If you think India is swarming, chaotic, uncomfortable and choked with grime, dust, smog and gut-wrenching stench, you’re right. Compared with back home, it might as well be a different planet. The abject squalor, unscrupulous scam artists, annoyingly-persistent rickshaw-wallahs, suffocating bustle, and ear-splitting vehicular horns piercing painfully, incessantly are, for many, too much; steamrolling even the toughest traveler’s tolerance. Moreover, the changes in diet, air quality, lack of sleep (deafening noise is resident, uniform, fundamental) and exhausting hyper-awareness to thwart touts grate, inevitably, upon any residual sagacity. One traveler confessed needing to leave as he’d become “quite the a*shole”, falling quickly into agitated disenchantment.

There are just too many people. Public infrastructure is stressed comically beyond its faculty. The power grid is intermittent, unreliable and volatile; threatening to deep fry our sensitive Ipods, digital camera and laptop in a whimsical surge. While outside, lungs, in search of breath, will distend on the noxious stew of burned-oil, stagnant urine, manure and thick, impossibly-permeating dust.

Transportation of any government-run variety is a tedious abomination; a loony caricature guaranteed to be uncomfortable, tardy and mismanaged. Accurate transit information is elusive; hidden disparately for a hasty, ill-timed treasure hunt; usually resulting in a fantastic perversion of one’s schedule. Only the dogged glean fact from the cryptic, mostly fallacious mutterings of government employees, solely charged, in their impudent apathy, with foiling your route; which will undoubtedly incorporate additional, miscellaneous, multi-hour delays. Furthermore, the pictures of 2 and 4-legged bodies rammed into, hanging out of, and clustered on top of moving vehicles are not fabrications.

In the cities, unhygienic, frantic, random, dangerous, idiotically bureaucratic things flounder all around in teeming, 24-hour pandemonium; far beyond Western comprehension..

Daily rituals, simple errands, even recreation can become abhorrent as Western standards of cleanliness, logic and overall synergy deride the visceral cultural experience that, I’ve come to know, IS India. The incessant challenges are, however, not without reward. After a futile, vexing struggle, contrasting my lifestyle requirements with theirs, I learned this frenetic, fascinating country is savored by the resolute, whom, in their thirst for understanding, patiently accept the good, the bad and the extremely ridiculous, ( much like you would in any person) as an imperfect whole. Killing India with kindness and tolerance is central to maintaining personal peace, else, you’re confined to the downward spiral of embittered disappointment. Once I vilified my judgments, comparisons and enlivened my sense of humor ( which was not easy for me), I discovered my passion for this intimidating realm. There is a saying: anything worth having does not come easily; and such is the case with India

Notwithstanding admitted regressions into aggravation, I’m enraptured, sometimes in the very same breath and therefore I sympathize with those who classify their relationship with India as “love/hate”. What other than marvelous, exotic, addictive cultural experiences could lure you back into seemingly masochistic anarchy?! One moment I’m infatuated with her vegetarian, sweet yogurt and cinnamon-spiced cuisine, overtly social people, Middle Eastern Mughal architecture, and incredibly ornate clothing. In another moment, I ponder going home, breaking up, after she treats me like a soulless ATM, poisons me with rotten victuals (condemning me to a squat toilet), and even steals my only pair of shoes from my feet. But her wrath is capricious, fleeting, and it’s not too long before she’s wooing me, splendidly, again…

Grotesque, inconvenient, painful experiences and all, I am thankful she exists, lucky enough to see her firsthand, as Earth would be a painfully homogenous place were it conquered by the sedentary, climate-controlled, hyper-convenience of the West. Many a complainer would be done a substantial service, toughening up, living a much different (perhaps also more fulfilling) life on this side of the world. **Were we really made for air-conditioned shopping malls?** Still, acclimating to an environment and lifestyle so shockingly different, even wild by comparison, is a delicate, exigent, time-consuming process. But, I’m willing.

India’s lifted me up, beat me down, and I can say, haggardly, I’m not through yet.

We’ve discovered Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh, saddhus, yoga, meditation, and mysticism. We’ve dined on mind-blowing dosas, chai (the original stolen from Starbucks), uthapams, puris, samosas, lassis and gulab jammun. We’ve been cheated, helped, harassed, extolled, chased, enchanted, and befriended. This country incarnates the inherent living dichotomy in all of us, the epic contrast between forces side-by-side: yin and yang, black and white, good and evil. In touch with my ongoing metamorphosis and education, I appreciate these honest incidents, traversing this less accessible and, consequently, more authentic culture, feeling the richness, the diversity, the over-populous pulse tangibly beneath my fingertips. When I’m pissed, when I’m sick and when it hurts, I chant the doctored maxim: When India doesn’t kill me…