India Week 1

Hey all!

After a 16 hour flight, an midnight bus tour of Mumbai, a 3 hour flight, and a 4 hour mountain bus ride: we have arrived safely at our destination in Coonoor, India. A hill-top mountain town that overlooks a valley sprinkled with rows of tea gardens. It feels and looks like the Jungle book. Flowers are blooming everywhere, the air is cool and sweet, and every now and then you will spot a monkey or a wild buffalo. India as an experience to say the least. Here is an excerpt from one of my first journal entires that should give you a glimpse of my experiences so far:

"It is disturbing to me, my window. How I can press my hand against the glass and feel the sticky heat of Mumbai clinging to the pane while I, alone, stay cool in my perfectly air conditioned hotel room. It is strange to be amongst all this marble, leather, electronic gadgetry and glass; only seven stories above a vast slum. They are all there, living. The tan and swollen bellied slum dogs crawling and scaaping at every surface. the shoeless and shirtless adolescent boys playing cricket in the rubbish yard. The silver haired woman, red sari twisted up between her legs as she sqwats and whipes wet laundary against a concrete slab. The endless buzzing and honking of mumbai drivers. And me, here, on my hotel room floor. I want to play cricket with the young chums, I want the old shiva to teach me the grace of laundary by hand. But I am instructed to stay inside, where the air is manufactured and my pockets can't be picked. But how am I to learn without my feet and my hands involved? I refuse to solely let observation be my relationship with India. I want a love affair."

We are blessed, my friends. And I did play cricket and have harvested tea leaves with the locals. India and I are doing a waltz, well actually we are doing one of those little Indian jig dances where you pet the dog, screw in the light bulb and squish the bug. It has been marvelous so far. But, we are blessed, and so much of the world is not. This realization is my existence here. I will try to post once a week but the so-called wireless internet is sporadic at best and mostly nonexistent.

Know that I miss you and love you and that I am stronger with this Indian air.

Light,
Brittany/ Muskaan (the Hindi name my friend Salome gave me: It means "smiling spirit")