In Anticipation

Early tomorrow morning we are off for Chicago, taking the Megabus to be with the Lonergans and the Evan Makelas for Thanksgiving. The trip will seem something like a shakedown cruise for the longer trek to Delhi scheduled for a week from today. Since we will be back here Saturday evening, we will have a day and a half to recover and to pack up for that trip; but, certainly, anticipation hangs heavily in the air this evening, believe me!

Partially this sense of anticipation revolves around the uncertainty surrounding what lies ahead. Not that we both haven't traveled internationally prior to this. Lee, in fact, spent a day in Mumbai, then Bombay, back in 1962 (on the same voyage during which he stopped off in Sri Lanka -- then Ceylon -- as well as Singapore and Saigon ); both of us have been elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, too: Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia ...

But India is something else again. On the one hand, we might find the atmosphere like that of Thailand in the mid-nineteen-sixties or Japan a few years earlier. But, certainly the cities will seem, at least to some degree, much more integrated into the global community than either Bangkok or Tokyo was "back in the day." And neither country was nearly as poor nor as crowded even then as India is today.

I often caution my students, when discussing Chinese history and culture, to avoid saying "the Chinese" since it's impossible to categorize an entire population of over a billion with a single adjective. Clearly the same is true of India. On the other hand, I'm sure, once we are on the scene, we'll make some categorical generalizations and feel some kind of general emotional reaction (empathy? detachment? unease?) that will serve as a touchstone thereafter. What that reaction will be, however, remains the great unknown at this moment in time.

And therein lies the anticipation.