Meera and Family

The perfect transition into Indian life. After 16 hours of travel to arrive back at my apartment in Washington, DC, it was only two short days before I would be on a plane headed to South India, and flying again was not my idea of a good time.

The 20 some hours spent on an airplane this time, however, were some of my favorite times in flight. Although it took a bit of back and forth between AirIndia (the airline) and our parents, Meera and I had the pleasure of spending the entire flight getting to know each other, in person. Meera Mohan is someone I have written to, exchanged photos with, and spoken on the phone for a few minutes here and there, on and off for the last 12 years. We are obviously both named Meera, but that is just the beginning. I was born in India and adopted to an American family in the United States, and she was born in America to an Indian family living in the U.S. We were born only two days apart (I'm the older one, finally) and we both spent a portion of our childhoods playing the piano and doing gymnastics. I had the opportunity to meet her mother when at an event in Seattle in 2008, but Meera and Meera had never spoken a single sentence face to face. Much of the rest of the Mohan family, cousins, brothers, etc, live in South India. As Meera Mohan travels to India with her family every few years and I happened to be going to South India for two months this summer, her and her mother and father flew from their home in South Carolina where I could meet up with them in Washington, DC and we could all go from there.

Minus the fact that I don't think Meera's parents would have actually ended up with two daughters two days apart both named Meera, I seemed to fit in just fine. It was quite an experience to travel with an Indian family, talk to Meera in English while her mother and father spoke to each other in Tamil, and sit next to one another on a plane where we were both served vegetarian, Indian food. It felt like we were all taking one big Indian family vacation!

When we arrived to Chennai after flying from Washington, DC to New York, to Mumbai to there, we were all hot, sticky, and exhausted to say the least. Although I had spent the last month and a half living in a climate much hotter than this, India's humidity compared to Jordan's lack there of made for a bit of an adjustment. Anyway, according to Murphy's Law, everything went just as planned. After making our way to baggage claim on a very delayed flight, only my luggage was to be found. Spending some time speaking with the people at the information desk, Meera's parents were assured that their luggage was not "lost" and only misdirected, although the people giving them this information hadn't the slightest idea as to where their luggage might have been "misdirected".

Meera and I were told to go outside and look for the two people who were transporting me and her family to our respective destinations. Meera instantly recognized her Indian cousin, and only a few seconds later I was flagged down by the same driver who picked me and my family up from the airport 12 years ago, Mutukumar. After waiting for about 15 minutes for Meera's parents to express adequate frustration towards the people at the baggage claim information center, they met up with us outside, Meera and I hugged and said goodbye, and we went our separate ways. And so the journey begins...