I waited around for my check in time to start outside the terminal, got my last iced Eskimo from cafe coffee day, and sat, with stares and glances coming my way every minute. Apparently the windows near where I was sitting were in desperate need of intense cleaning, as were the floors because within about 10 minutes of sitting there, I had at least 3 or 4 airport workers just standing close to me, mop in hand pushing the dirt around, and window cleaners just idly rubbing the same spot over and over. BUT then I checked in and took a portal which whizzed me to another universe via the elevator down to the special lounge for important people like me (fluke, I'm flying business class). And I walk in, in my balloon pants and dirty chokos which I haven't taken off for 5 months and look around at all this food and drinks, and adamantly don't believe the server lady when she tells me everything is free of charge. This guy nearby chucked and said, something funny about that and we started chatting and I felt like I had been zapped into another world that I had forced myself to accept did not exist anymore.
And it wasn't India: it was not what I had come from, not when early yesterday I ate lunch with my host family for the last time and found 3 small ants in my rice,...not when on the way to the airport I saw a 3 year old girl walking through a pile of garbage, carrying her 1 year old sister on her hip. Not the same place that I have been living in where I take trains over night and smell and see piss and shit along the train tracks because the toilets are just holes in the train floor. Certainly not the same place as the mountains and gorgeous rivers and sprawling tea plantations, or the Taj Mahal or the wonderful decay of Kolkata. Not the height nor the depths of the India that I've seen. It was just this rich, too organized place that felt like a pod of westernization. And yet, of course, it was SO amazing to get free food and a beer and not have to worry about my bag being stolen or anything like that. And I was still in Hyderabad.
It was amazing how refreshed I felt after a really short time in that luxury. My turn around time has increased so much, so that after only an hour or two in a place less stressful, I already feel ready to get back out there into the real and hard, exciting and fast passed world of REAL India. But of course, I didn't go back out there. Instead I was shuttled from the special lounge via a separate tunnel onto the plane and sat down in my seat, looked out the window at the same image I saw when I sat on my plane going to India and suddenly felt like I was back on my ride going to India 5 months before taking off from Boston.
And then I left India.
Yesterday I cried a lot. And it was not because I was sad to be leaving India--at least I don't think it was. That was certainly not why I felt the impulse to just weep. Maybe on one level I'm sad to leave it because it means this crazy experience is finally over and now I have to go back to a normal life and somehow find a way to integrate the two together; but all that feels and felt secondary. No, I cried yesterday out of fear. Each time I thought about my family and home I just couldn't help myself. I could feel myself, at last, so close to getting back, and yet still was not there. The plane ride from Delhi to Hyderabad was so weird because the entire time I could only think about how the plane was going to blow up or crash or something would go wrong and prevent me from ever actually leaving India. I've never in my life been paranoid about flying or airplanes, but that day getting back and forth from Delhi to Hyderabad, to my homestay and back to the airport my mind was full of the worst thoughts of disasters and crashes--so much that I had to just STOP thinking or else I was going to go crazy. When I got back to my Indian home in Doyans 101 I felt so strangely like I was coming home, it was weird after all that insanity of traveling and yet all I could think about was that I was finally, FINALLY, going to my real home! I realized though, in seeing my little street, my room, the University campus and the small gate into the Guest House, just how far I'd come. How much everything in India--all that stuff that at first felt totally unmanageable and overwhelming--had become customary and doable.
The last leap was to get myself to the airport so I left early and sat on that bus and that's when I cried. Miraculously it went smoother than any other transaction I'd had yet in India, and I got to the airport at 7:30PM for my flight that left at 1AM later that night. It was so terrifying to think being so close to going home, and yet feel still so far away from it. I had been separated physically by 2 continents and 2 oceans the entire time, as well as all the plane and train rides I took, as well as all the emotional barriers necessary to make living in India possible, and yet that day before coming home I was emotionally already home really, but still JUST as far from home as I'd been all semester. There were still the oceans and land masses separating us. And it was scary because I was terrified that somehow there would be something that prevented me from ever actually getting away and finally going home. Some part of me, while living in India, had to convince myself that that was my new life--that it was permanent and real. Because, if I didn't accept it all, then I would never have come to be OK with it all. And so I convinced myself that it was all going to last forever and that there was no end in sight and that is how it was doable on some level, and accept that it was my life for the time that it was. That last day though, was so strange because I saw that it was going to end, but was still just as far from being there as I'd been the whole time. I was terrified that somehow I wouldn't end up making it home and I'd have to stay in India for longer and longer and never make it home. Only now I realize how much I had to twist and warp my mind so that I could accept that I was living in India for 5 months as it was happening.
I was sick on the plane, which was actually great for me because it kept me reminded of where I was coming from. Amidst the luxury of business class I was still confronted by what had been real: the dirt in my fingernails, the holes in my clothes, the dust in my eyes, and the grains in my teeth.
I was sick on the plane, which was actually great for me because it kept me reminded of where I was coming from. Amidst the luxury of business class I was still confronted by what had been real: the dirt in my fingernails, the holes in my clothes, the dust in my eyes, and the grains in my teeth.
weird, because in the entire time I flew from Hyderabad to Boston I didn't smell fresh air for almost 2 days.
that's all.
peace out homeslices. it's been REALZ.
that's all.
peace out homeslices. it's been REALZ.
s
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