Linda Blake - Global Reporter       

After a16 hr journey from New York through Brussels, I arrived in Delhi.  I glided past immigration with ease: my eye make-up smeared like a battered Vegas-showgirl's, my Jew-fro on the verge of becoming a ripe dread-lock and the smell of death blazing from my arm pits.   

 *STAMP 
Another blemish marked my plump passport.  Yet, this diplomatic ink-blotch is far from the nomadic pageantry of stamp’s past....  

I left the Indian sub-continent on December of 2007 as a backpacker.  I return in January of 2009 as a foreign correspondent in training.  I carry my universe with me—two bag’s worth. 

Shoving said bags into a Yellow & Black Taxi at the Delhi airport terminal, I proceeded to take a deep breath of India's magnetic midnight air.   My tongue and lungs were, at once, coated by tar.  A 3-legged dog hopped past me. To my right, two men warm their tired bones before a pile of burning garbage.  

As my chortling cab criss-crossed the congested streets, I wondered:  Why have I returned to this strange land filled with simultaneous expressions of love and filth - a place that has terrorized, teased and transfixed me?  Why let the Shakespearian love affair take hold again? I found the answer this evening when browsing through old emails I sent during my first tour in Incredible !ndia...

10/2007 

Dear Mom, 

 
I think I fell in love with India yesterday. And this admission after being bumped, bent, and spun around as the sole foreigner on a 17 hr sleeper train ride....  I, of course, slept cuddling my bag as if the big knap-sack was my coffin.  My snores hummed in tandem with the non-stop train's chugachugachugs.  With each train stop the loud yells of "MASALA CHAI, MASALA CHAI" from slap-happy vendors patrolling the aisles would jolt my eyes open.

When the train stopped at the final station a group of ladies in radiating yellows, reds and greens started to sing and laugh --all holding hands. The women wore their leathered skin with pride and smiled at me with toothless grins.  

Later that evening, I listened to the piercing singing of a moustached man. He darted his all knowing hazel eyes my way, turbaned-out in a ripe colored fruit basket.  Women performed in the foreground. Their heads wiggled ever so slightly as they punched-out a subtle symphony, using only bangles and metal hangings from their bodies.  When they weren’t erupting in creative music-play, their mouths spit fire.  They softly wrapped their lips around sharp knife blades - contorting their bodies like birds in flight.  To see such fragile forms, juggling fire and blades....  well, it opens my heart, Mom.  It mirrors what I am starting to learn in this country: it is possible to be vulnerable and delicate in the face of such destructive forces.  Flirt with fire-engage in a beautiful surrender.

Love,
Linda

Looking back at this declaration of love, I realize I have returned to India to capture this vulnerability. This time I will suck in the surrender and upon exhale reveal how it manifests itself in the political, social and economic fabric that is modern India...    

My first TV assignment kicks-off Monday.  With the global resonance of Slumdog Millionaire (or "poverty porn" as many call it here), I will explore one of the movie's major themes: corruption in India's network of child beggars.  I will look specifically at the controversy over government efforts to ban child begging in a country where social services are limited and good cop/bad cop are often indistinguishable...  I look forward to posting my latest works on this site in addition to regular multimedia--heavy updates.

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