Wide-eyed

I am overwhelmed with gratitude and awe. Vindu, my hostess in Delhi said to me, "Welcome to India" and I thought: really? I'm here? Unbelievable.

Of course it is true. This is really unlike anything I have ever seen. I ate lunch today in a garden with so many different flora, the only one of which I can identify with absolute certainty is grass. Some plants are familiar: Chrysanthemums? Then there are the incredible trees, from which long green and brown fruits hang like noses. The service keeps bringing me Chapatis until I say I've had enough. Afterwards, they bring me a bowl of warm water with lemon to wash my hands in.

Away from the airy house, things are different, of course. Everywhere the air is dry and full of dust. Dust is everywhere, lining the streets, intermingling with grains of dirt and sand and concrete... kicked up by people on foot, in rickshaw taxis, on 3-wheeled bicycles hauling several meters of piping. And the men in absolute rags, squatting barefoot by the side of the road talking to each other. The contrast is palpable.

I saw a man piercing his friend's ear on a sidewalk, and I was enchanted by a graceful woman in a pink sari perched sidesaddle on the back of her husband's motorbike, not batting an eye as he whizzed in and out of the constantly honking traffic.

The girl sitting next to me on the plane was from Holland, but her family was Surinamese (Suriname was a Dutch colony in South America, where they brought Indians as "contract laborers in the 19th century. Think: colours of India flaunted with bombastic Latin-American spice). She was meeting her fiancee's family here in India to go shopping for the wedding. Yes, that's right, I met someone having an Indian wedding (albeit in Holland) before EVEN setting foot here.

Tomorrow, I'll catch a train to Moradabad, where I'll be met by the crew from the school where I'll be teaching. Then, the work begins!

Hopefully I will find an adapter for my computer plug soon, and can then post some pictures. Love to all.