How we remember, forget

December 10, 2011. I lie on a fuzzy brown blanket on the hard Indian grass, birds crowing and chirping and flying and singing, darting in foggy sky from flowered tree to bushes dancing in the breeze. Tombs stand over us, centuries of sunlight and tourists gazing and taking, and we talk of past volunteers and brassy lovers sitting near. Is this India, I ask myself, and I feel opened by the trees. 
Nick and Sally stretch out, hands occasionally finding each other, he writes and she reads and I sit up, the third wheel that watches the old and young men that walk in pairs on the snaking paths, and they stare at me too, at my blonde hair illuminated in a world of black and brown, but gold means more. I am wealth, I am beauty, I am valued, but not like the women courted lying strides away. She is veiled in black, and he looks at me and at her and back at me, and I wonder how to love someone without seeing their face. Children run and fall in long-sleeved  shirts and sweaters because it's winter to them, and white kids roller-skate in small shorts and straggled hair. I watch them all, and hold in my mind the beautiful and the serene and I remember all else too.
I rode a motorcycle yesterday, for the first time,in the chaos of Delhi roads where rickshaws honked at the swervings of my unexperienced driver and the shouts of men who shout at girls like me and the approach of small children carrying fake roses, and Nick dismisses them, but I'm still new enough to care. 
I felt free and scared and I held onto his shoulders and waist and loosened my hold as time went on, and I know we all chase that feeling, the myriad of ecstasy, the setting Indian sun burning orange through smog and domes of temples. 
We passed under the Bridge of Despair, fires cooking meals for whole families, and I wondered where the children slept, do they have blankets for the chilly nights to barrier from the cold concrete, and part of me said, it's just India, that's the way it is. 
My mom says angst comes through, tucked in between words and in the gaps and holes of letters, but I feel calm now, but not as simple as before. 
I miss home, especially when voices of my friends come through my iPad in crackled jumbled phrases, the connections lost somewhere.