I'm tightly holding onto the smells and the clothes. My scarves, bangles and hair oil. I avoid eye contact with men and stay closely to those with whom I walk. I am an American but in so many ways I felt and wished that I was Indian. Landing in Mumbai was perhaps the most exciting moment of my life-once I started to breathe again after the flight attendants fumigated the plane with pesticides. Walking through the airport-seriously outdated, that sort of linoleum green that flooded middle schools across the country-our country, the U.S. which would have created a much easier system for navigating not only the airport and the missing luggage, but streets with no street signs, the traffic crossings with no lights, no stop signs or rear view mirrors for that matter. It would have been illegal here to allow cows to roam through city streets-social workers would be out collecting the children that sleep on those same streets when the cows retire and the stray dogs come out to play. The air was thick on that first night and I was in India.

Three weeks later, I've gotten used to the game. I know how to avoid the scam-complete avoidance-ignoring any person, voice or hand that taps you on the shoulder-any Indian who approaches you is not just trying to be nice-everyone stares-everyone-and then there are the real people who don't want anything just because I am white.

And I don't want to give up-I want to hate it so bad that I love it-because that feels so real. How sad to me that I have never experienced this before. To fight for space and work for food. To rub the layer of accumulated dirt off the arms that amazingly never got a sunburn-because it's winter-and it's still 80 degrees. The train gently rocking me to sleep-my first chai on the streets- a Bollywood star named Katrina, who I apparently bear a resemblance to (not that I'm complaining)- and the girl on the bus to Agra who asked me for a pen and when I gave it to her, thanked me and made it her own. The Taj Mahal, which despite my ability to have low expectations for architechtural feats, completely blew me away-as I stood barefoot at dawn with less than a hundred people and very very few tourists. It was the food and disregard for utensils-the liter bottles of water covered in dust selling for the equivalent of 20 cents. The drivers who used their own bodies to pedal you through the streets, willing to wait until you came out of the movies or dinner to take you home to the hotel where they only turn the hot water on from 8 to 12 and 5 to 8.

Where there is a wedding every night and where that means a white horse and trails of marigolds and a parade through the streets with 4 foot tall flourescent bulbs and a personal power generator. The craziness-the open space where someone had been, will be, or has lived their entire lives-the water with no dissolvable oxygen that houses dolphins while being fed a constant flow of the departed.

Being thankful for what you have because poverty is all around. Karma and the pursuit to change it-avoid being born again and again-marketing spirituality and putting red powder on my forehead with bits of rice while I am handed a coconut. "A coconut?" I ask, confused, reciting words that I think are Hindi, but cannot ask in English, except to say, "Donation? Sorry, I don't think I agreed to this. I'm not even a practicing Catholic, let alone a Hindu."

Dead puppies, piglets, fires in garbage pits, motor cycles, the flies, head bobbles, betel nut. English beer and liquor stores. Chapati. Madam, Sir. Nearly dying every day in traffic that defies all laws I once learned in a manual. No problem.

-"Where from?"
-"America"
-"Ah, the U.S. Very good country."
-"Yeah"
-"Mmm. Obama. Very good."