Happy Birthday, Grandpa

I felt surprisingly close to my Grandpa yesterday, his 90th birthday, despite being well more than 7000 miles away. We left Delhi at 6am for Pushkar, in Rajasthan, to go to the Camel Fair. There were the preliminary signs, like the Indian man with the striking light blue eyes holding a baby. (My first memory of Grandpa is sitting in his lap on his chair next to the radio, just staring up into his famously blue eyes.) There was the couple on the train with the noticeable Midwest Drawl (tm). It was only when we pulled out of New Delhi, out of the suburbs, that I really started to feel close to Grandpa. The huge wheat fields that support the sizable population of the northern swath of Hindustan start at the tip of the suburbs and continue on till well past the tip of the desert. Defiant farms shake their fist in the face of the dusty winds that roll in from the west. It's unshakable, though. My first and only thought when I see golden fields in low-angle morning radiance is Grandpa on his tractor in Clay County, Kansas. The tractors of Hindustan are few and far between. The farming implements are mostly unchanged since the Middle Ages, with a few modern amenities thrown in. Grandpa is probably real thankful for the CASE (perhaps the defining image of all my Kansas memories), but, at the same time, I think if he had to deal with the rough conditions of Hindustani agriculture, he'd be just fine. Because, really, after 90 years, the highest compliment I can pay to my grandfather is the highest compliment I can pay any man: that he looks after his farm, he looks after his ever-burgeoning family, and he does those things with the best of them. The farmers here would understand him, I think, and wish him a very happy birthday. As do I.