I miss the tumult—the kinetic, exuberant, brash, buoyant life–the pounding, screeching, dare-devil dodge-em-car/cycle/rickshaw traffic of Dehli and Jaipur and Jodhpur and Udaipur. The staccato Hindi and insistent car horns. The faces and more faces and the colors of vegetables and saris and signs and tasseled trucks. And I miss the cows—the right-around every corner, utterly placid, accepting cows. The perfect calming, counterpoints to frenetic life.
I’m obviously just home from my second trip to India. This time to Rajasthan—the northcentral state, once the center of the Mughal dynasty–as compared to last year’s eastern coastal ones. This time with friend and shepherd Helen and friend Jenny. This time celebrating—experiencing—my 80th birthday. And as I slowly regain this life in Helena, on Alpine Street, as I gather myself back into the rhythms and routines of friends and cats and house care, I am unsettled and wistful and becalmed. I’m unwinding the more than the twelve hours of time dislocation. And I’m wanting—maybe more than ever–to wrap my mind and soul around the culture and the places I experienced. I struggle—as I did on the trip—with how to move beyond the biases that plague every traveler to a strikingly different place: romanticizing, distancing, overthinking, fear, just plain weariness. I tried there and I’ll try here. . . . ©
