Goodbye, Mumbai

It's only now that I truly feel like I am on my way home. Only a couple minutes into our flight, and the lights, glitz and squalor of Mumbai have been left behind as our jet races over the Arabian Sea. Briefly I spotted the lights of a cargo ship reflecting off the water but even that faded into the night, slipping over the horizon. 

With a murmured "Goodbye Mumbai," my visit to India truly feels done.

The one big difference this visit from other visits is in the past there has been this feeling of finality. When I was 10 years old, I had no real control over when or how I might return. Years later when I was 18 years old, I had some degree of autonomy but no true financial ability to return. Another thirteen years after that, I was lucky enough to have a brief visit but as a father to young children, raising them was the top priority for both time and money.

Now it's different. My children are adults, now. They made space in their lives for introductions to a culture, land and people they were never able to truly know. And I discovered a culture, land and people who have lived, loved, aged and progressed while I wasn't looking, as if in some type of reverse Brigadoon effect.