The pull of India: a country I never wanted to visit, but can’t stop returning to
Radically kind Kashmir, the Syrian Christians of Kerala and the magnetism of Auroville. Edition 15
When I first came to India in January this year I was, well, disappointed is one – mild – way to describe it. It felt like I’d come from the 21st century with all its perks and conveniences into the 19th – a sleepy, dusty village. The funny thing? The sleepy, dusty village was Goa – one of India’s most famous destinations.
I have nothing against dusty villages and travelling in time can be fascinating, but this was different. It was a village in the most prosaic ways: scrawny stray cows, ugly houses with barred windows, lethargic villagers, and in contrast, rude staff in all tourist areas.
Unlike the friendly service staff common across Asia, Goa’s were indifferent at best and openly rude at worst.
The parking attendants who’d shout at you because you left your motorbike for 10 minutes while stepping from a café to a beach; the bike renters who’d try to cheat you and ask three times the price and become boorish when you call them out; the homeowners who’d want to rent their shacks - offering the bare minimum - for the price of a luxury villa.
Goa as a Disneyland
The Goa of the Beatles sitting (probably stoned) under the banyan tree, while other hippies sang songs around the campfire, made love and slept on the beach or somewhere nearby for free – this Goa is long gone. Those nostalgic hippies now in their sixties and seventies still come here or even live here, but the Goa I’ve read about is nowhere to be found.
Now it’s a Disneyland of commercialised counterculture, where the rebellion is scheduled, the spontaneity is curated, and even the dirt feels expensive.
Add to this Russian package tourists, traffic jams, and concrete hotels where those banyan trees used to be.
The unique thing about Goa is that it still attracts Indians from all over the country. People here like to repeat that Goa is not India (and who would doubt it?). But in one day without leaving a café you can have conversations with an IT guy from Delhi, a digital nomad from Bihar, a business owner from Mumbai, a music producer from Punjab and a content creator from Gujarat.
“I’ve done it all for my parents, now want to live my own life”
On day three I was asking myself whether I really wanted to see the rest of the country if even the most well-known place was so underwhelming. On the same day I was sitting in a café digesting both my food and unpalatable thoughts when a well-groomed Indian woman joined my table with a heavy sigh.
One word led to another, and soon we were discussing the rude parking guys and her (as well as my) ordeal with finding a short-term rental apartment. Two days later Anuradha was helping me to move from an Airbnb flat to a better apartment, giving me a lift in her rented car.
We quickly became friends, this Delhi-based “I’ve done it all for my parents, now want to live my own life” woman and I, and for the next month we shared lots of stories, laughs, even dates. Yes, out of anthropological interest and mischief we had double dates and even more fun sharing our notes after those dates.
When the country reveals its other side to you
The shift – and I hate admitting this because I was so ready to leave, so ready to write India off – came quietly. Not with some moment of clarity, but through small cracks, letting in light I wasn’t looking for.
I started bumping into kind strangers who’d try to help me with different things, or just share a laugh, a hug, a long walk by the ocean; they’d invite me home for their home-cooked meals, recommend that “local jazz bar where musicians from all over India come to play”, or that yoga teacher who doesn’t advertise himself yet whose lessons are more like moving meditation.
Once an Indian guy even apologised to me on behalf of his compatriots when we found an angry note stuck to my scooter (someone made a real effort – it was handwritten in English) admonishing me for parking in the wrong place.
That was an empty street at 10 pm, yet when I returned after midnight there was that rude note. Apparently, the building I parked by was a hospital and the note said what a heartless bitch I was to take space from poor children. At 10 pm in an empty parking lot!
Life is harsh here. Generational traumas are deep. Violence and aggressiveness are common. And sometimes people genuinely think they just tried to convey a message but got a bit carried away.
Frustration sits deep. There are many reasons behind it. I get it. But on that night I was stung to see such a spiteful note. My local friend was surprised too and apologised profusely as if it was him who had written the note.
India is a 50/50 country
It’s 50% positive versus 50% negative. And this is a very low ratio in my books.
Of almost 90 countries I’ve been to, my usual experience is 95% positive versus 5% negative. There are only two countries with such a low rate, and India is one of those two.
Whenever I shared this observation with my Indian friends, they would laugh and exclaim: spot on! And add: all this is considering that we treat foreigners better than ourselves, so to us Indians our country is even harsher.
Why do I come back?
Why did I end up spending three months travelling through India, then returning again and again?
The answer is simple: because that 50% positive is remarkably powerful – warm, kind, profoundly human, revelatory even.
And it usually happens straight after the negative, often within hours or even minutes. This emotional pendulum becomes addictive – unhealthy in the long run but irresistible in the moment.
… At some point Goa showed its other side: Portuguese heritage in beautiful, story-filled mansions, crowd-free beaches in the south, Old Goa with its fairytale churches, and locals who embraced me with genuine warmth.
After Goa, Kerala was a revelation. I fell for its picturesque villages and Syrian Christian churches, the Jewish heritage of Kochi, and Varkala’s relaxed vibe – crowd-free beaches and Ayurvedic clinics everywhere.
In Tamil Nadu I lived in Auroville – an international community founded at the end of the 1960s by Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, and a French woman, Mirra Alfassa, who’s referred to here as The Mother.
Remember this woman’s name. What a mind-boggling biography! Mirra Alfassa was born in Paris in 1878 to an Egyptian Jewish mother and a Turkish Jewish father. Mirra was a force of nature with a powerful imagination and the energy to execute grand ideas. I met people in Auroville who knew her. They still speak of her with an intensity that makes you realise she wasn’t just a founder – she was the force that held contradictions together.
A sect? A human experiment? An idealistic community turned into a tourist attraction? A place of creative and spiritual research? That’s a separate story and I’ll share it soon.
The Dalai Lama and the view from his window
In Himachal Pradesh I chanted for hours with the Buddhist monks in a temple opposite the Dalai Lama’s residence. The view from my house where I lived in Dharamkot was much better than the Dalai Lama’s view and I wanted to share with him the blue mountains, the sunsets and the silence of my place, thinking how unfair it was that the holy man had to live among the crowds with a restricted view of the mountains.
Then I laughed at myself for having those thoughts, realising that in his world concepts like “fair/unfair”, “beautiful view/no view” must be irrelevant. For a man who has lived in exile for most of his life and oozes patience, the optics through which he sees the world (with its mountains and sunsets) could be totally different.
Oh Kashmir!
During the four days of India-Pakistan conflict I happened to be in Kashmir – oh Kashmir!
“A man comes to Kashmir to enjoy life, or to end it, or both”.
The way Kashmiris took care of me and showered me with their hospitality and kindness in a stressful time for their own families – while dealing with internet blackouts and their own fears – that generosity still undoes me.
On the day when a ceasefire was announced, like many other locals, I was walking in Srinagar’s beautiful gardens designed during Mughal times. The palpable collective relief was in the air. Soldiers with rifles on the boulevard didn’t disappear, of course, they had been here for over two decades and wouldn’t leave soon.
The militarisation had become normalised. People get used to everything. Except for radical kindness, the sort I’ve experienced in Kashmir, which I will never take for granted.
The human experiment of Auroville, the radical kindness of Kashmir, or the secrets of Kerala? Let me know which story you want next - hit reply and tell me.
They say India gets under your skin. That’s not quite right. It’s more like India splits you down the middle – one half remembering the frustration and rudeness, the other half aching for the unexpected tenderness. You’d think that would tear you apart. On the contrary though, it makes you feel whole and constantly present.
When people ask me about India now, I tell them about my 50/50 observation/rule. Some laugh. Some book tickets anyway. Some look at me like I’m describing an abusive relationship – and maybe that’s not entirely wrong.
Some places don’t want your love. They just want your attention, your presence, your willingness to be undone. India is that place for me. And, apparently, I’m a willing participant.
Know someone who’s been fascinated or frustrated by India? Share this post and see if they agree with the 50/50 rule.
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I couldn't agree more with your essay, and I've been to all the places you discuss here, except Kashmir, and now I'm dying to go there. The reason I could return so frequently is that I lived close, in Dubai, UAE, but now I live in the US and have a 10-year-old, so it's a bit of a stretch. I do hope to take him there one day,
I happened to visit India on a work trip. Luckily for me it was mostly a 95%. Mumbai is a good city to visit.