Chaos and Order

The driving adventure from last post triggered a thought about how organized the way of living for the people in US is. As I said earlier, driving or rather most aspects of US lifestyle, from what I observed in my time here, are organised. People don’t honk while driving! Even the dogs don’t bark much!! Take it from hiking to food habits to exercise, people think a lot over things and then try to make it as risk averse as possible. Human life is much more valued and cared for than most other places can afford to. If you go on a hike, you would find that there are properly maintained trails. If you are in the wild, you are allowed to go on the trails and camp at specific campsites, but not otherwise. So living in developing countries can be much unorganized when compared to this.

India I believe is equivalent to beautiful chaos for many western travelers. It might be much enriched, diverse, beautiful but day to day lives are chaos at the end of the day! And it needs a lot of skills to be adjusted to that. If we take this context of driving, a driver in India never knows where the next pothole will come from, neither the dogs nor bikes nor buffaloes. And that needs a lot of skills to be aware and be equipped and be able to respond to that. I believe, I have been good at it. I was never organised in my things, thoughts or activities but always thrived on that belief in myself to be able to respond to things effectively. I enjoy riding a bike than travelling in a train or a bus or even driving a car cause that keeps me busy, on my toes and needs me always to be aware of my surroundings! It becomes so “not boring”. Same goes with life. I remember, I was riding through south India, alone for more than 3500 kilometers and was staying in Pondicherry for a while. My friend was using my bike for a short duration and it broke down 20 km away from town. I never saw him panic that much. I understand there were some other stakes involved there, but I’m sure I would have handled the situation in calmer manner. After a couple of days in the journey my rear tyre punctured and the guy mending that removed my brake oil tube. Already exhausted from 17 days ride, I rode last 230 kilometers without rear brake as I was 2 days late to join office.

I was at Kashid a few months back enjoying the beach. I don’t know how to swim, but I was still treading the waters as the depths are much more gradual than most beaches there. The waves are quite rhythmic, speeds predictable. If you observe them closely, you could gauge the height the water would rise to as the wave approaches. If you stay still and stubborn, the water will pass over your head. But if you face the seashore, rise along with the water as the wave hits you by an upward thrust to your body, you can easily float for that moment enjoying the ride and then move towards the shore keeping the body perfectly upright, cycling forward with your feet, landing softly on the land. Afraid of the depths, this was my first time in such sea waters where the depths were more 5 feet. It was a wonderful experience and a confidence booster for me. But, it also taught me an important lesson, that learning to ride the waves was a wonderful thing which enabled me for that experience but riding could take me only that much. I could see my friends swimming in deeper waters as it was calm anyway and floating along nicely. Riding the situations can never make you a driver of things. Driving the things takes much more.

Sometimes, this ability of riding the chaos or situations comes with a cost. It gives you reasons to remain unorganized. It gives you reasons to delay decision making. It gives you reasons to not drive things to completion... if that is what your inherent nature is... and the things get worse for you in a scenario when everyone else is organised, everyone else is following rules, everyone else is completing things. Take this scenario of driving. The blessing here is that there would not be dogs, buffaloes or bikes blocking you out of nowhere, but the problem also lies in the structure that it forces you to follow the rules very strictly that you cannot stop abruptly if you have taken a wrong turn, you cannot slow down beyond a limit on highways if you are unsure of the next turn, you cannot afford to enter a wrong lane because it has inherently enabled everyone else to go at a faster speeds. Organized structure has lots and lots of advantages but it could be devastating for us unorganized mortals! It’s high time I work on getting things together and start be disciplined. Cause the art of the day is to bring chaos to order!