indian arrival

It’s 7am and I’ve been mostly awake for the last few hours, thanks to nine and a half hours of jet lag compounded by 14 hours of fitful sleep on the plane. My family is gradually waking up – my father and my grandparents are already busying themselves, readying for the day – in the various parts of my grandfather’s apartment where the eight of us are staying for the next few days. On the way over I was bit by the desire to write, so here I am tapping away on my old Dell Latitude laptop, a tech hand-me-down recently brought over by my parents, just like I used to when I pounded out weekly columns in college.
As bodies and bodies of better-written work can testify, traveling often entails learning more about yourself and where you come from than it does about where you’re going. No matter how many trips I’ve made, this is how I feel every time I visit India. Seeing as I no longer have my own newspaper column, I’ll be posting my thoughts (the interesting, intriguing, and the insipid) here over the next two weeks.