One Eleven

Lorraine MacKenzie

Today is the 1st of November 2007. Today is All Saints' Day. Today is my 40th birthday.

I woke up this morning and could tell that Derek, my husband of 10 years, was still asleep. I peer through the curtains and take a look out of the hotel window. I can't see much as it's dark and very early, almost 4.00 am. I woke up a few minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

We are on a tour of the main tourist sights of northern India. Just saying the word "India" excites and thrills me. When my Mum was a wee girl she used to collect stamps and coins. I remember playing with the coins, looking through her stamp collection and being intrigued with, particularly, the coins from India. At that time all we had in Scotland were boring heavy round coins but the coins I used to hold in my hands that came from India were all sorts of wonderful shapes and sizes. I'm sure I remember that one even had a hole in the middle. You couldn't get more exotic than that.

I always had romantic notions of what India might be like. When I was very young I imagined tigers and elephants parading through mist covered jungles. When I was older, in my teens, I could visualise gurus sitting meditating next to a waterfall high up a mountain.

So here I am, finally, in India and on my 40th birthday I'm in Varanasi with an exciting day's schedule to look forward to.

Varanasi is steeped in history, its buildings and streets just ooze spirituality, love and a certain certainty. I find it all very atmospheric. The city has a welcoming and all-embracing presence. There's something reassuring, solid and timeless about the place.

I had been feeling a real connection with Varanasi all day especially when walking through the oldest part of the city, along the dusty streets that are thousands of years old, that millions of people have walked along before me. I was finding myself very moved just with the awareness of being in such a holy place, the knowledge that Hindus make pilgrimages here and bring their dead for their final farewells. I felt very privileged to be able to experience it.

For me the highlight of my birthday came at the very end of the day with a boat trip on The Ganges for evening prayers. There were about 16 of us in an unsteady and very old, but thankfully sea-worthy, rowing boat. One poor guy was doing all the rowing. The rower looked very thin and a bit fragile but he must have been strong with good muscles because he powered us through The Ganges and the hoards of other tourist-filled rowing boats to get pretty near to the stage on the banks (or Ghats as they are called) in order that we could all see and hear clearly.

Sitting there in that rowing boat with Derek sitting just across from me, feeling the pull of the place, feeling totally immersed in the spectacle and spirituality of the evening prayers, I started thinking about my Mum (she died in 1996), and what highlights I've had in my life, what experiences I've had since she died, culminating with sitting in that boat at that time, floating on The Ganges, listening to evening prayers; I was overcome with emotion.

I was just about managing to hold it together when the bells of the evening prayers started and the beautiful tinkling sound they made flooded me and allowed me some sort of emotional release as I let the tears of joy and wonder at the intensity of the experience fall silently down my face.

I wasn't embarrassed about crying and I didn't try to hide my tears. I was, I realise now, pleased that I was able to show that the place had moved me and when I reflect on it today, it's as though those silent tears which left my body and seeped into the wooden rowing boat on The Ganges somehow grounded my connection to the place.

One eleven sixty seven is my date of birth and I say it frequently.

One eleven zero seven was my 40th birthday and I will remember it forever as a magical day.

One eleven zero eight is this competition's closing date and my 41st birthday - the start of a whole new chapter.