CAT | Bali
Hi Everyone,
I have never felt so happy in all my life to be home! What is that? A place where people can easily understand everything you say! Where you can really get what you WANT, and if it’s the wrong thing, after you get home, you can take it back, and get what you REALLY wanted. Note to all: Never try to bring back something to a store in India. Forget about getting your money back. Even exchanges are hideous to try and get.
I had a great and intense experience in India. Everyday was a new challenge. Even if I stayed in the ‘neighborhood’, anything I did became a ‘scene’. People still stare all the time at you if you’re a foreigner.
Indians are wonderfully, different, and sweet people. Culturally, extremely different. Still I would have liked bringing a few home with me, if it were possible. Like the piano player, my masseuse, the chef, who I taught how to make my favorite anchovie pasta, my housekeeper, ‘boy’ Shudiker who would get special ‘permission’ to open the permanently locked window on my veranda, and let me have some ‘fresh’ air while he was happily cleaning, and I typing away on my computer.
Today, for the first time in 6 months, I washed my own dishes in my darling miniture dishwasher here in my atelier in downtown Wallingford. I even went grocery shopping for the first time in months. It was so fun to CHOOSE what I wanted to ingest. And know what was REALLY in it.
I bought some whole grain bread from Essential Baking Co. Peets Coffee, and Almond milk. Pacific Tomato soup, and made a grilled, cheddar cheese sammich. (I do most of my grocery shopping at Bartels). I also bought some beautiful young garlic and fresh green onions, and sunflower seed sprouts from the Wallingford openair market on Wednesday. What a salad I enjoyed! With Brianna blue cheese salad dressing. On sale @ Bartels…
They have no ‘awareness of salad’ in India. It was stressful to try to get one in my hotel, I usually just got a plate of raw veggies and some lemon juice dressing. One day, I saw a big plate of what I thought were green beans! Wow, I’d never seen them in India before….My first huge mouthful told me why….they were NOT green beans, they were green Chilis! Unable to eat anything after that, I learned an important lesson. IT MAY LOOK LIKE SOMETHING YOU COULD LOVE, but, it aint….
I am going to start sprouting my own sunflower seed sprouts. So many things I couldn’t do living in a hotel room.
About the most organic thing I did there was cut open pomegranits and compile the seeds into a bowl and pour on soy milk on them and crunch away. That was a comfort food to me. And quite messy I might add.
You learn so much about what you love, when the moment of being separated from it happens. I missed my kitty, so substituted the street dogs. I ended up having a pack of playful yet wild dogs surround me, anytime I walked out the door of the hotel on to the main small street in front of the hotel. I named them all. Lola, and Lulu, (the girls that I helped get spay) Rocky, and Guru, the boys who avoid the dog catcher uncannily, and the young twin black dogs, Black eyed Susan, and Princess, that would run and play like speedy, otherworldly animals, and were so skinny and worn down before they met me! I always brought them a bowl of water, and food. It was my way of having a spiritual experience. Sometimes they’d follow me to the park like grounds at the hotel across the street. I was the Alpha to them, and they centered around me, fought for my special attention, and loved to show off and play together with me watching. I gave up caring that others were staring
A cab driver friend named Suresh, is feeding them now, I bought him two large bags of Pedagree dog food. He keeps it in his trunk. A housekeeper boy, named Kelvin is in charge of bringing them water. Plus an American friend name Kat is looking after the cab driver, to make sure he is doing his promised job. (I will send her $ to buy more dog food, she’s an animal activist in India as well as a baker of dog birthday cakes and home made dog biscuits).
I guess I haven’t completely abandoned them. On the last night, a cab took me away from my strange little familiar cul de sac by the airport, that had become my hood for the last 6 months.
On my last evening in Mumbai, despite the rain and thunder and lightening, when it subsided, I went out to and fed the dogs one last time, some special ‘snacks’. It was a bit messy out there, what with the mud, and the bags of goodies I was handing out a bit difficultly in the dark.
The taxi’s waiting he’s blowin’ his horn, already, I’m so lonesome I could cry .
Lola, my number one doggie, was sitting at the foot of the driveway, as the cars exit the hotel. I opened the window and said goodbye, she didn’t quite recognize me in the cab, and I didn’t want to linger and have her know it was me going away for the last time, never to return. I may have been the only someone she had,in her street life, felt loved by.
The monsoons are upon them now. The dogs stay off the street, out of the rain, somewhere, no one really knows where they go. Sometimes in those big water pipes that just sit on the side of the road waiting to be planted for some future infrastructure.
I had to go.
Now in Seattle, a million miles from Mumbai, I feel so in love with life. There’s a gnawing in my soul for those I left behind. Some of the people too. They told me they’d miss me with all their heart. You’ll be back they warned…
Today gonna take my kitty in for a check up, as she waited so patiently (6 months) for my return. She has an ingrown claw….ouch. But, isn’t complaining so far.
I just keep sighing, as I am so relieved to be home and still ‘intact’.
It’s stressful to be away so long. I learned how to make something, out of nothing. I think I possibly earned a PH.D in International Relations! Now if I can just make it work for NEXT time.
During the time I’ve been gone, they raised my rent, the Gulf turned black with oil, several friends became unemployed, and my nephew Roman, was shipped out to the Persian Gulf. Ok, so, let’s have a drink and go to the Fremont parade.
Do several things when I go out, not just ‘run to the bank’.
Do it all. Then stop driving. Save on oil.
Ok, call me.
I’ll try to come out and see you sometime soon.
Happy summer. There’s no place like home.
