Manoharan & Sara in front of IWAY internet center

Manoharan & Sara in front of IWAY internet center, originally uploaded by Lisa Tripp.

Here on my last day, as my friend Manoharan and I went with his cousin to the local IWAY - internet center. Once there, I was able to go online and show them my blog, and show Manoharan the entry where I spoke about how we found each other in the village.

There really was some magic that we were able to reconnect after all of this time, with nothing more than me going to the village and trying to find him - and him just happening to be home from work at the time when I was there looking for him, and him asking his niece to go find out if the foreigner's name was Sara Smith.

Now we were saying good-bye again, after 40 years. It wasn't quite so difficult, as this time we have addresses for each other, and we both know that our connection from 40 years back remains a treasure in our lives forever.

With the rain starting to come down heavily, Manoharan and his cousin both got aboard a very full bus and headed back to their homes. I returned to the hotel just in time to avoid a torrential rain, and to meet up with Bruce's friend Ashok. We had a dosai and coffee and time to reflect a bit on the years since Bruce and I had been here in 1967. Ashok had lived in Bangalore then, and he and Bruce became good friends over the years.

My mind was already moving into the next leg of this journey. I arranged for a taxi at midnight to take me to the airport, and then Ashok have me a ride to the local cinema, where I thought I could watch a Tamil movie, stay dry, and pass a bit of time. The cinema was in a fancy mall, and there in the middle of the ground floor was a Santa's cottage with a squad of young people dressed as Santa's helpers. The whole scene felt so bizzare...so different from the other parts of India where I had been.

Going for an easy movie, I bought a ticket to the one that someone said was for children, and lots of children and their parents were there.
The movie was really a moralistic story of a father who opposed all kinds of corruption (police bribes and political favors) and other "bad things" (drugs and affairs) as well as taking a stand against poverty when wealthy people have so much, and also against poor people not having access to good health care. The short story is that the father had a nervous breakdown, confronted the police and was shot and killed.

What a strange afternoon....really...and when I left the movie, the rain was pouring even more. Eventually two other people shared an auto rickshaw with me and helped me get through the increasingly wet streets to the hotel just 4 blocks away.

Quickly, I was able to rebook my taxi for 10 pm and was slowly heading to the airport through the streets packed with traffic, in the pouring rain, with the water rising in many areas making the streets hard to get through.

It truly felt like my journey to India for this year, for this time, was coming to a close. The chapter was finishing. I had done what I had come to do: to be here, to look in the two villages for people I had once known and to thank them for the wisdom and friendship they shared with me while I had been with them.

Once again I felt the odd pain of not having mommy to come home to, of not having her interested, inquiring mind to quiz me about all the various details of my journey.

There in the airport in Chennai, waiting for my 4 am flight, I had many moments to watch my mind do a tug of war with the past, present and future. Sometimes I was able to breathe in the present moment, but the hours were challenging, and the rain kept pouring.

The plane left in the dark rainy night, and I quickly fell asleep.