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From a spiky, arrogant English man who abhorred India, its food and its people on his first trip here, to someone who is trying to tap into its subconscious, Charles Foster has indeed come a long way in his understanding of India. However, the author of In the Hot Unconscious, a journey into India’s mystical complexity, has no delusions about having comprehended the land and its ways fully.
In Delhi recently to release his book (published by Tranquebar), he quips, “When I first came to India, I was confused and went back none the wiser. Today, after several trips, I am a little less befuddled about certain things and a trifle more confounded about many others.” Comparing India to an onion, “unpeel one layer and you encounter another”, he knows that the enigma called India can never be unravelled. Nor does he intend to do so. No wonder the book, peppered with humour, remains a quest. It is a voyage into India’s vast hinterland, its many ashrams, where he is observing, taking and making notes astutely. The take is, however, never condescendingly judgemental. Nevertheless, it brings forth a lot that may have remained hidden even to an Indian eye. A travelogue with a difference that meanders through India’s spiritual crevices, the book is not an outsider’s gaze, in search of the exotic and the sensational. Nor is it borne out of a desire to talk down to Indians, for Foster believes, “It would be delusional to dare to tell Indians about their own religious teachings?” Yet he goes on to make the most profound observations about Hinduism, in particular, calling it the “most detailed religious exposition of the unconscious” and further adds: “In Hinduism we hear the sound of one hand clapping, an exhilarating sound.” The book, however, is not a thesis on Hinduism. Rather it is an attempt to find the meeting ground between the East and the West. He brings alive in many places the need for a dialogue between two different cultures with his engaging storytelling mode of writing, especially so in the chapter Trains and Myths in an encounter with an American woman. His insight reflects thus, “I could see no way of telling her that the lingam of Shiva is a symbol of creative life-giving power and the yoni indicates that power itself is not enough, reciprocity is at the root of creation.” Later, in the same chapter, the rather pompous remark “West has nothing to teach us” made by an Indian he met on the train prepares the ground of what Foster cares to establish. He strongly feels, “The West, where everything has become so codified, has forgotten to listen to its ancient voices. In India, there is still a discernible and palpable connect between the ancient past and the modern present and more significantly between the conscious and the unconscious.” While the West, he thinks, has much to learn from India’s holistic way of living, the West, too, he feels, can teach a thing or two to India and bring some sort of orderly semblance to the quest of the unknown. This human search for unanswered questions which has pervaded his other books too, he asserts is akin to doomed love. But he interjects, “If no one had set into the deep dark woods, the Holy Grail wouldn’t have been found.”
As he has spanned India’s geographical distances from the North to the South, Forster shares that his contemplation became somewhat less diffused and more crystallised en route. He can’t say whether he learnt more lessons from either region, for “it’s the journey as a whole that teaches you”. The nuggets of insightful learning that he has discovered and polished further with his perception, he is only too willing to share with others. Those who browse through his book can immerse themselves into the experience of his reflective writing.
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India, with its multilayered narratives and concepts, he insists, is the best place to get lost, and hence the best place where answers can be found. And in this “perfect literary laboratory” he wants to find out more. Right now the idea that is incubating in his mind is about those on the edges of communities. While India is a land of many other important religions, he admits to having focused on Hinduism alone. And it’s the juxtaposition between Hinduism and Christianity that his book arrives at. He writes: “Christianity is the business of having lunch with the Advaita.” He puts forward the notion of a happy marriage between Hinduism and Christianity, where Hinduism can help Christianity discover its feminine side and Christianity can give Hinduism lessons in morality, ethics and order and a mechanism for achieving redemption.
