
After spending just a day in the city of Delhi, I proclaimed to my journal, "I have fallen madly, hopelessly, deliriously in love with India." Oh India! Land of Gandhi and Arundhati Roy, where vegetarians are catered to (even at McDonalds), cows are sacred, and yoga isn't just for hippies. I had found my spiritual home... Now that what the IHP handbook terms the "initial euphoria stage" of culture shock has worn off, I can see that my love, though geunine, was also a part lust, part utter delight to be anywhere but Tanzania.
Upon arriving in Delhi we had two free days to explore the city. After two beautiful morning runs in the park and several delicious meals of lentils and vegetables, it was decided: I would strike up residence in Lodhi Gardens park, learn Hindi, and live out my days dining on chana masala and naan, sipping sweet chai, and practicing yoga.
My whole being heaved a sigh of relief to realize that I could walk down the broad sidewalks and feel safe and happy. No one shouted "mzungo" or shoved souveneirs in my face. Walking by men, I stopped instinctively lowering my gaze and bracing myself for comments and stares like I had in Tanzania. It even SMELLS better. The stench of deisel and BO of Arusha was replaced by alternating whiffs of spicy curries and sweet floral jasmine.
The food here is incredible. I still can't get over the fact that I get to eat Indian food everyday, three times a day. It's like winning the argument over what kind of takeout to get, at EVERY meal- INDIAN! Our host mother delights in feeding us too much of her delicious homemade bengali cuisine- yellow dahl, a myriad of vegetable curries, fish, and always plenty of rice. She is a wonderful grandmother of a woman. The other day I washed my underwear and hung it up to dry overnight on my clothesline in the bathroom adjoining our bedroom. That morning at breakfast she recounted to us her surprise amd sheer delight at finding my laundry there that morning. She clasped her ringed, wrinkled fingers together under her chin and exclaimed with glee, "So beautiful! So small!", and laughed and laughed. She calls Maria and I "you people", and shouts (lovingly) when she talks because she is a little hard of hearing: "What time you people take de breakfas?!!" "You people take de chai?!!" "Acha. Acha. OK. OK."
I love the autorickshaw rides we take to and from class everyday. The streets are teeming with the little, 3-wheeled green and yellow tuk tuks: an army of rogue bumpercars broken free from their bumpercar chains to swarm the city of Delhi. To ride in one is to take part in a live-action game of MarioKart, complete with just as much swerving and fear of losing your life as the videogame. The lines in the road are taken as completely arbritrary designations of lanes: if you can squeeze your rickshaw into that tiny gap between the Hyundai and the bicycle and the pothole and the pedestrian, the spot is yours to drive in. Invariably, there'll be gold-framed pictures of technicolor hindi gods behind the bicycle-handlebar steering wheel, and heart shaped stickers of bollywood stars pasted to the review mirror. Stopped at lights, passing drivers and passengers will peer through the open sides of our auto and stare. The degree to which I enjoy exchanging flirty smiles with passing motocycle cuties is probably a good indication of the current dearth of menfolk in my life.
On Sunday (a precious day off) a group of fourteen of us travelled the four hours to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. For me, the Taj, with its glowing white bulbs and towering minarets, has always been the ultimate emblem of world travel. So to actually be there, to be a part of that picture I hold in my mind's eye, was surreal. It felt like meeting a celebrity. The kind of celebrity that is just as nice and beautiful in real life as you'd expect from her movies, but just another human being nonetheless.
And now, I feel the need to give a caveat to the extensive praises I've sung of India. I recoginize that the only part of India I've seen is Delhi, and the relatively wealthier parts, at that. In preparation for hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the city has "cleaned up" the streets, pushing most of the poor to the margins of the city. We have seen some poverty. It is a terrible feeling to have filthy, skinny children, their hair streaked false-blonde from malnutrition, clutch at your hands through the sides of your rickshaw, begging for money and chocolate. But the amount of poverty we've seen is, unfortunately, nowhere near representative of its prevalence in this country. We've seen the shiny, happy face of India. Yet I'm aware that in horrible contrast to this wealth (and perhaps precisely because of it) millions of Indians are living in abject poverty, malnourished, dispossed from their land, and victims of all kinds of violence. Not pleasant thoughts, but a reality.