt rather than face it, but in fact it is part of our Whole as beings. I spent an hour cleaning the 'surfaces' of my place only to find what I consider quite nasty critters in the drains. And this is precisely what India shows me every day. The endless garbage and filth and sewage and cow shit and grime is constantly present here. Perhaps we (Westerners) never get used to the overload on our senses but I think it is healthy to face it and realize it is part of the whole picture .

How many of us have been to our local dump? We neatly place our rubbish on the curb where it is conveniently collected weekly, but do we know where it goes? Are we in touch with our whole system in its entirety and how we are a part of it?

While I was quick to put the bathroom drain back on and leave the cockroaches in the pipes, I feel less and less appalled when I see all the garbage and filth in India. Honestly, it feels more real here in a sense because it's not hiding much!