Wind Beneath our Wings

The westerly breezes that bring the hot desert air and dust from Rajasthan have not yet begun their job of turning this cool Delhi winter into spring. So chilly has it been that this week public schools were shut on account of the cold. On this morning, the last morning of our year-long Indian adventure, the winter skies are heavy with clouds that reach right down to the ground. Delhi winter mornings are often hazy, so famously so that experienced business travellers know not to schedule early flights because they are often delayed, but the air on this morning looks particularly dense making the view from our balcony window like looking through your bathroom mirror after a warm shower.

I suppose having a warm shower is not something we will miss about our time here, the under-engineered Indian plumbing here tends to only allow for scalding hot or icy cold trickles of water and any attempt to mix the two is met only with wild swings from one body-shocking extreme to the other. While I was hopping in and out of the flow this morning like some kind of naked Irish dancer, I thought about how these frustrating, infuriating experiences mingle with the magical, beautiful and wonderful experiences in this nether land called India in a way that simply makes one fall in love with it.

For someone who had never been here, the best way I think I might describe this place is that India is like a woman. She is beautiful, charming and alluring yet mysterious, unpredictable, frustrating and often utterly illogical and unmanageable – and it is the combination of these “good” and “bad” traits that make her irresistible (Note to Mrs. WMG – these are generalities about women and do not represent any particular woman especially the one that I am married to). One often hears the expression, “You either love it or hate it” applied to people, places and things, India is not such a place. I think that to know India is to love it and hate it.

We had some large sheets of cardboard in the flat that were taped together in such a way so as they could be used to protect furniture during transport. When our housekeeper was here last week and I was moving the unwieldy mass of paper through the house toward the door, she stopped me and asked me to save it because she wanted it. My great fear at that moment was that she was going to live in my cardboard box headed for the rubbish bin, but fortunately that was not the case, rather she wanted to use it for a kind of carpet in her home – an alternative only made less shocking because we have grown somewhat used to the poverty we have seen here.

Arriving two hours early, our housekeeper Deepali rang our doorbell at around 9:30 this morning. Together we loaded up a large suitcase with a few household goods, some of the foods and oils that were left in our kitchen and some dishes and glasses that we had bought while we were here. I walked to the front gate with Deepali’s husband who was dragging the giant suitcase behind him with one hand, cardboard now rolled in a large bundle under the other. The low clouds had turned into a very light drizzle now and the tarmac was splotchy with damp spots here and there. I smiled and assured the guards at the gate that it was OK for my housekeeper to be leaving with so much stuff, put the package I was carrying for them on the ground, waved a hearty goodbye to them one final time and turned back into our apartment compound.

As I walked down the driveway that encircles the great grassy garden in the centre of our complex, I recognised that something was different this morning. The edge of coolness was gone from the air, there was a breeze blowing but it wasn’t brisk and northerly as on other mornings, it was more pleasant and coming from the west. Rajasthan is in the air, another cycle begins, another season, another adventure.

We arrived here one year and three days ago today. One of my first observations then was that this is a complex society. Little did I know of the complexity of emotions one would have upon leaving it.