India Day 1: It starts
Blog date: May 25, 2009, New Delhi, India, 10:40 PM
Today, Nirmala and I began our trip to India ALONE, for the first time ever. It’s been a pretty good trip so far. The only small mishap, if it can even be called that, occurred in The States.
First off in Cleveland, the TSA Officer dropped my mom’s ashes out of the urn it was in. Given, I understand it was not a big deal, but she didn’t even say sorry! She couldn’t even look me in the eye. Nirmala and I stood there in moderate shock of the event and the moments thereafter. The Officer was clearly ashamed of the accident, but yet, she must have had some sensitivity training to learn the word “sorry.” Nevertheless, I let it go after sometime, but had to return to conditioning myself with the words “My mom was not her body,” to keep myself from running off and complaining to the nearest Continental Associate about the utter disrespect and disregard for people and their religion and personal effects.
So the trip has started and now I’m on the other side of the world from home, from my mom’s final resting place. I don’t feel foreign in India anymore. It feels familiar. Though I know the people here will never treat me like a fellow Indian. I do feel comfortable. More so, I feel I could be here and not feel sad or miss home too much. I envision my time in India will be emotionally and physically challenging. It’s 99o F in Delhi and who knows how much hotter in Hyderabad.
This trip is going to be a lesson that my mom could only teach in death.
--Sujata
posted by Suji @ 4:51 AM
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