Karma and dharma

Got back from India on Monday. This was a trip that was long overdue and that I made it and back was so gratifying.

Couple of things I learnt from this trip. Chennai and Pondicherry and even Bangalore are oppressively hot. Like sweat running down every pore and maybe pooling on the floor at your feet kind of hot. Again, coming from an almost fifty year old, who walked up and down Chennai's roads in the summer, doing a research project for Kothari, thirty years ago, this is just an observation and not coming from my nose held high in the air. Second, its loud back home. Everyone and everything is loud. It takes some getting used to after living in Portland, which in comparison, is very sparsely populated.

But, coming back to India, you are forced to acknowledge that you have multiple personality (dis)order. You have a 'foriegner personality' and you have an Indian personality- the one that loves ethnic clothes, can barely form a thought in English, wolfs up samosas and idlis and biryani and sweet, milky coffee and Falooda, and Chinese noodles which wouldn't pass muster with any of your Chinese friends here. You become the one who wants fresh jasmine for your hair everyday, and eat mangoes with juice dripping down to your elbows, the one who barely winces when walking in the terrace in the hot sun. The one who marches briskly across the street through traffic in both directions without missing a beat or beating yourself up about having broken a traffic rule. You become nonchalant and bindaas like they say in India. 

You soak in that feeling. You marinate in India, you absorb the air, the water, the smells, and you become India. For someone like me who has spent exactly half my life in India and the other half here in the US, the dichotomy is interesting to watch. How one can slide back to your old self with very little effort.

Meeting friends and family and shopping to my heart's content apart, I specifically wanted to write about an experience that I had in Pondicherry, that warmed the cockles of my heart as my non-Indian personality would say!

The little one wanted snacks of all sort from back home and so off we went, my mother-in-law and I, to Adyar Ananda Bhavan (A2B in local parlance) in Pondicherry to buy some murukku, seedai and thattai for him. We also decided to try some other stuff for consumption right there, like some laddu, some kozhukattai freshly made right there on the premises (remember the multiple personality I talked about? That's what made me crave it). So the list of purchases was long and the billing was slightly complicated. Since we had places to go after that, we paid, picked up the bag and left.

The following day, we visited relatives in Cuddalore and beyond and came home late in the evening and proceeded to open our suitcases and pack up stuff to bring home. And that's when I noticed- the bag from A2B had just a fraction of what we had paid for! We had left behind about two thirds of our purchases! Damn! We did not know what to do. I looked for the receipt everywhere and couldn't find it and sadly decided that it was a lost cause anyway. It was very disappointing, but without a receipt, it wasn't even fair to go back and ask for what we left behind. So we gave up. More like we commiserated on our carelessness and tried to move on. Not an easy task though right?

The day before we were leaving for the US, we were finishing up some last minute shopping and were driving close to A2B. And it stuck me that like all things in life, it wasn't the outcome, as much the effort that actually counted. So we decided that we would walk in and talk to someone, anyone and see if they would be able to help. Steeling ourselves for disappointment, we went in and explained our predicament to the first guy that we saw at the counter. He seemed pretty chill and didn't say no, but asked us to wait for the serving staff, who would be able to help. And the next female serving staff mentioned the name 'Kavitha'. I perked up my ears. My name? And then the lady who had served us walked in, Kavitha.  And before I could open my mouth, she literally pounced on me, going, "Madam, I  am so sorry, I should have told you that there were more bags I needed to hand to you. I just bent down to pick up the bags and you had already walked away. I even hurried out of the store to see if your car was still there, but you had already left. I am so sorry!"

My jaw dropped! What??? Here I was thinking that it was long shot even getting someone to acknowledge that I had left purchases behind, and  here she was, apologizing for, in actuality, my carelessness.

I told her how sorry I was about not making sure that I had all the stuff I had paid for before walking off to the car. But she was insistent that it was her fault. And she rattled of a list off all the things I had left behind, every single one. And promptly took a large plastic shopping bag and started filling my order! Whoa!! 

What do you say? How do you acknowledge such magnanimity? The cynic in me wondered if she was a gullible person that can be taken advantage of easily..she did not ask for a receipt or even cross check if I remembered the purchases. But her confidence that she was doing the right thing was a sight to behold. She did not ask anyone if she could refill my order, or even hesitate for a second before piling everything into a plastic bag.

And me? I was dumbstruck. I had walked in the store expecting only the satisfaction of having tried, and here I was walking out laden with stuff I had never hoped to see again. And she, she looked happy, triumphant almost. I don't know who was happier that day, me or her. 

I didn't know how to acknowledge the huge favor she had done for me. Giving her money would cheapen the whole experience and reduce it to a mere transaction. I am sure good Karma would bless her abundantly. But I had to do something to let her know, how overwhelmed I was with her kindness. And the Tamil female in me woke up. I walked up to the flower seller who usually sits outside the store, and bought a couple of cubits (mozham in Tamil) of fragrant jasmine flowers strands and walked back in..and she was gone! I asked the lady at the counter one more time, but this time, I asked for her by name. She jokingly pointed to the floor beside her and said, " She's right here!" She stood up from that infamous position that had actually caused this whole confusion, and I thankfully handed her the flowers, cupped my hands in gratitude and walked out of the store, my confidence in humanity restored. 

Death by a thousand cuts, I've heard of. But that the world, in reality, survives those cuts by a thousand little acts of kindness like these is comforting and it restores my faith that we will survive. All the evil in the world, all the injustice, will be balanced by these small acts of kindness, which actually have an outsize effect on humanity. Bad news receives way more publicity than good. But good always wins. Always. There is hope. I am sure.