Sleep - yes sleep. It is now 3:09 in the am where I am - California. Sleep alludes me. The older (maybe not sure - but a boyfriend 20 years my senior - 40 to my 20 told me he didn't sleep as much as he used to) I get the less I can sleep. It is a drag because I used to like to sleep and still do - just can't.


Anyway - I woke up after a great sleep and they fed me breakfast and then bid their goodbyes and sent me back to Helen's with the driver. Back at Helen's I just settled into living with them for awhile. I would walk around Bombay and just take in the rush of the throng of people there.

My mother knew an Indian woman who was having a torrid affair with another Indian guy that was a friend of the man who would become the father of my sister. I knew her name at that time and knew she lived in Bombay somewhere. As my luck would have it - someone Helen knew also knew this lady when I mentioned her. (don't ask me how all of this shit came together the way it did - it just did.)

I located her and she invited me to her house to stay for a couple of days. She had never married. She was of the Brahman cast (priestly cast and therefore the highest cast in the system). I managed to get to her family house by train and she welcomed me into her home. The women were quite separated from the men in the home and I was with the women. We were all introduced - extended family living under the same roof - maiden (although not a virgin - if what my mother told me was true) aunt living with her parents and brothers, wives, nieces and nephews.

I had dinner with them and the woman (can't for life of me remember her name at the moment) invited me to hang out with them for the night and next day take in some sites with her and her niece. I spent the night there and again slept like I wish I could now. I got up in the am and had breakfast with the family as if I belonged and felt so relaxed - it is hard to explain the Indian culture of hospitality.

When you are invited in, you become one of the family - no matter how different you may be. I would just sit back and listen to the language and be lulled into a blissful state of relaxation and forget I was American and different. I hung out for part of the day and we headed out for a beach site. It was somewhat of an entertainment center of a beach and they had camels that could be hired for a ride.

Just the thought of riding on a camel with this distant contact from my mother's life of the '50's was just such a mind blower. We rode on the camel all over the beach and paid our few rupees and walked around for the rest of the day with this little niece. It was quite an experience.

I ended up back at Helen's and continued my visiting with all of her friends. Many people she knew were in the movie business there in the Indian Hollywood. Actresses came to her house for lunch and we went to their places for lunch as well. Most of these "stars" were slightly older and had moved from playing the main love interest to playing the older sister type roles - much as Mr. Singh and moved from the romantic leads to the heavy.

I finally decided to go back to Madras and my friends there. I hopped a train and headed back.

To be continued - I need to sleep sometime.