Zindagi zindabad!!

So, it's late as all get out (the Americanisms are starting to assert themselves in my speech again), work is blazing me into a state of sleeplessness, and yet I am invigorated, even if the eyes betray a bit of fatigue all day.

This has been such a great experience here in India, I feel a need to reflect back on the first note I wrote on this blog. The second blog entry I wrote was this...

...beautiful America. We will miss you, but we will be back. We have seen your green South, your Vermont in autumn, your Teton and Wasatch ranges, your City by the Bay, your deserts and rain forests, and a countless variety of other things of wonder and beauty. We have loved your people and your goodness. We look forward to seeing you again, shortly.

We will watch you recede off in the wake with a longing in our hearts.

I meant this.

Now, as I reflect back on the return back to America, I think back to how we felt at this point when I wrote this.

First, it was authentic. America is an exceptional land, and we have been fortunate to see so much of it. They just don't make countries like that anymore.

Secondly, I am in awe of how the boys as I think back to how they walked through the airport that day. They had no idea of where we were going, or how it would all turn out, yet they came along. At the time, it seemed mundane that they would go where we told them it was necessary to go. But we were going to *India* and they came right along like little troopers. It's amazing the trust children have in their parents. We are frankly unworthy of this level of trust. What an amazing thing is the trust and love of a child. They simply came to India alongside us.

And then there is Tara. In some ways, this was all her idea. This experience in India is but one of many turns in our life where she lead the way. In so many situations, her judgment has been validate as profound. Even as hard as the first six weeks were, this has all been worth it. Her innocent statement of, "We should move to India..." next to the fireplace on night in March of 2007 flowered into this amazing thing. She is indeed a rare creature.

One thing I have reflected on is the friends we have here. We really want to consider these people life-long friends. Asha hai.... It has been so gratifying to meet such interesting people and make friendships of this depth this quickly. The one thing I have noticed about all of our friends is that they work incredibly hard on the thing that brought them to India, but they are also dedicated to life outside of work with something that is proportional. Honestly, the American pace that so many try to keep back there is not only exhausting, but ends up with so much isolation. I believe and hope that this experience will instigate us to be builders of community. Life's too short for anything else.....

American friends, please don't read I am speaking poorly about you, us, or our land. It's just that...... well, things are different outside of our land of green and plenty.

How could we have gone from this land of green and plenty, a place that is the envy of the world in so many ways, to a place like India - one of tumult, chaos, and such deprivation that it makes the eyes sting... and found in that new place such happiness?

How? It is not easily explained in English, so I will say it in Hindi - Bharat mein zindagi bahut zyaada hai. This roughly means, "In India is a great deal of life." But, trust me, it means more in Hindi and doesn't come out right in English.

Zindagi.

Zindagi is not life as experienced through the next exhausting sporting event with the kids, or spending a day running around in search of a buck or a million bucks, or finding new reasons to get upset with overabundance..... zindagi is what you have when guys are getting their hair cut in the open air on a chair in front of a mirror nailed to a tree. Zindagi is children running around unfettered, without a care in the world. Zindagi is what runs through us and within us and it makes us smile and cry and fight and produce children and laugh and argue and enjoy bright colors and dance. It is what makes us human. It is a gift. Yeh Bhagwaan se hai, it is from God. Zindagi is what makes a couple guys sitting under a broken truck during a monsoon storm crack up over a shared joke.

In India, zindagi is spilling out all over.

I am fully confident that this thing that is flowering in us will be used somehow. Fiat.

Surely but one of many reflections on this time in India.

By the way, pretty great what Liam has experienced at a mere foourteen years of age, no? What about those pictures? He has a great eye, as stated by one of my friends.

All for now, Byl *out*.....