XXIV. Time – Passages

It is a bit before 0700 on Monday the 27th of April 2009. I am in Chatrapati Shivaji Airport in Mumbai, on my way to join Hemali, Karun, and Eesha Shetty and their extended family for a wedding in Delhi, then on to Nanital. I see a young girl (maybe 5 or 6 years old) traveling with her parents; redolent of those days when we used to travel as a family. I started writing in my journal when I was about her age. I loved the images of life and wanted to capture them – fearing that when I got older I would not remember. I sometimes go back to the writings of my youth, and my writings about Christine’s youth. Precious memories. There is something true about the impermanence, but also about the ability for the writing to evoke the memories.

I love the tastes, smells, sights, and sounds of my life now. Talking with Jane and Christine on the computer! The wonderful Thali last night in the ACTREC canteen. The conversations with Ashok, Dilip, and Navin on science, patient care, and the meaning of life. The drive to the airport in the comfort of the ACTREC Director’s car. The gentle sort of self-discipline that I have learned over the years (and especially recently). The experiences that life has given me and what I have been able to take from them.

Still, I also love the memory of the tastes smells, sights, and sounds of those days when Christine was young – Diving in the Caribbean and eating conch on the beach. Playing in the snow. Cooking on the open fire in the Masai Mara. The 4-day Camel Safari in the Thar Desert; sleeping under the stars, milking the goats for tea. Christmases in Oaxaca, Central Massachusetts, Kathmandu, Nairobi, and Chico. Swinging high over the fire pit in Columbia, South Carolina.

People here ask me: Where is your family? Well, scattered in space I say. In South Carolina, New York, Massachusetts. If I go back in time (but I don’t in conversation) my mind wanders – to the French Cemetery in Fall River (Faux Riche, as Dad would say), to Ste. Moises, Quebec (where Pepé’s side of the family was buried until the last third of the 19th century). Nearly three hundred years before that – Normandy, Brittany….and those Micmacs who were living on the frozen shores and inland waterways of North America for thousands of years before that. Amazing people, these ancestors of mine.

I recall earlier times in India and Southwest Asia – evoking images of people who are vague memories. Are they real? Where does the dream begin? Where did this time go? Still, I have their pictures – stark, vivid, looking straight at me from decades gone, disappeared. But was there a time that I cannot remember? There is something pulling at me. Tens of thousands of years ago as they left Africa and traveled to the East, The Ancestors settled and then there was a second Diaspora, from South and Central Asia. Some went into Europe, but most traveled East, in the direction of the rising sun. Remember Australia? The Dream Time. The Ancestors walked these lands that I now fly over. Traveling East; in the direction of New beginnings. Youth. Love. East. To the New World.

Time – the playground on which the drama of life unfolds. Timeless India. Walking the streets of Varanasi (Benares) to the Burning Ghats. Ancient city when Christ was born. I am pulled from the past into the future – as I have said, my favorite adobe when I will not be in the present. India; Land of endless stories. Truth revealed – if I am only not too blind to see, not too deaf to hear, and not too closed to experience the touch, smells, and tastes that will come my way.