The Most Significant Event in My Life

The most significant event in my life One day, when I was lying on the bed and started to relax myself. Suddenly, a question jumped out from my mind. What was the most significant event that I had experience in my life? At the moment that I was wondering what was the answer. An answer came in to my mind. It was a trip. It was my first visit, to a country that I had always been told was my great grandfather’s motherland. It was a land I knew no more about than what the travel brochures told me. Having come to Malaysia as an infant, I knew no other home or way of life than what I was used to in Malaysia. However, my trip to India in the summer of 2005 was a significant event that made me see myself as well as the world around me in an entirely different perspective. It was quite overwhelming actually; it was as if I was propelling into another vortex, one with pungent odours of curry and saffron. It was an entirely different atmosphere, one with snake charmers, palm readers, and attractive religious rituals. However, it was an environment with not so attractive sights as well. There were poverty and disease everywhere, men and women, emaciated due to lack of food and proper medical attention. Almost everywhere I turned there was someone, young or old, man or women, so withered from hunger and diseases that each bone on their body could be seen, so poor that they barely had enough rags to cover their body. This is the real side of India, one of disease and malnutrition poverty. A country, in which outmoded diseases like malaria, and tuberculosis are not only in existence, but run out of control. Nothing is safe; water is contaminated thus, causing an ideal location for disease. Of course, there is the beauty and enigma of India, the mystery of the mausoleum known as the Taj Mahal and the serenity one experiences by practicing yoga on the banks of the holy Ganges, as well as other tourist attractions.