Gandhi, Goa, and Gratitude

purchased in Margao, Goa

India has been drawing me for decades…

—the contrasts: opulent riches/grinding poverty, sweltering plains/frigid Himalayas, lush wilderness/polluted cities

—the colors: who else combines them so enticingly in fashion, in food?

—the dramatic, rich history of the subcontinent

Anna in Bengal (other photos prove
she did not have a beard!)

My step-great-grandma Anna spent her 20s in Bengal in the early 1900s—the middle years of the independence movement (Gandhi soon to return to India) and the latter years of the Bengali renaissance (Tagore soon to become Asia’s first Nobel laureate).  I’d read Anna's pleas on behalf of orphans during famine and her vivid descriptions of local life, but tracing her footsteps would have to wait for a time when I could get away for more than two weeks.

All fell in place for the November 2018 adventure:  son Owen said “I’ll go,” after a traveling buddy said she could not; round-trip tickets LA/Mumbai for $625 and e-visas were obtained; and friend Karen offered to arrange housing for us in budget-wise Goa, where she and her husband Dan spend winters.  My dream of taking a (opulent riches) train across the country would also have to await fulfillment.

Two favorite films—Attenborough’s Gandhi and Lean’s A Passage to India—inspired a Mumbai shore tour, beginning with Gateway to India, iconic monument of the British Raj.  Religion and the conflicts it can create were underlying themes of the tour.  We saw sites of the 2008 attacks by a Pakistan-based Islamic terrorist group.  “Hindus and Muslims in Mumbai get along okay now,” said guide Ganesh.  






At a Hindu temple we learned of millions of Hindu gods…more mind-boggling than the 10,000 plus Catholic-sanctioned saints, many of whom are also revered and petitioned for aid.  “I don’t believe in any of it,” said Ganesh.  I don’t either—way too complex.  Beautiful simplicity in Saint Paul’s inviting assertion: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”  

We visited the house (now museum) where Gandhi stayed—humbling, inspiring…the spareness of his room, the thousands of books he read.  “We’re not so keen on him now,” said Ganesh. “He told Hindus not to retaliate when Muslims attacked, but let the Muslims off the hook.”  Gandhi was drawn to the peace-making Christ and suggested Christians should live more like him.*  He also wrote that the West, while professing Christianity, was (still is!) “worshipping Mammon.”  Sad that the East—with a variety of religious traditions— increasingly serves Mammon too.  Indian Frank Raj writes convincingly about rejecting Christianity (Christ was not the founder, he argues), along with every other religion and ideology, and following the way of Christ at  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/gandhi-glimpsed-christ-rejecting-christianity-fals/

After two days in Mumbai we flew to Goa—tourist mecca and Portugal’s base for a lucrative spice trade for 450 years, until 1961.  The colonialists forced locals to convert to Catholicism and ran an inquisition in Goa to punish apostate New Christians—Portuguese Jews and Muslims who, under pressure, had converted to Catholicism—as well as converted Hindus suspected of having returned to Hindu practices.  Goa is now quite diverse religiously, but I sensed spiritual unrest amid the coconut palms and cashew trees.  Intriguing history—inspiration for Richard Zimler’s award-winning Guardian of the Dawn, my next must read!

Owen did repairs/put new strings on Hannah's guitar

Many Goans rent rooms to tourists; Karen and Dan set us up with long-time, nearby friends.  We felt immediate kinship to our hostess and her daughter Hannah.  Owen and Hannah quickly discovered common faith, common interests, and sweet companionship.  The mothers watched, intrigued; Hannah's mom said: “I recently told Hannah: ‘The right suitor must come with his mother’.”  I’d told Owen weeks before the trip: “The right woman for you will appear at the right time.”  What might evolve from the encounter?  Time will tell.  Meanwhile we feel profound gratitude for the riches to be gained when we move beyond boundaries of borders and race and culture and discover friendship...even halfway around the world.

Buying fish and squid on Benaulim Beach

*one part of Gandhi’s response to a question from missionary E. Stanley Jones, as documented in The Christ of the Indian Road—a profound little book