If you're still out there...I'm back

Hello, everyone. Although I doubt there is anyone reading to say hello to. I am thankful for you comments, and advice I received when I got back home. Even though it has been a while, my experiences in India still impact my daily life. But why, you may ask (if there's anyone to ask it), am I writing more now? Well, this morning I received a letter from Dharamsala, India, from the Tibetan Children's Village (TCV) where I volunteered in the library, and collected winter coats for. It was a warm, sincere letter fully typed in bad English, with several paragraphs repeated. As I read it, nostalgic thoughts of India floated through my head. Fears of the travel quickly dissipated, and my heart swelled with forgotten love.

And I do love India. I would go back tomorrow if I could. While I was there, the chaotic streets seemed normal, and the smells, were only slightly disgusting, not vomit inducing. A few months ago, I was required to write a short descriptive essay about a city street, or a favorite place. It doesn't take a brain researcher to guess what I picked. At first, the words flew form my fingers, but for every sentence I wrote, I could have written pages. A smile crept up my lips as I remember the locals following us around, begging for food, money, for us to take their taxi. At the time, it was irritating, and a practice in executive control. Plus a healthy amount of mindfulness, to make sure you weren't getting run over and that you still repeatedly refused the beggars' requests. Quite and experience.

But I digress. So, if there are any of you out there, who maybe, might have wanted just a little more, I will give it to you. And a lot more. Though no one may read this blog, and my posts may be infrequent and irregular, things need to be said. Things that only a person fully recovered from India can say. But most of all, I'm writing more myself. Because I have too many thoughts in my head, and I'm afraid they'll start mushing together and I will have a muddled and half complete memory of my first trip to India. I am writing this for posterity. For others who will come after me, and my later self. So with out further ado,

India

The sky was a noxious, smoggy grey, even at eleven in the morning. Beads of warm sweat rolled down my burning, DEET covered face. I couldn’t stop gagging. Every corner revealed a new treasure, a dead dog, starving children pleading for a few spare rupees, or maybe a homeless leper begging for food. But the smell beat them all in the horrid competition to overload my senses. It was the reek of people, of filthy, un-bathed bodies shoving into each other. The stench of urine, whether it be in the barley enclosed public urinals or simply on the ground or the side of a building; the exhaust spewing out of motorcycles barely able to carry the weight of whole families. Pealing paper signs on cracked, decaying buildings boasted “color TV, rooms servises” while the parade of emaciated children and barely living forms marched on.

Fully clothed in bright cotton saris, despite the 100° plus heat, groups of women slithered through the throng of bodies like one cohesive organism. Men joked and jostled in their ox-powered carts, transporting eye-stinging spices to the crowded market. Crowded does not describe India. Viscous is a much better word. The cars and carts flowed down the road, like magma slowly rolling down the mouth of an erupting volcano. Yet quick streams branched off as motorcycles roared and snuck through the heavy bodies of oxen like a mouse through a hole. Bicycles squeezed though the fat, sagging bags on carts driven by emaciated human structures.

The polluted air filled my lungs with every wheezing breath, and made my tongue swell and taste of wet dirt. A pack of young, dark haired boys scampered by, playfully kicking a deflated soccer ball with them. The noise was unbearable. A cacophony of honks and screeches was lead by the throbbing beat of a headache pulsing on the outskirts of my consciousness. After every step I took, the soles of my feet screamed in protest, but despite my exhaustion and the pain, I kept walking.