2012 ends, 2013 arrives

As 2012 draws to a close, Delhi is still cloaked in a pall of  gloom following recent events. There is outrage at the lack of dignity or security for women in this city, which promises to become a fortress tonight…

Darkness falls over the city fog, the wintry chill makes my eyes water and it is easy for the present to blur into a past winter – a perfect year-end in Germany and Austria. If Bavaria is magical at Christmas, then Nuremberg’s Christkindlmarkt (Christmas Market) is at the heart of the magic. We stroll among the colorful stalls on cold evenings, drinking spicy-sweet gluhewein and eating mouthwatering cakes, before walking over to hear the carol-singing in the historic cathedral. 

The day before Christmas we drive to Salzburg, arrive in the afternoon at the quaint family-run Bloberger Hof and are shown to a charming little room beneath the eaves. I can hardly wait to see the old town and it is everything I can hope for: narrow cobbled streets between tall ancient buildings – one of them is Mozart’s home, where he was born and lived almost three centuries ago… Foolishly, we have not booked a dinner table for Christmas eve, but are fortunate to get the last one in the coziest, most beautiful restaurant in the alley! It is the perfect end to a perfect day, surpassed only by waking up to the uncanny silence of a white Christmas - where the newly fallen snow forms a thick white velvet cover over rooftops and cars and branches.

For two days, we are tourists in Salzburg: cable car up the Alpine slopes, walks along the river and Europe's finest confectionery. On the third day, our fellow guests help dig out our snow-stuck car and cheer us loudly on our way when we are free! We stop in Munich to see the spectacular Residence, breathtaking palace of the Bavarian monarchs, and then back to Nuremburg.

Now, as I return to the present New Year’s eve, I can feel again the cold of Salzburg and see the breathtaking snow-covered vista we woke to on Christmas morning. I can taste the flavour of Christmas stollen and hear the sweet sound of Christmas carols. I can hear the calling of the geese, as they scramble for bread crumbs on the half-frozen lake near Munich, and smell the bratwurst cooking over charcoal embers. My mind turns to the spectacular fireworks at midnight that we looked at from the Nuremberg window …

Visit to India - at the end

I am profoundly struck by this unexpected aspect of my move. Everything about my life in America is new and every new experience is like unwrapping a gift. Along with this privilege of unwrapping the newness of America, I now find that I can experience India anew as well, discovering it afresh with an additional Western perspective. 

Perhaps one day I will visit home with an American friend and witness how it must feel to unwrap India for the very first time with a childlike and breathless excitement — the way I have felt flying over the Mississippi for the first time or watching the thoroughbreds race at Churchill Downs or snapping ice crystals from the branches of the trees on the street where I live. How many people are graced with such good fortune? 

My final day breaks to a chilly morning (never again will the weather in India seem cold to me!) and the skies are grey. My last evening is an appropriate end to my visit home. We walk up to the fort with a cool breeze blowing in our faces, the sun setting in one direction, the almost-full moon growing brighter in the other.

 

My thoughts drift in two directions as well: here I am in the land of my birth and family, but soon I will be back in St. Louis. Or should I say back home in St. Louis?

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!

 

Visit to India - Mumbai

My visit to India, a year after moving to St. Louis halfway around the world, opens my eyes to some rich and unexpected rewards I never knew were mine. In a breathless moment of insight I see that I can have the best of both worlds. I can have the rare luxury of a constant newness.

We land in Mumbai soon after dawn, in 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As we drive towards Colaba, the open windows let in a balmy sea breeze. Soon my senses are overwhelmed by this city's sights and sounds and smells and colors. There is no gradual transition, rather an instant shift. Traveling along a once familiar route, I see the buses, the cyclists, the vendors and the street urchins with fresh eyes. Greedy to embrace this gift - this feeling of newness emanating from the familiar - I throw myself into my old/new lifestyle: walking under the coconut palms, dashing across the road dodging honking cabdrivers, drinking coconut water from the vendor at the street corner and browsing the old curio shops. 

Quickly, I slip from the busy, organized and independent lifestyle of previous months to complete decadence. Each room in Jyoti’s flat has one wall composed of sea - a breathtaking view that erases uncertainty and enables serenity. The days are full of reunions. My friends are unchanged and hungry for every detail – admiring of my ‘independence’, incredulous that I drive and shop and cook for myself, impatient to hear about the people I’ve met…

 

And then there is Kartik, unchanged and yet completely changed: confident, grown-up and self assured. He amuses us with his anecdotes and I marvel that this witty attractive young man was ever the baby who came to me in tears over a bruised knee or clung to my skirt shyly before strangers or threw a tantrum over something in the toy store… With mixed feelings I miss the little boy whose life centered around me, but am filled with pride that he has grown into this wonderful man. I know he will be different each time I see him and pray for him to remain as secure, happy and enthusiastic as he is today. I visit his apartment in Bandra, it is small and simple. Now he insists on paying for dinner and I smile to think of how independent he has become.

 

 

Abbey of Gethsemani – 3

This abbey environment is perfect to confront myself without the trappings of the day-to-day, which I have grown so addicted to. As I write out my ‘Retreat Offering’ check and look around me at my sparse yet beautiful room, I am ashamed that I have so much beyond what I need. In future I will try to de-junk my life, both in terms of not acquiring new things and also by giving away things that someone else will value more than I do.

Before thinking about what I want to achieve in the new year, it might be good to think about who I want to be. Perhaps now is a good time to revisit who I am, what I want to change about me and where I can begin. I start with the positives and am pleased to list the many thing I like about myself. Then I begin to think about the not-so-nice and find there are several things I’d like to change. To start with, I’d like to be less self-absorbed. America is so much about oneself. Each person is expected to be self-contained and self-sufficient and, yes, self-absorbed. So let that be my challenge. Let me consciously try to turn outward, be more curious about the world, more attuned to my surroundings, more sensitive to those around me. Let me be less guarded about my emotional self. We are all shaped by our experience and mine has taught me to be wary and careful. This attitude sometimes makes me closed and over-cautious, even though my nature is to be open and adventurous. I will try not to be inhibited by my baggage, as I live my life.

Abbey of Gethsemani - 2

This Retreat is liberating because I don't need to think about making impressions on people - with my appearance or attire or conversation. It seems everyone is turned inward into themselves so they don’t really experience me, just as I don’t experience them. When I see other people at prayer or at meals or just walking in the public spaces, they are faceless to me like the monks in their robes. I am free from having to see or hear or speak to them or indeed in any way acknowledge them; they merely coexist. Interestingly, this dimming of the senses to the outward seems to sharpen the inward focus, because here there is no possible excuse to evade introspection. Not only has the abbey caused me to shed the persona I don in order to present myself to the world, I seem also to have dropped a protective layer from the being I present to myself. Everything seems to be a little bit closer to the surface. A number of times during this day a mere memory from the past has made my eyes well up… as if the sadness or loss were closer or more recent than it is. So, in a way I feel strong and invincible; and at the same time, in a different way, I am more exposed and vulnerable.

While yesterday was wet and it rained on and off, today is dry and windy. I saw a few swirling snowflakes earlier in the day. After lunch, I go for a winding walk in the woods across the road. The biting chill penetrates my several layers of clothing, making my eyes water, my nose run and my hands turn numb despite their gloves. The gently rolling hills near the abbey, the woods and lake beyond them and the colorless dome of sky overcast with ominous dark clouds remind me of Hardy’s England with a sense of brewing drama... but perhaps I am being fanciful and it is probably just a gentle Kentucky landscape!

 

Abbey of Gethsemani – 1

I have been in this Kentucky abbey a whole day. In one way it feels the hours have flown by, in another it seems I have been here longer than a mere day, and in yet a different way it seems time has acquired a different dimension here. More than once in these hours I have felt faced with contradictions but, when I examine them, I find they do not really contradict. Rather they seem to be two complementary sides of a single coin.   

I always believed that words can allow one to describe anything, but right now my mind is full of thoughts I struggle to articulate truthfully. I have not spoken a word to another person since I reached here and no word has been spoken to me. Aptly the signs say ‘Silence is Spoken Here’. I think this silence allows us to travel inside our minds and focus on shaping our thoughts. I hope I will eventually find the words to express these thoughts. 

The only words I hear are in the singing of the monks during the several prayer services I attend. They sing timeless monastic prayers in Latin. It is unreal how they sing for themselves and for us. While the world around them fights and sins and struggles and carries on – they sing. Eight times a day starting at 3.15 in the morning, never having missed a service in this abbey since 1848, they sing! All the Retreatants seem to be American and Catholic and I am conscious of being neither American, nor Catholic, nor Christian. Still, listening to the prayers and hymns and readings transports me to the scripture classes in school and I find myself reading from the bible that is placed in my room. Before I know it, I become absorbed and two hours go by. I am surprised at how many of the stories in the Old and New Testaments are familiar to me, as well as so many psalms and parables and passages… While I have not planned for this to be a religious experience, the environment insists it become one. And it is a pleasant and comforting feeling after all…