Upper-deck Delhi

I am in a second story restaurant near our airport-situated hotel in Delhi. It overlooks a main highway and everything important is clogged along its access road- gas stations, restaurants, discount clothing stores, fruit stands, mega-marts, shops selling raw materials I can't even recognize. Making the (seemingly) long, horn-filled walk to a filling station for the ATM, I felt pleasantly calm. Cars were swerving to miss auto-rickshaws, swerving to miss mopeds, swerving to miss bikes, swerving to miss pedestrians with everybody yelling and kicking up dust and breathing and walking and being. I thought to myself, "I've seen worse," then realized I couldn't remember where that might have been, exactly. Maybe a combination of places- Asia and Madagascar. It's barren here, in that there is no vegetation, minus some dusty trees and scrubs of grass. The air is thick with humidity and particulates, and I feel my lungs and throat adjusting- closing up and producing extra defense to clear things out a little. I sound like a woman who's been smoking since birth. Nothing to be alarmed over.

But amongst all the peace, I understand this is just the beginning. I have been told that India is relentless and I think that is key to the all-encompassing sensation people experience coming here. Previous travel has been intense exposure in the cities, then breaks of respite in quite escapes. I am not sure how much that is possible now. When it's hot, it suck-the-life-from-you-oppressive. When it rains, you can't breathe, the water swallows your oxygen like a wet wool blanket slung over your head. Proverty drives people to do things we never think possible, like selling children; and the spirituality is so deep, it branded "enlightenment" and produces some of the most incredible human feats on this planet.

When people asked if I was ready for India, I could only think "I don't know how to be." Sitting here at its gates, I still am not sure. Prepared for break-down and realignment, I only know to steady myself for a rollercoaster unlike anything I've ever known.