"Good to be back?"

We have been asked countless times a single question - "Is it good to be back?" There are variations - Americans often drop part of a sentence in our vernacular - thus, it becomes simply "Good to be back?" Or there is the leading question, "So, it's pretty good to be back?" with a tonal intonation that means, "Tell me how great America is."

Generally, the question is asked a bit like "How are you?" Most people aren't really interested in how you are - it's just an obligatory thing. There's nothing worse than the person of whom you ask, "How are you?" and they reply with a story.

So, if the question is the obligatory kind, it is answered in the same manner.

"It's good."

On the other hand, some ask it in such a way that you know they mean it. Or it is a close friend. So, you share some ideas with some people.

And the honest answer we give to the question is, "It's a mixture of feelings."

If they ask more, I still keep it high level and say, "We had a good life there. We enjoyed it and we were sad to see it end. But you can do alot worse than ending up here." When I say "here" I generally make a gesture with my hands to everything around me, which is, more often than not, very nice. A clean office building, a green and tidy neighborhood, a nice shopping center, a park.

It's all pretty nice.

In reality, we're pretty sad that it's over and we're eager to have an adventure of a similar sort again some day. As I have alluded to in this blog before, I am not sure that life is intended to be a tiring and relentless pursuit of order. But I have said enough on that theme....

Tara and I compared notes recently and found that the same thing was happening to both of us - people were asking questions about India that generally lead us to believe that many people here don't know where or what India is. For example, (and these are otherwise smart people) we have heard the following:

"So, did you have to wear your head covered over there?"

"I bet those people are so scared because of the punishments that they have."

"So, do they have like any equality between men and women?"

"Did you learn to speak Indian?"

"So, you had like a regular house?"

And on and on....

So, that is a bit discouraging..... I truly believe that many of our fellow Americans still live in a bubble that is soon to burst, if it has not been burst already, unbeknownst to us. We truly excel at looking inward, in a cultural sense.

So, there's a bit of insight into some of the questions we have been asked.

Work is cranking up nicely.