In Search of Silence

by Poorna Bell

  After I say goodnight to her, I hear her moving about in the next room. I don’t want to let her go. I run out of my room and throw my arms around her. She looks up at me, this tiny, beautiful, strong brown woman who has been through so much, the little dynamo in our lives. She knows, without saying a word, that I am smelling our mortality.

  She says with infinite love and patience, ‘Remember I am always with you.’

  Then she holds my face and looks at me. ‘And when you go to New Zealand, say hello to Rob from me.’

  I swear this isn’t Eat, Pray, Love, but I’m going to talk about belief again.

  Nothing much had changed with God and me since the temple experience in Nepal, but it did get me thinking about how I fit in with the world. What did I believe? What was my own philosophy about life?

  I still didn’t believe ‘everything happens for a reason’ – a belief that collapses quickly under the weight of things such as Ebola and Justin Bieber.

  But what had begun in Nepal was a strengthening of the self, met with the bigger question: what gives my life meaning? And when thinking about the future: what do I want to give me meaning?

  The epiphany came when, a few days before we parted ways, Mum, Dad and I drove to Pondicherry in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. It’s a union territory because it was formed out of four French colonial enclaves.

  Pondi, as we call it, was a place we visited when we were children. My main memory was that of the seafront promenade, pretty colonial buildings and French shutters.

  As we drive through, there’s a dichotomy between the Indian part and what’s called ‘White Town’, where the French used to stay. Surprise, surprise, the Indian part is more haphazard and dirty, while White Town has broad streets and more money.

  Walking around, you see pastel-coloured buildings emerging between rain trees and white pillars blackened by monsoons of the past.

  Beyond the quaint colonialisms, Pondi is also a place where two big spiritual leaders lived – Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, a French woman named Mirra Alfassa.

  Aurobindo was a wise man originally from Bengal, who died in 1950 aged seventy-eight; Mirra Alfassa died in her nineties in the ’70s. Together, they held and discussed huge discourses on philosophy, and their teachings have now been distilled into books. When we arrive, we decide we want to go and visit Auroville, which is their centre of learning and houses an impressive building called the Matrimandir – or Mother’s Temple.

  But it’s not really a temple, and the beliefs of Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa were non-denominational. The building itself is a short walk from the gates of Auroville, and it is like something from science fiction.

  A vast, golden dome made from beaten steel panels covered with gold leaf, it looks like a temporarily parked spaceship. Inside, there are various points to meditate and it has been designed so that a special crystal in the centre of the building channels light from the sun and pings it around the room.

  At first, there’s something undeniably cult-y about it. Mirra Alfassa is referred to as the Mother. There are photos of them everywhere. Then there is the Matrimandir itself, its futuristic shape and feel, not to mention the mega crystal.

  Hippies roam around the grounds, mixed in with Indian tourists taking selfies on their iPhones. Finally, there are set rules – if you want to visit the Matrimandir, you have to sit in a room and watch a video first.

  It is a surreal sight: Mum, Dad and me sitting in the smallish room, watching a video while the soothing, flat voiceover washes over us. I mean, if I was going to try to brainwash someone, that’s the voice I’d use.

  But the thing is, it’s not a cult. And I’m not saying that because I’m now in the cult.

  I’m almost ashamed of my cynicism by the end of it. What I find out, both from the videos and the museum that reveals all of the architectural secrets of the Matrimandir, is that their teachings, coupled with how I’ve been feeling inside, knits together a philosophy I’ve been drawn to for a while now.

  Basically, it’s about the internal self – so shoring up and making yourself feel as strong, balanced and loving as you possibly can be. To seek those answers within, rather than looking for something external to fix your unhappiness or dissatisfaction with life. They are big believers in meditation but, interestingly, it’s not a fixed type of meditation – they call it concentration. So it’s just finding a spot and being quiet for a while.

  There’s a moment when we enter a meditation spot and I say sternly to Dad, who doesn’t have a clue about meditation and I just KNOW he’s going to clonk in there with his general observations, ‘Dad, you have to be quiet, no interruptions, okay?’ Mum and I sit, and we take in the peace and calm, the freshness of the air and the gardens, but he can’t help himself. ‘Hey, look at that guy’s funny shirt.’

  We both glare at him.

  Really, what Auroville was and is supposed to be is a place where people can come together above all of the things that cause disagreement such as race and politics.

  It was dreamed of as a city of the future, a living embodiment of human unity and somewhere that could harness the best of humanity. It didn’t quite achieve that, but it still has a strong community and visitors come from all over the world to see it.

  For it to connect with someone spiritually sceptical like me, as a place where people can just come and rest, and be still and quiet, with no hidden agenda, that’s impressive.

  I had one last niggle which was the reference to the divine, but when I looked it up it said the divine is ‘all the knowledge we have to acquire, all the power we have to obtain, all the love we have to become’. So, not a bearded man sitting on a cloud.

  It also starts me thinking about a different sense of purpose.

  There is and always will be a huge hole left behind by Rob. I don’t think I will ever fill it by stuffing more things into the gap. But perhaps I’ve been pulling away from people in anger, when the solution actually lies within them.

  There are slabs of stone with quotes from the Mother lining the way to the Matrimandir building, and there is one that stays with me for a while.

  ‘Do not think of who you have been, think only of who you want to be and you are sure to progress.’

  It gives me a lot to think about after I say goodbye to my parents and embark on one final journey before leaving India.

  Most of my family live in Bangalore, but some are scattered across America, England and the rest of India. Very few of us live in Mangalore – the place we are originally from.

  For a sense of where it is, hover above Bangalore on the map of India and draw your eyes west.

  It is the largest port city in the state of Karnataka, a place held by the Arabian Sea and the mountainous Western Ghats. Although Mangalore hums with construction work, imported cars and technology now, back when I was a child it used to be a hot, humid swamp town.

  Mum and I arrived in 1987 to stay with her parents; Priya was already living with them by that time. Dad was intending to join us once he had sold our house in England.

  I left the quiet of our Kent house and my little tidy room of books and carpeting, for Mangalore’s tamarind fish curries, blaring noise and mosquitoes. Her minimum level of humidity is 50 per cent; when she’s feeling vengeful, it’s 93.

  My younger self can’t remember much of her beyond sandstone walls and coconut trees, dust and heat, the rain working the reddish mud up into thick rivers flowing down culverts.

  I was too involved in the cultural disconnect between India and England: one had electricity, the other had temperamental moods around electricity; one had comfortable duvets and loo paper, the other had thin sheets and a bum bucket.

  It has been twenty-five years since I have visited. This time round, though, I have a better understanding about belonging. Apart from when I went to a specific community event of our people in England, I have never, ever bumped into another Shetty.

  I thought the characteristics that marked
my family were unique to my family; I never imagined that they marked an actual place. I hear people speaking our language – Tulu – in the street, at the supermarket. Before, it had only ever really been in people’s living rooms. They are polite, don’t barge into you and are well-spoken. ‘Dignified’ is the most apt word.

  Mangalore, when viewed from a distance, is what a city looks like before it has been swallowed whole by steel, concrete and glass. Buildings, lights and phone masts crop up from within the dense knit of coconut trees, and it still retains its sense of greenery and poise.

  It is already too late for Bangalore, which, like every other city, wrought a Faustian deal and traded identity for money and cheap tech, but Mangalore’s soul is still here.

  Around a 45-minute drive from the city is Mulki, a stretch of land that fringes the backwaters of Mangalore. We never visited it as kids, and I’d never heard of it until now. Its quiet existence is why it remains the beautiful, peaceful place it is today. Everyone has heard of the backwaters in Kerala, but this is a glimpse of what Kerala may have looked like before she had boats chugging diesel up and down Lake Vembanad.

  Through a leafy curtain of coconut trees, the river lies further ahead. A kingfisher zips past and marks our arrival; a brahminy kite looks balefully at us with a you’re not fish stare.

  My reason for coming here is the Mantra Surf Club. Surfing is a relatively new concept in India compared with the rest of the world. Mangalore’s beaches, like other parts of the Indian coastline, are notoriously deceptive.

  They draw you in with their untouched beauty, but the waters are fast, treacherous and their currents will suck the life from your bones if you aren’t careful. However, in this particular spot, there is a protected part of coast that creates waves just right for beginners.

  Mantra is special because it doesn’t just teach tourists to surf, it also encourages surfing in the local community, especially girls. Indians – especially Indian women – aren’t encouraged to do activities in the water because you get dark in the sun.

  I love that there is a cool little organisation that sticks two fingers up to the norms and arranges surfing in the morning, paddleboarding or kayaking in the evening.

  The river here is quiet and flat, thoughtful. Along her right flank, she stretches towards a curve, framed in tiny stubs of mangroves. The day before I begin my surfing lessons, I go kayaking and pitch my canoe into the water, under a swirl of kites beadily watching the water below. Tiny fish arc across the water to escape to another part of the river, silver bolts of lightning where the light catches them.

  As the sun begins its descent, a fiery smudge in the corner of my eyes, the water gathers weight; it becomes heavy, denser, like it’s holding all of itself in, in preparation for the darkness to come.

  As my paddle dips in, it feels thicker, like it is calling to some quietness within the water. And it is quiet, so quiet, and you get the sense that although lives are ticking away along the riverbank – maybe someone is washing clothes, or another person is gutting fish for the evening meal – it is hidden away from sight.

  I close my eyes and there’s a line, a rope to the landscape, a feeling, a heartbeat.

  There is something utterly different when you are in the place that built the skin and bones of your ancestors, a clicking together of pieces. Is this what other people feel like when they are home?

  Do they even notice that subtle settling down of the shoulders, an unspoken language between their own history and the landscape? Even if I will never live here, this is a moment that I can fashion into belonging and peace and take with me wherever I go.

  Yet I know, if I had grown up here, if I did live here, that I wouldn’t feel like this; I wouldn’t have this relationship with the water. I certainly wouldn’t have grown up here thinking I could hop on a paddleboard or try surfing, or any of those things. I’d have felt like I couldn’t because being in the sun means you get dark, and there’s that relentless discourse about the unattractiveness of dark skin.

  The next day is surfing, a sport I have only tried once and was utterly terrible at. I’m joined by two Indian men around my age and my shoulders immediately stiffen.

  The reason being, I always feel self-conscious about my body in India because the men are far more outright in their staring than in most other parts of the world. Sex and the female body is digested mostly in one of two ways: either in an unrealistic Bollywood film or at home, where women are probably covered up. There’s no in between to normalise the female form.

  I almost never wear swimwear in India that’s revealing, especially after I once saw a group of men in Goa taking pictures of a white tourist’s arse as she was sunbathing in a bikini. This sense of shame was drilled into me from such a young age that, quite honestly, I didn’t wear a bikini until I was about twenty-eight regardless of where in the world I was.

  I’m wearing a long-sleeved rash vest and shorts to surf. We take our boards to the water and, despite my self-consciousness, it turns out I have nothing to worry about. These guys are two days ahead of me in the three-day surfing course, and all they are concerned with is trying to perfect their surf before it’s time for them to go home.

  While I wait on the beach for my instructor to finish getting them set up, I take in my surroundings.

  Along the beach, crabs do their sideways shifty shuffle across hot sand, peeping out from the tip of a tunnel. Some of them are the colour of glass dipped in milk, tiny creatures leading little crustacean lives beneath our thumping feet.

  There is no one on the beach, save for the kites circling overhead, the crash of waves fulfilling their promise to return to the shore, the swirl of the river mouth nearby where currents collide and swirl. Nearby are rocks you’d half expect mermaids to perch on while picking remnants of foolish men from their teeth.

  When I grew up, like a thousand other brown girls, I always thought of mermaids as having pink skin and red hair, like Ariel in Disney. But here, with the electricity of my homeland coursing through my feet, I imagine the mermaids of India with indigo skin, teeth like pearls and large eyes ringed in coal. Beautiful, dark, deadly. Lost in the foam and waiting just out of reach. I wonder how many hearts they have crunched, how many songs they have sung to lure us to this place of beauty.

  I start humming to myself and, after a time, my instructor yells at me to come to the water’s edge.

  The next few hours are a humiliation, as I launch myself over and over again into the water and manage to stand up on my board a grand total of once.

  Further along the shoreline, some of the younger members of Mantra are surfing, and they look effortless, gliding into the water and dancing across their board as the wave catches the underside.

  Exhausted, cranky, but pleased with our progress, we head back to the main house where a vegetarian lunch is waiting for us. Ravi and Sanjay, the two guys I went surfing with, don’t join us, and, at first, I’m relieved. Even though they don’t seem strange, now I don’t have to make small talk.

  But then we’re thrown together in the early evening, as the Wi-Fi only works in the communal lounge space, and are clustered around the one table. I radiate ‘don’t speak to me’ vibes but, undeterred, one of them strikes up a conversation. This is the first time I’ve had a conversation with two completely strange Indian men, and in a matter of moments, our easy chat and laughter remind me of my male university friends.

  We share some stories; they make me laugh. Ravi is in love with a girl whose father disapproves of him and is discussing plans to elope, while Sanjay is divorced and totally cynical about love. The two met in Australia, where they were living at the time, and moved back to New Delhi.

  Then, they say, ‘Look, we can’t hack the 24/7 veggie food here. Do you want to come with us to this restaurant we’ve been secretly going to?’

  Part of me is hesitant, and the other part carpe diems and wins. The walk and conversation is easy and comforting, like we’ve known each other for years. After
dinner, we walk back in the dark, our stomachs full of butter chicken and naan. We hear the chirp of insects in the fields and pick our way back by the light of our phones. I feel safe, comfortable, full and happy.

  It may not seem like much, but these two have broadened my experience of Indian men, and slowly the world widens and changes its shape. Don’t get me wrong – I won’t be wearing a bikini anytime soon on an Indian beach, but it makes me think of my preconceptions of India and what I now know.

  This India is poised, quiet, patient, waiting.

  This India stirs in me something deep. It reaches out its hand and, for the first time in my life, I willingly take it and allow the quiet and familiarity to heal the most grief-torn parts of me.

  As I pack for New Zealand, a full thirteen hours ahead of most of my loved ones, 18,323km from London, I wonder if I’m going to miss them.

  Chris Rock, in his stand-up show Tamborine for Netflix, said that it’s impossible these days to miss someone. ‘You can’t miss nobody – not really – you can say it, but you don’t really miss them. You are with them all the time, they’re in your fucking pocket!’

  He’s got a point. Technology has completely changed the concept of missing a person. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram mean that even though we’re not in the same time zone, rarely a day goes by when I don’t have contact with my friends or family. I remember how it felt to miss them when I was a child, and whatever the emotion, it is now of a different shape and colour.

  I thought I was fixing things by taking myself away from my life, from them. But had I got it wrong? Even if I felt pressure to be or act a certain way, didn’t I need them in my life to give it meaning?

  In a sweet-yet-terrible romcom film with Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon called Shall We Dance?, there’s a quote that unexpectedly pierced my heart, which applies to marriage but I think can be applied to all the loves in our lives.

  Sarandon says, ‘We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.”’