Mumbai Musings

I know--you're wondering where I've been--perhaps both literally and figuratively. Literally--I've been hanging around places like Atlanta, Rome, Memphis, Prague, Dallas, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, and other places large and small. I put a couple of kids in college in August, had an auto accident or two, and tried to stick more closely to home.

Figuratively, I've been tending to the pressing matters of the past seven months--keeping all the balls as high up in the air as I can get them. I've not been here (on this blog) much at all. The truth of the matter is that I really haven't had much reason to be in this place. Too much was going on around me--and too little was going on inside me.

Then I went to India.

Here is a picture of Guyeth and me--sitting in a swing in Mumbai. It's a beautiful little swing--sort of a traditional Indian swing with a beautiful Indian painting behind it. It sits just off the swimming pool in a gorgeous 5-star hotel near downtown Mumbai. We didn't stay there--we just visited.

It's one of those historic British hotels that dot the former British empire. I generally avoid these hotels. They are a bit too "high profile." You have to go through security just to get to the check-in desk in the lobby. And I follow the general rule of never staying in a hotel where I have to send my suitcases through an X-ray machine before I check in.

This one is called the Taj Hotel. I guess you've heard of it. This picture was taken just off the lobby of the hotel about ten days before gunmen seized the place and several other prominent sites in the city and killed some 170 people. We were there on a gorgeous early afternoon. We stood in front of the Gate of India and snapped some photos and then we headed into the hotel just to see the place. It is grand and beautiful--with an historic old section and a gleaming new tower. We strolled about the place--and then moved on.

I suppose the experience has caused me to reflect upon where I've been lately. It matters where we "are"--both literally and figuratively. It matters that I was literally at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India in mid-November and not on November 26. It matters that other people were there on November 26 and that their lives were destroyed or devastated as a result.

And it matters whether or not I am figuratively at the Taj now--reflecting on it. Trying to figure out what it means. Trying to understand what it was that brought terrorists and tourists and businessfolks all to that place at that time. Not to be there . . . is to truly be absent.

So wherever I've been . . . I'm back.