Although it's only been four weeks since I have been back, my recent trip to India seems like a life time ago. The last time I went to India I kept a blog of mostly my shock and misery with some lovely photo's peppered in between. When I told people I was going back for another month long holiday; Why? was the most common question.
Sadly I never finished my Bollywood Dreaming blog and people may not have understood what a profound effect travelling for the first time and returning to the place of my birth had on me. I hated India with a passion it was like being permanently stuck in the twilight zone, contradiction abounded and Indians I discovered only know black and white. I also discovered that I was very Indian in this sense, over the last four years of studying and working I had become brittle and hard, the slightest wind threatened to snap me. All I know is I left the first time swearing never to return and almost as soon as the plane landed I suddenly just wanted to go back.
On this recent trip despite a lot of advances I found this strict adherence to black and white was still ever present, having lunch at a 5 star hotel in Varanasi we saw that they had both a chicken and cheese sandwich on the menu, when we naively asked if we could have both the cheese and the chicken in one sandwich we were swiftly told it was not possible, when we questioned why the waiter just repeated no. I don't know how a country that can't mix cheese and chicken is going to be a super power, but go figures.
What had changed was me, almost gone was brittle Tanya that folded in the face of trouble and instead I was more a supple read flowing with the wind and not against it.
The Taj Mahal really is as beautiful as people say it is..
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