Sitting on a bus in Delhi

As the afternoon drizzle of rain kisses Munnar's tea-fields green and gold, I take a moment to glance through the pages of my haphazard journal. The black and white composition notebook offers a sweet familiarity; I have been writing in such journals for a decade: pasting pictures, etching crayon-happy drawings, scribbling short cafe-napkin thoughts and writing longer discourses on anything from the beauty of spring crocuses to the shame of jet-sprayed soybean fields that poison happy cows, well-meaning earthworms and uninformed people. The India journal is particularly haphazard: a conglomeration of train station data, inspired chapter outlines of the yogic texts I have been assigned for the upcoming Yoga Teacher Training, and momentary gusts of inspiration that spiral their way into essays and commentaries much like those I post on the blog. As I finger through the soft-lined pages, I come upon an entry I wrote while in Agra, the rough industrial city that draws hundreds of thousands of tourists to see the breathtaking dawn beauty of the Taj Mahal. The Agra entry communicates the laughable chaos that describes travel in India: so many faces, fragrances, possibilities and impossibilities. And so, I choose to look over my shoulder at the month past and share the following entry.

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Sitting on a bus in Delhi, I think about the crow of madness . This phrase is used by Jane to describe life in Nepal and India: sunshine is beaming one minute and the next, storm clouds bring chaos and inexplicable lack of reason.

First, there is the famous head-wiggle: the same side-to-side gesture with the half-tilt of a lopsided metronome can mean "yes," "no," and "maybe." Does this bus go to Agra? (Head-wiggle and mumble.) Leaving at 11am? (Head-wiggle and wave.) The bus might get to Agra eventually, taking more than 5 hours to go 200 kilometers. And the bus could start its engine at 11am and move to leave around noon. Maybe there will be a 10 minute lunch stop that is really an hour. And you might order butter nan for 30 rupees and pay 50 because today the manager is changing the menu. And the bus might have air-conditioning that feels like someone is trying to cool you with his breath or with the air from a deflated balloon. The journey could be great and maybe the bus corresponds to the ticket you bought from the travel agent who pocketed more than the price of the ticket in commission. And maybe you eat lunch in the Delhi slum and arrive for dinner in an upper-class Agra marble-floored apartment. And maybe you feel more comfortable sitting on broken cement with the flies than you do being served lemon-soda in a crystal glass by a 12 year-old family servant. Both images of India. Both wings of the mad crow. The script of this film is being written as we speak and there is no one being paid to make it all make sense. So: let us choose good-humor to set the scene and live out the chaos with a generous smile and an enthusiastic head-wiggle that means "yes," "no" and "Of course I'll fall into the flow of this wild-ride that colors India's everyday with sweet unpredictability."