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Now that I am back in the land of filtered gasoline, wide-open spaces, and bleach-based cleaners, India seems like one long trip on acid. The vivid colors, the mass of people, the frenzied traffic and vibrant smells- one millisecond sweet jasmine, the next raw sewage.

If I had left India after a few weeks, I would have been ready to leave, remembered mostly the unpleasant and inefficient, and would have seamlessly resumed daily life at home.
A month, however, took away the luxury of dismissing the problems of a third world country by forcing me to imagine myself a true part of the culture and someone who must come psycologically come to grips with the humanity squashed around me.

Of course, I don't know how it would feel to actually live in India, to even visit for longer than a circumscribed short period of time. Someday, perhaps, I will!
In the meantime, though, I feel so thankful that I could go and lucky that I met so many interesting people. It is a very nationalistic country, filled with diverse peoples and religions, privy to major construction and changes in its labor force. We could learn alot not just from India's domestic airline carriers (they rock!) but from the religious culture of acceptance (sans their views on Pakistan) and focus on family.
Of course, my American heart will be satisfied as soon as I can find some good bhindi masala and aloo gobhi.