When I saw an odd bunch of people huddled solemnly around the TV in the break room this afternoon my heart missed a beat fearing some terrible news again - like the Tsunami. While fixing my cup of tea I figured they were waiting for white smoke to signal the new Pope. Like a bunch of children hoping to catch Santa in the act - excited but very serious about their mission.
Since the smoke was a while coming, I returned to my cube without actually seeing it. Blogosphere was already humming about it. Some interesting observations I came across were comments made on Airbag's post
"I might consider not being atheist anymore if I could just see one picture of a room full of cardinals blogging away."
"Pope 2005 Blog? I think the Vatican missed a really good opportunity for smash hit reality TV show. Who wouldn't want to tune in to a see a group of Cardinals running an obstacle course through jungles of Borneo? Talk about appealing to the masses."
"Al Gore is still demanding a recount of the smoke signals."
Then there were rumors of someone having "popesquatted" BenedictXVI.Com to sell it to pornographers. Who would have guessed a brand new Pope could hog so much air-time and bandwidth on day one?
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
Comments
lol @ cardinals blogging away!! that would be a 'cardinal' sin, now wouldnt it? ;)