Category Archives: writing

Beginning with Marmelade

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Indira Ganesan, Sue's Daffs, 2013

Indira Ganesan, Sue’s Daffs, 2013

I have been wondering in the past thirty-eight hours how to begin to unpack my impressions of my first visit back after two years. Finally, I made some toast and jam, and a cup of rose tulsi tea, and now I’ll begin.

Home is one of those words that I use to return to “that which I know where I rest.” For a few days, home has been my friend’s home  where I retired and replenished during my travels in Colorado. I have often spoke of home being the yoga workshop where I once practiced with some diligence among my friends. Home is of course in, South Asian parlance,where my parents live. To say come home means come visit me at home: come [to my} home.

Boulder is home. It is where I am comfortable, and can breathe easy, where things look similar if not quite the same. It is where my friends have like me grown two years older. It is where I run into people I know but don’t quite know, who say, I haven’t seen you in a while, and I say, I’ve been away two years, and because it is Boulder, city of bicycles and slow-moving mountains, that is accepted.

To declare allegiance to one home over another is of course to betray another home, where you have friends, where you are supposed to be making a life. To choose, as Georgia O’Keeffe did in Santa Fe (when I saw it, I knew it was mine) is a form of colonization, for no place really belongs to anyone.

I tried to pay close attention to when I came home to Provincetown, where I live now, but I was caught up in a conversation about other cities, other lives with another traveler, an artist who travels for work. I wanted to know if I felt a stirring, if the sand and marsh were saying, this, too, is home.

I have no conclusions. There is in me a desire to have a home, a permanent city apartment, a place where I can do with less clutter. I know I went to Boulder to see friends and to read from my book, and re-discovered my community.

COLORADO!

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Indira Ganesan,Solo Sunflower, 2011

Indira Ganesan,Solo Sunflower, 2011

I’m excited to head back to Colorado for two readings. It is a lovely chance to see old friends and take the book back to where it was mostly written. Maybe it was the extra oxygen, or all that sun, but I lived fully my seven years there, in a gamut of emotions. What I discovered was a treasure trove of friendships, love freely given and given some more. Only by leaving can you often gain perspective on a place, but I was lucky enough to know I loved it when I lived there. Most of the time, anyway. Once I struck up a conversation with a woman at a soup-only cafe on what ‘home” means. How long does it take to make the decision you are at home in a place. Five years was her suggestion. Give any place five years before passing judgment.

I want to write more on this topic of home later, but for now, if you are in the area, please come to these events, for which I am deeply honored to be taking part:

Thursday, April 4, 7:30 pm: Boulder Bookstore, Pearl Street, Boulder, CO: As Sweet As Honey Reading and Q & A

Friday, April 5, 7:30pm: Tattered Cover Books, Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO: As Sweet As Honey Reading and Q & A

Peace During Flight-time

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Indira Ganesan, Afternoon over Bay, 2013 Indira Ganesan, Afternoon over Bay, 2013

It begins with my car whose battery light keeps flashing even though the battery and alternator are fine. So take a plane to teach, because the only bus to Boston gets me there ten minutes after my first class begins. I  plan to take the bus back.  I arrive at the station, and get in line, with fifteen minutes before my bus departs.  I wait  for one slow transaction to end, try to quickly to get a ticket, try being important, run, and find the bus departed two minutes earlier.  The only bus to my destination.  Maybe the next bus driver will drive you there, the ticket seller suggests when I return. I calculated the chances of a bus driver driving an hour and a half out of her way, three hours total, called the bus station to make sure, and decided to catch the last plane to my destination.

From the bus terminal, I went my favorite cafe, where after telling the story, I was rewarded with a coconut macaroon on the house.  This is why this is my favorite cafe.

And why I love to fly.

Taking the little plane to the Cape from Boston is the height of a certain kind of luxury.  I have been taking this flight so long, I wind up running into friends.  At the end of the flight, the pilot says thank you, and we say thank you back.  We are all in it together.  Twenty minutes over the bay, looking for whales or dolphins, sometimes falling asleep, despite the noise of the propellers.   Just when you feel ready for the trip to end, which given your attention span these days, is truly ridiculous, you sight land.

This is peace during flight-time.  privileged peace, to be certain, but peace.