Hunger is There

India is a complex country, and so are its many languages. With 420 million inhabitants, 22 major languages and well over 720 dialects are spoken.

My first visit in the fall of 1987 to the country formerly called Hindustan was life-changing. To call the trip eye-opening would be an understatement. A land of paradoxes, perplexities, and extremes, I remember having a talk there with an acquaintance, who explained its essence by saying simply, “The Indians know how to live.” This verity is expressed through the country’s many languages that sprawl across the vast landscape of its ancient soil.

Languages have always been a fascination for me, including the native tongues of India. Most intriguing to me is the way in which a language encapsulates the subtleties of it culture, reflecting its nuances in the sounds particular to its people. The placement in the head and nasal cavity, the unique use of the lips and tongue, the glottal stops and the elongated phrases, the pronunciation of consonants and vowels – all reflect and convey the basic personality of the country, if one listens astutely.

One significant idiosyncrasy of the Hindi language is that it doesn’t express the concept, “I have.” Instead of saying, for example, “I am,” one says, “To me, this happens.” The standard structure of a sentence is subject/object/verb. In Hindi, most verbs are placed identically to English. However, the verb to be is often replaced with there is or, in the case of a question, is there.

For example, instead of saying, “I am willing,” an Indian might say, “Willingness is there.” Rather than saying, “I am hungry,” the phrase would be, “Hunger is there.”

In some not-so-obscure way, this sentence structure and choice of words seem to capture the impersonal, non-attached nature of the Indian consciousness. As my friend noted about Indians who said that they “know how to live,” perhaps a part of that knowing is an understanding that we are “events for which we are responsible,” as explained about the Banana Flower Essence for humility, in Chapter 36 of The Essential Flower Essence Handbook:

“Be little in your greatness and goodness. Always be willing to step out of the way and view yourself as a mere passing event for which you are responsible.”

In other words, even in saying, “I am hungry,” it is the self, the “I,” that comes first and receives the emphasis of that sentence. Perhaps somehow the great wisdom of the Indian culture to not claim ownership is conveyed in their unusual syntax, “Hunger is there.”

This level of detachment is explained in the metaphor of a lotus flower in the glossary of my book, From Bagels to Curry, where the Indian name of one of my friends, Nalini, is defined: “Spiritual name meaning ‘lotus, a flower which is a symbol of illumination and detachment, since it rises above the mud of its origins.’”

We too can rise above the mud of our origins, or the mundane nature of this world, to the greatest heights of our uniquely individual spiritual possibilities – that place where there is no hunger but only the nourishing joy of the soul.