The Ending Before The Beginning

As I passed through the last doorway and left the world of pages and in-baskets to the trusted and talented hands of my partners, my thoughts lay with two things. First, I needed to get to the gym. The prior two weeks, including the Christmas holiday, had been incredibly hectic, and my schedule had rarely […]

In Which I Begin The Long Journey Home

I looked at the food on my plate, the slightly creamy, and very wet vegetable curry paired with the steamed slightly lumpy but very fine-grained mass of … well I don’t quite know how to describe it, but it was made with rice flour. That was the starch, and there’s an almost essential curry/starch combination […]

On The Shore of the Arabian Sea

We waited on the beach for the day to end, an occasionally ambitious tendril of the Arabian Sea leisurely climbing up the shore to graze the soles of my shoes. Prema and Beena had both kicked off their sandals, more water and sand-friendly than my sneakers, and waded deeper into the waves and returned already. […]

When A Country Is Closed

Today was a lazy day. We didn’t originally plan it as a “down day,” but as is my pattern, India held a strike today. This wasn’t just a specific museum being closed, or the metro being shut down – this was everything. Stores weren’t allowed to open, with some specific exceptions. And taxis weren’t permitted […]

All The Tea All The Time

I woke before the sun had passed the horizon and looked out the window from our hotel in Munnar, high in the Western Ghats. The dark green shadows of a stirring countryside lay before me, nestled under a downy haze and the pale pink precipice of a precocious morning sky. We had only spent one […]

In Which I Keep Tasting Things

The three of us walked out of the Ayurvedic center and climbed into the car afraid to touch anything. We had all just spent nearly two hours getting Ayurvedic massages, during which we were drenched from head to toe in fragrant oils. Taking our seats for the ride to the hotel involved us all holding […]