Rickshaw Mashup

So yesterday, in true form, India interrupted my life and made me rearrange my plans, but I think I have come to an understanding of this dysfunctional relationship we have. It came to me in the form of a mashup.

First let me set the scene. It was Monday morning and I set out from my apartment to go to the gym where I have a set time at 9 am to meet with my trainer. I am fairly religious about the church I call gym. Wait let me rephrase. I have been born again after not going to ‘church’ over the last month of holidays and thoroughly indulging for which I should truly repent. So I am on my way and we have hardly made it around the corner when a rickshaw decides to turn against traffic and slam into our van. As is usual, Javed gets out and approaches the rickshaw driver in a very aggressive manner. Now you may be thinking that I turned around to see what was going to happen- to see if it was going to get ‘juicy’. However these car accidents and following interactions have become fairly regular so really I am checking my watch out of frustration because I have somewhere to be.

Checking my emails and messages and still waiting, I turn around. Javed is grabbing the driver by the scruff of his shirt, a crowd has formed and a few men in matching black, dress-up security shirts arrive on the scene. Now I’m swearing because this is going to take longer than usual. Suddenly my door opens and the rickshaw driver grabs my shirt and starts pleading with me in Hindi, until Javed pulls him away and shuts the door. Again I am not bothered. I just lock the door so I’m not disturbed again and check my watch. After some back and forth, these Hiranandani security guys tell my driver and rickshaw driver to go to the Powai Police Station. Needless to say I was 2 ½ hours late, missed the session with my trainer and was still fuming after a 10k run on the treadmill.

When I reflected on the day’s events after watching a Stephen Hawkings special regarding Quantum Physics, I realized that my experience in India is very similar to the Doppler Effect. In its simplest form the Doppler Effect, or rather my simplest understanding of this theory, is that when a vehicle is approaching, the frequency, (understand sound wave here) is much higher as it approaches than when the vehicle passes you. This has something to do with the frequency waves coming closer together as they get closer to you but move farther apart as they pass.  As individuals, and if you are not a science junkie, this translates into an automatic expectation for you. When you see a car approaching you immediately assume the noise will get louder as it gets closer and more quiet as it leaves you. If this were not to happen you would immediately notice the distortion to your expectation and be thoroughly confused.

Now what I realize as I mashup my understanding of physics and personal relationship to India, is that what I need to do is try to warp my expectations based on the Doppler Effect and think completely outside the box.  When these ‘India’ events get closer to me, the noise and chaos of not understanding the culture forces my immediate expectation of not understanding and being frustrated. In recognizing this, I also understand that as these events pass by with time then my tolerance of them increases and therefore the frequency of frustration reduces relatively. What I need to do is change my expectation so that as these events approach I control the frequency so that as it approaches and comes even with me, I either stop and observe the isolated frequency or expect the frequency to be lower.  This, I realize, requires a huge paradigm shift from my traditional expectations based on my conservative Canadian upbringing to a more creative, organic approach but I remember not too long ago my first frustrating days in China. I returned to China a few months ago and it felt like home. The lower frequency of China after having moved away has allowed me to appreciate the higher frequency noise which existed when I lived there. My goal is to not wait until the frequency has passed in India to appreciate its ‘noise’ but to value  the current high frequency I exist in now.