Gulp

It's 3 a.m. I'm in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I have jet-lag. Just a few days ago I was at a bar in Manhattan sipping a whiskey soda, taking the subway home to my window-filled apartment in Brooklyn. And now here I am, for a brief stop-over at my parents' house in Dubai, and then off and away to New Delhi, India where I plan to stay...a year? Indefinitely? Who knows?

I'll write more about why I'm making this move in a later blog... but for now, late at night when everyone's asleep and I'm the only one awake, I'm thinking about weird abstract things like, "What exactly does 'home' mean??" It suddenly feels like a really strange concept that I can't quite get a handle on.

I feel like I have so many places I consider home, and at the same time I don't have any place to call a home. Because of my dad's job as a banker my family moved from country to country every few years... all of these places feel like home in my memory, but I guess if I really had to pick a place, I'd pick the small white house on a tree-lined street in New Delhi. This street was called Vasant Vihar (translates to "The Green way") and the house was my grandad's. My family returned to him and my grandmom every summer and winter no matter where in the world we were posted.

I loved getting off the plane and smelling that unique Indian airport smell of cloth and burning fires and wet paper and hot tea. I loved how my grandad and his house-keeper Krishen would be waiting for us outside of the terminal, and I'd always spot my grandad first because he always wore this furry brown cap and a hunting vest and sandles that showed his plump clean toes.

I remember how it would usually be late late at night (like it is right now), and as we drove home the streets would be empty, except for a few sleeping dogs who would wake up and chase our car half-heartedly. I remember the gates to our street had two garbage dumpsters on each end... and I even loved that smell of rotting vegetables because it meant that in just a few moments we'd be driving down the street to the smallest, oldest house in the row of big shiny houses, and Krishen would be opening the old black gate, and we'd be driving under the steel awning with the hanging dense green vines, and the car would go silent and I'd hear a key turn in the doorway upstairs (my grandmom eagerly awaiting) and the sound of crickets and the scent of night flowers blooming and the soft scrape of suitcases being unloaded and my grandfather's wheezing breathing as he smiled and turned to me silently saying, "We're home."

I also loved waking up that first morning back in Vasant Vihar. I'd feel the light on my face from the big open windows in my grandparent's room. My sister and I would be on a mattress on the floor by their bed. My grandmom would have on religious gazals playing from an old tape-recorder. I could hear her in the kitchen, and smell the fresh oranges from which Kirshen squeezed us all juice that was such a rich deep color it was almost a shame to drink it. Even before opening my eyes, I'd hear my grandfather breathing and chewing his tobacco and the scratchy sound of his pencil doing the crossword in the newspaper. I loved this moment so much I'd keep my eyes closed just a little longer and from outside I'd hear the vegetable vendors screaming from their bikes, "tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes...fresh, fresh, fresh." And the crows and the cars passing... wow, even as I'm writing this I feel like I'm there.

Sadly, that house doesn't exist anymore. My granddad passed away two years ago, and my dad sold the house and I hear it's been turned into an apartment building. I haven't been back since my granddad's funeral... and I guess that's where the "gulp" part of this entry comes in.

I'm excited about going back to Delhi. I have some grand plans to rescue my grandma (from my mom's side) from her alcoholic son and embark on a series of adventures with her in which we watch lots of romantic Hindi movies and eat lots of delicious snacks. My grandma and I are going to live in a small 2-bedroom apartment with lots of windows...which is good. She doesn't know this, but I'm planning on finding her a suitor who will come over in the evenings to drink tea with her and tell her she's beautiful (which she is--the woman has the most amazing skin I've ever seen). I've also found out that our neighbor is a firecracker of an old lady named "Thoshi"... she's 80-years-old and she lives by herself because her no-good son ran the family business into the ground. I have a feeling Thoshi, my grandma and I will be great friends.

Anways--what I'm nervous about, and I've not really verbalized it before, is going back and finally knowing for sure that my home in Vasant Vihar is no longer there, that my grandfather is really gone. I think until now I could still somehow pretend like everything was the same. It's not the same. And I guess part of life is accepting that and moving on and creating new memories... I'm looking forward to that, the creating of new memories and the creating of new places to call home.

I'm also really proud and amazed to call New York my home. I don't know how that happened. When I first came to New York I hated it and I left it, and then I came back to it and didn't plan to stay long but ended up staying 3 years...and somewhere along the way I fell in love with it and now I will always consider it my home.

I guess that's what I'm hoping to do by returning to India--to make it feel like home again too. I think maybe in my life I will have many places I call home. I want these places to be filled with a diverse group of friends I love and who inspire me, and with little quiet coffee-shops I hang out in, and bars in little nooks that not many people know about but where the bartender knows my drink. I want home to be a place where I can walk out the door and randomly talk to a stranger who randomly tells me a story that I'll remember for days if not a lifetime to come. I think a park, and lots of greenery, and a way to leave the city and find some water and flowers...that should also be a part of any place I call home. I also have a fantasy of becoming friends with some crotchety old man who owns a musty bookstore...wow, if that's part of home that would be amazing!! But I'm not going to be too unrealistic... he doesn't have to own a bookstore.

Ok, this entry is way way too long. I loved writing it though. I think I'm really going to like this whole blog thing... makes jet lag alot more fun.

Good night (well actually, i'm not sleepy as yet. think i'll go watch some tv)