Green Card Safron Sun White Thoughts

I smelt the dusty Indian summer sun while driving to work this morning. This despite the fact that the windows were rolled up and the AC was on.

I saw a wicker basket left askew on the corner of the road, in a way that can only happen in really poor countries, where the street is an extension of home for so many. And household goods can just be found lying around on main crossings and kerbs, much like a dishevelled kitchen or bathroom.

I saw the three irritating temples that fall on my route to office and that exasperatingly slow me down with their sequined thread, red cloth, meandering crowds and crushed flowers pace.

I saw a stray dog. Or two.

Abida sang Ghalib on the very western CD player, in my cocooned and conditioned world: my protection against the onslaught of an India that can drown me in an overdrive of sensuality. A battering that the eyes, the ears, the nose, the skin and the tongue cannot take, without taking violently ill.

I must temper the India that I live in; dilute it to make it digestible. My system is fragile.

I saw dark green leaves, still, and then mildly ruffled by a summer breeze that carries no shade or solace.

I saw a 'tempo traveller'.

And Abida with her 'patthar-phek' style of singing, as I call it, bellowed out, Bekhudi Besabab Nahin Ghalib, Kuchh to Hai Jiski Parda Daari Hai.

Don't get me wrong. I like the way she sings. It's part of that overwhelming in-your-face, like-it-or-not Indian experience (ok, don't force me to say subcontinent; in the context of what I'm talking about, its the same dusty terrain, LOC be damned).

I saw, in my ten-minute drive to an extremely international style office, Lata Mangeshkar and Gol guppas; cows and colony parks; cotton kurtas and crows; dusty feet and sweaty ideas; bus rides and whirling fans; struggling grammar and corrupt politicians; visionary men and characterless charlatans; inept tellers and unreliable plumbers; fantastic domestic help and useless colleagues; dirty maroon rajdhanis and cholera infested waters; steel plates with pockets for daal and subzi, kele-ka-pattas and roadside pottery; paanwaalas with tinny radios and hot rotis with daal.

I saw Kishore Kumar and sequined chappals, I saw sufi concerts and kulfi falooda. I saw so much though my eyes were blurred with tears.

I saw so much. Because today my husband said, "Lets Move to the States. This country is shit".