Peace in the chaos

‘Peace in the chaos’

An ongoing theme from a local phrase in India.

People come to India searching for peace.

Buy a plane ticket. Book a retreat. Stay at an ashram. Eat, pray, love. How hard can it be?

A step on India’s streets is met with intensity. The living conditions are a confronting reality to how many people live.

Dust and the fumes of creative things in flames fill the air. Yesterday’s fire was four men crowded around a burning car door.

Sellers, drivers, and beggars inhabit areas possessing a noise of its own scale. Sound seeps into every space, including sacred sites.

Meditating in temples are challenging. Inner projections of how it ‘should be’ overtake seeing things for how they are.

Looking around I see it’s only me that’s irritated.

Merchants light up every time in conversation after days of rejection. Sadhus offer a cheerful ‘adiyo’ rising rom a cold night’s sleep in an alley. Tuk tuk drivers look at each other and laugh following a collision, like they’re in bumper cars at a theme park. A wild, stimulating street corner for me is the afternoon resting spot for another.

Something is felt in India. It breaks conventional attraction reframing the understanding of beauty. Things don’t need to appear in a certain way, they can be as they are.

Centuries of spiritual devotion charge the landscape. The persistence of the people creates a new perspective to beauty.

People move mountains each day. A whole mountain range rises from within them. River channels flow through their words.

The differences to home are dominant here. There’s a lot for me to learn. Today it’s how I attach to comforts. A seeking of external things for satisfaction that needs to come from within. Perhaps if I alter how I perceive the world, I too, might find peace in the chaos.

This is Vinit. A small group of us were playing the handpan between classes at a buddhist centre. We were forced to play on the street as no music was allowed on the premises.

Playing around the ashes of the tuk tuk drivers’ fire, I noticed a sense of calm fill me on this street. All of India came past. Buffalos. Tuk Tuks. Trucks. Street cricketers. Monks on bikes. Unbothered, it felt like a representation to ‘peace in the chaos’.

Enjoy watching a man play the handpan for only the third time.