A post from Noida: July 30, 2023

I've been to this place before. Warm nights, small bugs, rich smells, and so much color that your eyes almost fail to process them all.

And if you have a hard time with the sights, imagine the smells. Curries, plumeria, and a scent that can only be described as tropical.

It breaks my Californian brain to think of how this place can smell hot and wet, but it does. What must the person who comes home from colder climes feel when they break through the olfactory nothingness of airport air conditioning into the warm mist?

I imagine it’s a lot like the pang I feel in my heart when tip over the edge of the Sunol grade at dusk and spy my beautiful valley of twinkling lights.

There is also body odor. I won't rhapsodize about that, though. And honestly, it's not as prevalent as you would think, given the heat and the press of bodies. I tip my face to the sky and am kissed on both cheeks by a fine mist. The smell that floods my nostrils is water slowly soaking into stone over the course of a thousand years.

Out my window in Noida, I see green. I'm across from a huge modern mall behind the double pane glass of a five-star hotel where every night I go into a curtained box to be wanded by a small security woman with a friendly smile and a smear of red down her parted hairline. I pull the curtains wider and look down to catch four street dogs. Two are playing, one is wandering, and one is snuggled into a bush on the third floor of the garage. People are taking their daily walks, dodging the detritus from the American Street Corn stand that was doing brisk business the night before. Right now, it’s calm and quiet. The heat has yet to kick in. Today it'll be in the nineties, rainy, and so humid that no matter how cool the AC keeps my room, condensation will guarantee that my head hits a damp pillow when I go to bed.

I return to the ghastly floral couch to type this entry. My friends and colleagues are downstairs having breakfast, but I can’t stomach it. Instead, I nurse some black tea that I’ve made with bottled water and a smashed Luna bar that I’ve brought from home. I've just spoken to my mother, a tremendous fighter, although I don’t know if she sees herself that way. She tells me about how my stepdad is a tremendously brave man.

And I'm so far away.

A tear might slip down my face while I type, but it’s with pride more than sadness. I expended every ounce of sadness I brought to India within the last few days. I have none left.

While they're discovering what it is to be in this moment in his cancer journey, I'm as far from home as I can be. I ache to be there, but I know it's right to be here. In the humid air, drinking Kashmiri kahwa, laughing, hugging, begging my friends to be mean to me so I don’t break down at the first sign of kindness, and generally being alive even when diarrhea briefly made me wish for death.

To be at the end is to appreciate when you're not. Or, at least, when I get to that place, I hope that I'll look back on a life that was rich and full. That includes today.