Nice Work If You Can Get It

i keep delhi in my back pocket
like a switch blade,
like a double-edged smile

cradle me loosely in the
back of your mind,
drifting like kite strings between
your fingers
and the infinite sky

i set my table every friday night
for dinner;
wisdom has yet to accept
the invitation.

You know those days when you can't really tell what's different, but you know something has changed? And you can't tell if you've changed or if it's what's around you that has changed?

I've been home for 10 days or so now. That's 10 days without sounds: incessant horns, Hindlish, my sister laughing hysterically in the next room. 10 days withough sights: street cows, Jason smiling in the rearview mirror, countless people on one speed bicycles. 10 days without smells: mom's morning coffee, Delhi smell, Sarojini after the rains. 10 days without traffic jams and flyovers, tuk tuks, four house cats, Morrison's Cafe with the boys, endless "getting ready" time, my office, Sunday mornings at the pool, cheap mangos and cheaper bananas, garbage in the streets, rupees, bargaining...

I went to buy a cell phone yesterday. When the guy at the store quoted me $5 more than the quote I got from the guy at the booth on campus, I almost broke out my market attitude because I was convinced he was going to pocket that extra $5 himself. It took everything in my power to contain the "nay, boss" that was dying to jump out of my mouth. I eventually just walked out of the store.

I'm home, but nothing feels the same.

The sky looks so much farther away. There is no sense of urgency here, no immediate threat. Instead we get stressed out about the smallest things because we've got all this energy to misplace. We've got all this money to spend...

The people I know and love have grown since I left. It's funny this idea we have that when we leave nothing changes, that what we've left behind continues on in the same way it always has, as if we never left. It's startling to come back to see that life has continued on without you, even though the logical part of your brain knows full well that it must.

My old haunts are still my old haunts, but the players have changed roles, new ones have emerged, familiar ones have exited stage left, and I haven't figured out which lines are mine yet, or if I even have any. It's disconcerting going from a role of relative fame (deserved or not, wanted or not) to a role of memory of that fame. It's like living with my own ghost. I was told that someone on campus had become the new me - how easily we are replaced.

I'm carving out a new identity for myself, one that attempts to incorporate everything I've learned from the past few months and everything I took with me in the first place. The trouble is, it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day of life that we forget what we've learned. It's also easy to get so stuck in what you were that you forget about what you are. I don't want to forget.

Top 10 Things I learned in India:

10) The less people have, the more they are willing to share.

9) Take time to learn some of the language and culture of any place you visit. Eat the food. Talk to the locals. It's less common than you think.

8) Contemporary imperialism is less about agression and more about advertising.

7) Treating someone like they're a person means acknowledging that they have just as much capacity for awful as they do for good.

6) Being friends with your family is more important than anything in the world (ha ha ha, then why is it number 6?).

5) Don't be afraid to take up space and keep asking for what you want if you don't get it right away.

4) Don't judge the hippies too harshly. Before you know it, you're doing exactly what they're doing only you're wearing different clothes.

3) Say what you can while you can to your friends and family, you might not get another chance.

2) Everything is temporary.

1) It's not about what you're doing, or what you buy, or how many places you visit or the things you do, it's about how you feel at the time. Be in the moment. Live it, even the boring parts. Take pictures if necessary.

It was tough leaving India. I didn't pack until a few hours before my plane left. Total denial. Now that I'm back, it's tough to be here. But it's good, too. I've come back to family and friends who I loved and missed desperately without really realizing it. I'm settling in. In the immortal words of Meaghan Beames, "ahhh, you're fine."

List of things I saw on the street in India:

men peeing (lots of them)
dogs
dogs having sex
cats
flocks of geese
monkeys
children doing acrobatics
women begging with babies in their arms
dentist chairs (shade service or sun service)
barbers
markets
water buffalo
cows
garbage
piles of scrap metal
Blueline victims
families sleeping
children taking craps
old shoes
forgotten bicylces
ice cream wagons
men sleeping on their ice cream wagons
children playing in flooded boulevards
women nursing
people bathing and brushing their teeth
people praying
strewn jasmine flowers
men selling sparkly ganeshas
workers welding without goggles
women doing mendi
lepers
people selling basketballs and motorcycle helmets

and far more that I can't remember now. I'd hoped I wouldn't forget...

canadian by chance
citizen by happenstance

surrounded by home,
bed and blankets and you and the rain.

my bones sighed.

they heaved and cracked,
the exhalation a house heaves

settled after a long rain.

the login page featured
a precocious little box
next to an equally precocious

"Remember me?"

i wonder how many have
checked that box and thought

"If only it were that easy."

i still haven't figured out
what it is i want to say