Back in the U - S - S - A

We arrived safe and sound in Newark, NJ on Monday night after spending 20 hours in the air. My brother was waiting happily for us at international arrivals with warm jackets to face the winter air. After the heat of southern India the shock of the cold felt like breathing broken glass; simultaneously, it felt refreshingly like home. We chatted deliriously and crashed as his apartment in New Brunswick that night, then breakfasted at LePeep for some good old-fashioned Jersey Diner American food. I was amazed at how bland my smoked salmon eggs benedict was. I miss Indian food already. Laura and I then caught a train into NYC to pick up our car, then drove to mom's in Philly to spend the rest of the week recovering.

I was more than a little worried about our flight(s), and I'm still half-amazed that we're home safe. I didn't want to blog about any of this before we left, but now that we're home safe I can spill the beans.

1. We flew out on Republic Day, one of India's two major national holidays. Our cell phone service was cut off when we returned to Mumbai due to heightened security (see "Problems with Penmanship" post earlier), and there was a general sense of foreboding in the air. Police and security guards were crawling all over Colaba, the ritzy touristy area where we were staying (and home to the Taj and Oberoi hotels that were hit in the Nov 26th attacks, as well as the CST station and Israeli house). There were now-familiar sandbag machine gun turrets lining Colaba Causeway and staged around the Taj hotel. Even the Krishna temple down the street had 3 armed guards outside 24-hours a day. Yeesh.

2. We learned early on in our trip about the "terrorist calendar" that 4 major attacks had followed. The first was in Dehli on May 13th. Attacks then occurred every other month alternating between the 13th and 26th, culminating in the Mumbai attacks on Nov 26th. Jan 13th was next in line. When that failed to yield an attack it seemed only natural that Republic Day, Jan 26th would be next.

3. To make matters more interesting (and to excite the superstitious among us), there was a total eclipse of the sun on Jan 26th in India.

The signs indicated that flying was risky that day. We braved it anyway. I was heartened by the INTENSE security at the airport. Bags and people searched multiple times at multiple checkpoints. Of course being white we were waved through a few of them while nice Indian families got the full-search treatment. And then again at London Heathrow we were waved through a final check point while two black families ahead of us were pulled aside.

An appropriate return to post-Obama USA. Racism is alive and well around the world. It's one of our big exports, infused with the Great American Dream of Coca-Cola, McDonalds, two car garages, and surround-sound digital HD TV's.