Familiarity and Random Assocations

India can be intense, because everything is so different from what I am used to at home. I think this is why I was drawn here in the first place, and what makes me love it so much. So it's surprising sometimes when something unexpectedly reminds me of home, or of other places that I miss.

The first time it happened was when I tried a local fruit called chiku. It looks like a kiwi fruit on the outside, but when you peel it, the flesh is pinkish brownish. And when I bit into it, it tasted like Mexico. During the summers I spent in Merida in high school, I became obsessed with the local fruits. One fruit called mamey was big like a papaya, but reddish-orangish on the inside. The mamey and chiku fruits have similar flavors, which have an odd sweetness similar to a date or brown sugar. In any case, it was odd to be overcome with reminders of Mexico when I am in India.

Then, a few weeks ago, I went with my friend Tim on a morning walk before work. We met at 7:15 on the street corner where we both live, and we walked to one of Udaipur's many lakes, then made our way up a small mountain (or big hill?) where there was a Hindu temple at the top and beautiful views of the city. It was damp and there was a light sprinkling of rain that morning, which kept us cool. Near the bottom of the hill and by the lake, where one main road crosses with another, there were some little shops and chai stalls where people were crowded under the thatched roofs to avoid the wetness. As the city was waking up, shop owners were starting their fires over which they would boil chai and fry samosas. And suddenly I was overcome with intense memories of Ecuador, and specifically, the Amazon. The smell of the wood burning fires, combined with the cool feeling of dampness and smell of rain, immediately brought me back to mornings in the rainforest when we would all huddle around a fire and drink steaming tea and eat baked bananas. It made me miss Ecuador so badly, and the rainforest was vividly alive in my mind all day long.

It wasn't until this past weekend that I had flashbacks to Kentucky, and for the first time since I have been here, I became homesick. My friend Andrew, who works for an MIT development project in Udaipur, rented a farmhouse outside of the city and threw a big party. Probably all of the foreigners living in Udaipur attended, plus some local friends. We hung out on the candle-lit rooftop all night long, where music from home made me feel slightly American again. Once during the night, I wandered a little by myself on the dirt road in front of the farmhouse. In the dark, it almost felt like I was on a farm in Kentucky. I could see the outlines of the farms all around me, which were separated by fences. There were some huge, old trees with good climbing branches along the road as well, and I could see bats flying from one to the other. Though there was not a drop of humidity in the air, it was warm with a nice breeze, just like a summer night in Kentucky, and I pretended like it would all be lush and green in the daytime.

I'm not usually one to get homesick, but I think the knowledge that I am here for so long makes me more susceptible to homesickness than I have been before. Send me emails! And pictures! It helps.