sleep

i love to sleep. especially lately. especially after india. for some reason, sleep has been my goal after the red-eye flight from mumbai. so my bed is my place to be.



the night we got into Mumbai and stepped off the bus for a roadside stop at the district office (for a tiny bit of food, a liter of water and a poddy break before we rode for 4 more hours), i went inside the house. the bus stopped outside of the house in the street about 3 or 4 yards behind another vehicle. the yellow street light buzzed and endless indian street chatter hummed. several busloads of people passed us at 1 in the morning, and i know that a busload of sweaty white girls wasn't unnoticed.

i walked back several times between the bus and the yellow gate to the house, but once, while i was stopping to wait for Simone, i stumbled upon something. i didn't disturb him, but realized when my eyes adjusted to the light (or lack of) i realized there was a man curled up on his side, fast asleep on his cot. in the middle of the street.

um, whoa. we were trodding in his bedroom.

this was probably one of the most surprising things to me -- something third-world that i hadn't seen before. and this man was not alone. as we drove through the rest of mumbai i realized that we were passing probably hundreds of people sleeping on the streets. a thin sheet separated some from the dirty ground and even without, groups of people slept side-by-side. this was their resting place.

i wondered outloud this morning how people could sleep with all of the noise. sib replied that they get used to it. tune it out. i don't know how they do it, but need rules out a lot of logistics.

and i slept in a bed all week. with clean sheets and a pillow. in a room with screens and an amazing ceiling fan. it's humbling, yet, i can't be who i am not. i can only look upon the world with openness, awareness and an ever-widening view of humanity, need, who i am, what i have and how i have what i have. i hardly know how -- but these moments are where i express my need to act and my inability without community and the inspiration of God.