My first journey to this incredible country of India was over ten years ago and it definitely had impressed me in innumerable and countless ways—right from the start. I shall never forget the scene as I emerged from the familiar comfort of the jumbo jet to descend the metal stairway to the pavement below: The contrasts and chaos were overwhelming.

The waves of heat, odors and smoke that spun around the airport were right out of a 1950’s movie. The corrugated metal fence that surrounded the runways appeared to be held up with makeshift shacks of cardboard and plastic. Large red letters of an unknown alphabet were splashed across a giant billboard. Long lines of dark, skinny workers, wrapped in sooty rags, weaved back and forth between the sleek modern jets, balancing big metal bowls filled with dirt and rubble on their heads. An international airport in Bombay in 1978, but I felt catapulted back to the ancient days of pyramid building. Oh, dear, I thought, It’s just as I feared; they won’t have flush toilets here for sure.

The customs’ officials subjected my suitcases to a thorough search. I was a little nervous because, at that time, I was carrying all sorts of contraband: chocolates, cosmetics, razors, which my friend Anjali had packed for me to carry to her family. However, the inspector did not seem to notice the candy or nail polish; he was only interested in my tampons, a three months’ supply. I ended up having to open the boxes and present the contents. The inspector, dressed in his starched khaki uniform, was stumped. So I quickly extracted one from its cardboard case and rubbed it on my face like a big cotton ball. “For the ladies,” I told him. “Oh, ladies,” he laughed and slapped my suitcase closed. Well, what could I do, I could not be expected to give this dignified gentleman a lesson in modern feminine hygiene. Not in a place where they do not even have wheel barrows.

Hurrying out of the customs’ section, I looked around for a porter to carry Anjali’s heavy suitcase, not one ounce under the maximum 75-pound limit, and my smaller one. As I followed the exit arrows, I encountered a dark narrow passageway to what looked like daylight ahead. When I entered it, I was confronted by a couple of very young and short porters, dressed in what originally may have been white uniforms, but now were streaked with black grime. I hesitated, for they definitely looked too weak to lift such a load. But as it turned out, they were not porters.

They informed me that they were collecting an airport tax—ten rupees. Having just arrived, I had not yet exchanged any money, and I assumed other people had not either. Is the foreigner already being scammed? Luckily, before I had time to figure out what to do, a tall, dignified woman approached me. Yes, I was Nancy and she was Mrs. Sethi, Anjali’s mother. I suppose she dealt with the airport tax, or the collectors just disappeared, because the next thing I knew I was seated in a neat little beige Ambassador car. Rolling down a strip of asphalt, I was beholding my first view of the Empire named “India” by its foreign invaders.

Certainly, no one had bothered to clean up the first sights of the “crown jewel” for the sake of the tourists. After we passed what seemed like miles of squalor of makeshift shacks, we turned onto an ordinary Bombay street, lined with tiny open-air shops. When I looked down that endless blur of color, my mind reeled. Bright sun and dark shadows; luminous turquoise paint and black grease; an undulating movement of bicycles, cars, pedestrians and a couple of cows. Vignettes of another way of life whirled past me: a sari shop with colorful cottons waving in the breeze; a dark cubby hole filled with shelves lined with brown medicine bottles; a hole-in-the-wall with a barefoot man seated on a bench among huge woks filled with colorful sweets; a thin woman squatted on the curb peddling a huge basket of yellow bananas. Fragrant incense wafted through the air, cut by murky, musty odors from the open sewer that lined both sides of the street; aromas of food frying in large vats, interspersed with the stench of burning rubber. Do they use old tires for fuel here? I wonder.

I gape at dark gaps between the blocks of shops, which revealed shadowy mazes of shacks piled precariously behind the store fronts. Squashed between feeling overwhelmingly stimulated and incredibly petrified, I sit transfixed. Somehow, my mind loves the diversity, but my emotions shriek: I am upside down on the other side of the world; what have I done to myself?

After an hour’s drive through an increasingly metropolitan environment, I sighed with relief as we turned into a quiet lane lined with tall palms and a number of four-story residential condos. Within minutes, I was sitting peacefully on a shady balcony in the middle of Bombay, enjoying a gimlet with Mr. Sethi, while Mrs. Sethi orchestrates dinner with the cook—a necessity in every household.

Although this was our first meeting, Anjali’s family took me in just as if we were old friends. Educated during the years of the British Raj, their English was impeccable. They were to become like my own family as I passed through Bombay in the future. And the bathroom did have a flush toilet, and a big bathtub with claw feet that was surely left by the British. So I rested up for a week to brace myself before I boarded a train to take off across the varied landscape of this colorful, varied country.

It turns out that I loved seeing the world standing on my head. I loved being startled and confounded, and attempting to conceive of the world, and even myself, from a different point of view. Although I had come for a visit of a couple of months, I kept postponing my departure until I stayed for almost two years. During that time, I visited all the major cities, Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras and Bangalore. However, as I traveled by train from city to city, I caught glimpses of another world; a world of rural villages and gentle folk that I consider to be the real Bharata. That’s why I decided to return.