India

I was born in India, and spent the early years of my life in that remarkable place.

I wish that I could revisit those days, to experience them with a heightened appreciation of the history and culture that surrounded me then. The atmosphere affected me at the time, certainly, but I feel that my ability to step outside the guise of landed gentry did not come until much later, at a time when the war had fundamentally altered the place that once was. I have returned there in recent years, and when I do, I find myself searching for the same atmosphere of enchantment that I have always so closely associated with my youth. In some respects it still exists, and in others, it seems to have faded with the passing of time. Sometimes it’s just hard to search by moonlight.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

I was born in India, a place of magnificent cultural heritage, a place with a pulsating spiritual force that filled that world with colour and rhythm, pungent aromas, and deities who have danced their cosmic dance throughout the ages.

It was not always beautiful. There I witnessed many cruelties that appalled my deep-rooted sense of order and decency, and that no doubt instilled in me a sense of stoic rigidity that I have carried with me all my life. But in spite of that, India is and always has been a place with a beautiful soul.

I was given a unique and exotic platform from which to embrace this world and embark upon my adventures, and I was thus steered in a direction very different to the one I might have moved in had I spent the first years of my life in England. The seat of my bloodline and the location of our ancestral manor were to be found in the Cotswolds, far from India by land and sea, and a world away in terms of heart and soul.

Though deeply connected to the environment that surrounded me, England has and always will be an integral part of my identity. I suppose I took it for granted then, that my state of mind was shaped by a notion of civilised behaviour completely foreign to the land that bore me. It was simply the fabric of my mentality. My manners were shaped by the sophisticated propriety of my mother and father, and when I came of age, I moved in circles of lords and ladies very similar to those that they once had occupied. My frequent visits to the manor brought together past and present, and a singular sensation of being at one with myself, safe and comfortable in the expectation of how I ought to situate my life above and beyond the scope of chaos and doubt.

And yet, a seemingly new and unusual consciousness had begun to stir within me, though it had been there from the very beginning.

I was like a boy, speaking in a foreign tongue. Speaking a language in the first years of life accustoms him to various sounds, and allows him to perfect certain rhythms. His knowledge will go beyond a mere collection of words and perfection of grammar, to encompass thought forms and nuances particular to that mindset. In much the same way, the world of dusty streets, ancient deities and raw culture became like a second language to me, but a second language so endeared to my mind and thoughts that it would determine the direction of my life until the end of my days. I developed a second consciousness with which I looked upon the world. Having come to absorb and understand one rich, foreign culture, I felt a deep desire to expand my awareness and experience that could not be denied.

<< Back | Next >>