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Well I'm back. Its almost been a week since i got up at 4am and boarded the train for Delhi.
Back in Canada, I haven't really left my house much yet except to walk the dog. I'm still marvelling at the miracles of modern technology. It's all very space-age and shiney. I am making my way into it slowly to ease the decompression process.
It is exciting and there is so much to explore. The air smells amazing and fresh here. The air is so different. The air smells new and freshly washed. The air in India is like the air is infused with the ancientness of the country and all the souls that lived and died there for 9,000 years. Here it just smells like spring trees and rivers.
I did ride the bike to the grocery store yesterday. That was a thrill. The simple things are so new. So I am savouring their novelty like I am a child who has ridden her bike to the store for the first time in her life. That is a bit how it feels.... yet at the same time, it is oddly familiar, like I went there in a dream once before.
The grocery store was stocked FULL of so many things. So Many Things. It was amazing.
If I have bought any groceries in India it was from a grizzled old man stooped next to a cart that maybe held a selection of about 12 different items: eggplants, zucchini, cilantro, tomotos, cucumbers, ginger, potatos, okra... and perhaps, if he had really branched out, he has a few fruits on there too: apples, oranges, bananas, guavas or mangos.
Then I would have to find the little notch in the wall place that sold the dried fruits, nuts, beans and rice. Here they would also sell candles and matches and laundry soap if you needed it. But everything is behind the counter, so you shop by pointing and miming out the items you need. Also by saying the English word to go with it, hoping that somehow the connection will be made. And usually it is. Sometimes it is not and then, not knowing if it is your inconvenient and uncouth lack of Hindi skills that has caught you up or simply that he does not carry that particular item, you ramble on down the street looking for the next store to inquire within. This is shopping in India. Often times they won't have the item and they will tell you "come back tomorrow ma'am, tomorrow" and they will somehow magically procur said item by buying it from somewhere else nearby (instead of just sending you to that place directly). Always the middle-man looking to make a rupee.

Oh, and my first day back I had to drive our mechanic back to his shop in the van. That was fun. Driving. Just like riding a bike apparently. Didn't even think about it.
I didn't drive while I was in India, that would have been just plain stupid.
Driving in India is clearly a skill you develop from birth, in your blood, as a citizen of that country, and not a skill that can be acquired this late in one's life, IF one wants to continue living, this life.

It IS nice not to have internet that is crashing now, every third of fourth email, or that is fatally subject to frequent power cuts. No, it is nice to clickity-clack away with full confidence in the fact that the last 30 minutes of "work" is not going to be sucked into cyberspace.... blank screen in front of you. It's a nice feeling.
I will probably go through a week or two here of everything being a novelty and then there will be a period of homesick and nostalgia for life in India for awhile, and then life will pretty much go back to "normal".
I am not done with India yet, and she is not done with me.
As I parted with the people whose warmth and hospitality cradled me for 8 months, I heard myself responding to their asking "when are you coming back?" with the words "next year, next year!". Words out of my mouth without me even thinking about them. So I guess I better get saving.