Nanowrimo word count 2739 running total 39578
My word count looks good, but I am behind in my calculations of the years of my life. I had thought that yesterday I would have reached three-quarters of the way in my life, but I am still only about 19 years old. I have not graduated, have not bought my first house, and I am not a mother—three more years and all that will have happened.
I have spent many hundreds of words explaining that my parents’ behaviour was a product of my grandparents’ and my great-grandparents’ attitudes. These would have been as a result of living under the British Raj although I remember people in the village in the 60s saying life was better before Independence. It takes time to shake off the shackles of colonialism.
My husband was on the ‘hippie’ trail from Europe to India in 1976. He tried to impress me when we met by saying, ‘I’ve been to India.’ I laughed. I could have said, ‘I’ve been to your birthplace, London.’ It’s not exotic though, is it?

When he returned with me in 2005, he was disappointed that the Grand Trunk Road which runs from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) had not been improved to motorway level. Parts of it were, and work is ongoing. The amount of traffic is growing, people travel more, and the roads can hardly keep up. The toll roads are helping.

Education is now a significant employer. In 1963 I returned at age thirteen and wasn’t sent to school, and no-one thought it was wrong. That wouldn’t happen now. It’s a different world.