I was walking through an enormous wheatfield today, sweating profusely, when I suddenly had a mental image of myself on the Underground (this time next week!). I looked around at the golden fields, the coconut palms, the white stupas in the distance, and thought, am I mental?
I was on my way to the Sujata temple with an American girl I met yesterday (Andrew having left for Nepal, despite the Maoists dying like flies). For some reason we decided to walk there in the middle of the day. Ha. It was long and hot and probably sunstroke-inducing. Not particularly clever when I've just been ill.
The temple wasn't that exciting, but the journey was something else (now there's a metaphor for life). It was such a beautiful walk out into the middle of nowhere. A small child guided us along the tangle of paths through the wheat. He distinguished himself by entirely failing to ask for money - saying "money no good for children, education is".
We walked through his school (one small windowless room for sixty children), past women making those cowpat cakes for the fires, past these cute fat little haystacks. It was all incredibly picturesque and charming, but with that by-now-familiar feeling of touristing other people's poverty. That's one thing I won't be sad to leave.
I have a lot of mixed feelgs about going back to the UK. Part of me desperately wants to stay here . . . Another part of me is crying out for 'civilisation'.
Things I look forward to in the UK (this list is partly for my reference, when I arrive in the cold and gray with only one jersey):
*seeing my friends (woo! bring on the parties)
*CHEEESE
*salads - big 'uns, with feta (cheeeese), avocado, tomato, sprouts. Mmm.
*avocado and carrot sushi
*drinking tap water, brushing my teeth in tap water, not wondering whether I should keep my mouth closed in the shower . . .
*being anonymous on the street
*Green and Blacks chocolate
*red wine (_with_ the G&B, mmm).
Ohmigod, that was a bit crazy. I started writing that list, wrote 'seeing my friends' and 'cheese' and got stuck. How could I have forgotten red wine? What has happened to me? Good god, I think I've acclimatised while I wasn't watching. Hopefully that means that arriving in the UK will mean a delightful re-discovery of the sinful delights of the Western world.
I get on the train(s) to Chennai tomorrow, then fly out next Friday. Unfortunately I have to leave before Meagan finishes the Vipassana course, so that I can go and sort out my plane ticket (assuming I still have one, the STIC man was pretending not to know who I was again). It's utterly bizarre to think that she has spent all this time sitting and meditating.
Posted by eithne at March 26, 2004 01:49 PM | TrackBack