….at Kolva this shoreline is the second longest in India, 40
miles of uninterrupted clean white sand …..there are only four longer beaches
in all the world.
In Bombay everything has a price, and everyone is trying to
sell something. Is it the way all India has to go?
….15,000 feet plateau of Tibet, that begins in Afghanistan
and stretches 1500 miles to Burma, that is still uncharted territory in many
areas.
Nepal, everyone will rightly tell you, is a place to unwind
and relax after the sheer intensity of India and its constant stunning of the
senses. Women in particular find it a relief to get away from the Hindu
prurient interest in white bodies and be among a people who have always
accepted an active role for the female. ….Mountain people, the world over, have
a vigour and matter of factness about them that instantly reveals the
affectations of ‘civilisation’.
Behind this pantheon of gods and goddesses, lies a worship
of Shiva and Shakti, the male and female regenerative forces. India has
preserved from its long past a respect for our own creative powers, a belief in
their consecrating effect. Where we seek to subdue, the Hindu seeks to be at
one with the natural forces. It is the recipe for the ease of tension that the
West has induced in itself by a denial of our deepest drives, believing them to
be base. Hinduism would disagree.
The streets of India are alive with human bustle – no other
country can match both the sheer intensity and variety of street life …..
The women of India … Even though during the day they will
have worked in the fields, fetched and carried, looked after children, tidied
their house, all done with a tread of light grace and a perfectly straight
back.
The magic of an Indian dawn. The intensity of the light in
India is wholly different from that of Europe, and brings a drama to the
opening of any day that has to be experienced to be understood.
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