My Last Trip to India

     In '96 I made my last pilgrimage to India, and I am sure I will not go back due to finances, but I felt almost bad about having gone.  I was thirty-five and at the time my younger child was only seven.  In retrospect, I often feel that I should have gotten him back from his father and got him back in school here sooner after I got back from Colorado, but I was impulsive and went to India for all the wrong reasons.  Tonight as I cannot sleep, I realized that maybe it was for a reason, reasons beyond my knowing.
     I sent my brother a letter today in which I was reminded of my father, how proud he was of his own writing, and before I left for India in September of that year, he gave me a poem or ghazel rather, which he asked me to read aloud in Mandali Hall with Eruch Jessawalla present, and I did.  
     My father also gave me twenty dollars to buy garlands of flowers to lay on the Samadhi.  In India twenty dollars buys a lot of flower garlands in three weeks, and I used every bit of it on garlands of roses and other flowers from street vendors like the ones near the trust office where the bus comes.
     Maybe I went there just to read the poem and lay the flowers with the help of others in the tomb.  I am no longer very devotional, but in my heart I still love Baba.
     Life has not been that kind to me over the years.  My life has been rather difficult in a lot of ways, a lot of challenges.  I hope that it will improve.  I think that positive things will come to pass.
     With all the evil in the political arena, and the fear of loss of all that is humane, I am trying to turn it over, let go and let God, and think of Baba and spirituality, rather than falling into the fears of some sort of 'may or may not be' holocaust.  
     I feel things are changing rapidly, but perhaps nothing bad will happen to America. I remember when the twin towers happened, I went to a program at the Meher Center.  There was a letter from the Mandali in India, most of whom are gone now.  They went into Baba's room and prayed for America.  It touched my heart and I wept.