Postcard from Mecca

I want to go for Umrah, I announced to my family.

Take your mom, my dad suggested. I want to do it alone, i want this to be my own journey. My family's initial concern for my security did not last more than a few hours. For a practicing Muslim family, the idea of a daughter with a liberal world view travelling to the holiest place in Islam was a welcome move.

There was a minor glitch. Travel agencies who inundate your Whats app with Umrah and Hajj travel offers the year around would stop replying the moment I offered my intention to travealone. Another said point blank: We do not make arrangements for single women

A third one that came highly reccommended through a socialite friend offered to help, and thus started the journey of navigating the holiest place in Islam that saw a record number of 13.5 million Muslims visit the holy cities of Mecca and Madinah last year. As i crossed the immigration at the Mumbai international airport and wore the abaya and the headscarf for the first time in my life, i felt conscious of the gaze of people around me. I was leaving for my pilgrimage days before the inauguration of the Ram temple in India. Television screens at the Mumbai airport beemed images of the preparation for the temple that was being built over a demolished mosque.

At the boarding gate, men started wearing their Ahram, a two piece, unstitched white attire required for them to perform Umrah. For many passengers who had travelled to metropolitan cities like Mumbai and Delhi to travel to Jeddah, this was possibly their first flying experience.

A writer friend in Germany with whom I had shared my apprehensions about this trip asked me to leave my concerns behind "Look for faith and resilience. I know It is easy to feel theanger over destruction of humans, environment, when you witness the luxury, the abundance, the companies with blood on their hands"

On arrival in Jeddah, I was taken to my hotel in Mecca by the driver, Abu bakar who could speak Hindi with the same fluency he spoke Arabic, both languages he learnt on his arrival in Saudi Arabia from Burma. He says he married a Pakistani who he met at a grocery store in Jeddah and that made him a citizen of the world before he proceeds to