Part 3, Section A - Moti Garmach, Tokyo, Japan - Getting to Know Delhi, India

00:19 Speaker 1 Last time we talked about the possibility of you telling us stories from your shlichus involving people you met. I mean, what happened? Is there something like that?

00:34 Speaker 2 Let’s clarify. Stories that happened on shlichus, or stories about chassidim?

00:39 Speaker 1 No, stories from your own shlichus, about the different people you met. What happened? Did something develop? Did they stay with you? I don’t know—the children and parents, something between them, or things like that. Do you have stories like that?

00:56 Speaker 2 Yes. Over the years, there have been a lot of stories. I have to put them together somehow... Yes. Let’s start with “L’chaim.” L’chaim, to blessing.

01:03 Speaker 1 L’chaim, l’chaim. Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu v’Rabbeinu, Melech HaMoshiach l’olam va’ed, of course. Of course, of course. Absolutely. So let’s begin the farbrengen.

01:18 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s the month of Elul. We’re deep into Elul.

01:21 Speaker 1 The king—the king is in the field.

01:24 Speaker 2 Yes. Your background is deep in the field. Running through the hills. The background...

01:32 Speaker 1 Hills, the field. Yes, “the field” means outside the palace. The king goes about outside the palace and waits for...

01:40 Speaker 2 Where the peasants are, where the farmers are—that’s the field.

01:45 Speaker 1 That’s true too.

01:45 Speaker 2 Anyway, stories. Let’s begin. I need to prepare... I didn’t have a list of things. I arrived during the India period. There was a young man...

02:06 Speaker 1 You were in India?

02:08 Speaker 2 Yes. A young man who was traveling with...

02:11 Speaker 1 Where in India were you?

02:13 Speaker 2 In Hampi. Hampi. Hampi is in southern India. Yes, we haven’t gotten to Hampi yet. We’re still in... the year of kvutza.

02:22 Speaker 1 Right, but you’re not talking about shlichus stories. You can tell us you were in Hampi; that’s fine.

02:27 Speaker 2 Yes. Never mind—life took us to India too. We were... I was there for almost twelve years.

02:37 Speaker 1 You were in India for twelve years?

02:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:40 Speaker 1 Wow, wow.

02:41 Speaker 2 Of that, about nine or ten years were after I got married. Before that, I was there as a single man for another year and a half or two years. It was on and off: I’d go for six months, then come back to study part of the course for semichah, then return to India, then come back for more semichah. Back and forth like that.

03:05 Speaker 1 You’re using terms that Chabad people know. Explain them, because the audience doesn’t know what semichah is.

03:12 Speaker 2 So, to get back on track, or to go back—

03:14 Speaker 1 Not even to go back—

03:14 Speaker 2 Back to the stories.

03:15 Speaker 1 Go back to your path. All right, let’s hear about it.

03:17 Speaker 2 Well, you got me going. We finished our year of kvutza. Kvutza is the year we mentioned, when you study near the Rebbe for a full year. During that year, you really prepare yourself, mature a great deal, and take responsibility. Then, after that year, you go out on shlichus, broadly speaking. People go all sorts of places. Many return to Israel, to yeshivos and Chabad Houses, to places that badly need help—more hands, more people doing the work of shlichus. I wanted to stay another year, to become more settled there. Then, after a few months, the month of... Shvat, Av, Shvat came, and I got a call from the Chabad House in Delhi. Back then it was run more by young men. He said to me, “I’ve been called up. I need to travel now,” and so on.

04:22 Speaker 1 Who was the person? Who was the person who contacted you?

04:25 Speaker 2 Well, the young married man who opened the Chabad House in Delhi was Rabbi Nachman Nachmanson. May he have a complete recovery.

04:33 Speaker 1 Amen.

04:34 Speaker 2 After his wedding, he really... the Chabad House in Delhi. Today things have progressed a little more, but back then... People say that the whole world is reflected in a person, right? The Maggid of Mezritch says that the human body is, in a sense, the world. There’s the analogy that everything in the world is found in a person, and so on. So, to put it crudely as a joke, if the whole world is a human body, then the most... the backside would be Delhi, or India. And within that, it would be the street where the Chabad House is, Main Bazaar. It’s a street that’s always full of mud, cows and camels. Sometimes elephants pass through, along with rickshaws, and there’s noise—it’s a catastrophe. You can hardly go down that street; it gives you a headache. And...

05:32 Speaker 1 Why did the Chabad House set up there, specifically?

05:37 Speaker 2 It’s a chicken-and-egg question. The Israelis... It’s a very, very cheap place and very close to the center—very close to the central train station and to shops where merchants sell all kinds of things cheaply. It stands out. Let’s call it the South Tel Aviv neighborhood. It’s central too.

06:00 Speaker 1 In terms of being close to Israelis, which is the Chabad House’s main purpose, that’s probably...

06:05 Speaker 2 Yes, but why did the Israelis settle there? Because it’s convenient. There are lots of hotels. Not hotels—we call them hotels, but they’re guesthouses, rooms.

06:14 Speaker 1 It’s a cheap place. A cheap place where you can...

06:18 Speaker 2 They’ve been there for years. Maybe the first Israeli who arrived went there, and everyone followed. That’s how it stuck. On the third floor of one of the hotels, there was a room that belonged to the Chabad House. Rabbi Shmulik Sharf took responsibility for the place, together with Mordechai Kupchik for a time. He was there after he got married too. Later, his wife was killed in Modi’in—murdered by rockets from Gaza. So that was his Chabad House, Delhi. We’re talking about when he was still a young man, and he called us—me and Rabbi Levi Elias, your neighbor in Upper Tzfas.

07:00 Speaker 1 Elias, yes. He’s a young married man here in the city.

07:02 Speaker 2 Yes. So we went to Delhi together. That’s how we got there for the first time. We arrived in Delhi with no handover from anyone. We had to find the place, find the Chabad House, find the key. They’d given us directions. Before that, they’d told us about [unclear] by the Delhi Chabad House. At [unclear] there are five shops—several shops, then an entrance to a hotel, and then... Anyway, we arrive by taxi, and there’s this whole market, and you have no idea what’s what. You’re constantly worried someone will steal your things. You’re on edge the whole time, because it’s your first time in a place like that, with no help. We arrive in the evening, at night, ten or eleven o’clock. Anyway, you start looking for the entrance to the Chabad House. It’s nighttime. In India, a shop can be as wide as a table: a man sits at half a table and sells whatever he has behind him. The whole shop is basically a stall. During the day, you can tell one shop from another. At night, when the shutters are down, they all look the same. You try to guess. Anyway, I get to the end of the alley and walk back and forth, and I can’t find it. Hare Rama is a central spot; he’d said the Chabad House was there, where all the Israelis are. So for about fifteen minutes you walk back and forth, trying to work it out. Then one of the Indians says, “Come, Chabad House, come, I’ll show you.” Anyway, then you see the Hare Rama sign. Between the shops there’s some kind of entrance. You can’t tell what it is; with the tiles, it looks like the entrance to a mikvah or something. Anyway, that was our welcome. So that’s how we started there as young men. I mean...

08:51 Speaker 2 We came to fill a gap. We were only supposed to be there for a short time, but then—that was it. You see, it was love at first sight.

09:02 Speaker 3 What year are we talking about?

09:04 Speaker 2 We’re talking about the period of 5765, so this was 5766, the end of 2005.

09:11 Speaker 3 Ah.

09:11 Speaker 2 2005. Yes.

09:13 Speaker 3 So you arrived in India—was it on an Indian airline, or which airline did you fly?

09:19 Speaker 2 I think so. I remember going to get a visa for India at the Indian consulate in Manhattan. They send you down to the basement of some building in Manhattan, and it’s crowded. Anyway, I went in and needed the bathroom. I went into the bathroom, and everything was clogged and filthy. You think, wow, they’ve already given you a taste of India at the consulate. Right from the...

09:46 Speaker 3 What you’d call [unclear].

09:47 Speaker 2 Yes, today it’s not like that anymore. Today everything...

09:52 Speaker 3 Today what? Today what?

09:55 Speaker 2 Today, getting a visa for India is a completely different world. But back then it really was a mess, a real mess.

10:02 Speaker 3 You’re saying India has developed a bit since then.

10:04 Speaker 2 The Indians outsourced it. They brought in someone from outside to do it, an outside company to manage all of that. There was a power outage. You’re thinking, “Are you sure?” You’ve arrived, you’re in Manhattan, everything’s... But at the same time, it has to work. Welcome to India: a power outage. Anyway, what’s special about India—and why we stayed, among other reasons—is that India puts you in a certain state of mind. We’re all Jews, the same people everywhere. Yes, there are Jews everywhere: in Europe, in the United States, in South America. But there’s a particular India state of mind. Your surroundings really do affect your soul and the way you behave. When you arrive in India—maybe this has changed a little today, but especially in those years—you enter a different mode. Shanti. There’s no pressure and no time. You simply take off your watch.

11:15 Speaker 3 No time, no sense of time. Is that what you mean?

11:18 Speaker 2 Yes. You’re not rushing anywhere. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know what day it is or what the date is; you enter that state. Because an Israeli kid, or anyone, has been through school, parents, an army commander. People are constantly telling you what to do, telling you what to do. Suddenly, this is your time. That’s it. Give me some peace and quiet, and let me think about what I’m doing right now and what the next moment holds. I’m not interested in what I’m going to do later. And you pick that up from the locals, too. The Indians open their shops at eleven, and everything is like that. Someone tells you, “I’ll be there in five minutes,” and it could take an hour. Time doesn’t mean anything. Everything just flows. Now, that has a powerful effect on you. When you come to a place like that, it opens your heart. You’re not trying to judge anyone, and you’re not judging yourself. On the contrary, you’re trying to break through boundaries. So that also shows up in drugs—people try all sorts of things—but it shows up in the clothes they wear, too. Israelis, and not only Israelis, but Israelis in particular, wear outfits they would never wear in their lives: dirty clothes, or clothes cut up in all sorts of ways, or... It’s like testing every boundary. People might suddenly shave their heads; girls shave their heads, a young man grows a beard or doesn’t shower for two months. Everyone takes it toward something that felt stifled until now, or something they’ve never experienced in their lives. And now nobody’s going to ask you about it, and it doesn’t matter to anyone. Now, that’s the...

13:09 Speaker 2 That’s the atmosphere, the place, the feeling. On top of that, there’s all the idol worship. Everywhere you look—when you get into a taxi or a rickshaw, go to the grocery store, to a shop, anywhere—everyone has their own little object of worship, their idol. It might be a doll, it might be [unclear], it might be made of clay or gold, of anything—silver, not gold. All sorts of figures. They have a little cabinet where they put rice, milk and sweets for it, with music and lights, and incense, of course. Actual worship of deities, literally. Yes, the incense, it’s... And it’s not something you have to look for. It’s not rare; it’s right in your face in every shop. When they’re burning incense, you’re not allowed to enter the shop while they’re engaged in idol worship. I mean, when the incense is being burned for the sake of idol worship.

14:09 Speaker 4 By “not allowed,” you mean according to the Torah, not according to them.

14:12 Speaker 2 According to the Torah. If they tell you to take off your shoes, if you have to take off your shoes because they’re in the middle of a puja, a religious ceremony in honor of the deity they have in the shop... But it’s not something you can miss. How do you put it? It’s so conspicuous, everywhere, in every corner. To the point that—there aren’t toilets, right? In India, everywhere is a toilet. When a man needs to go, he finds a corner and goes. There’s no embarrassment, no... People urinate everywhere, especially in the Main Bazaar. Now, when they want—

14:46 Speaker 4 Especially where?

14:48 Speaker 2 In the Main Bazaar. The Main Bazaar is that crowded street with all the... with everything. Apart from airplanes, it has everything. And when they don’t want someone to use a wall as a toilet, they stick a picture of an idol on it, maybe thirty centimeters above the ground, or very low down, fifty centimeters above the ground. Or they put up some little ceramic image. That’s supposed to stop people from urinating on the wall.

15:16 Speaker 4 Oh, because it’s considered sacred, so they wouldn’t dare.

15:21 Speaker 2 But that gives you a picture of what goes on there. A lot of people don’t have toilets at home. First thing in the morning, they go down and relieve themselves in the street. Afterward, there are people whose job is to sweep it all up. There are piles of it, and rats. You go into a grocery store, move some product, and a mouse darts out from behind it. I remember... We’re talking about a time when people didn’t have phones. If you remember, there was Messenger on the computer.

15:56 Speaker 4 There was Messenger, yes, that’s right.

15:57 Speaker 2 Messenger from Windows—no, not Windows, MSN. MSN, I don’t remember exactly. But that was how you exchanged messages. It was either that or email. I remember messaging my family—I still have the conversation saved somewhere—and while I’m doing that, I feel something. I was wearing sandals, without... I’d just gone down to the... You had to go to an internet shop; you didn’t have internet at home. You paid for half an hour or an hour of internet access. I feel something, look down, move my... and suddenly I see a mouse running away. So I sat a bit more carefully and carried on messaging. Then suddenly I feel something climbing up my pants. I put my hand there to block it and start thrashing around. It comes out—a little mouse! What was it doing? Looking for somewhere to hide. You’re sitting at a computer, at a computer desk, with your feet there as usual. Anyway, it’s... how do you put it? It’s an experience. Those are the kinds of examples... The whole experience, the whole atmosphere, the bargaining over everything—everything about it. In short, life there is fascinating. Things are different. Now, with all that atmosphere and the strong spirituality—though it’s spirituality in the sense of some dimension beyond the material world, the way the Indians look at the world—there are theories, and there are also ordinary people who are simply idol worshippers in the literal sense. Everyone has their own deity and their own energy: what they do with it, what they don’t do. It’s all, “This is a power,” and “What about that power?” Everything is a form of idolatry. Now, a Jew walking around there—religious or not, from a kibbutz or wherever—you can’t remain

17:54 Speaker 2 indifferent.

17:55 Speaker 5 Wow.

17:56 Speaker 2 You see these things again and again. It makes you think: Where does this come from? What’s going on with them? What is this? What about us? Where do we stand? And against that background, when there’s a Chabad House there, it becomes a place where it’s very easy to come in and ask questions. Young people who ordinarily wouldn’t dare walk into a synagogue or anything like that back in Israel suddenly find it perfectly natural to come into a Chabad House in India. And as I said before, people aren’t so worried about what others think. The atmosphere is that nobody owes anyone an explanation. It’s just a different atmosphere.

18:45 Speaker 5 Yes.

18:45 Speaker 2 So the Chabad House became a place to come to, a place to meet. Of course, things have changed over the years. Today everyone travels with a phone; everyone has WhatsApp and Facebook, and everything is different.