The flight from Chennai back to Denver takes about 27 hours, including layovers. The Lufthansa flight left at 2:00 am on Thursday and, through the wonder of the earth's rotation, I arrived in Colorado at 4:00 pm that afternoon. "So who knows where the time goes," as Judy Collins once sang (well she undoubtedly sang it more than once." On the plane I was adding to my journal and reading over some of the entries remembering the people walking around the Golden Lotus tank at the temple to Meenakshi in Madurai. And then changing planes, other people (carrying more stuff but not necessarily more joy) likewise walking or jogging to their next destination. The same? Different? Seems to me much more the same than different. On my last night, I was invited to dinner by one of my son Tom's colleagues, Dorairaj, who works in Chennai. We had idly, chutney, and a number of dishes whose names I was only becoming familiary with. Dorairaj had spent some months working in Colorado...I can only hope our hospitality and welcome to those travelling among us is as full and generous as that of the people I met in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
