Our last hoorah: a weekend in Bombay

Can't quite believe today is our last day in India!  We're just about all packed, a process that started around 11pm last night when we arrived from Bombay (I suppose this is what you get when two recovering-procrastinators marry).  Tyler is out closing bank accounts, cell phone accounts, etc etc, while I rush to finish up the few remaining work documents before we leave.

This past weekend was the perfect end to our almost five years here in India.  If we ever live in India again, no doubt it will have to be Bombay.  The energy and vibe there rival that of New York, with just enough craziness that you know you're still in India.  It was our own Bollywood weekend, complete with an incredible dinner with old friends from Hyderabad (it felt a bit as though our Hyderabad community had upped and re-rooted to Bombay, which, in a sense, it has) and dancing at a club where there were actually more women than men (gasp!!) Friday night...

...Followed by a perfect south Bombay Saturday, with Priya as our fearless guide: our first Bombay train ride to Colaba, a mouth-watering final lunch at Trishna (I dream about the butter garlic crab there... and the Hyderabadi tikka pomfret was delicious as well!), exploring the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art (awesome exhibit on the photographer of British Vogue, who took striking fashion photographs in India in the 1950s), drinks at Leopold's (where you could still see bullet holes from the Mumbai attacks in November 2008), haggling for sandals on the sidewalk, and catching a free Blues concert in Malabar Hill (with songs on Indian expat life like "Honk OK Please!"... and a relaxing dinner in.

Sunday felt like we were back in Banjara Hills in Hyderabad: a relaxing brunch with friends, followed by a chill afternoon at Molly's Colaba apartment, lounging on her couch and watching Downton Abbey.

The Blues band front man from Saturday night summed it up best: "Mera dil Mumbai may hai": "My heart is in Bombay".

Some pics of our weekend adventure:

From top to bottom: (1) circa 1:30am outside The Big Nasty with Manasa, Priya, Adrien, and Molly; (2)  at the Norman Parkinson exhibit at the India Contemporary Art Museum (where we learned "pink is the navy blue of India"); (3) with Priya at Leopold's; (4) at Malabar Hill.

It's the final countdown.

This morning, on our way to our last Hindi class:

"Babe, the countdown is on."

And while we're both beyond excited to move back to NYC, it's been a bittersweet week of "lasts": last Hindi class, last trip to Hauz Khas (my favorite part of Delhi), last meals (tonight is peking duck... not exactly Indian, but one of my favorite restaurants in Delhi).  And of course saying goodbye to our friends here (the one saving grace is we're all international nomads by nature, so nothing feels fully final).

It's our second to last day in Delhi, and it's all just a bit surreal.  Add to that insane sandstorms, construction (more like destruction) next door, and both of us feeling feverish from lack of sleep, and the entire week has felt like one giant dream.

Our apartment is still a long way from being packed up; perhaps part of me is still in a bit of denial (though mainly it's because of laziness and procrastination on my part!).

This weekend, we're off to Bombay for our final hoorah with friends... and then Burma!!  All quite a whirlwind.

I must say, India has regained some of its lost magic in the last few weeks that we've been here.  And as though to give us one final goodbye present: it's mango season!

Reverse Culture Shock, Part 2

Got into NYC this morning from DC.  One obvious difference between NY and Delhi jumps out: In NY, it's all about the output, not the activity.  You can see this just watching people walk: head down, checking their smart phones, rushing to get to their destination.  The walk itself is a hindrance, something to get over with as soon as posible.  In Delhi, it's more about the activity itself: whether it's sweeping the road of dirt (when it's obvious the dirt just returns), or hanging out and just talking on the road.  We notice the difference a lot in work, but it's much more pronounced just day-to-day.

The buildings are taller and more majestic than I remember... I still think I know just about everyone I pass... and I remember I can't just go up to any cute baby I see -- in India, this would be welcome; but in NY, that would just be weird.

Biggest of all right now is just re-orienting to abundance.  Delta Airlines announces free coffee, bagels, and newspapers while we wait for our flight, and I'm shocked people aren't running up to grab their share and more (and have to stop myself from doing so).  It's like I've been a bit reprogrammed, yet I remember how I should act -- it's just not yet in automatic.

Maybe it's the amazing weather, or that everyone is talking about the Yankees opener... but it just feels like one giant community.  

It's nice to be home.

Language and Kids

Sitting in Starbucks and can't help but smile at the eight-year old French boy at the counter.  When the barista asks his parents something, they look to him to translate: "le cafe... le frappoosheeno... le chocolat chaud".

It reminds me of friends of ours in India: sitting on a train, an Indian man asks something in Hindi.  The father doesn't quite understand.  Exasperated, the son rolls his eyes and says with annoyance: "Dad... he's asking if you if you want tea!!!!"

Something to be said about learning language early!!

Reverse culture shock?

The European couple we met last weekend in the Andaman's issued a cryptic warning.  Moving back home to Switzerland after living in NYC for seven years, they predicted: "You'll definitely experience reverse culture shock when you move back to the US after living in India.  You may not realize it initially, but it will hit, especially somewhere around month six.  You become a different person living abroad, and you return to somewhere that's essentially stayed the same."

And while it makes sense intellectually, there's something in both me and Tyler that is skeptical this will happen.  If anything, living in India has made us more aware of our identity as Americans, and well, we love America!  There's nothing like flying back to JFK and the immigration officer saying, "Welcome home" as he stamps your passport.

On this short trip back to NYC and DC, I've become more aware of potential reverse culture shocks based on our recent conversation.  

For now, they're superficial at best:

My sense of personal space is all thrown off, and I stand too close to people, resulting in awkward backward shuffles.  I over-enunciate when ordering my Starbucks, pausing at every adjective (tall. soy. latte.), aggravating the poor barista and other customers.  I do double-takes and think that I know almost everyone I pass on the sidewalk (turns out, it's just because they're white).  I find indescribable pleasure in reading a paper copy of The New York Times and marvel at the ability to text while I cross the street (yes, I know, I shouldn't do this, but everything is just so easy here).  I smile at strangers a bit too much, and it feels like some sort of super-human power that I can understand conversations around me and be privy into people's lives.  Mini-skirts and shorts look riske to me, and I want to eat at just about every food joint I pass (I knew I'd feel this way about all my favorite restaurants, but who knew I'd also feel this way about Pretzel Time, Dunkin Donuts, and other fast food places I had no interest in before).  I have a strange desire to ask people how much things are (especially rent), and I marvel at new technology (such as the ipad stations in JFK) like a country bumpkin.

If something more profound hits, it will likely be a while.  But for now, it's just nice to be back home!

And so it begins...

Sounds were the first thing that struck me when I first moved to Hyderabad.  I remember waking up that first morning in the LifeSpring guesthouse and laying in bed for a while, just listening.  It's fun going back and reading my journal from November 2007:

Mornings are the most surreal.  Honking cars fool my half-sleeping brain that I could very well still be in New York City.  But then other sounds enter into my slowly-waking realm of consciousness: children chattering in Telugu; a man singing at the top of his lungs—or is he selling something on the street?; the hammer of construction in an ever-growing city; a bird crowing nearby…Add to this a panoply of unidentifiable sounds—perhaps a drum and then the swoosh of an airplane overhead…Most closely, I hear a muffle of voices through my thin bedroom walls and kitchen commotion in my guesthouse.  I lay awake in bed for a good twenty minutes, taking it all in.  Hyderabad is home now…For the next ten months, anyway.  I consider taping the symphony of strange and exotic morning sounds, but for now my bed is too comfortable.  

Ten months has incredibly turned into fifty-three, yet even as my mind is getting mentally prepared to be back in NYC, it's still the sounds that bring me back to the present in India.

When I was back in Hyderabad two weeks ago, I was shocked at how much the city has developed and grown.  In the year that I've been gone, HITEC City has become unrecognizable.  What once felt a bit like the Wild West, a dusty playing ground where Tyler first taught me (unsuccessfully) to drive a motorcycle, with companies like Google and Microsoft staking a claim on the land (a bit like that final scene from Far and Away), it is now a major city - complete with hundreds of new high rises, shopping malls, and wide roads.

While the sights left me wide-eyed, it's the sounds that bring me back to my time at Hyderabad: the peacefulness of the call to prayer as the sun sets and the newborn babies crying their first cries at our hospital.

And now that Tyler and I are back from our whirlwind South Asia adventures to Bangladesh, Agra, and the Andaman Islands, it's the sounds again that tell me I'm back in Delhi: the bass-thumping club music on a Wednesday evening... and the musical wails of the vegetable/water/plant vendors as we start to wake up.

I can't say that I'll miss the cars honking, but there is something about the cacophony of sounds (bicycle bells and bird chirps and vendors and children and calls to prayer and wedding parades... and yes, even the horns) that make India, well... India.  I used to get annoyed by all the sounds when I would meditate in the morning, but with the little time we have remaining in Delhi, now I just smile.