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Today I have been so close to crying so many times. Teariness is at least in part because I am terrified about going to Delhi on Friday. I am worried about:

*packing
*fitting in things that need to get done in the u.s. over the summer (and figuring out how to do things from abroad)
-renewing my license
-paying tuition
-setting up/paying for/keeping track of apartment things
-cleaning at the dentist's
-follow up appointment at the doctor's
*getting to my auntie's safely with no cell phone
*finding a cellphone and some sort of internet service
*disappointing my internship site
*keeping in touch
*my little brother
*getting lonely
*becoming disillusioned with Delhi
*not being missed
*regret

That list is so awful. Right now I don't want to go anywhere or do anything. That's making me feel worse, because I know I am so lucky to be able to go away for the summer and instead of being excited and appreciative I am resisting change and getting scared. I think I am going to cling to my momma at the airport on Friday, sobbing.

Mostly I have been outwardly nonchalant about my trip but inwardly freaking out. It's almost like I'm forcing myself to go at this point, since I'm freaking myself out so much. I really want to feel better because I know that I want to go. I guess I'm just feeling kind of moody anyways and then I'm additionally getting cowardly, scared of going by myself instead of with a program. It's also scary that I will go back and Delhi won't be the same. Not just Delhi changing, either, but my version of Delhi. The friends I made in Delhi won't be there with me. I'm worried that I'll be lonely. I want to have friends, of course, but I also need to have friends because I won't be able to do a lot of the things I want to just because it's not safe to be by myself in big public places. I'm worried a lot about safety. I won't have my classes and university and program center waiting for me there, either. What if I don't love Delhi without those things? I knew that last sentence was impossible as soon as I typed it, actually, but I'm still having a hard time.

I'm trying to focus on fun things (food! Bollywood! feminist publishing! auntie! salwar-kameez! Mother Dairy ice cream! nationalism! Indian optimism!) but I'm also getting bogged down by those worries. I'm being so foolish, because I had a great time for five months before, and this summer is only half that, but ohhhhhh I don't even know. Things work out! They always work out! I just want so much to feel more excited and instead I just feel anxious. From December until about a week two weeks ago all I could do was go on and on about how much I love Delhi and how much I missed it and now that I get to go back I'm being an idiot. I also need to stop comparing my last pre-trip feelings to these pre-trip feelings, because right now I'm in the "I love MN and the Midwest and suburbs and being at home so much" phase of break and eventually I'd get lonely and bored here and going to Delhi and working at Zubaan should be so great.

I hate to admit this, but I think part of my freakout is because I might not have the internet all the time like I did last time, and I'm afraid of being out of such easy contact with home and friends for a couple months, and I'm afraid other people won't mind at all. I need to remind myself that I will be busy with my internship and I always have my auntie and I can do a lot of reading instead of wasting time on the internet and that I'm just being terribly insecure. I need to keep thinking about sunshine streaming into my bathroom at my auntie's, little schoolchildren with oversized satchels, head bobbles, pure veg samosas, being busy, late dinners, AIKGA mailers, relaxed lifestyles.

I have a feeling that as soon as I have a cell phone a lot of my worries will go away. That will be a way to keep in touch (albeit limited) and it will give me a sense of safety. Hopefully my worries will go away before then, but I had better be pumped about Delhi again by then at the latest. It is one of my three homes, after all.

things to look forward to

I'm staying with my auntie again this summer in Delhi. She has a computer and used to know how to use the internet and things but has forgotten because she so rarely needed to use it. I want to (re)teach her how to use e-mail so we can keep in touch more often and so she can also e-mail and receive photos from her daughter who's moved to Mumbai. I am also going to try to take my auntie to see the Taj Mahal. The Taj is only about an hour and a half drive, bus, or train ride away from her house in New Delhi, where she's lived for the last 20 years, but she has never been to see it. My 71 year old auntie lived in Delhi for most of her childhood and now her widowhood, but has never seen one of the most iconic images of India. My auntie is India. She was 10 in Delhi during Independence! She nearly missed singing the national anthem with her class for Jawaharlal Nehru on the day of Independence but her cousin bicycled her over just in time. I know the Taj isn't as big of a deal to Delhi-wallahs, but it's still all over and so emblematic and I think my auntie should visit. She's traveled a lot, but I also loved the Golden Temple, so if we have a longer weekend maybe we'll get to go to Amritsar, too.

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Other things to look forward to for The Future:

reading for pleasure
nimbu panni
summer movies
bucket baths
berries
songwriting
apartment decorating
fresh midwestern vegetables and fruits
clavicles
changing leaves
foggy, frosty fall days
baking
60s dance parties

localfiles

Since being back from Delhi I've been trying (even more than I did before) to get a lot of India in America. I'm lucky because there is a big desi population in the Twin Cities area. That means being able to buy ajman seeds at the grocery store and eat fresh, puffy puris at restaurants and watch Bollywood movies in real theaters(!). It's not quite warm enough to be wearing a full salwar-kameez, but I have instituted Kurta Mondays when I'm at school. Please come soon, Spring, I'd like to be able to wear full suits and air dry clothes again!

One time about a year and a half ago my friend Leigh told me she buys mehendi cones and has her eyebrows threaded in the Indian area of her old neighborhood. I told her I had never heard of threading and she was surprised in a way that made it seem like I had been missing out on something amazing like raspberry lemonade in summertime or Prince's Purple Rain album real loud on the record player or Freaks and Geeks dvd marathons with oreos dipped in milk. And since I really like all of those things I started searching the internet for a place to try having my eyebrows threaded. It took a long time, but eventually I found a huge list of women in my area who thread and apply henna and cut hair and do pedicures and all sorts of things you'd have done by the beautician in Delhi, but instead of having the beautician come to your house in India you go to their house in the States.

Turns out Localfiles serves as a sort of bulletin board for desis in a few different regions of the U.S., including Minneapolis. It's got a name like a singles network or something, but Localfiles is actually how I know about most Indian things in my area, like Bollywood at the discount theater or Curry Up Deli's sweets counter (which I still haven't sampled because sweets outside India are notorious for being a let down and I do not want to be let down). I don't mind a little awkwardness (you know, showing up to a stranger's house with hairy eyebrows), so I think threading is a really great deal. I've had my eyebrows done for $4-5 and that is crazy cheap, especially compared to having them waxed at a salon (at least $10) or even buying a waxing kit (around $10 maybe? and scary). I'm awful at shaping while tweezing, so I don't mind how painful it is to thread. Plus it reminds me of hanging out at my friend Caitlin's auntie's and chitchatting with her animated beautician, who is really beautiful herself, or my auntie's beautician, who told me her husband is just "thik hai" ("ok"), but that her children are really great.

This video shows one method for threading. It's different than the way I've had my eyebrows done (with the beautician holding one end of the thread in her mouth), but it does work. I don't mind the thread-in-mouth method because the whole thing is a really casual process. My friend Reeta told me that she would thread her friends' eyebrows for them while they were at university in Delhi. She learned from watching other people thread and then she just picked up a spool and tried it and figured out better types of thread to use from there and started threading her friends in her hostel (hostel is the term for a dorm in India). Sometimes I wish I were cool with rocking the unibrow like Kajol or Frida, but I'm realizing that I actually sort of enjoy having them threaded. It's comforting for me, or reassuring maybe?, knowing that women all over South Asia and the Middle East do the same thing. I really miss beautician days in Delhi.