Pilgrim's Ponderings

A sore throat, I hate it. In Delhi a sore throat is far from an uncommon thing given the air quality here. As usual I find myself with one all over again. It’s the kind where it hurts to swallow anything – liquid or solid or even my own saliva (a gross observation but an important one, you will see). As expected I’ve spent a day feeling grumpy about it and sorry for myself. Towards the end of the day yesterday I was particularly grumpy about everything to do with my voice and throat and I decided I would go to bed early. I was annoyed because I had to pass up a rather tasty dinner because it was hurting too much to swallow. I lay in bed and I thought to myself “wow… I swallow a lot.” Remember I said every time I swallowed, even my own saliva it was hurting. I had become very aware of the amount of times I was swallowing in a day. It’s an activity that just keeps happening through the day in the background. Now, suddenly because it hurt each time, I was aware of this background activity...

Disclaimer: This article is titled "The two sides of English experience" but it could also be titled "An apology to my parents and sisters|. Back in the year 1999 I was sitting on a KLM flight headed to the UK. Our family was on our first and only international trip together. My dad used to teach at a Christian university in Oxford. This year he decided to take the whole family with him for a break. It was a summer holiday that lasted a month. One that he and my mum had planned and saved up for. I was nineteen at the time and was being a classic teenager. We arrived in the UK and had friends pick us from Heathrow and drive us straight to this beautiful house in Oxford where we would be based for the trip. Oxford is a student town with a lot of international students. For this reason, in the summer when all the students have gone home for the holidays, it becomes a much quieter town. I had silly reasons to be missing home and even sillier reasons to be a sulky teenager th...