Saying goodbye to India was a toughie. It’s definitely a place with some character, and it smacks you across the face with it upon your arrival and grabs at your ankles and holds you back when you leave.
I realized, coming back from my vacation to Bangalore that I had really made the place my home, even though it was for a short while. I began to allow the stray dogs, run-down neighborhoods, and rude, hectic traffic into my life, and learned to accept it as it is.
I held conversations with locals that were confusing, angering, hilarious and everything in between. My interactions were dramatically eye opening, intensely life-defining and even unexpectedly mystical and spiritual. I even attended a "laughing club," something that the Indian culture is known for. It consisted of a gathering of middle aged to elder women to exercize their lungs, facial muscles and diaphragms while practicing all different kinds of silly laugter which then made you break out into actual laughter. (My favorite was the lion laugh where you turned to those on either side of you, put on a ridiculous tongue-out facial expression on and made clawing motions in the air.)
The little piece of India I got to know offered me its magic to the fullest, and while walking down the street
to my house on the last day, I experienced a nostalgia that made me really understand how much I love the place, and how much I’m going to miss it.
I spent one of my last mornings with my host father, Prabakara, walking through a large, beautiful botanical garden/local park called Lalbagh, taking in the views and talking about- his specialty- life in general and all that happens in it. We sat on a bench and he told me, “You know, in 20
years from now, you’ll look at something and say, ‘this seems familiar’, and you’ll be reminded of this day that you were sitting with me on this bench looking out onto this lake and remember how it was a very special thing that we were brought together.”
The group enjoyed a last hoorah with the families over a big dinner function, for which most of us girls came in traditional Indian garb. My host mom, sister and aunt decked me out in a royal looking purple and gold saree and (believe it or not) wedding jewelery which had actually just been worn a few weeks prior to the event in a family member’s marriage ceremony. My host mom assured me that dressed like this, I was sure to get a date, haha! (Thankfully I didn’t, though; if even allowed to take place, dates are pretty much an engagement in the Indian culture.) We spent the whole rest of the night at home talking and laughing (and crying from laughing so hard) until 1 a.m.
India gave us its lasting, charismatic and frustrating goodbye with plans of sending home boxes at the post office falling through (we didn’t have our box tailor-wrapped and stitched in cloth, so it was a no-go) and also with a slightly uncomfortable cramming into rickshaws with 50 lb. luggage on our laps- both instances a friendly reminder from the country to us that it just functions… differently. But by far the most difficult aspect of our departure was having to say goodbye to our families. We were told “Ateetee de Woah Bahbah”- “Our guest is our God”- which is really how we were treated and revered by our loving hosts, and after being given gifts and sad hugs and long prayers in Hindi over our very heads, we left for the airport.
See you later, India!
