Emerging...

Well I think I was having an extended, minor anxiety attack for a while there. I am fine now, in fact I feel stronger than before as is often the case with hard times. No single thing happened to trigger my uneasiness, but a few factors piled up. First there was Brian leaving and being suddenly alone in a strange place...then the harassment in Hyderabad, then it got even crazier when I was least able to deal with it. I am now in Chennai, happy and breaking down some of the barriers that I put up around myself when I couldn't trust the world.

Here's what happened...I arrived to visit one of the projects I needed to do an update for. The director of that project had lost his wife last year, suddenly, and I was to stay with him at his house (usually nice for me, since I have been in hotels for over 2 months). I arrived to find the house covered in huge photographs of her and the home still very much in deep mourning. My co-worker could not stop crying and would collapse in grief on me regularly.

It was so sad- he loves her so deeply and she was not even 50 years old. He is absolutely heartbroken. But I was of little help, already quite depressed myself. In India the concept of privacy doesn't really exist and it was not at all strange for him to have me in the house during this difficult time, but I couldn't handle it. I obliged as well as I could, for example by looking at 200 photographs of the dead woman in her casket, which had a perverse window built into its face - for her to see out or for us to see in?

He took me to visit projects for a day - to see the land reclamation being done in tribal areas overly-silted from the tsunami and extreme flooding this year. It was OK, but I was wondering if I could handle spending the scheduled five days there. Aside from the challenge of consolation, I was overwhelmed by the way I was being treated as a little girl, my preferences and free will totally over-ridden by he eccentric, grieving man, who bellowed out commands to his servants and ordered me to eat huge amounts of food, do this and do that.

It was simply not conceivable for him, a well-off, middle-aged, rural Indian man, to consult my opinion on matters affecting me. This was totally weird to me, a strong willed and able woman, and I felt completely suffocated. I don't know if this makes any sense to my readers but it's how I felt. I knew something was up when I arrived early in the morning to find one of his many servants picking his toes for him. YOU GOTTA PICK YOUR OWN TOES! Really.

So I was itching for a way out, couldn't imagine five days in this situation. What cursed mental powers did I trigger? For the third morning of my stay, he received a call that his mother died at the same time as I was sobbing my heart out to Brian, who helped me see that I had to get out of there. I had to leave this sad, sad situation. He tried to get me to go with him to look at her dead body but I said sorry, I gotta leave on the next train. I hope I don't sound too callous but the truth is that I did feel kind of callous. I am imperfect and it's OK.

Anyway, when I got to the station I found that one of the servants had relieved me of all my money. I probably would have done the same if forced to pick toes. That was the final proof that I had strayed from my path of sanity. Luckily the train ride was easy and I listened to music that rocked me back towards mental health.

And Chennai has been good to me. I am staying at Hotel Comfort and the name suits it perfectly - it is healing me swiftly. And the joyful eccentricities of travel are coming back into my awareness - such as the 2 foot tall Indian midget (seriously) wearing a huge sombrero who works as the doorman at the Tex Mex restaurant where I dined last night! So all is well that ends well. My strength is restored.