Strength, banana peels, and that marshmallow embrace

It is a funny thing, knowing when your soundness of mind is slipping. For weeks now, I’ve known this, seen it from somewhere outside myself, heard it in the way the words of children bounced off my brick, barely beating heart instead of being absorbed in their usual way of sweet marshmallow embrace.

It is a stranger thing when the strength in you realizes it is time to step up, that only so many positive lessons can come from this state, and this strength begins to clear the banana peels from your path.

Finally, when this strength finishes cleaning up and comes to enter the confused and hopeful and healing rest of you, she holds your hands from within. This sort of comfort can come from nowhere, and no one else, as only from within yourself can you embrace such vital and personal pieces of you - your blood, your heavy tongue, your desperate optimism.

Only through this strength can you be sure you’ve acted with love and grace and gratitude, when your empty outstretched hands begin to hold the words of others too closely.

To India, I owe my most blissful moments and the moments that left me wondering if another breath was really worth the effort.

I regret nothing and embrace the memory of each moment within the loving arms of a country whose beauty -lovingly, gracefully- breaks my heart.

I have learned about limits and about how much further than your breaking points you can go, if you can just summon the strength to shrug, to smile, and to hum some Bob Marley when you’re scared.

I know now that it is arrogant to bow at the feet of another, palms to the sky, and to offer more than they need or want from you. Similarly, I recognize the greater value of having one hand over a strong heart while the other is free in case anyone who needs it can access the comforts of this same strength.

I will depart India to fall in love with Thailand, but there is something of me, a piece of this personal strength that could only reasonably exist within Her borders - this I will leave here, to weave and mingle amongst these beautiful people, until I am blessed enough to cast my humbled eyes upon the soil of this land once again.

Bharat Mata: Mujhe tumse such me pyar hai. Fir milenge.