transit

It’s been a crazy couple of days. Finally slept on the plane. Almost wish the flights had been longer. I’m sure I have the look of a person who is lost and dazed. I am not just a couple of hours off beat, but an entire dimension it seems. The real world, I remember, is very different from Mysore. The energy is so different in India.

Still, I’m in traveler’s limbo, where everything is hyper ordered and clinically hygienic. Singapore’s Changi airport is my third airport in 9 hours. Now at the lost and found office awaiting one of my bags unwittingly left behind. I am a person in transit, one foot forward, the other dragging a little, nothing new there.

I’ve had little time to mull on my premature departure. Things have happened quickly: my dad and stepsister coming down with dengue, dropping platelets, packing, making my way home. Less than 48 hours.

I am starting to take stock of unfinished business I’ve left behind: three more weeks in the shala (I just reregistered for my fourth month last week), an apartment paid up till mid-March, a week of philosophy class, and a Sanskrit teacher I’d failed to inform about my departure. I wonder what I’ve forgotten on top of that.

Time is a most precious commodity, and there are some losses that seem unquantifiable: spending time under Sharath’s watchful eye, time with dear friends, and time to dig into oneself, which feels so much easier in Mysore, when one is more soft and pliable.

I left saying I could come back, when my father recovers. But I don’t know if that’s how it’s going to work out in the end. The recovery period from dengue can be quite long. And, upon taking leave of the shala, Sharath said I should return when things are quieter, when there are less students.

Truth is I can feel reality tugging me back the further away I get from Mysore. I can feel the pull of family and the dharma that comes with being a daughter—at least my version of it, which I know strays from the Philippine ideal. I’ve bought my dad a bottle of Glenfiddich malt whiskey for us to break open when he finally feels better.

And I can feel that even if this wasn’t exactly my plan, this is the way things are supposed to be.

(This was written, literally, in transit. I am now in Manila. Arrived yesterday night. My dad is still in a critical time. But I've seen him and feel that recovery is around the corner. The irony is that I am now not allowed to visit. I have a cold. And he's too vulnerable to be exposed to it. The good news is my step sister is better and has returned home from the hospital.)