Some may think our life is adventurous. Most of the time, it
doesn’t feel very adventurous. Most of the time my job feels just like any
other 9 to 5 job. Sometimes, I feel more like a bureaucrat than anything else,
the person weaving webs of red tape ensnaring the unsuspecting instead of
slicing through it. As for home life, we have many of the same worries we would
have in the States. We wonder what we will make for dinner, how to get homework
done, and finding a babysitter for Saturday night. Of course, too, we have other worries,
some that we wouldn’t have if we lived in the good ole U.S. of A.
The things we see and hear that once fascinated us so can,
over time, become routine. There is a man who pushes a wooden cart full of
bright red tomatoes through the neighborhood next to ours. This is his sole
vocation, a peddler of tomatoes. He walks through the street shouting, and
women come to the second and third story windows of their flats and shout back
down to him. They lower a bucket on a rope to the street with money in it and
he sends the tomatoes up. Elise had described the transaction to me after having seen it on one of her photo walks, but it was
one thing to hear the story and another to see it with my own eyes.
Nowadays, I see the man every day. I am no less impressed
with his business acumen as I was that first day, but I admit I don’t feel the
same sense of wonder and excitement I did when I first watched him sell
tomatoes to women in high places.
I don’t want to become desensitized to India. This morning
on my way to work I saw not one but two platinum plated horse-drawn carriages
clopping down the middle of the road. Sundar pulled up behind it and started
honking the horn, but the road was narrow and there was nowhere for the horses
to trot to. I asked him what they were, and he told me they were wedding
carriages. Later this evening they would carry brides and grooms.
No adventure is typical or always wholly expected. It is
often the unplanned adventures that can be the most fun.
When we planned our travel to India, both when we first
arrived, last November and our most recent trip from the States earlier this
month, we planned an overnight stop in Europe, the unofficial halfway point.
In November, we spent less than 24 hours in Frankfurt,
Germany, but in that short time we braved the German rails and ended up in a
gothic city center near dusk. Church spires were silhouetted against the indigo
sky, the black forms of pigeons flapped in flocks overhead. As we made our way
over the cobblestones, we tucked our hands deep into our pockets against the unexpected
chill. We were looking for a traditional German meal, maybe bratwurst and a
stein of beer, but ended up at McDonalds instead.
Clementine fell asleep in my arms, and we fed the boys french fries and took
the train back to the hotel near the airport. Elise and I ordered brats and
beer from room service.
This time, we stopped in London. I had never been to London
before, but Elise and the kids had when they flew out from Chennai to
Washington. After checking into the hotel, we took a quick nap, then headed out
the front door of the lobby to see what we could find.
Elise and I had already toyed with the idea of taking the
kids to the Princess Diana Memorial Playground in Hyde Park so we took the bus
back to the airport and hopped on the Underground to take us into town. The
train ride alone—as it was in Frankfurt—would have been enough to tickle the
kids.
The playground was truly impressive, but what I know was
more memorable for me was the ice cream afterwards.
We bought soft serve ice cream cones and sat on the grass
near the carousel. The boys finished their ice cream and started pretending
they had bows and arrows. They ran through the grass with a sense of abandonment
I hadn’t witnessed in a long time. They drifted further and further from where
Elise and I sat with Clementine in the grass, perhaps pretending to be two Hawkeyes
from the Avengers, but never out of sight. The park was crowded, but they were
never unsafe, and we let them run. I was comforted by the security they must have felt there, knowing that we would always keep an eye on them (despite the fact that we did almost loose Petey in the Underground). We let them go. They were having their own
adventure.
One of the things I love most about my life is not
infrequently I find myself in situations I never could have imagined being in
only a short time ago. I never in my life thought I would get to see my sons
run happily through a field in a London park. It made me happy to give them
that small freedom as fleeting as it was.