Two months later...I'm in India!

This is and has always been my problem: consistency. Not to make excuses, but I feel it is a by-product of what is my greatest strength--biting off more than I can chew. I always admired those folks who knew exactly what they wanted to do in their senior year in high school, set off to do it, and are still doing it today. Here I am at 65, doing what I love--all of them. This includes teaching, which pays the bills, writing, traveling, and playing classical guitar. What I'm telling you is that I'm learning to be a blogger and a podcaster, on top of all that, hence my long silence here. Those things require consistency. Prioritizing a brain that is polyamorous in its endeavors is a full-time job in itself. Life is never boring. I'm currently writing this from a humid room in #Kolkata, #India. It is humid because no one in India has central A/C, and rooms are cooled with wall air conditioners. Those units are used sparingly, however, because of the astronomical cost of electricity. Ceiling fans rule the day. It is my second trip to Kolkata and my longest (last year was just three weeks, this year is seven). The insanity of the traffic and the constant, vibrant movement of humanity through the streets are no longer astounding; rather, I've learned to enjoy them. The traffic is a thing of beauty, because all the honking and dodging and weaving is done with an almost mystical precision, and I have not seen one single accident in my two trips here. More astonishing is the fact that I have seen even the slightest hint of road rage. You see, people here simply don't have the time or inclination to be angry at each other. There are 15 million people in Kolkata, and they have all accepted the fact that there are delays, and crazy traffic, and almost insufferable heat (which everyone manages to suffer, sans central A/C). If they get angry, they don't bother showing it.

The difference here is the mindset. Why be angry? Why rage at one another? We are here under the same blistering sun, trying to get our stuff done, or maybe just trying to survive. No one seems to care about what you are wearing, what you look like, or where you are going. There are endless beehives of commerce taking place on every block: vegetables, fish, street food, fabrics, snacks of every kind, you name it. Some people are eating, some are doing their week's shopping, some are napping in the shade of a lean-to they have built on the sidewalk, while a family member one foot away sells fried fish. This blog is largely about writing, so I must mention that we visited College Street yesterday, an open-air market of nothing but books. Everything is there, from college textbooks on physics and calculus to Dr. Seuss, Dan Brown novels, how-to manuals, and the writings of #Tagore. The book market is not one street, it is several, stretching for some sixteen square blocks. Stacks and stacks of print from every corner of the earth. And yes, tea and snack stalls on every corner. In the din and clamor of everyday life, there is, somehow, peace. It flies in the face of my Western sensibilities, where sanitized, quiet neighborhoods deceive us into thinking we are in paradise. I love my life in the U.S. But this is different. This is a mind-trip as much as a physical getaway, and it is refreshing.