We've come full circle and India feels smaller than it did 2.5 months ago when we started out here in Bombay. Having returned to Colaba, the sticky heat is the same, the tourist hassle still present, the men just as persistent in their ogling. Everywhere there is the unsolicited and ever-hopeful "Yes?!" echoed by every shopkeeper, taxi driver, coconut man, and beggar.
But the surroundings seem more familiar on the second pass, brought into clarity by weeks of getting used to the way things work here, making sense out of chaos. So there is a cow in the middle of a busy street. So there is a poor family squatting with hungry eyes in front of a store selling a glimmering array of baubles that they could never afford. So the taxi driver tries to rip us off and smiles anyway when we give him the fair fare. This is the way of life and we are starting to see it all with an Indian lens rather than an American one.
India, and the world as a whole, feels smaller now than ever. We've spent time with people from around the globe, including several French and Australians, the occasional Brit, a Manx, a Dutch, a Swede, a Pole, the Spaniards, some Americans, a South African, a Japanese, and at least one Irish. We ran into a group of architects from Dubai, which alone included several Filipinos (fashionably sleek with a Louis Vuitton bag, certainly the real thing), an Indian, and a Dubai national. In some ways we've traveled only within the bounds of one country but we've also encountered people from such a variety of backgrounds and cultures. Of course India is hardly a homogenous country, with its dozens of religions, millions of gods, and a mind-boggling array of spoken languages (ranging in count from the 18 official ones, to Lonely Planet's citation of up to 1600 minor ones, including dialects). And us poor Americans, all we can speak is English!
Synchronicity has dominated our trip. It's as if certain people, key players, have come into our lives at the right time and in the right place.
The time we spent early on in our trip with Mire and Edu, the Spanish couple, seems like many moons ago indeed. But meeting them when we did and gaining some insight into the wonders and troubles they had encountered throughout India prepared us for what lay ahead. When we arrived in Varanasi, we expected a frighful barrage of the ultimate hassles, but instead we enjoyed the laid-back attitudes at Assi Ghat and discovered that Varanasi was one of our most favorite places in all of India. They were down-to-earth, experienced travelers (more so than us) and watching Edu interact with locals so effortlessly inspired us to do the same later on.
Meeting Phil the Manx was like encountering a guiding spirit. He was always just around the corner wherever we roamed in Darjeeling, appearing from an alleyway or the door of a tiny restaurant just as we realized we were lost. This happened not once but a dozen times. On the way back from viewing the sunrise at Tiger Hill, there he appeared from a sidestreet to say hello. Numerous dinner or lunch spots we picked out randomly only to arrive to find him already there, or about to arrive within a few minutes' time. He treated us with fantastic storytelling of his many years traveling in the region and of his life back home on the Isle of Man. He was a kindly, gentle soul, but firm in his self-awareness, like a grandfather who transforms into a genie, like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And because of Phil the Genie, we met Anna and Bjorn, who were gradually realized as mirrors of ourselves, older and wiser. Anna is a project manager working in a biology lab, she's from Poland, an avid (and good) photographer, a ball-buster at times, completely practical, a wonderful sense of humor but no-nonsense, never shy, she wears the pants at just a few inches over 5'. (In case you don't know: me - a project manager in advertising, wrote a biology thesis for undergrad, a Polish ancestry, an avid photographer, could be called a ball-buster at times, reserved, growing a greater sense of patience and humor, and 5'2" in height.) I could learn the most from her self-confidence, her lack of restraint, the complete absence of shyness. Bjorn, mild-mannered, intelligent, quiet, but accomplished and very confident, he and Nick understood each other well.
After leaving Anna and Bjorn to continue on to the Andaman Islands for scuba diving, we traveled south to meet our college friend Anaka in Madras. Not many days later, stopped in a shop on a random street in Bangalore, we met an art store owner who knew Anaka and her mother, who owns a textile business, quite well.
And, if Anna and Bjorn were perhaps older and wiser versions of ourselves, we also met our younger self, like a sister born of our past. We met Eva, from Holland, in Alleppey and traveled on together to explore Fort Cochin. An 18-year old who picked India as her first trip outside Europe, traveling alone, an adventurous type with incredible youthful energy, loads of spunk, and a bright optimism about the world despite being attacked by an Indian man only a few days before (she escaped but not without scrapes, bruises and toothmarks). It reminded me of my innocent walk many years ago down a very dark road in Jalapa, Nicaragua, gripping hands with my friend Sarah Klain, realizing that we were very much in the wrong, wrong, wrong place, and suddenly far from anything safe. The young Nicaraguan man that approached us on the bicycle turned out to be helpful, but in another reality he could just as easily have been an attacker. At the time I wasn't sure, as I spoke to him in very broken Spanish and trembled, hoping for the best.
I have finally met the parents of my girlhood pen pal, a meeting over 15 years in the making. Somehow, us here in India with Linga and Vijay, and their daughter, Sneha, living in Indianapolis. So, in a cross of synchronicity, I meet her wonderful parents first and have yet to meet my penpal, whose friendship has spanned over more years of my life than anyone else outside of my family.
And now, here again in Bombay, we meet up with our friend Bart, a college friend, somehow halfway around the world in the same city, precisely at the same time as us.
Last night, meeting Gunjan again, my advertising friend living in Bombay, having drinks with her advertising colleagues, just like home: the same mannerisms, the same humor, the same eccentric rowdiness. Full circle.
Synchronicity has been a major factor on this journey, and the people we've encountered along the way, seemingly randomly, will make it all the more unforgettable. Had we spoken to no one and isolated ourselves, this trip would never have meant the same or been as memorable.
Perhaps in India, it is impossible to isolate yourself. There are one billion people here and growing. It is not a country where you can avoid being around people, and running into a few you really click with seems like part of the script.
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