India
I have been to India twice.
Seen the beautiful smiles, gazed at the vibrant colors, tasted the spicy food, felt the drenching heat.
A country so breathtaking and a people so hospitable and wonderful, I felt like family.
I have beheld the gut-wrenching poverty, the heaviness of starvation, the hovering of death, the abandonment of babies.
A country so heartbreaking and a people hanging onto strands of hope.
I have felt the wind blowing against my face with my head out of a speeding rickshaw, out a bustling train.
I have held onto the narled beautiful hands of an old woman, held small babies close, close, close.
So close I felt like my heart and my world would expand so much that it would burst inside me.
How I love that country, with all of it’s contradictions: the beauty with death, the smiles with tears, the color with the poverty.
It takes your breath away and sweeps your heart inside it.
