MY THIRD LIFE, SHOPPING, AND THE WIDE OPEN DOORS OF THE HEART

 I'm in India now, in the city, with my mother, my loving family all around me, embedded in the larger community of my mother’s help, maid, cook, gardener, driver, cleaning person, and teeming humanity outside, living my third life: Urban India. I hit the ground running after an extremely busy time in the US, negotiating for a new car since we had sold ours before we left for the US in October. My nephew, JD, helped with everything, and within two days I had a car and had it fitted with things I wanted, seat covers, mats, bumpers, roof rack, etc etc. Though I had so much help with it, I was so exhausted at the end of it that I spent two days in bed with a fever. Today I have to get it registered, which I am told is a long and perhaps tiresome process.

Yesterday I ran some necessary errands, stepping into the teeming bazars to get two zippers fixed on my backpack. A new development in my psyche says, don’t buy, fix. Fortunately, you can get just about everything fixed in India. My bill was about 50 cents. Another of my mottos these days: make do or do without. It’s all in the service of simplicity. Unfortunately we have to wait till our later years to learn the supreme necessity for simplification. At least, this is so in my case. But don’t let me fool you into thinking I have arrived! Instead of shopping in the stores I simply love online shopping for its convenience, and, yes, I am still shopping! My amazing discovery last year was that amazon has a branch in India, amazon.in, which takes the pain out of driving around in the city buying necessary things. And don’t let me fool you here, either! I don’t always buy things that are necessary. When the shopping bug bites, I like to buy things that are not in the least necessary. I have discovered that instead of carting gifts from America, I can buy them on amazon here, which takes my American credit card and makes things so easy. I have bought a ton of books for my grandnieces, and kitchen items for my nieces who are building a new home. Though I deplore amazon for its business practices, convenience at this age of my life wins the conscience battle.

         But I had to ‘descend’ into the market place to get my zippers fixed, buy medication for myself and my mother, some delicious seekh kababs, and get my old sim card fitted into my new iphone. I marvel at the crowds, the teeming, colorful humanity that overflows in our bazaars. I can take it only in small doses now, another function of aging, I suppose. My mother at 94 rarely, if ever, leaves the house. Fortunately, she too has old contacts with stores that send her items she needs. Last year she had expressed a desire to have new curtains for her room and I thought it was a good idea. It would give her something to be involved with and it would brighten up her room in which she spends most of her waking and sleeping life. So yesterday I went looking for curtain material with pink flowers and found it in the first store I walked into just as I walked in. I clicked a photo of it, and she liked it. How very merciful when you don’t have to go looking far for what you are looking for. And doesn’t this apply also to our inmost needs for the Divine? No need to go to temple or church or gurdwara. One simply has to walk through the wide open doors of the heart.