Opinion
It’s one of the truly great destinations in the world. But we just don’t get it
Ben Groundwater
Travel writerI know only one thing for certain about India: you don’t forget it. Whether you’re there for a day or a month or a year or a lifetime.
Everything else I can tell you about this country could be a fantasy, or a lie, or a total misunderstanding. Everything anyone can say about India will be absolutely right in some ways, but then completely wrong in so many others.
India is a universe of its own.Credit: iStock
It’s chaotic; it’s calm. It’s beautiful; it’s ugly. It’s heart-warming; it’s heart-wrenching. I’m trying here to avoid the obvious cliché, but you know it’s coming: “India is a land of contrasts.”
It seems shameful to rely on those few words to encapsulate a nation that’s a world or even a universe of its own. This is a country of 1.4 billion people – not so long ago, in the 19th century, that was the population of the entire planet.
So what do you say about India that isn’t trite, or cliched, or just plain wrong?
You don’t forget it. Let’s start there.
I’ve only been to India twice – once to the north, once to the south, and not for a good 10 years now – and yet still this country feels like it’s imprinted on my soul. There aren’t many travel destinations where your lasting memory is just the feeling of being there, the feeling of existing. No attractions, no activities. Just being there.
India does that to you. It’s so different and so powerful on every level, for reasons that you will cherish and despise.
Here’s what else I can say about India: most of us don’t understand it. Any novice visitor with no prior experience of the nation and no specialist knowledge, does not get India.
It’s just too much to take in, too huge, too varied, too different.
I thought about this a few weeks ago, in Melbourne of all places. I had dinner at Enter Via Laundry, a restaurant run by Helly Raichura, a former HR professional, freshly migrated to Australia from Gujarat, who turned her hand to food and has been wildly successful with it.
At Enter Via Laundry, Raichura serves Indian food, but not the Indian food most of us know. She changes the menu every month to focus on a new regional cuisine: Kashmiri one month, Goan the next, Tamil the month after.
Some of the regional dishes served at Enter Via Laundry.
She serves it at an intimate shared table, where she and her equally passionate staff tell stories about India, the place they came from, and the place that I’m sure they, more than anyone else, realise that many of us misunderstand.
So many of us don’t get India. I realised this while sitting in that Enter Via Laundry dining room, listening to stories of regions and histories I was previously unaware of, told with such passion. How many at that table even appreciated the regionality of India before this, the fact it is made up of 28 distinct states, many of which have their own language, customs, traditions, histories and cuisines?
Jaipur is just one part of this huge country.Credit: iStock
India isn’t India. It’s not just Agra and Varanasi, Jaipur and Mumbai. It’s Bihar and Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. (Have you heard of West Bengal? It has a population of almost 100 million people – that’s the same as Vietnam.)
It’s not a criticism to say we misunderstand India. It’s impossible to know the country if you haven’t spent a long, long time there. This is one of the truly great destinations of the world, and we don’t have a clue about it on any deep level, about anything beyond Bollywood and cricket and the Taj Mahal.
That’s why we flail around with cliches and draw hurried conclusions. Short-term visitors tend to get blown away by the big moments in India, and miss all the nuance.
But that also makes India incredibly exciting. I get the feeling this is not a destination that has popped back onto too many travellers’ radars since the COVID-19 shutdowns. We’ve been quick to embrace the likes of Western Europe and South-East Asia, countries that are perceived as safe or familiar, but how many are travelling to India purely for leisure?
I for one would like to, to this time delve deeper into its regionality, to use time there to appreciate the distinctions that run from city to city, state to state, to discover empires and influences that have in turn affected the rest of the world. That’s the only way to begin to understand India, to be able to put more words to its contrasts and its colours than the ones we’ve all heard before.
Food is a good place to start, as I realised in Melbourne. What do they eat in Gujarat or Goa? In Kerala or Karnataka? And why do they eat it? Find that out, and you’re on your way to understanding.
The writer visited Enter Via Laundry with assistance from Visit Victoria
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