Bad Karma

We arrived back home at around 6 am on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday night I took a bus from Pune to Mumbai - it was a special airport bus that was supposed to pick me up at my hotel and take me directly to the airport. They arranged to pick me up at 6, and when I boarded there was only one other passenger - he had started his trip at 5, he said, but the bus was stalled for 45 minutes because the AC wasn't working. (An AC malfunction is always reason to stop a bus in India, because if they don't provide air conditioning they have to refund the difference between a deluxe ticket and a regular ticket, which is probably 90% of the ticket price). He told me we had to pick up another four passengers around Pune. We picked up one elderly couple, which took a while because the bus was too big to fit down the residential alleys. Then, at around 7, the other passenger asked me, "Did you forget anything at your hotel?" It turns out we had just driven in a circle and we were in front of my hotel again. I thought that was bad planning, but I didn't have the worst of it. When we were about to get on the highway we picked up enough passengers to fill the bus. They explained that they had been dropped off some time ago - the bus they boarded had collected all the passengers before the driver realized he didn't have any fuel. He left to find some and told the passengers to board the next bus.

The trip to the airport took around 5 hours in the end. I didn't mind because I was meeting Gilles at 12:30 am or so. The only problem was a strange man from the Osho Ashram in Pune. He looked a lot like Rasputin. He insisted on sitting next to me and then proceeded to tell me how he had had a lot of relationships with western women. I had heard from my friends in Pune that this ashram taught good meditation techniques but that the long-term residents were rumored to practice free love. I was not disappointed when this guy changed seats - I preferred his suitcases to him.

We arrived back home, admired our dead plants, and promptly went to sleep. We woke up around 1 PM and started breakfast, and then at 2:30 Ramakrishna showed up with his friend from Mumbai, Jyoti. Ramakrishna is quite excited about producing a play in sign language. Later the guru Anantadev arrived, and told us about Michele's visit. He and Ramakrishna were quite amazed at how much she seemed to like India - Anantadev said it must be karma, and she must have been Indian in a past life. This got me thinking how I was certainly not Indian in a past life - heck, I don't even believe in past lives. I have been trying to figure out why it is that I don't feel at home in India. I think I never will. A lot of western people tell me how they love it here, how they want to come back again and again or stay for a long time, and the thought doesn't appeal to me at all. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, and as someone who can adapt easily to new environments. Maybe I am just getting older and it is not as easy as it used to be. But on the other hand, maybe India and I just don't get along. It's not that I dislike India - it's just that I can't imagine living here forever. I tried to think of reasons as I walked down Sampige Road today - the best I can come up with is that this is a country of a billion people who never seem to look where they're going.