The Old Marketplace

The scenery blurs as I race past it. In my feverish state, I fall asleep. It is my chills and shakes that take me to this place, where color blinds my eyes, where smells lay siege on my nose, and where my throat has forgotten its ability to swallow. I am lost in a labyrinth of bedlam where entrances and exits do not even exist. I race through the throng of people, anxious for air and relief. A caretaker sees my distress as I dream, and places a wet towel over my head. At the moment my head feels coolness, I see stairs leading to outside. I follow them, only to be greeted by cows and the possibility that one will step on my feet. My delusions bring me to flowers in every shape and shade, to Hindi music foreign to my ears, and to cluttered streets and the scrawny bodies that fill them. There is a naked child walking alone, a blind couple in the tunnel begging for money, a boy who wants to go to America, and a woman nearby who used to dream herself.
I am exhausted simply by standing. I want to collapse on a magic carpet to take me above the pandemonium. I want to be rescued from the hallucinations this fever has caused and find a cure in my awakening. But I will never rouse from this state because I will never recover from the sickness. The disease of wanderlust will not abandon my body. It brings me here, to a marketplace in the city of Bangalore, igniting a fire that lashes across the plains of my mind and through the bloodstreams underneath my skin. India grips the traveler with such a force that even the smallest touch leaves a scar. My fever leaves my body changed forever.

***

Despite the confusion, things become clearer here in India. The pen has always been my closest companion. I have found such comfort in its consistency and its loyalty. Writing can never disappear. As long as I am alive, I can write. But here, in a place that constantly pulls and stretches my perception of the world, writing will not stop at being a comfort. It can be a purpose. India is an artist, painting my mind with a whole new palette of colors I never knew existed. It’s my duty to display those colors to others who will appreciate their glow.