Home again, home again...

As I'm sure you have already heard, I arrived home completely safe, relatively sound, carrying a 30 lb. harmonium under my arm and no infectious diseases in my digestive system! I did, however, enter the States with another bug... the India bug. Not the one that makes you sick - the one that reminds you of your 10 year visa and that you have yet to see Kasmir and Amma Ji. What to do??

I'm soaking up the massive attention Anthony is showering upon me, sending home beautiful trinkets to my family, and buttering everyone up so they let me get back on a plane in a year or less! Jai!

Don't cry for me, Delhi...

Last day in India! My flight departs at 2:45am tonight, which is tomorrow for the States. Today is a whirlwind trip to visit the Lotus Temple, the Raj Gatt where Gandhi was cremated, and to buy a harmonium!!! This is the third time I'm in Delhi this trip, and it's starting to feel like...home? No, it still feels like India, in which I am quite alien! We still have men and children approaching us wanting pictures with "the white people," we still can't communicate more than five words with our rickshaw driver. But still, even after only two weeks, I feel like I have come to the river and gotten my legs wet. Not totally submerged (even though I did half-drown myself in at the source of the Ganga, but this is a story for another time), but definitely a good splash. At the very least, I've been covered with enough Indian dirt and digested enough Indian food (and bacteria) to change my physiology forever! Will I return to India?? I'm keeping enough rupees just in case :)

Ganga Aarti

Last night on the Ganga. We bathed our feet and hands and malas in the river and sat to chant with Swami ji and the rest of the ashram devotees. The ashram is swaddled between the first great hills of the Himalayas, right on the banks of the Ganga, which is fierce and white here. As the sun goes down, there are barely any lights dotting the bank across the river. Our ceremonial fire illuminates the giant white marble statue of Shiva just a few feet beyond the bank, who seems to rise up from the depths of the river shining and clean. The smoke of the fire billows as more rice and ghee are tossed in, each chant of "svaha" puffing up a new cloud. My travel companions and I are looking more and more India each day; some tattooed with henna, some adorned with gold jewelry and heavy mala beads, all of us wrapped in bolts and bolts of colorful cloth. All of us sway and clap with the chanting, some of our voices rising in called recognition. After the final call, we linger. Not quite ready to dry off, not quite ready to go back to sleep.

Delhi Belly

Last night I suffered an attack of the "Delhi Belly." Apparently some little bacterial frenemy has been stowed away in my system only to be discovered by an afternoon round of pakora and dosa. I was a little green and a little white, then more white, more green, and now I'm roughly orange again. Much like the India "Tricolour" (above). Now, exhausted. Sleeping most of the day, aside from this escape to the air conditioned internet cafe.

Akbar, Babar, and the Mogol Empire

This is a quicky - I'm getting in as much blogging while I have a computer!! I am reading the new Salman Rushdi novel "The Enchantress of Florence," which is so prophetic because every time I get off a bus or out of a rickshaw, I'm in the novel! One of the main characters is the emperor Akbar the Great (which literally means The Great Great). Agra and the Taj area are littered with his tombs and palaces, all so lovely and intricate - hopefully pictures to come - but if you're in a dry spell for good literature, get this book!!

Maha Svaha

I could have uploaded a picture of the Taj, but to me, this is closer to the point.

What's wrong with India?

"What's wrong with India?" my travel companion is found of asking. What is wrong with India? This is a big question.

India is all at once the most beautiful and most ugly of places. It's flooded with billions of people traveling about every day, but has no roads whatsoever. There are thousand year old layers of dirty and filth surrounding the whitest, purest marble palaces, which are topped off with an extra layer of dirt for good measure. Shoeless, naked men in dodies (loin clothes) dig trenches along the street with pick axes all to lay high-speed fiber optic cables for internet. You are required to take your shoes off everywhere in reverence - temples, palaces, tombs, ashrams - but the country is fraught with hook worm and God knows what else. The monkeys want your sunglasses more than your bananas. What's wrong with India? This is a big question.

Indians have cultivated an enormous capacity to sit with discomfort. Here, this may be my biggest lesson. This is a country of too much and never enough. What to do? Sit with it. There is nothing to do. I didn't sign on for a trip to the Bahamas. I came to India. Not the India in "Eat, Pray, Barf" - this not a quaint, spiritual place. As Jill likes to say, India pushes and pulls. It is a drill sergeant whipping you into shape. Time to discover what you're really made of.

What to do? You don't come to the ocean to stay dry.