I. Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Ayesha and me! In this picture we were decked out to go to a wedding, which was just one of many instances in which I attended celebrations for people I did not know. Once a week, or so, someone's nephew's roomate has a wedding or a birthday, and the entire Parsi community converges on a hotel or a club to congratulate them. Just a few weeks ago we attended a one year old's birthday party, which took place on a hotel rooftop, was catered, and had a DJ. These Mumbaikars take their partying seriously.

Right now I'm home for the twelve days of Christmas, from the 17th to the 29th, after which I fly back to India, and then to Tanzania on January 4th. Some might say this didn't make geographical sense, but those people clearly don't understand the way the earth curves and the great circles that form over the poles and the curved nature of spacetime, all of which completely justify my 4 day visit to India when analyzed carefully enough.

It sure is nice to be back in sleepy old New Hampshire after the treacherous journey through India that Ayesha and I undertook just before my trip home. Terrorism alerts at the Bombay airport, cyclone warnings when we arrived in Chennai, Elephants loose on the streets in Pondicherry, giant spiders lurking on our houseboat in Kollam, and Malaria infested carnivorous mosquitos in Cochin left me feeling quite rattled. But don't worry folks, I escaped with no more than spotted hands, a headwound, and a brief bout of projectile vomiting. I suppose this needs some explaining.

We left Mumbai shortly after the terror attacks, from an airport under red alert due to an email warning sent from a terrorist, on the fifth of December, which was the day before the anniversary of the Babri Masjid Mosque Bombing. We sat tensely, making terrorists out of the group of young men in front of us only to find out, when the plane touched down, that they were travelers just like us, travelers polite enough to offer us their seats on the airport bus. I felt guilty for being suspicious of them, but I guess that I was experiencing a symptom of the terror that those men inflicted on the India this past Thanksgiving. We didn't let this insidious fear stop us from making our journey, but we weren't entirely impervious to it either, and nor were the Dinshaws. I think they breathed a sigh of relief when we called them from Chennai after a safe landing.

We spent the evening in Chennai, in the hospitable care of the Bangeras (family friends of the Dinshaws) who made us feel right at home, and we left for Pondicherry the next morning feeling well fed and refreshed. We stopped at Mahabalipuram where we saw amazing old temples of stone, corners and intricate carvings worn away or rounded off by the sea weather. The temples and the giant sculptures were made in the 7th century, but their crumbling stone facades made them seem even more ancient than that.