Now that I (finally!) got my visa, I don’t
have to rein in my excitement anymore. I can let it to rule my life for the
next several weeks. I can even start packing!
I don’t know what I’m most excited about
though. Is it experiencing the agony and splendor of a month long travel with D
once again? Or seeing the majesty of Taj Mahal? Or getting deep into different
cultures? Or trekking in the Himalayas? Or joining in the communal breaking of
bread at the Golden Temple? Maybe it is the idea of being able to get away and
escape to another word. Or the thrill of
actually visiting the country that I fell in love with through the pages of
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children:
The monster in
the streets has begun to roar, while in Delhi a wiry man is saying, “…At the
stroke of the midnight hour, while world sleeps, India awakens to life and
freedom…” And beneath the roar of the monster there are two more yells, cries,
bellows, the howls of children arriving in the world, their unavailing protests
mingling with the din of independence which hangs saffron and green in the
night sky—“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out
from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long
suppressed finds utterance…”
