Still We Miss Each Other

“Mum, hi!  It’s Ida.”
“You’re here!”
“No, no. I’m sorry.  I’m not.  I’m still in Darjeeling.”

I called Mum in Kolkata.  I intended to visit her.  What with the agi­ta­tion and the slow pace of progress here, I didn’t make it.  I had emailed her last week say­ing I hoped to come this week, which didn’t work out.  She answered the phone think­ing I had arrived.

“What?  You travel across the seven seas and still you don’t make it to see me???”

I felt ter­ri­ble.  I miss her.  She’s one of those peo­ple who grows on you instantly; ener­getic, famil­iar, frank.  I met her through a mutual friend the first time I came to India.  She has a daugh­ter now.  I can hardly imag­ine.  Her daugh­ter is even talk­ing, baby Ben­gali bab­ble.  I can’t imag­ine.  Mum will have a new job soon as direc­tor of the India branch of an inter­na­tional NGO that focuses on psy­chol­ogy and hap­pi­ness.  Con­grats Mum!

I didn’t get a proper good­bye from Roshan of DLR Pre­rna, the NGO I’m work­ing with here.  He’s off to Ire­land and got all held up with the “Queen’s reps” in Delhi get­ting a tran­sit visa for Eng­land.  He sent me an email, express­ing his enthu­si­asm for the post­card project and his regret at not being able to meet up again.  Email: so unsat­is­fy­ing.  No one’s fault, but we’ll blame the Queen’s reps.

Mum isn’t sat­is­fied either. “Well, yes.  It was nice talk­ing to you.  But it would have been nice to see you face-to-face!”

Some­how we come so close and still we miss each other.