To Bangalore and Beyond: Day 2: The way of life

Today started with being awakened to the call to prayer through a loudspeaker which i presume is from a mosque somewhere in the area at 4am. This was something i've never experienced before. Still suffering from a bit of jet lag, I was quite wide awake, since it would have been around 8:30am back in brisbane.

After smashing through some breakfast and have a debrief with our supervisor, Augustine, we had the afternoon off. So as you would, we went shopping through Bangalore's shopping precinct and market district. As any shopping area, a sea of people were strolling throughout the area; walking on half finished pavements, striding through the traffic, walking either by themselves or with family or friends. Cars, scooters, motorbikes and tuk tuks steadily filling the roads with their honking horns blaring at one another. Some scooters had their entire families on that 2 wheeled mode of transport, and I'm sure i saw a young person who looked like 13yo driving a motorbike too. On top of this, cows were strewn across the roads, creating congestions and roadblocks as vehicles try to avoid these sacred animals. While we were walking through the streets, vivid memories of Thailand and zimbabwe came flooding back into my head. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the way of life. I saw an elderly lady go from store to store picking up boxes and bottles and adding them to her collection bag, which was the size of a small car. This was her way of life. I saw people manning stalls and stands, not knowing when the next customer will come. It may be minutes, may be hours, may be never. Yet, this is their way of life.

We spent a good hour in an authentic Indian dress shop, where the family of this family run business spent so much time, effort and creativity in helping the girls get that right Indian look. They were so caring and considerate to each and everyone of us, that they offered us chairs and mango juice while i waited for the girls to try out all the different clothes, jewelleries, bangles, pants etc. The girls didn't have cash on them, so one of the daughters willingly walked us to the nearest ATM (about a good 7min walk). This is the way they did business, this is the way they kindly and respectfully treated their customers, this is their way of life.

The rains were just breaking through and we were heading home so we split into pairs and got into our respective tuk tuks. Unfortunately, we were caught up in a scam. We lined up in the tuk tuk rank where they took the first group back home fine, but it was there where they made us join another cue of tuk tuks on the other side of the road that things got iffy. We told them the address we wanted to go, and next minute they head in a completely different direction and where do they take us? they took us to their connecting jewellery store, wanting us to have a look and to buy something. It was then that the rains bucketed down. Soaked, and slightly frustrated that we had been lied to, i ordered that they take us to our address. after agreeing to this, would you believe it, but they were about to take us to another one of their stores. After much debate and dialogue as to why he was taking us their so he could get commission (not of money, but of a better uniform), we started walking the main roads in the the pouring rain trying to find a tuk tuk that could take us home. thankfully we did and we got home soaking wet, but i didn't care, at least we're home. Now i write this tuk tuk story because i could so easily blame, be angry and irate, or just frustrated at the people who scammed us. Yet, the more i think about it, the more i come to the conclusion, perhaps its just their way of life. You see, i don't know their story. Perhaps they have a family to feed, a child who is sick and needs money for medicine, or perhaps they are just really dodgy salesmen, but either way, its their way of life.

In all of these stories today the thoughts of these lives people are living, re-raised existing questions in my head. Why are they living this way? What are they living for and for what reason? Is it to feed their families; to just survive; to keep busy; to do something that when they sleep and when they wake up the routine starts all over again? But its so easy to put that on them, yet do we not do the same? What are we living for? Why do we live the way we live? Are we living to just feed our families, to just survive, to keep busy? Thinking along the thought patterns of C S Lewis, I'm sure he would say something such as "the idea of even coming up with a need to ask 'why' points to a fact that there is a higher purpose, or a reason that is needed for what is the purpose of life?' and this goes back to my pre-existing question of what if there is a reason to live, a hope you might say. What if one is living for a reason, for a purpose? How would that change one's perspective or outlook on life? Wouldn't life not become a chore, a routine, or something thats menial, but to something that now has meaning, has purpose, has reason? what if someone lives because they are living on hope? What more if this hope is a living hope, not a dead hope (would even be hope if its not attainable or unreal)? How would that change the way of life?