21-29 August, 2008
New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai, India
I landed which means I must have taken off must have enjoyed my last morsels of Qdoba Mexican food procured from the shining SeaTac terminal with its northwest salmon décor must (not!) have cried the night before reluctant to fold away and finally willing to unleash the tension of the last eight months the smell of shit the barking dogs the constant stares the speeding slow pace the gleaming lives of the upper middle class reminding me of the blindness of my unimaginably unequal drain on the resource pool so I’m stepping sideways in it from a place guaranteed to an emerging archipelago of islands from the Delhi International Airport to the cab where I switched my shoes to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club where my mind could relax with gin and tonic and koti rolls and a friend of a friend might drive me home so I have a mattress for the sleepless night and company for the first meal complete with flies and brilliantly spiced shwarma and off to the station with a generalizing conversation on the changing role of women that would be slightly over half the population in India and eastern feminisms so that when I boarded the train I didn’t mind the old man talking to me was gracious and happy to share his joy of the low hill country the emerging teak forests that we were lucky to see because the train was late so after another sleepless night and a long day of reading Ghosh and chattering recyclable packaging and European architecture I took a nap and he came he finally came was there touchable in the dream lanky like me and not yet bald from chemo and genetics but teasing me doofusing lounging and welcoming so that when I woke with a start he stumbled with me but I stumbled with the same twenty years of without and the kind gentleman left me on platform nine three-quarters of the way down with my three bags leaning against the Narnian lamppost and protected fiercely by my blank stare at the familiar canvas of Secunderabad Railway Station flickering only enough to allow the grand entrance in black and grey a million expectations of flittering now fluttering thoughts breaking across the platform in a great wave so that they rushed around my ankles and tripped me up the stairs and he said there was no hurry so I waited for the tide to recede whispered fleeting memories of the dream companion who led me off the train and I folded into arms burrowed so I could breathe and then we took the rickety rickshaw home to the hotel to collaps happily into the cheap golden bedding the starched white sheets and I had television company for another sleepless night but woke in a panic that I had landed so I arranged the world around me and when this had sufficed I slipped on to the networks and on to a road and alighted at the café amidst the bright colors and paninis and read in the shade with the breeze at my very own one-woman table when messengers suggested that I go to see a girl about a play – Wilde’s Ernest – that she had organized a reading of for that afternoon and of course I knew all the players and of course the room was a beautiful white wash against the semi-lush green garden and specialty bookstore and aged olive green chaise lounge and the voices came quickly but soon the movie was starting and the boy was leaving but the traffic trapped me against the northern edge of the lake with the Buddha waving the evening light my way and a Catholic vigil nuns in saris holding candles on my right yet I made it to the platform to miss the message and pick up the sweets and was only carried down the wrong side of the road for a moment before I landed back at the hotel pocketing the simple citrus candies from the front desk and lugging my ‘necessities’ all sixty or seventy pounds of them to a new room that was recently flooded and I think the black mold missed my lungs but for the next few days I slept downstairs in our invented hostel Mrs. SSR president and founder and a proper Telugu mother to bring pickles and I waded through the monsoon streets for packets of morning milk I went to work and finished the book I met the women and made the phone calls I suppressed the panic that this return was a ridiculous idea and traced the familiar lines of the city with a white-gloved finger to see if I would pick up dust or chattering chucks of memories and I rode the waves of confidence and familiarity and the possibility bred between them and the night before last I put the finishing touches on a present and boarded a train and read about Sen's India and landed lightly back in arms in a home away for the weekend so when we sat on the rooftop last night and the lights of the stretching-flat city reflected on the underbellies of the clouds I watched the changes in his face as it observed mine and I smiled at the panorama as we leaned back to watch the same sky begin a different cycle.
New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai, India
I landed which means I must have taken off must have enjoyed my last morsels of Qdoba Mexican food procured from the shining SeaTac terminal with its northwest salmon décor must (not!) have cried the night before reluctant to fold away and finally willing to unleash the tension of the last eight months the smell of shit the barking dogs the constant stares the speeding slow pace the gleaming lives of the upper middle class reminding me of the blindness of my unimaginably unequal drain on the resource pool so I’m stepping sideways in it from a place guaranteed to an emerging archipelago of islands from the Delhi International Airport to the cab where I switched my shoes to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club where my mind could relax with gin and tonic and koti rolls and a friend of a friend might drive me home so I have a mattress for the sleepless night and company for the first meal complete with flies and brilliantly spiced shwarma and off to the station with a generalizing conversation on the changing role of women that would be slightly over half the population in India and eastern feminisms so that when I boarded the train I didn’t mind the old man talking to me was gracious and happy to share his joy of the low hill country the emerging teak forests that we were lucky to see because the train was late so after another sleepless night and a long day of reading Ghosh and chattering recyclable packaging and European architecture I took a nap and he came he finally came was there touchable in the dream lanky like me and not yet bald from chemo and genetics but teasing me doofusing lounging and welcoming so that when I woke with a start he stumbled with me but I stumbled with the same twenty years of without and the kind gentleman left me on platform nine three-quarters of the way down with my three bags leaning against the Narnian lamppost and protected fiercely by my blank stare at the familiar canvas of Secunderabad Railway Station flickering only enough to allow the grand entrance in black and grey a million expectations of flittering now fluttering thoughts breaking across the platform in a great wave so that they rushed around my ankles and tripped me up the stairs and he said there was no hurry so I waited for the tide to recede whispered fleeting memories of the dream companion who led me off the train and I folded into arms burrowed so I could breathe and then we took the rickety rickshaw home to the hotel to collaps happily into the cheap golden bedding the starched white sheets and I had television company for another sleepless night but woke in a panic that I had landed so I arranged the world around me and when this had sufficed I slipped on to the networks and on to a road and alighted at the café amidst the bright colors and paninis and read in the shade with the breeze at my very own one-woman table when messengers suggested that I go to see a girl about a play – Wilde’s Ernest – that she had organized a reading of for that afternoon and of course I knew all the players and of course the room was a beautiful white wash against the semi-lush green garden and specialty bookstore and aged olive green chaise lounge and the voices came quickly but soon the movie was starting and the boy was leaving but the traffic trapped me against the northern edge of the lake with the Buddha waving the evening light my way and a Catholic vigil nuns in saris holding candles on my right yet I made it to the platform to miss the message and pick up the sweets and was only carried down the wrong side of the road for a moment before I landed back at the hotel pocketing the simple citrus candies from the front desk and lugging my ‘necessities’ all sixty or seventy pounds of them to a new room that was recently flooded and I think the black mold missed my lungs but for the next few days I slept downstairs in our invented hostel Mrs. SSR president and founder and a proper Telugu mother to bring pickles and I waded through the monsoon streets for packets of morning milk I went to work and finished the book I met the women and made the phone calls I suppressed the panic that this return was a ridiculous idea and traced the familiar lines of the city with a white-gloved finger to see if I would pick up dust or chattering chucks of memories and I rode the waves of confidence and familiarity and the possibility bred between them and the night before last I put the finishing touches on a present and boarded a train and read about Sen's India and landed lightly back in arms in a home away for the weekend so when we sat on the rooftop last night and the lights of the stretching-flat city reflected on the underbellies of the clouds I watched the changes in his face as it observed mine and I smiled at the panorama as we leaned back to watch the same sky begin a different cycle.
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3 comments:
when i began reading this post i expected the title in your infinite wisdom to have a deep metaphorical meaning it took me a while to place the commas in my head and make sense of the read this journey has been a long one for you involving planes trains taxi rides auto rides car rides and mental rides
in awe of the life without commas and those beautiful journeys we take to make sense of what we think we know
beautiful piece of work as always
R
You saw him in your dream! I often see him in the sky. Recently I saw him in your eyes and in your aura and in your Way.
Love,
Alix
I love love love you Lily.
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