Hard Stuff

There seems to be a general attitude of complacency towards poverty here and it’s been hard to swallow. I understand that, as an outsider, specifically as an American outsider, I really have no place to barge in and point fingers and pass judgment. But it’s been bothering so I’ve been trying to understand how Vrinda, a highly educated person, can tell me not to worry about the children begging, that they really have plenty of money, to dismiss them with a wave of her hand and a “Nahi nahi, jao.” She must have the capacity to understand that these are children, just as powerless and dependent as any other child. And so most of their money is probably going to a street maffia that demand a cut of their daily profit, or parents who keep their kids from attending school because they can bring home more rupees in a day than their father makes in a week. She must understand how it works. Right? For a while I tried to excuse reactions like Vrinda’s, until one day I saw a dirty little boy, no older than two, squatting and defecating by the side of a busy road, face caked with dirt and tears, mouth open in an O of complete and utter anguish. Another one of those “brutal and terrible” things that take place in this “space for the unpredictable.” So what do you do? Do you pick him up and hold him and comfort him? And after that, then what? Go home and write about it on my blog? Why don’t the police directing traffic do something? But obviously, no one did anything, including me. We’re all implicated. All our hands are dirty.

There’s this urban legend here, that it seems like everyone has heard, about how 8,000 rupees were found under a beggar’s mattress once she had died. So yes, for some it becomes a way of life, a habit. But, besides the obvious salacious factor, it seems like the reason this story is so widely-circulated is that it eases the conscious, without having to face the enormously complex task of fixing the system. And hey, I can relate to that. It isn’t much worse than the biscuits I buy to distribute while I’m out. Because what miniscule impact will that cookie have? But it will certainly make me feel better. 

Wilderness

“In India we are fighting to retain a wilderness that we have. Whereas in the west, it’s gone. Every person that’s walking down the street is a walking bar code….Everything is civilized and tagged and valued and numbered and put in its place. Whereas in India, the wilderness still exists—the unindoctrinated wilderness of the mind, full of untold secrets and wild imaginings. It’s threatened, but we’re fighting to retain it. We don’t have to re-conjure it. It’s there. It’s with us….I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. There is just a space for the unpredictable here, which is life as it should be. It’s not always that the unpredictable is wonderful—most of the time it isn’t. Most of the time it’s brutal and it’s terrible.”--Arundhati Roy, The Shape of the Beast

Although I don’t agree with a lot of Arundhati Roy’s opinions on development and globalization, I think she hits this description of India right on the mark. Daily life in India is that much closer to life, but also that much closer to death. Every morning it’s equally likely that I will see two calves suckling its mother by the side of the road, or a goat, body rigor mortis, tucked into the medium (but never a cow, never never a cow). 

Rules of Survival on the Road

To give you an idea of the chaos that I live with daily:

"1. The one who is the biggest has the right of way. The big trucks, overloaded, pay no heed to you before coming into your lane, nor should you expect them to.

2. The one who has the least to lose has the right of way. That is the reason why a Mercedes or an Opel Astra gives way to the battered old Ambassador and the rickshaw gives way to no one. Pedestrians give way to all.

3. The cow always has the right of way. Killing a cow is equal to killing one’s own mother. All Indian drivers brake for cows and dogs. They very seldom brake for pedestrians, however, mothers or not.

 Horn: A horn, the louder the better, is an essential piece of equipment. It’s not just used to warn everyone you’re about to run someone over, but a regular short beep is also a friendly and constant reminder that you are coming."

--Courtesy of MSID 

Scho Schweet!

Magy and I are living with an incredibly warm and sharp older woman named Ramaji. She is a retired Professor of English (although confusingly she still teaches four classes, so I don’t really get that) and her husband passed away some time ago. She plays the sitar and is an infinite source of Hindu mythology. Her son, Tarun, also lives with her. By day, he’s the head of Emergency Medicine at the large government hospital here, and at night he works on a medical computer software program he’s developing. So needless to say, much of what we see of him is in passing. But he’s heart-warmingly goofy and if you can manage to catch him in one spot for an extended period of time he makes for some great conversation. That is how I know, for example, that he’s self-professedly still “emotionally dependent” on his mother. He also has a wife and kids who live in Toronto which is another confusing thing that I don’t get, but because of this (or at least I’m assuming it’s because of this) the dining room table has plastic Niagara Falls placemats on top of the beautiful block print (a Jaipur specialty) tablecloth. Vrinda is Ramaji’s daughter and although she lives a few km away from home, she comes over every afternoon to be with her mother. She is also a Professor of English and she is also heart-warmingly goofy. She has a great repertoire of phrases, like calling the car that parked harhazardly next to hers a “stupid creepy crawler.” She especially likes to moosh either sides of her cheeks with her hands, widen her eyes, and exclaim “Scho schweet!” at things that aren’t that incredible (Oh, you’re writing a letter home? Scho schweet!).

            Rounding out the household is a series of servants, and this has admittedly been a little weird to get used to. Baiji is a grizzly old woman with gray hair and rotten teeth. She lives with the family and has for 30 plus years. She doesn’t speak English but she has a great instinct for physical comedy and laughs at our attempts to speak in Hindi with her. When Ramaji is busy while Magy and I are eating a meal, she stands over the table making sure that we eat enough, forcing us to take more papaya or whatever even after we say no. Maname (not sure on the spelling) is the new sassy young cook who Baiji is training. She’s young, married, and with child. 

Animal Sightings Thus Far

Elephants

Camels

COWS

Pigs

Colorful Birds

Goats

Donkeys

Monkeys

and many more less notable ones...Photographic evidence to follow soon...

"Soft Landing"

One of my favorite stories so far is from the very beginning. The whole group arrived at a hostel in Delhi late Sunday night, internal clocks turned upside down by the 10 1/2 hour time difference. Of course, I couldn't sleep at all and by 3:30 am I began hearing a man singing/chanting in what I assumed to be Hindi from what seemed to be right outside my window. It carried on well into the morning until my roommate and I finally gave up pretending to sleep. In the daylight we could see the golden dome of what turned out to be Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, the largest Sikh temple in Delhi. The singing we had heard had been the Call to Prayer. After breakfast and before orientation officially began, a group of us ventured out of the hostel and found the temple, stunning with its white marble structure and golden turrets. We went inside, shoes off, heads covered, and found a large bath next to it as well. All in all a beautiful morning and fitting introduction to India.
As it becomes harder to describe my experiences to family and friends back home succinctly in an email, I find myself reverting back to this moment. I guess the story is easy to tell because it fits neatly into most of our Western expectations of what India is. Rimaji, the program director, said repeatedly the first week that MSID purposefully plans a "soft landing" for its students, and I think that phrase applies here as well. Looking back from my two week hindsight vantage point, I'm thankful for those soft landings because the hard landings, questions, and stories come up soon enough.