So today is my last day in Kolkata. It is so hard to believe that 3 months have gone by already. Tomorrow I will catch a 30 hour train to Agra, spend a night there, and see the Taj Mahal. Then I will take a bus to Delhi and go to the airport, where my flight leaves for Paris early Wednesday morning. I'll be in Paris for a week, and leave on Tuesday evening, with a short stop in Dublin, and then back to the States. I fly into DC, so I won't be back in PA until probably the 13th of December. I think I will be glad to not be living out of a suitcase anymore, but it is definitely sad to leave India. I have gotten used to the craziness of the traffic and the sounds of the city. I will miss so many things about living here- the call to prayer from the mosque that wakes me up every morning, the women in their beautiful saris, the barrage of color from the marketplaces, riding the bus every morning hearing the ticket collecters hollering their destinations out the side of the bus, stopping every few hours to have a cup of chai (and being unable to turn one down...), the incense burning in even the most humble shop, the candlelit stalls in the evening with men stopping for a snack on their way home... so many sights, sounds and smells that I have come to love. And so many people that I will miss as well. Not only my roommates, and other travellers that I have met while being here, but the kids at the shelter home (who, on my last day there on Thursday not only thanked me for playing with them and giving them coconut oil and powder, but actually sat me in the middle of a circle and laid their tiny hands on me and prayed for me (in Bengali, of course) for safe travels and that I would come back soon. It was also really tough to say goodbye to the girls at the center- I've been working with them for 3 months now and they will miss me as much as I will miss them. So many incredible people that I have met here, and some of them I know I will see again someday, but it is still difficult to leave. But I, like the rest of us, am trapped in the grip of time, bound by chains of seconds, minutes and hours that march by, deaf to my pleas to slow down. The passage of time is inescapable for all of us, and while sometimes that is a good thing (I doubt I will want to slow down any hours on my train ride) it can be difficult when we are in a place that we love and are forced to leave. Yet change is part of life, and while we may hate it at times, we must either embrace it or live a static, fearful existence, and eventually be dragged kicking and screaming into a different stage of life. So I guess it is better to enjoy the moments that we have while they are here, and not to hold on too tightly to them lest it hurt even more when we have to let go...
"I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiates 3: 10-11
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