sick

There's so much I could write about from this past week, but right now everything is blurred by a thick nausea, vertigo and dizziness that set in four days ago.  The spinning sensation comes in waves and makes the nausea purely awful. It was severe enough that I went to the local hospital where I was diagnosed with "ear wax" and sent home feeling very flattered. I feel drunk when I walk and find some comfort only lying on my left side.   This is not a good state to be in when traveling, especially in this chaotic, noisy, on-the-go-constantly kind of place.   I'm trying the "mind over matter" tactic today and we'll see how it goes. We are booked for an over night train to Delhi and then flying to Calcutta.   Please pray that whatever is plaguing me would dissipate.   There's so much I don't want to miss out on. 

Up

Everything in Mussoorie feels like it's perched precariously somewhere between up and down.   The plains end in Dehradun and a narrow, winding road holds for dear life to the raw edges of this himalayan hillside. I am tense through each blind corner, trying to block my awareness of how everything falls away below a small guard rail on our left. Above us the town is visible. Clusters of life have negotiated some ancient agreement with gravity and lay claim to their space between earth and bright blue sky. The air is cooler and clearer. We bypass the main bazaar. The price of the short cut is an impossibly steep grade that makes me grab Naths hand and lean forward in the illusion that it will somehow help the straining engine. We arrive at the tiny home my parents rent and walk the last 300 meters up steep uneven steps through pine and deodar forest. Like almost everything in Mussoorie it sits anchored to the hillside over looking the dun valley a few thousand meters below.   Inside I'm immediately met by a smell so familiar that I'm caught off guard. A combination of whitewash and the insidious mildew of a hundred monsoons, scrubbed away but lingering on. It's an ancient smell but somehow not a bad one.  And I know immediately that it's identical to the smell of my first homes here. Smell is said to trigger memory and I realize how true this is. India is full of smells, for better or for worse,  and I'm curious to see what else will be unlocked in my memory through them.

My Name

My name and it's pronunciation have always been a complicated issue. Anjali is a common Hindi name meaning offering. You can attach a prefix to specify the nature of the offering, but stand-alone it is a simple open handed posture. I really like this image. And I like to believe that the meaning is a sort of sealed  destiny for me.  Empty-handedness before God. Everything I have and am an offering.

People tell me that they like my name, but I wonder if they know it? The true hindi pronunciation is UN-jali, but as a kid that strong first syllable made me uncomfortable and I welcomed the softer mispronunciation that gradually solidified into my 'outside of home' identity. My family holds strong to the original, and maybe this month in India will give me a new appreciation for their steadfastness.    Part of me wants to settle the debate. Part of me is content in the duality.

Today, however the issue was not with my first name but my last. I got to the airport and realized my plane ticket was booked under my married name whereas my passport still says Hamilton. Big mistake.   My only options were to buy a new ticket or to show my marriage license and disprove my "fraudulent" identity. Long story short I made it from Richmond to Burnaby and back in an hour and fifteen minutes, sprinting into the terminal five minutes before the gates closed.  A little bit of drama, a few desperate prayers, plenty of miraculous green lights and we're on our way.

Here we go.

Preamble

Here I go again.  Writing.  Words and I are much like passionate, moody lovers.  I am in love with their capacity to open steel doors of expression, flooding my mind with light and understanding.  Yet at any given moment they betray me, and I am back in the confines of wordless feeling and experience.  For me,to write is to understand.  And there is much that I want to understand.  There is much I want to observe, to notice.  So here I go again, fighting up current for the illumination behind the seemingly random. I want to listen amidst the chaos to the quieter things.  And most of all I want to write.  This writing is much more for me than for you, but light is brighter and warmer and fuller when you can stand in it with others.


The Occasion

Twenty four years ago, as a seven year old I left India. In two days, as a 31 year old I am returning for the first time.  As a child, this leaving birthed in me a lingering sense of displacement; of smallness in a very big world; of uncertainty about where and how and why and with whom I belong.  I have learned to carry these deposits on my soul, to take them wherever I go much like an awkward piece of furniture, and in recent years I have even learned to love them and treat them with gentle reverence.  They are weights we all carry in different ways, for different reasons.   And ultimately they are a call on our souls towards our truest Home. 


The details of our first few days:

Our flight leaves Vancouver at 1250 November 2nd and arrives in Delhi November 4th at 3am.  In Delhi my parents will meet us at the airport (thank goodness) to navigate on our behalf the insanity of bartering taxi drivers, coolies and the general mayhem of the busiest airport in the busiest city of one of the busiest countries on Earth.   Its nice to know that in our tired stupor, we'll be in good hands.  My parents have a hotel booked for the (rest of the) night, and then in their competent hands we'll get a crash intro to Delhi, shopping for culturally (and climate-ly) appropriate clothes.  One more night and we'll be on the train North to Dehradun, and from Dehradun we take on the winding road up to Mussoorie.   This is where my own blurred imagination-like memories will unravel into reality.   I'll post pictures and thoughts from my phone when we get to my parents place in Mussoorie.  Or maybe sooner, depending on my level of consciousness post-flight. Wish us luck packing!