Visit to India – Delhi, Alwar

The Bombay visit ends all too soon and I try to memorize the city as my Jet flight takes off toward the North. Delhi airport is as I left it almost a year ago. There is pandemonum as I retrieve my bags and till I spot the placard bearing my name. Then, finally, I am greeting the family, our words spill over each other's as we try to bridge the distance of these many months. The shift is as instantaneous as the transition in Mumbai. Now I am pampered and cared for and loved in a way I had forgotten. I am the center of everyone’s care and attention and can have anything and everything I ask for. Of course I am spoiled and it is the only way to be! America with its strangeness is very distant indeed...  Effortlessly, I slip into the past. The language and words and idioms I feared I may have forgotten come back to me as naturally and easily as if I’d never left. Here I can unashamedly miss the past and speak longingly of times that were; here I can be my old self and everyone knows me still - things I have sometimes forgotten in foreign lands with foreign people. 

We carry a picnic to Vijay Mandir palace grounds to mark the last day of the year. That night we are in the breathtakingly beautiful environment of the hill-top fort at Kesrauli. I listen to the Sufi music and think how different it is from a Jazz at the Bistro performance, and yet how similar. While one is a magical experience in an ancient setting that reverberates with soulful melodies, the other took place in the warmth of the bistro, after which I emerged to the perfection of fresh snow on the streets at midnight. The memory brings back the cold of that first St. Louis snow storm, and the beauty of the ice crystals on the branches, along with the vibrant music. Each experience has touched a place deep inside me and I know I am blessed to have known both. Interestingly, there are a few Americans sharing in the wonderment of this New Year’s Eve and, for the first time, I can experience the  enchantment through their eyes and ears as well!