Arriving in Ahmedebad

It feels like what it really is.

The shit has hit the fan, I am not in the corner, there is no spotlight, it is not the summer of ’69, and it doesn’t smell like teen spirit. Maybe I will write a song about it one day, but right now I am on my own and it feels like it. Wandering around this new city, in a new state, in a new country, on a new continent where I don’t know the language, I walk with hopeful, yearning eyes, corners are especially suspenseful, that I might see someone I know on the street, a small world story, a familiar face, a couple of degrees of separation and the resultant drink, my friend from Kindergarten, my sister for her birthday. I don’t know a single soul; I feel like a pixel on a screen displaying an image of Earth from space. I am not visible, don’t know any of the pixels around me, have no idea what this all amounts to and the people who complement me best stand in the starkest of contrasts thousands and dozens of thousands, oceans and landmasses away.

We left the guest house in Mussori at 6 a.m. on Sunday, and the damp morning air bettered only by the pleasant surprise of not vomiting on the 2-hour, 30 km descent. In a cluster for the last time, our backpacks, luggage, bags, and suitcases bumpering our way onto the train – no one even noticed us -- we load up, stuff big things into small compartments and buy water. Stretched out on the lower bunk of a second class sleeper, I am chilling, chatting it up, swollen from my last post that I am readier than ready to be on my own, snoozing some. Anna, Sunita, and the heat greet us in Delhi. Four of the fellows set off for their train to Mumbai, and as they walk up the stairs, dragging their center of gravity in their packs behind them, I calmly look on while the Everglades encroach on my ass.

Just for practice, to get us back into the pace of city life, the taxi drivers waiting outside like lions at a river during the wildebeest migration across the Mara and Serengeti in late July, put us through an exercise in bargaining, and manage to rip us off just enough so that we felt good about slashing the original price and they knew who was screwing who. At Anna’s apartment, the remaining 11 of us waiting for later overnight trains relax, cool, check email, and eat like wildebeests. Slowly, in 45-minute increments, taxi’s come, honk, go, the trickle of geographically labeled clusters of people, some to the south, some to the west, some the south then the east, return to the station, the last place of familiarity any of us will return to for a long while.

Unlike the trip down the mountain, for this trip across half of India, I have the top bunk, accompanied by a very able and on cooling vent, spraying me directly with freezing cold air. Luckily, my blanket handy, I form a chrysalis and defeat the enemy attack. As 16-hour train rides go, it is good. At the station, a man from my host organization meets me along with another type of different, drier, somehow as hot, heat. With all my things, the rickshaw lurching back on its two hind wheels, we speed, sorta speed, to the hotel.

Ahmedebad is a busy city. It is dirty, bustling. There is traffic. Millions of people, swarms everywhere. Bicycles, cars, carts, horns, motorbikes, camels, dogs, goats. Buildings are stone, cool, some brick. On the roller coaster of my emotions, the ride to the hotel is the slow, exaggerated, dramatic, teasing, ascent to the pinnacle of the ride. Inside the door of my hotel, the operator pulls the crank and that roller coaster car dives straight to the ground, physics lessons enter my mind, my stomach clenches, literally freefalling. As the cold air of loneliness encroaches on my body, my mind and heart catch up with the goosebumps of my skin – the room empty, standing there alone. Really alone, no friends down the hall, around the corner, a couple blocks, a few miles on my bike, several hours in a car. No phone.

Writing this the Thursday after the Monday, these feelings have waned, with each passing day my comfort growing, but in that moment I was mortified. Admitting so is not easy for me, the person who likes to think himself a world class adapter, converting any voltage or wattage output with ease, someone capable of hoping a flight to any part of the world, somersaulting through customs and landing on my feet at baggage claim on my way to a direct taxi ride, familiarity with a place and rapport with the people, thoughts of trepidation never evident in my face – in my armpits of course – but able to make the best of any situation. That’s always been the style I’ve tried to command, and I know I’ve not always done it, too cool, unflappable, able to get along with any and all. That door slammed and with it slammed many of these ideas but their remnants firmly present, important lessons on the good and the bad, that life is not all ups, that the downs are as instructive as the ups. My growth lies here I and I know it, I don’t like it, but this time will make me a better, more complete person.

Rather than putting my hair in a high pony tail and bashing things with a spiked club, after sitting in the room with my sadness for 20 minutes, I walk. Without direction or purpose other than to get my mind off myself, I walk. Hot and humid, I sweat, but I walk.

There are no other white people. I don’t see them and from the looks on people’s faces, they haven’t seen any in a while either. And yet people don’t seem to care or take much notice. Smiles smile back. Young boys wave, a few cyclists dare a touch, others ignore me plain and simple, children gawk, grandmother glower. I walk on.

Down a main street, onto a side street that spits me out blocks later onto a bigger artery, a quick right, down a bank, up the stairs, over the bridge, a moment of hesitation then left. Each step pounding the pavement with the most profound anxiety I have ever known, each step speaks and the ground hears me. My tensions trickle from the furrow in my brow, through my hunched shoulders, compressed spine, tight lower back, aching hamstrings, flexed calf muscles, and exit through the soles of my feet into the ground of my new home. Organically, in time, with my mind and body together I will grow to learn this new city and it will learn me, its people, make friends, do good work. It will take time, but that walk was the first and most important set of steps to doing so.

A little less empty when I return, I sit with my thoughts and fall asleep, still afraid, shutting my eyes for a second that feels like an hour, but a little happier, a touch more comfortable, a touch more prepared.