Home Again

There’s the yin and yang of life in India – and then there’s the yin and yang of life in India versus life in America.

I’m back home (read Southern US city) after much too long, having skipped my last planned trip due to a critical work project.  It’s wonderful to be back! It smells heavenly. It looks heavenly – the beautiful, fresh green of spring again (although it feels more like summer) interspersed with fabulously blooming dogwoods. It feels and looks so clean and pristine – the air and the earth. 

Forgive me the effusive praise…this is what happens when you are gone for too long.

I ended up skipping the entire winter here which, as mild as it was this season, would still have meant the use of a heavy jacket at times so that doesn’t make me that sorry. Instead, I enjoyed the mild, pleasant, unseasonably and unnaturally cool weather of Mumbai’s winter of 2011-12 where temperatures ranged from the 50s to the 70s.

I’m back for a short visit now. 

Every day has been a catch up day, meeting with friends and work colleagues, sharing news, information and warmth.  One night, I was at a friend’s house for dinner.  Since it was a week night, we started and ended early – barely after 10 pm. I was driving back home and it really struck me then how different my two worlds really are.  There was virtually no one on the roads!  It was dead. At 10 pm! During Spring Break week, no less!

Where was even that hint of a cacophony of sounds that can overpower and overwhelm you in Mumbai?  The honking car horns, the revving autorickshaw engines, the barking dogs…and people, people, people everywhere – it doesn’t matter if it’s midday or midnight.

 And, wait a minute, was I actually missing that?!

I know that this is not a giant metropolis like Mumbai, but it’s not a tiny village either.  It’s a nice-sized, right-sized Southern cosmopolitan city. Undoubtedly, this is quiet and peaceful compared to Bombay.

But listen to what someone who lives in the heart of Manhattan had to say of his recent trip to Mumbai – “It felt so quiet and peaceful in New York City immediately after I returned from Bombay”.  Yep!

Other than feeling mighty wonderful about being back home for a bit, it was difficult not to notice some sea changes that are occurring in the US of A. The softness of the market is more than palpable – everybody is affected by it in one way or the other. The issue of the day: Jobs.

That usual American optimism is noticeably tempered, no matter who you talk to or what media you are reviewing. I wonder to myself, is this reversible?  Yes, of course it is.  This is part of the cycle that this country seems to go through every few decades…although most people’s memories don’t go back far enough to find a period as hard as this one has been.

And then, of course, there’s the upcoming election.

As Republicans converge on “quantum Romney” as their candidate of choice, it will be an interesting time leading up to the election – which I will be missing and watching from across continents…:-(

No prizes for guessing what I want the outcome to be!

And Home Again

Too soon, it will be time to return to Mumbai and India where I will once again get immersed in the unique atmosphere and environment that can only be found there.

The yin and the yang... never let it be said that I don’t recognize how  fortunate I am to be living and experiencing both.

:

Photos:

City Park View: By Richard Bitting [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

 Autorickshaws in Mumbai: Antônio Milena/Agência Brasil