Recuperate, reintegrate, commemorate

It's been over 10 days now since I've been home.
From the day I returned, it was as if I had never left. The kids were back to arguing and testing. The days were hectic from dayrise to long after sunset. Work waited for me, in piles on my desk.

I did have a chance to reflect however. I had a chance to discuss with those who were eager to hear about my adventures.

Here's what I came up with.

I did, after all of my resistance, fall in love with India. At which point this happened, I don't know. But it did. I would go back. No question. Did it change me? It did. Not sure how, but it did. Regardless of the insanity of everyday life back in my 'bubble', it feels different. Someone said to me the other day, you look peaceful.

I feel like I'm letting everyone down by not having concrete answers to the questions I had before leaving. But in the spirit of honesty and truthfulness, I can only say that I can't quite express adequately in writing what this trip has meant or done to me.
I guess you'll just have to find out for yourself why it is that everyone that goes to India comes back changed and inspired.

The point of it all

I'm sitting here at the Heathrow airport in London on my 50 hour journey home. Really, all in all it will have taken a total of 50 hours to get to the Ottawa airport. Regardless of the fact that I have no idea what day of the week it is, I am sitting here with a smile of my face.

Although at times the trip was difficult, I return home with fond memories and life lessons.

This trip has certainly made me appreciate my life and family. I feel so incredibly fortunate.

I didn't come here to find myself, I'm too old for that. I think I'm getting to a point already where I trust my values, my decisions, my experiences, and the people that I chose to surround myself with. But I did find something here in India. I found a world, where the people and places within it now seem less distant from me. Not sure if that even makes sense.  In a weird way, I feel more connected now to the world -- to the different cultures, music, art, traditions. I tasted life outside of my bubble. It tasted sweet.
I made human connections with people that I only dared dream about, those who I saw only in movies, or read about in books. Now, I have real names, human stories, and new friends.

It was awesome. But next time, I want to share this experience with my family. It's too precious of an experience to keep all to myself.

I will log in again in a few days to wrap up. Once I know which way is up again. Once I pry the little arms from around my waist...but I want to bask in that first.

Leaving soon...

This is my last full day in India. Tomorrow I leave on a long trek back home. Although at times this trip seemed so painstakingly long, at the same time I feel that time flew by.
I have to admit that I’ve had a tumultuous love affair with India. It certainly started with a volatile courtship. Perhaps it’s because our first date was in Mumbai, one of the most crowded and polluted cities in the world, and one where the disparities of class and status are blatantly obvious.

It’s when I left Mumbai that I began to see the country and its people for what and who they are. It’s difficult to explain what it’s like in India. There is so much diversity; both in the landscape and in its cultures. It is large crowded cities with high-tech enterprises and new wave architecture – but at the same time it’s deserts, jungles, and oceans. Each state has a dialect and a culture within its own. There are longstanding traditions and customs, intermixed with the influences of colonialization and globalization.
I found an excerpt in the Times of India the other day from a man called Ramachandra Guha who attempted to explain the Indian experience. I cut it out. It stuck with me.
“India is the most daring, not to say most reckless, political experiment in human history. Never before has a territory so disparate and diverse constructed as a single nation. Never before was a population so poor and illiterate given the vote. Given India’s size, its poverty and its colonial past, the history of this experiment can certainly be illuminating for other countries. Given the staggering diversity of religions, languages and cultures that this experiment contains, Western nations now coping with mass immigration can learn from it too.”

Throughout the day today I’m going think of my lessons learned here in India. I need to be able to share those with my family when I get back. That was the point of this after all wasn’t it?
Perhaps I’ll have to do all of this thinking lounging by the pool today.
Come on, it’s my last day before I go back to my hectic chaotic life that I love so much.

I will bask in these last moments of solitude.

On that note, I leave you with this picture that I took yesterday evening at dinner in Vagator, Goa. It was our view from our table.

Hope for Street Children

Today I had an amazing day. I had the opportunity to visit El Shaddai a not for profit child welfare organization that works with street kids and orphans in Goa.
We visited the school, completely funded by this organization, and where hundreds of children flock to each day from nearby villages. Some are bused in. Here, they are given an education, a hot meal, and hope for the future.
Then we visited a shelter for street kids in Margao. This is where homeless children who live in the streets are picked up by field workers and brought to this centre to be cleaned, to be given clean clothes, and to learn basic educational skills like the alphabet and writing their names. This shelter had over 100 children there today. The minute we walked in there we were completely jumped on by these children. They wanted to shake our hands, tell us their names, show us their dancing and signing skills.
By the end of the 2 hours, they were riding on our backs, tending their arms up in the air for us to hold them, giving us hugs, and showing us their secret hand shake.

My new friend Anita from the children's shelter

After all the poverty and sadness that I have briefly witnessed during my time here in India, this experience provided me with a lasting impression of resilience and spirit. Organizations such as this one can only do so much, but yet they do so much.

In a few days I leave India. But now I leave with an understanding that within despair there is hope.

Me with the girls at the school run by El Shaddai

The Women of Baga Beach

I love the beach. I’ve been to Cuba, Mexico, and Jamaica. All beaches were great. This beach however, is like no other that I’ve seen. It has thousands of thousands of people on this beach, and most are Indians vacationing from other parts of India. There are a few intermittent foreigners which are obvious and for those of us who’s fair skin makes us stand out, we become easy targets for the hundreds and hundreds of peddlers. At first glance I ignored them. It was chaotic, everyone wanted a piece of me. It made me uncomfortable. Most were women, very young, and obviously working under the supervision of a tough looking man wearing expensive jewelry and glasses. Yesterday, I took a stroll by on Baga beach by myself. This time with the intention of engaging with the women peddlers; looking them in the eye, answering their questions.

What is your name, they ask.
Where are you from?
How long have you been here in Goa? Not long because you look very white!

Funny, three or four of them told me the same thing. I guess I need a tan.

But after a while of not ignoring these women I had about ten of them around me. Touching my hand, asking me questions. Telling me about their children, asking me about mine. I told them about leaving my children behind for this trip. They told me that they leave their children behind all of the time during the tourist season – it’s not so bad, they said.
I knew what they wanted. But for that moment it didn’t matter. It felt like I had a genuine connection with these women. In some weird way, we had a bond.

Then, I purchased an anklet bracelet from each of them.

A young girl performing on a make-shift tight rope for the benefit of the tourists.

Saturday Night Life in Goa

Sorry for the delay in posting. The internet has been intermittent. So bear with me as I update you today, but using different posts.

Saturday evening, we did what every good tourist in Goa would do, we experienced the nightlife. We dared go out to the hottest club in Baga beach Goa. I have to say that it was a worthwhile experience. It showed me 2 things; 1) I am too old for the nightclub scene and 2) not every night club has a fire code limiting the number of people within it. So, not only was I one of the oldest people there, had there been a fire I would most certainly have been either trampled to death, or burnt to a crisp for lack of an exit.
There must have been at least 500 people, dancing, shoulder to shoulder within a room no larger than my hotel room. I say shoulder to shoulder but really, it was more like face to face.
After 1 hour, we left, feeling overwhelmed, sweaty and somewhat violated.

But at least now I can say that I’ve been to a world famous night club.

Wonderful Day in Calengute, Goa

Today was one of the best days in India yet. This morning we set out for a town called Calenjun. It’s a small town near Baga beach in Goa, and its mixture of Portuguese Catholic influence and local heritage make this area spectacular. We set out with a mission today, and that was to engage the locals in conversations, something that we had not yet attempted fully, cowarding behind our tourist identities.

I met Jackson, our first driver, a 30 year old man from the area who seemed all too thrilled to show off his music repertoire while driving us to the town. “Nice music”, I said. He cranked up the volume with a broad smile across his face. In the short distance that we were together during this ride he told me about his family, with whom he lived, all 3 generations of them; all of them working in the rice fields during the off season. It’s hard work, he says, and he’s glad that the season is over. During the tourist high season, which will start shortly, he drives a cab.
If you need a safe driver, he told us, you call me. I will keep you safe.

In town I met 14 year old Michael when I stepped into a small t-shirt shop along main street. He was working the store. He was small, and looked no more than 12, but he assured me – he was 14. Where are your parents, I asked? He stared at my curiously. “Why do you ask?”
Because I wonder, why a boy your age isn’t in school?
He simply shook his head.
He was desperately trying to sell me a t-shirt. He offered me tea.
“Do you want to have tea? My sister can make some.”
He took every single shirt off the shelf for me to look at. I felt bad not buying anything, too sheepish to tell him that the only reason that I had entered his shop was to talk to him.
I’ll take that one.

On the way back I met Raj, our other cab driver, who was all too willing to tell us about himself. He was from Rajastan and had been driving for 22 years. For a while he was an ambulance driver in Mumbai.
How did you get around in that traffic, I asked?
“I put the siren on all of the time”, he laughed.
He had been a driver in Dubai, in almost every state in India, and was proud to claim that he knew every single main road in the country.
We asked him about the night scene here. It was, after all, Saturday night. Should we go out to the nightclubs in Goa tonight?
“No”, he said firmly. “Too many Indians, not safe”.
We told his about our travels around India.
Apparently, if we make our way to Jaipur, we can call his brother who owns a good hotel and who would be more than happy to help us around there too. He gave us his number.
All of these encounters keep bringing me back to the overarching theme that keeps astounding me here in India – the people. They are truly caring and warm.

A tailor that we met on the main road.

Now the nightclub scene might be a different story.