grounded growth

Before I moved to India I spent a lot of time thinking about shoes.  Ask my friend Denise, she’ll tell you.

I obsessed over open-toe vs. closed-toe, the benefits of a rinsable, recyclable sandal, whether I’d need sneakers or sport sandals (yuck!) and everything else shoe related one could possibly obsess over.

When I was done with shoes, I moved on to over-thinking about pants, about toiletries, about exactly how much contact solution a girl might need before she can hit up Target again in a year.

And now I’m here.

I am here where it’s dusty and sandy and wet and dirty and hot and all at once smells wonderful and then, in an instant, terrible. I am here where the roads end without warning and the traffic is insane and there are no rules but there are so many rules and there are cows in the streets and the same dog is everywhere and the people… the people!

Women draped in bright saris, loops of jasmine in their hair. Men in lungis with wild hair and mustaches galore. Knobby-kneed children in finely pressed school uniforms walk in groups giggling and swinging invisible cricket bats.

Tuk-tuks barrel down the road, tooting horns, blaring horns, birds, birds and more birds, the lovely, loopy lilt of people speaking Tamil in the streets, waves crashing outside of my bedroom window.

Everything is new. My senses are on serious overdrive and shoes and pants and all that other stuff I was trying to control?

None of it matters.

I’m here. Now.