i am here... and. oh it is so strange and wonderful and horrible. I was in bangalore, but i could not bring myself to go to the cemetery alone. i thought i could, but then i found myself feeling so so fragile. brittle - like the least thing would make me shatter into little pieces. i knew i couldn't deal with it.

everything here reminds me of my nana. Women in saris. A smell of talcum powder. I see an old man driving a car and it's my grandpa. I took a lift without doors, and i was thrust back into the apartment building where i got stuck in such an elevator. The apartment building where they died.

It's all just echoing in my head and i didn't expect that i would feel like this. Skin is stretched so thinly over muscles that ache with my grief. I hold my arms around my abdomen while i try to sleep. I fear that my bright red rage will just spill out onto the sheets.

I picture the blood.

it's hard. i was alone in the airport in bombay and i found myself picturing my mother standing there waiting for her suitcases in that very spot. all alone, still wishing she could wake up from the nightmare she'd been thrust into. How was that flight that she had to take? How did she do it? 20 hours, all alone, nothing to do but sit in the dark and think.

And then. Staying with some oldish people in B-lore... nana and grampa's age. They still cal it "the incident" as in... "this is Narcissa. She's the granddaughter of those P_____s from The Incident" and then they go on and tactlessly ask me millions of questions until i want to tell them to shut up but i can't cause i'm staying in their house so i just put on my very sweetest voice and tell them what they want to hear. yes, they caught someone. yes, drugs. yes, horrible. yes, tragic. i don't know what they want from me. Do they want me to start crying? I sense that they do... they want me to weep and then they can tell the tale with relish at their next bridge game.

And then later, they sit and tell E and J all about their mom, and their aunts and uncles and their history. And Estelle is like me - eager to learn - so she's asking all kinds of questions, and i think it's so horrible that i will leave this place with so much knowledge about their history and mine will remain this tragic blank.

*

but. it's not all so horrible. There is beauty everywhere. Women washing clothes on the roadside. Men balancing haybales on their heads. Thalis for lunch. Paneer with butter chicken sauce for dinner. Fresh naan. Cows randomly roaming the street. funny signs: "STOP: DEAD SLOW" and "NO URINE PASSING"

and stories around various dinner tables... everyone's a character from a movie. I doubt that anyone could write dialogue like this. "i know! he looked so great! especially with his teeth!" i can't even recreate it... old grandfather hasn't even noticed that the doctor was missing teeth.

grandmother and daughter can't get over how wonderful he looks now that he has them.

Conversation takes twenty minutes.. ("i always thought he was a bit strange.... conversation with him was impossible. Like pulling teeth." [this said by old grandfather with totally straight face. no idea that i'm crying because i'm laughing so hard])

I feel like i'm alive. And that is something.

8:15 a.m. - 2003-08-03