Post-India

It's been one week since I arrived in snowing Petrozavodk, my native town in North-Western Russia. It's lovely to be with mamma and the family. To have hot shower whenever I want and not when the sun warms up water (or doesn't warm it up at all, which is more normal), where the streets are white and the tap water is drinkable, where brown bread is available on every corner and where fresh fruit juices are 100% safe and I don't have to ask the boy to wash the cup before poring my portion in it, where the cars stop politely when you cross the road (on a crossroad, which has been a rare thing in my life for the past 4 months), and where there is no honking AT ALL (if you've been there you'd understand)! But (always there's a BUT) i definitely miss everything else that one can't find here - Ganga, heat, babas, children, homeless dogs, fresh papayas, dust in the air instead of snow, thalis and chapatis, temples, buddha boys and monks, banoffee pie and ginger-lemon "sex on the mountain", samosas, elephants and monkeys, Himalayas, Himalayas, Himalayas, Tibetan bread, chowmein and momos, incenses, flowers, banana trees, women in sarees and men in turbans, rickshaws and crazy busses more more more...
But all that turns out to be SO superficial! What I got there is that overall meditative state, that new attitude to life, that happiness which has nothing to do with joy and excitement. Or have I just established myself in it? It was dormant like that cobra on the street, and a magician, let's call him India, woke it up, and now it is there dancing :)

BE HAPPY!