I just got back from my first trip to India in 20 years. The last time I went, I wasn’t old enough to form my own opinions or memories of the experience. Growing up, India was the place that my friends’ families made a yearly pilgrimage to; it was a place that everyone had left for something better. This was what I thought about India. This was before I met her.
I went to New Delhi, Baroda, Baruch, Surat, and Mumbai. I traveled by trains and cars so that I could see the things in between. I saw entire villages made out plastic bags and tarp; I saw unclothed children playing with abandoned kites along train tracks; I saw starving cows standing beside parked motorcycles. These are images I can’t shake, moments that introduced me to an India I had only heard about.
In Surat, incense fragrances air that feels heavy with exhaust from cars and rickshaws. In Baroda, there are colors everywhere—ripe fruits and vibrant dresses that merchants sell roadside, kites strewn like confetti over dirt sidewalks. There’s not a moment of silence. Hawkers pace alleyways and neighborhoods while the sun rises, calling out names of fruits and vegetables I’ve never heard before. Late at night, motorcycles zoom past windows of quiet, sleeping houses and sleeping beggars.
Like an idiot, I forgot my camera at home, so I had to take mental pictures in my head. Before I left the city for India, I watched a darling of a movie called Slumdog Millionaire, which, I’m sure by now you’ve heard of. I was proud of it before I left; there are some things that just make you proud to be Indian (read: Jhumpa Lahiri stories, Bollywood, Deepak Chopra, etc.). But after actually going to Mumbai, the city that the film so artfully embodies, my chest swells in a way it couldn’t before.
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