Life on the road sometimes seems like a continuous string of hellos and goodbyes. New people and places drift in and out of life each day under their own momentum.  It’s surprising how easily friendships can form amidst this constant flow.  Strangers can become your constant companions for days on end and in the span of an Asian bus ride you may make a lifelong friend.  Sometimes just finding someone that can speak your language creates an unusually strong bond among strangers in a strange place.  The allure of each new place for me has become the lives that will intersect with mine, often for the most random of reasons. Whether locals or other foreigners, people I can speak with, or just new pantomime friends who can’t understand each other’s words, the personalities make the magic of place.

This magic has a price and with the thrill of each new friend there is an inevitable goodbye.  Departures are an inevitable yin to the yang of new friends on the road and with this certainty has developed an unspoken etiquette, the etiquette of the traveler’s goodbye.  This etiquette follows a protocol which is careful never to dwell on the future or the reality of ever meeting again.  Travelers simply wish a safe journey and leave the question of future open. It’s just bad form to put some ending punctuation to these new friendships.  Over months the ritual can become a routine, each time the words exchanged become more brief and the parting of ways more hasty.  Practice teaches you not to look back, don’t linger on train platforms, and a silent smile is better than letting hollow promises and unlikely obligations cloud the air.

Occasionally you meet someone, a kindred spirit that creates such a deep impression that you know the parting will leave a hollow space that will not likely be filled by the next stranger on a train.  Sometimes it only takes a few hours, some times a connection is built over weeks exploring strange new places together.  It’s not up to us to decide these things, fate chooses.  Sometimes fate decides to light a spark, to reveal the adventure in someone else’s soul, allowing a peak into their dreams, their potential, their history, their future. Fate can place a personal gravity between two people that will always draw them back together no matter time or distance. Unfortunately fate’s sense of humor can often seem cruel when she makes these chance encounters all too short and the future all too uncertain.

So it is with a heavy heart that I prepare to make another goodbye, but somehow a parting smile and some brief well wishes will not suffice.  This seems like the hardest departure yet and I risk tempting fate’s humor, but I must share more than a few words of fondness. For this new friend she got deep inside my head and my heart. While she was teaching me so many lessons she also managed to steal her way into my life in ways I never expected. I wish I could linger longer with her, listen again to the ancient secrets she shared and explore those places she keeps hidden below her chaotic exterior.  I would like to give in once last time to the temptations she promises if I stay for just one more night train ride.  Yet we both know this can not to be, she has asked me to leave.  Although she promises to welcome me back after a few months apart, we both know that time and the forces of the west may keep us apart much longer.

I will not soon forget our experiences together; nights in the mud huts of small villages, sleeping in desert dunes under the stars, floating silently in the backwaters of Kerala, jostling our way through unimaginably crowded cities, jumping off of mountains, drinking countless warm beers, hours and hours of bone jarring rides across the Himalayas, heat that could melt your will to live, rains that could wash away whole cows, dark alleyways full of surprises, trains that could be 4, 6, or 20 hours late, customs officials that are more crooked than the roads, lions in the jungle, motorcycle rides through monsoon rains, seeing Mr. D. Lama, starting (and leaving) 3 new businesses behind, accidentally finding a wild cobra, the boat builders of Gujarat,  etc.,  etc.  All of this will live in my memory as long as I have one, but the most valuable things are not what we did together but what she taught me.

She taught me a patience I never had known before and a way to speak to the monkeys in my head, though I’m still not able to quiet them down.

She taught me that hope and a smile are the most valuable assets amid dire circumstances.

I learned dignity and pride are just superficial fashion for the rich, for the poor it is often their only possession. The poor are truly the best teachers of how to keep a balance

She taught me that without the pursuit of love and when affection is reserved only for the Bollywood screen, life will make you strong, stable, and committed, but boiling under the surface.

I’ll miss the way she could spin my head in circles some days until I couldn’t quite remember who I was and only then choose to reveal one of her many secrets to me.

She so readily communicated to me in my own language even when she knew I would remain forever illiterate in her many tongues.

She taught me to be a vegetarian for months on end, and of course fueled a deeper craving for bacon.

For all this I thank you India!

You taught me ways to live a better life. I thought my mind was open until you showed me your secrets. What’s more you opened my heart when I didn’t realize it had been closed for so long. Such unusual feelings you brought back, ones not easily or often awakened in me have found voices again. Creeping passed all the walls I put between us you managed to stir yourself into my blood.  No western transfusion will quiet my now wakened heart.

I have seen your wicked ways as well; choosing to caste people, breaking a human spirit with an untouchable status, and policing yourself with a force of legitimized thieves.  I have seen you struggle to change yourself with modern infrastructure, elections, and even a new generation of youth who marries for love.  While all of these experiments seem like awkward blemishes on your features at the moment I beg you to be patient.  You are a youth, sprung from an ancient and complex history and in time you will find a comfortable harmony.  That harmony I’m sure will be an example to the world.

You warned me from the beginning not too fall too deep under your spell for we only had 6 months together, but in the end my western confidence made me fall for your charms all that much more. You were my first subcontinent and your earthy smells and saffron scent have permeated my thoughts. I will never be the same.

I can’t help but wonder if months down the road I won’t find myself making unnecessary calls to technical support lines and reservation desks knowing my call will be routed to you.  Thinking I might catch some brief news of you, how you are doing since we parted, picturing your head bobbling as we speak from across oceans.  Hoping you might ask how I am doing, though I know it will only be part of a well rehearsed script. Yet I will still be eager for you to slip out of the professional etiquette and ask “What is your good name sir?” and “From which country you are calling?”  “Oh, you are calling from Amedica…very fine country sir.”  Then we might relax into our old selves and share a chai across the phone.

Well, until we meet again daydreams and distractions will have to do.  If only there was some substitute, some enchanting sister of yours that could keep me occupied until we meet again.  Hmmmm…Oh hello there Nepal.

Farewell India…

Ji Mata Di