So...

Being sick in India is not fun. I was pretty sure that I was going to die last week, all alone in a tiny, filthy, hotel room, with a fever and chills and severe abdominal pain and a splitting headache that truly appreciated the noisy construction work next door. The chills were actually a welcome relief from the heat, as the temperature went up over 100, and my air conditioner stopped working somewhere around noon on Wednesday. The construction workers didn't stop working though, and there was hammering from 6:30 a.m. every morning till 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

So, my last week in India could have been a bit more fun, I suppose. But I survived, and I'm now recovering in South Africa, where the air is cooler and Dr. Dad makes sure that I carefully take the appropriate doses at the appropriate times so that I can recover IMMEDIATELY and we can do EVERY SINGLE THING on his itinerary.

But before I write anything about South Africa, I wanted to reflect for a moment on my experiences in India. When my plane left the ground in Chennai, I felt a veritable lump in my throat, and it took some sorting through of my emotions to figure out why. Here's some of what I wrote:

The lump in my throat is for what I was and what I had when I came to India, for what I no longer am and no longer have, for what I've left in India, and for what India's left in me. It was also relief to be leaving, guilt at feeling relieved, and simultaneously, not wanting to leave just yet.

I had my heart broken in India, and as I tried to pick up the pieces, I fell in love with the country, with the people, with the expats, and India taught me to love myself again. I'm leaving with a heart not fully healed, but one that is bigger and stronger, and full of newness-- new people, new places, new ideas.

And I know I'll be back. India sinks into your bones; it becomes a part of you; it's an open challenge and rising to meet it makes you a fuller human being. There's so much more of the country I want to see; so much I want to return to. To make sense of India's contradictions is to make sense of your own hypocrisies and flaws.

I was reading Whitman the other day, when this stanza struck me:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then; I contradict myself.
I am large; I contain multitudes.

It so perfectly sums up... well, everything.