Monday 7 September 2009

The Return Home

(written 07/09/09, posted 14/10/09)

My flight home is early. It’s an irony that the place I’m going on my VSO placement, India, is the place I have a stopover. Getting off in Mumbai is an experience in itself and the airport feels pretty chaotic even though we are pretty much herded through the airport as we’re all on the connecting flight to Heathrow. Seeing people asleep on airport benches and the cacophony of mobile ringtones gives me a brief insight into the Indian culture I’ll be living in for a year come November.

The flight is pretty uneventful and I pass time catching up on my journal and watching a cheesy movie I thought would be a waste of two hours of my life but turns out to be strangely enjoyable.

On the tube from Heathrow I see strange phenomena a few metres below me as I go over a bridge. Namely, a red London bus and a black taxi cab moving slowly in traffic. They appear tiny from my train where I am watching the world go by below. After 9 weeks away I am surprised at how odd they both look. People kept telling me that by going to Asia I would find myself. I don’t think this happened as I was never lost. What it did give me was a different perspective that time away does. It turns out it was also a practice run for what is going to be my new life for the next year as a VSO volunteer in New Delhi. And after my brief insight at the airport, this is something I can’t wait to now get started.

No comments:

Post a Comment