First Day in Country

I started this sitting at a coffee bar at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, India, waiting with the team for the last leg of our travel to see our friend Jaya and all of the good things he is doing. The thirty hours of travel thus far are taking their toll, so I apologize in advance if my writing is a little incoherent. I rarely sleep well on planes.

The heat of the morning is already beginning to stir the hazy air, distorting the tail flashings of the planes sitting on the tarmac in the distance. All around me the terminal is abuzz with activity – janitors, wait staff, travelers, baggage handlers. But amid the din I still noticed workers stealing away for just a moment to catch up on the news or sit in the shade of a jetway to have a snack with friends as the stink of aviation fuel hangs pungent in the air.

I’ve been coming to India for over ten years now, and I am still struck at the triple espresso shot of concentrated humanity that I get when I arrive. So many people. So many lives. So many wills at work that it amazes me that the culture hasn’t reached a point of collective insanity. Perhaps it has, but the haze of sleep deprivation while I’m in country dulls my senses just enough to let it remain just out of apprehension.

But even amid the chaos there is design and things get done. We experienced that most recently on our shuttle ride between the international and domestic terminal and the fearless bus driver who drove headlong into a mass of oncoming headlights on a sometimes one-lane tramway. To the horror of the foreigners and the inattention of the nationals, he initiated toward the way-less-than-bus-sized space between two oncoming trucks and there is an indescribable, fluid process of challenge, collaboration and mutual yielding until all are back on their way.

And it happens way, way more than you would see in the U.S. It suggests to me that there is some kind of internal order amid all the chaos that is so ingrained in the Indian psyche that It would take more than the millennia that forged it to find out what had been really created.

Everyone is on campus now and quickly bedding down to start repaying their sleep debt. You’ll hear more about the delayed flight, the bus breakdown the iffy power grid and the flower pedal charged reception tomorrow. But I did want to drop you a quick line to tell you that it’s great to be back.

Chris for the Team

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. – St. Augustine