Safe and Sound

My sincere apologies to those out there wondering if I was okay, expressing their concern, during the suffering in Mumbai late last week.  I am in Delhi, don't ever watch the t.v. around here, and didn't even know it was going on until I heard about it from the US.  Then I called my Mom to provide the most immediate reassurance I could get out.  Then I called Anthony, Andrew and Zach's Daddy, to reassure all of them.  I hope and pray Zach and Andrew will do the same when they begin traveling around the world. They will.  Travel around the world, I'm betting.  Hoping so .... 

I had some plans to get out and about town (ok, make that 'teeming city of millions',) or simply out of the house.  These plans were not enough  to have me ignore the warnings I heard around that time about staying in.  I somewhat thought there would be no real concern since Delhi is so very far north, while Mumbai is on the southwestern coast.  But when I asked a few others whether they thought it was a good idea, I started to hear how I should definitely be back before 4:00 p.m., and they began to ask exactly where I wanted to go, and I had one woman say her husband didn't want her going to any markets where there were "crowds."  Honestly, crowds practically means outside the front door.  I exaggerate, but still.  This same woman mentioned a market that I walked to with Georgia, less than a 5 minute walk away from her backdoor, and breezily mentioned how that market would definitely be bombed "someday."  Georgia had been pointing out all the western stores there that day .... places you might be able to locate essentials like chocolate chip cookies, or a decent Italian restaurant, while here in India.  At the time I found these locales both humorous and slightly (I admit it) reassuring, but now this market felt way too close.  When I inquired with Georgia if she agreed about this notion, she immediately nodded, "oh, yea .....  well, there is a hotel right next to it where loads of diplomats stay because of all the embassies around this neighborhood ...."

I did notice both the Embassy of Paraguay and the High Commission of South Africa buildings as I walked to the post office at the C Block Market, not the one with the cinema and said chocolate chip cookies.  If I had been thoroughly longing for turkey and mashed potatoes, my plan B was to go to previously mentioned hotel for a Thanksgiving dinner.  Nixed that plan.  Though I would have been fine, I'm glad I got the phone call with the news.  And I'm happy to report, no bombing there yet.  

I wrote an exclamation point at the end of the last sentence, but thought that is just too glib.  It isn't that I mean to be lighthearted about the matter when it is far more appropriate to cry, but I cannot let myself become paralyzed about going where I need to go or doing what I need to do.  Bombs happen.  People live in war torn areas, gun fire a part of life.  Granted, not usually in Salt Lake City, but still .... 

Oklahoma City is part of American history.  Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols did some real damage and broke many, many hearts.  I'm as safe and sound as I am anywhere.  I just happen to be in the family room of a gorgeous home in Delhi, India at the moment.

Now I need to go somewhere else where the air is far more clean.  Last night I stayed in a "heritage hotel" called Neemrana Fort Palace, built in 1464, at the enthusiastic request of Georgia, to come see where the family spent their Thanksgiving holiday.  Well worth the trip.  The air was a bit cleaner there.  There was, perhaps, less intensity being in a village near a resort than making our way through Delhi to do almost anything.

I may have already said this, I may end up writing it somewhere in every posting, but I continued to be amazed at the dichotomy of images I see everywhere.    I am pulling this next bit from my journal:

"November 30, 2008, Sunday

On the road to Neemrana Fort Palace .... the dichotomy between things seen here is striking.  I pass a billboard that says, "Make life a bed of roses" and not 30 feet behind it, families and communities live in dirt, little (if any) material comfort, garbage everywhere--- in front of you on streets, no sidewalks to speak of, garbage on the roofs of buildings, open buildings, dirt and more dirt.   There is the entire spectrum of life absolutely apparent.  Visible.  It is difficult to see --- in some ways --- but there is truth in it.  And there are still children playing games, and women (and some fathers too) tending the children, and efforts at business, at trade, ways to "make a living"as we (westerners) refer to it.  Of course, one is either living or dead.  And life is what one makes out of it ... . . .  .  .  .   .   .   .    .    .    .     .     .     .       .      .     .  "

here I began to ramble about American living, romance, sex, security, honesty, fear, dying, rebirth .....  (I sort of wish I were kidding ... I really have to laugh at myself)

"And if we want to create what we came here to do, we need to be dying and reborn all the time.  Well, WE ARE Dying and being reborn ALL THE TIME at least on a cellular level, at the most basic, living level.   Our heads, our minds need to be more aware of what our bodies already simply DO.  Constant Unfolding. 

Constant Unfolding.

Even as we die, and crumble.

Decay and die, there is a 

constant unfolding. "

[ I MUST stop here to mention that as I rewrite this now, without editing my sophomoric philosophy pulled straight out of Deepak Chopra books and poetry that actually is not bad,   this bad, bad poetic sort of philosophizing had me laughing my head off as I wrote it out here and now in the middle of the night .... but I digress ]

"..... Just passed two carts-- on this highway-- being pulled by camels ... the large truck in front of us had moved over, but I did not see why until we passed them ..."