Bindaas and Barelegged in Bombay

I was crossing the road to get to an ATM in Hyderabad the other day (a feat in itself given the traffic) when I felt the familiar onslaught of leering eyes on my body. I looked into the oncoming cars and suddenly they were everywhere -- men on bikes and in cars and crossing from the opposite side. I felt so vulnerable, as if the pressure of their gaze would cause my button-down shirt to literally pop right open.

But I also realized why it hit me so hard: I had spent the last few months in Bombay, wandering through the cobblestone streets of Bandra totally bindaas in dresses and shorts, and experienced only a fraction of this kind of thing. That city had proved a haven and those days were some of the most liberated I experienced anywhere in the world. Unlike other places in India, I could wear what I wanted, drink when I wanted, and come home at a decent party-time hour. And unlike cities in the U.S., there was so little focus on time and schedule, or even image, despite the beautiful and highly fashionable 20-somethings around me.

And there's more. The autos run on meter so you don't have to fight with the wonderful rickshawvalas. And the people I met -- through concerts, meditation circles, parties, whatever -- were some of the most creative, lively and coolly ambitious folks I've encountered in one place. I had long conversations about how zombies were actually, symbolically, immigrants, and what it was like to walk through the red light district at 4 a.m. I learned which train station had the best weed (and no, I had no plans to buy it), and which music festivals in India were worth my time. Novelists, screenplay writers, musicians -- I was surrounded, making it easier for me to understand why I came back in the first place.

Bombay also revealed the striking power of what happens when women are actually visible on the streets (and in offices and buses and trains). A couple of months ago I got a text from a particular family member telling me to come back home because "India was a rape waiting to happen." I felt nervous, but also defiant. India has become a second home to me, at least as much as any place I've lived for the past ten years, and leaving it in fear would mean being one more supposedly empowered woman hidden away and held back. Not that I'm interested in being a martyr, but being able to walk down the street at night to buy milk (or let's be realistic -- Old Monk) is a right that can't be taken away from me.

Not to be too rosy -- Bombay's got it's issues for sure (read Maximum City while standing in a flooded street during the monsoons if you need proof, or look at the sleeping line of homeless people around every corner). And every Indian city has incredible treasures, charms and kindness. But in a lot of ways, I got to see the best of this country during my summer in Bombay, and fall in love with the motherland all over again.

These Bombay Shores

My friends and I sit silently on the edge of a park in Bombay as dusk turns to night, our faces turned toward the wild grey sea. Today the wind is rough and cool, and if you hold completely still you can actually feel where it meets the hot city air. 

I watch the waves below me -- following one at a time as they crest and break on the jagged rocks. Beyond the water is an arching bridge and skyscrapers illuminated in yellow light. A cluster of women in black hijabs gossip on the stone wall on one side of us, and determined joggers turn their faces toward the breeze as they make their rounds. Elderly couples saunter by in comfortable silence, their hands clasped behind their backs. I hear no one.

Everything, suddenly, feels like home. Like Clearwater Beach at night with my best friends, and the dock that stretches into the Anclote River behind my parents' house. Like watching the Potomac ebb under the M St. bridge in D.C.; that one quiet spot along the Arno in Florence. The rivers and oceans and seas flow into each other and I could be sitting on any of their shores, just belonging. And I'm not the only one.

The other day I met a traveler en route to Brazil at a cafe in Bandra — a soft-mannered guy with kind eyes and a stubbly beard. He had spent the day taking photos in the hot sun and we drank coconut water and jaggery coffee and talked about where we had been. After sharing a few adventures the talk turned to Bombay and the city's chaotic grace. There was something magical here, a quiet sort of humanity living among the fishermen's nooks and bustling Dharavi market and lover's perches on Bandstand. He took a sip of his coffee and said, "I have this theory that living on the water is good for the soul.” 

I smiled because nothing is coincidence. This is the same theory I've held for a while, created with my toes in the ocean: the idea that people must live on the water, or amid the mountains, or in the desert -- anything vast and natural and divine -- to feel truly happy. That without something expansive and beyond our grasp for reference, it is far too easy to slip into our minds and think the reality we've created is the only thing that exists. 

Out here on the edge of the sea, with the wind in my hair and the rush of water drowning out millions of voices, I  have no doubt that there is more. I feel like one of the rocks on the shore, at the mercy of the sun and waves and stars. And for now this city is as much home as anywhere in the world could be. 

Princesses In A Princely State

The Hyderabad of my childhood was full of palaces.

The first, an old bungalow where my mother grew up with her seven siblings.  I spent hot summer days there in frilly frocks, playing with small wooden toys and hiding from the dog, Cindy. My cousins and I would swing on a huge metal jula in a courtyard teeming with leafy plants and accessed through a beautiful wrought-iron gate.

I remember the stone grey floors that stayed cool in the summer, the stories that my mother told about her late father. Learning to drink milky sweet chai out of saucers so I wouldn't burn my tongue, and the sway of my grandmother's soft cotton saris when she did pooja in the morning.  I remember that next door there was a small buffalo farm with sounds and scents so strong that I knew exactly where I was when I woke up.

The second palace was my cousin's home, a sprawling estate perched on the top of a hill. There were white arches, black-and-white marble floors and a terrace where I spent hours asking Chitti, a beloved maid, thousands of questions and chasing lizards on the banisters.

This was a house meant for dreaming -- I could imagine the portraits of my cousin's ancestors coming to life, their swords and turbans and jewels in tow.  I convinced myself I was part of that royalty -- though my heart was fullest playing barefoot in the yard and following my cousin into the nearby construction sites for daily "adventures".

The palaces of my childhood are gone now. By the time I graduated from high school both had been demolished for personal and financial reasons -- land sold and replaced by apartments and modern houses where the marble and stone give way to glass and steel.

It's a lot like what has happened to the city, Shah Alam tells me when I visit his Golconda Cigarette Factory with the Chaiwallas. At 88, he is the patriarch of one of the city's oldest families, the ones who claim Hyderabadi as their identity before any state or faith. In Alam's Hyderabad, dinner tables are stocked with biryani and mirchi ka salaan and meant for at least thirty people.

Back in the day, he said, the princely states kept social order as it should be -- families were close and trustworthy, servants were loyal, and money was secondary to respect. Abolishing these states, and the power of the Nizam, monarch of Hyderabad, was the worst thing that could have happened.

His nostalgia is a little bit like the city my mom describes, one of shaded streets and rickshawvallas and more bungalows with open doors. Now, new money directs urban sprawl, and political tension has divided many people earning and living in the city. Huge malls line the streets and the cost of everything -- from a cup of Irani chai to a haircut -- has grown exponentially. My mom says she doesn't always recognize her hometown, or its people, and I've spent the last several visits vicariously bemoaning the change.

But in the past few weeks I have discovered beauty in this new Hyderabad, too. I follow my friend into the depths of Old City one day as he visits schools in mostly poor Muslim neighborhoods. I sit in a circle with thirty eighth-grade girls -- the first girls to be educated in their families -- and we learn about each other. One of them, clad in her uniform and black hijab speaks of the changes happening in her volatile neighborhood with such hope and clarity that I have to believe she and her sisters will take over -- the new princesses.

I spend hours with my cousins who have perfected the art of working to live instead of living to work -- enjoying each meal together, taking drives with their friends just to talk. I eat the best shawarma ever with Vivek, party at the most beautiful house I've ever seen, and enjoy two wonderful dinners at the National Police Academy with one of my mom's best friends, the first woman director in the institution's history.

When I think of those crumbled palaces my heart still hurts for what this city's people, and my family, have lost. But when I look into the face of that school girl in Charminar, I can think only of it's strength -- something like the stone statue of Buddha in the middle of the Tank Bund, so peaceful and timeless that it's core can't be shaken.

Florida, Man

I'm counting down the days until I go home. It's been almost a year, and I need to revisit the cycle of sitting on my dock, laying on the hammock, and dipping my feet in the pool while the heavy air of year-round summer makes everything languid and lovely.

But seriously, let's just talk about Florida for a minute. When you're north of the Mason-Dixon, that state becomes a bit of a caricature. Beaches, snowbirds and Disney aside, it's synonymous with weirdness. Just check out "Florida Man" on Twitter, or this "Weird Florida" section of the Huffington Post if you  need proof.

Part of this was obvious to me growing up between the glorious Pasco and Pinellas counties along the western coast of the state. There's a particular stretch of U.S. 19, a frenetic highway by my house, that I call "where culture goes to die". It's home to the ugliest of strip malls and most unnerving of gas station owners. The road is flanked by skeletons of would-be adorable downtown areas, huge, uninspired malls, and chipped paintings of manatees.

Oh, yes, I've had plenty of memorable weird Florida moments: landing up in front of the confederate flag store at a Waldo flea market; a young mother who told me her son was crying because he wasn't used to dark people. That time that my friend  told me that I had to be a conservative Republican because my dad was a doctor. Or when my sixth grade English teacher once marked my correct grammar wrong until I made her pull out the teacher's manual.

But none of this obscures the fact that Florida is awesome, on so many levels.

It's a diverse, amazing home to some of my favorite people in the world, and for good reason. Because sometimes you live on an old orange grove, and find out your neighbor was one of the mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs. You can buy the best key lime pie at a place that looks like a warehouse, or walk to a restaurant that serves turtle and alligator. There are pockets of southern hospitality at its finest, and a spray painted BBQ joint alongside a biking trail that hasn't been shut down by authorities.

The town I'm from, Tarpon Springs, is also home to a huge Greek population with beautiful Greek Orthodox churches lining a small bayou off the Gulf of Mexico, with people that know how to pronounce, and make, a gyro. And you can drive and drive and drive, through Alligator Alley and to Miami, or back up through the forested almost-hills of north Florida, and discover communities that are each so different you wonder what will happen when their dirt roads happen to cross. Just read Jeff Klinkenberg or Carl Hiaasen if you need any more convincing.

When you live in D.C., or really any city in this region, you're often surrounded by people who read the same articles, watch the same channels and build some of the same conclusions about politics and society and abortion and gun control as you do. As a journalist, it's actually helpful to have Facebook friends who think the exact opposite -- reacting to every piece of news and election in a way that you both despise and need to understand. On a personal level, it's just easier to respect different ideologies when they're embodied in that kid who drove through a hurricane to watch a movie with you in tenth grade.

But that doesn't mean I'll live there again. Nah, I'll leave that wild, tangled swamp to the people who can handle it, and hope that I always have a home to visit.

The Bob Marley Poster, and other things

Coming home to Florida this time was different. The suburban roads were memories, not boredom -- the time my car slid across a highway in a hurricane, the trail where my friend Kent and I biked across the county on a hot day. Within hours of landing, I lay on a hammock in my backyard by the river, listening to wooden wind chimes, appreciating the details.

And I'm back in my room -- it's garish, orange and pink -- looking at photos of prom, my corsage from homecoming, snapshots of reggae night in Gainesville with a bottle of PBR. Diplomas, poems, bucket lists. I try on old clothes and make a Goodwill pile, hanging on to an ugly pink strapless dress from 8th grade.

A precocious high school friend always quoted this Spanish poem. I don't remember who wrote it, I think Neruda, but it essentially said that you don't know how far you've traveled or who you have become until you come home again, seeing your country with new eyes.

I read diary entries dating back to 4th grade, and realize that some things haven't changed. Some of the things I hated about myself are still painful insecurities fifteen years later. Recurring themes of hating my reflection, not knowing what to say. Crushes that still make me feel a little bitter, "best" friends that were never sincere.

Then there are the dreams -- I wanted to be like Mother Theresa and I wanted to be a writer. I guess halfway there isn't so bad. On my list of Things to Do (when, at what timeline, who knows?) there are things I've crossed off: "Publish a Photograph", "Live abroad alone", "Go to a temple that requires lots of hiking", "Be somebody's role model". I have India to thank for so much of that -- I always have India to thank.

In a box of letters that I've saved I found a passage about education that my dad sent me in college. I didn't know then how my ideas would change, how I would come to see education as something completely separate than a school or university. How much I would support the subtle buzz of revolutions -- trying to find the "yes" in the Occupies, the Tahrirs, the anti-development movements.

There are things missing at home -- the sound of the tag on Louie's collar, clinking when he drops his head to the floor. A blueprint of Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel is replaced by a striking black-and-white of a cobbler at a temple, taken by a friend in Chandigarh. Everybody is a little older, a little more anxious from economy, health, jobs. The bathtubs are leaking, and the faucets are quirky.

And yet, I've never been happier to hear the rush of wind in the huge Jacoranda tree, or the steady waves against the dock. After living in so many homes in the past two years -- whether out of backpacks, or second-hand dressers -- my house is a reminder of the continuity, of the connected dots.