Day 0: Hello Home

Note: Due to limited internet access/time, I will be posting entries as I am able. The date they are posted may or may not correspond to the day(s) being reflected upon. This entry was written on Sunday June 13, 2010, late that night.

And as the plane descended upon Pune, I looked out the window, watched the pricks of light float by below, and said, “Hello home.”

Two years. I will be in India for two years. The vastness of time has not quite dawned upon me yet, I think, but as I uttered the words “Hello home” I began to realize the permanency of location. This is home now. Home. I just flew on a one way ticket. Soon I will start having new suits made, building up the wardrobe of my new home culture. In a few weeks I will start renting an apartment in Mumbai. I will put up posters, perhaps buy a piece of furniture or two. I will go out to work and come back to these posters, this furniture every day for two years. Every day. And when I come back I will say I am “going home.”

It is not a bad home, though. The people are very nice, friendly, and…”unique” as we have joking termed ourselves. Already I have discovered that Pune is rave central and we have begun to plot weekend outings to Pune to party and crash at another Fellow’s apartment. Of course, I have a feeling these will be incredibly rare due to the time-consuming nature of teaching. Still, I feel so blessed to be around such fun, and yet socially concerned, people – and I’ve only really known them a couple hours. These are people with whom I feel I can enjoy spending the long hours planning, strategizing, and even sobbing as the plans inevitably fall apart only to be built up again. Needless to say my roommate is also absolutely lovely (the third roommate has yet to come so I cannot speak for her). Tomorrow is the official start of the Institute, the beginning of the unknown...

... ... ...

The night before my flight, I read a gchat status that struck me. The status read something like: “Thus starts the beginning of the rest of our lives.” In context, the statement seemed to refer to the fact that the senior trip to Puerto Rico organized by my Christian fellowship had just ended; thus the last remnants of our college lives, of Princeton had finally slipped away, marking the end of the “era of Princeton” and the beginning of, as the status stated, “the rest of our lives.”

And yet this moment is no special than the rest. Each moment, each day, each hour, each minute has beginnings…and endings. The wind that blew one moment is gone the next, but the leaf is carried with it remains at my feet. And then I’ll walk away, leaving the leaf behind. And yet these beginnings, these ends—none of it is absolute. I may meet that leaf again, feel that air once more. Life is fluid. Just a river with eddies where bits get caught, exiting the flow, and rainfalls bringing new drops to the waters. I leave Princeton physically, but I still carry my Princeton experiences in my memory and my Princeton friends in my heart—and in my email. :) Reunions will occur and the Halloween tide will bear me back again to Princeton’s shores. None of it is absolute.

This is not so dramatic. This is not the “beginning of the rest of our lives.” This is but one moment of many, one beginning of many along the flow of life.