Appreciating Delhi

I've finished my first complete bottle of malaria pills, and have returned to Delhi from traveling for the (second to) last time. We have been traveling all over the place for the past month and a half, and seeing a lot more of India than just its capital city, Delhi. As I came back to Delhi last week (from an overnight 18-hour train from Jaisalmer...which sounds awful but sleeper trains are awesome and we get bunk beds), taking the metro from the train station back to Vasant Kunj, I found myself feeling something surprisingly bordering on comfortable, and happy to be back. This week, I've been traveling all over the city interviewing various people (and, let's face it, doing a bunch of shopping) and feeling cosmopolitan. I sat outside at Dilli Haat today, drinking a lime soda and reading, and it was kind of the pretentious people-watching-y cafe experience that I never thought I would find in Delhi.

Someone is a bit too excited about sleeper car bunk
 bedsat 2 in the morning—SPOILER ALERT: it's me 

This is a marked change from the first few weeks in Delhi, which honestly kind of feel like you're being beaten over the head all day. The city is GIGANTIC, and has piles of trash everywhere, and packs of stray dogs roaming the streets fighting each other. There are so many people, and so many cars, and so many honking noises and just plain so many. Due to its size, Delhi is definitely not a walking city—to get anywhere except your own immediate neighborhood off a main road, you have to take a combination of metro and rickshaw rides. Usually a rickshaw to the metro station, a quick, efficient, AIR-CONDITIONED WITH CELL SERVICE metro ride, and then another rickshaw to your actual destination.

Getting on the ladies car of the metro because I am a lady

Walking to your destination from metro stations is possible of course (I usually walk from my home to the metro), but is a bit more fraught with obstacles than just taking a stroll down the street. Delhi is not a place where you can just kind of zone out—it keeps you on your toes. Literally. You have to remain alert to dodge things like cars, rickshaws, bicycles, that guy taking a video of you on his phone and street hawkers, constantly watching your feet to make sure you don't step on that dog "sleeping" (hopefully) over there, or trip over that cow randomly lying next to the road, or fall into one of many pits full of grey sludge.

Now I know what people mean when they say "grey sludge"

Then there's the actual task of getting where you mean to go. As a person in a constant state of being lost, never knowing where I'm going isn't really a new thing, but Delhi is something else. I've just kind of relied on rickshaw drivers knowing road names and landmarks that I tell them, and that seems to work pretty well ("pretty well" is a relative term).

If you haven't noticed, a considerable amount of blog entry content is about public transportation, so you can see what occupies my mind most of the time.

The city is arranged like no other city I've ever been in (in my VAST EXPERIENCE in cities): there are big neighborhoods all over the city connected by metro stations and main roads, and they're all fairly spread out—for example, I feel like its hard to get anywhere within a half hour, but that might be me.  Off the main road, you get the actual houses, shops and markets of the neighborhoods. And here's where I get to what's great about Delhi: all of the things! I don't know what else to say besides that there are so many things here! You could find ANYTHING in Delhi I'm sure of it—the thing is you have to know where to look. Including things like Pizza Hut, although you'll find "paneer masala" as a topping option here. SIDE NOTE: Pizza hut is infinitely better than Dominos here, which is actually disgusting and occasionally contains "liquid cheese," something that should never touch food ever.

Also, appearances are deceiving—while it may look dirty and run-down and have a bunch of guys spitting red paan-juice and gambling for something in front of it, the actual building may be sparkling and beautiful. For example, I was in the Spanish Cultural Center last night watching my host sister's classical Indian dance performance. Firstly, there's a Spanish Cultural Center here, and they host dance performances. Secondly, we were on this back alley in Connaught Place behind a glittering Hanuman Temple, and there were sketchy groups of what I think were religious asectics? (they had matted hair, and that's supposed to be a cue, but I'm also not a great judge of this) hanging around the gate. But once inside, it was a fabulous facility where everything was white white white and shiny and they had great lecture halls and auditoriums. The outside appearances of anything—neighborhoods, markets, restaurants—doesn't belie in the least what's inside.

An example of "Clean Delhi-Green Delhi," a phrase on signs all over
 the city. Also, notice the "Cheer Up Point" in the center of this photo. 

I'm pretty sure it's been said before, but that's because it's true—Delhi is a city of contrasts. Grimy shopfronts conceal slick electronic stores, bumpy rides in (again) grimy rickshaws lead you to the greatest and cleanest metro I've ever seen, stands with piles of clothes all over the place actually sell beautiful handmade fabric and beneath a sky that orange-ish colored from all types of pollution, the city is full of greenery. This includes people—while you will see a lot of women in saris and salwar-kamizes (all traditional Indian clothing...more on that to come), you'll also see a ton of girls my age wearing western clothes. I mean, there are an awful lot of people in outfits we were consider a bit strange, like loose-fitting jeans, Teva-like sandals and age-inappropriate t-shirts that say things like "Girls just wanna have fun!" in bubble letters or weird TV show references like "F.R.I.E.N.D.S...if you buy me a diamond," but still.

This brings me to another feeling I had upon returning to Delhi: it's so modern here. I can get food from any part of the world here, and I won't feel horribly out-of-place (I said "horribly") if I'm not in a sari.  I never thought I would think that Delhi is modern, but after seeing more of India, its very clear how cosmopolitan and worldly Delhi is.

While the city is certainly easy to hate, there are so many thing that are wonderful about Delhi—if you go looking for them. Delhi isn't going to just open up to you; you have to make an effort. And once you do, you'll realize that there is always something great to do here: there's always a performance (usually free!) to go to, a restuarant to eat at, or yet another really really old monument or temple or an entire fortress-city (what up Tuglaqabad on the outskirts of South Delhi) to see. At least this is where I'm at in "my relationship with Delhi" right now. It'll probably stay that way cause I'm leaving for Chennai in a week and a half—which has been called the "Detroit" of India. We'll see how that goes.

What I Do Here

So I've been in India for pretty much 6 weeks (and actually writing a blog entry...I'm trying not to write something I'll cringe at tomorrow. So far, I've been unsuccessful). By this time, what may have warranted entire blog entries of me ranting/being amazed by/freaking out now are just routine. So, to give you an idea of what I'm actually doing across the world, I'm going to go through a "typical day." Of course, in my experience so far, literally NOTHING is "typical" in India. Everything is different. Example: the light switches are the opposite way. I still have not gotten used to it. But hey—today was a great day. I got fair rickshaw prices, managed to get myself to more than one Delhi neighborhood within three hours, had friendly negociations with some shopkeepers in Hindi and found a bagel place. Days like this kind of make me feel like I'm getting the hang of things...that is until I come back to homestay to discover that there is bat in the laundry room and I have the unexpected reaction of shrieking and diving under the table when it flies out. Don't worry, cause my homestay mother took pictures.

I love India.

So, I rise every morning at 7. Well, that is a lie. 7 is the goal. My Massi-ji (that means mother's aunt in Hindi, and it's what I call my homestay mother) makes me some breakfast and chai tea, which is milky and sweet here and doesn't resemble chai tea at home in the least but in a good way. Also, just as I love breakfast in America, I am a gigantic fan of Indian breakfast food.  I run downstairs to meet another girl from my program, who is staying at an apartment within my complex. Her homestay family and mine are extremely close, and I call her homestay mother my "Massi-ji Number Do (2 in Hindi)."

Where I'm living—my homestay sister says our part of Vasant Kunj
 is the best because "there are a lot of rapes in the others." Hooray!

We walk up to the main road and hop in a rickshaw to get to class—well, I wish it were that easy. For some background: a rickshaw is a small open-air car and the main way of getting around Delhi. Even if you take the metro, you usually still have to take a rickshaw to where you want to go, because area-wise (and everything-wise) Delhi is huge. But, rickshaws are not taxis—they may have a meter to tell you how much your ride costs, but the driver is going to say it is broken and refuse to turn it on. You have to negotiate a price with him, which is FRUSTRATING. And then it's not guaranteed that the rickshaw driver is going to actually know where you want to go. I have more than a few stories of nightmare rickshaw rides—including one that was over an hour long, costs far too much money and involved the driver getting so lost for so long that not only did he stop to phone a friend, he also stopped to pee. He offered to stop to pick up some food, but I put my foot down.

Bane of my existence?

 I, along with most of the other people on my program, did feel for a little while that rickshaw drivers were the antagonists of my life.  However, I've (kind of?) gotten the hang of them now, or at least gotten used to it. Plus, once you are actually in the rickshaw and heading the right direction, it's totally fun! Like a go-cart! Only with higher chance of death because Delhi traffic is actually insane and there seem to be no rules keeping the cars and trucks and motorcycles and rickshaws and bicycles and cows from crashing into each other except everyone's mutual fear of death (excluding the cows—COWS DON'T CARE. I am continually in awe at the extreme apathy of cows).

Once we are set up in a rickshaw, which usually involves my friend, who is Nepali and looks significantly more Indian than me (not hard),  pretending she doesn't know me and speaking in her fluent Hindi to the drivers in order to get a good price, we proceed to our program house for class. We begin the day with two hours of Hindi—sounds dreary, but our Hindi teacher calls our class "Thori Hindi, Thori Masti," which means "a little Hindi and a little fun." Example: a few days ago he forced all of us to improvise songs to introduce ourselves, and then danced along as one girl made it rain Sikh men during her introductory rap.

Aside from Hindi, we can have any number of lectures, some by our main professor and program coordinator, Storm-ji and a lot by guest lecturers discussing their specialities. The lectures all either themed around national identity and the arts (what our program's about) or anthropology ethics and such to prepare for our big INDEPENDENT STUDY PROJECT in November—a month we get to do independent research pretty much anywhere our budget can take us on anything we can think. It's awesome.

Smiling at Sulabh! (as per instructions on the signs)

Sometimes we have field trips. One day, we went to the Sulabh Museum, or as it is more colloquially known as, the Toilet Museum. Strangest (but greatest) museum experience of my life: after we received a tour of all the toilets and the history of them, we were taken to a board room, given cookies and juice boxes, and a group of women who used to have the job of picking up sewage with their hands came in to meet us. After that, we all went outside to take a picture together, and a man came out and gave us a self-help speech about succeeding in life. Then the women presented us all with sandalwood garlands and scarves.

One a week, we have practica, which is a fun class where you learn a skill. We can choose from a few options, and I am taking cooking! Yes, I'm totally continuing my quest to learn how to feed myself. I have still yet to light something on fire, and I stuck my hand in a huge clay oven fire tank last week.

Massi-ji and homestay brother, after a slight mishap with the flour-making machine that resulted in a bit of a flour explosion

After classes are over, I usually try to explore Delhi or run errands or whatever. Then, I go home to Vasant Kunj Sector A Pocket C to my Massi-ji and my homestay brother, which is honestly one of the best parts of my day. My Massi-ji is a stay-at-home mom who also teaches English to children who can't afford to go to good schools, teaches abacus on Sundays, used to teach computers, designs furniture, gets up at 5:30 every day and is in general a superwoman. My homestay brother is a clever little 9 year old boy who thinks I am a complete joke, especially when he wipes the floor with me in something that he likes to call "survival badminton." We all watch Hindi soaps as I do homework at the kitchen table, and then I stand over my Massi-ji and write things down while she cooks. While they both speak English, there is definitely a language gap—needless to say, I'm learning a lot of Hindi. And making a lot of faces at my homestay brother, which contributes to the "thinks I'm a complete joke" thing.

THE BEST BIRTHDAY CAKE EVER

We have fun. My homestay brother's birthday party was this Monday. I was the picture-taker, which was super great since there was a BOUNCY HOUSE and a cake SHAPED LIKE A RACE CAR. Last week, we went to the huge, gigantic mall in Vasant Kunj that has a Chilies and a bowling alley, had a food orgy at the food court, and then played hide and seek in what looked like India's version of Wal-Mart for two hours.

My homestay sister putting us to work—arts and crafts hooray!

As for the other half of my homestay family, there is my Massi-ji Number Do and her high school age daughter, and the girl from my program. My homestay sister often recruits us Americans to help her with her homework, which occasionally includes arts and crafts (yesss I love them). They are some of the sweetest people I have ever met, and they make everyone feel so incredibly welcome in their home–which is also full of magazines, and I have recently become addicted to "Femina," which is like Cosmo but with less sex and crossed with Women's Health and human interest stories.

Basically, my homestay is absolutely wonderful and I'm going to miss them so so much. I love being able to come back to Vasant Kunj and have my Massi-ji drink some tea with me while I share all the things I learned in Hindi class and my homestay brother laughingly corrects my pronunciation, or go down stairs and have my Massi-ji Number Do give me a hug, giggle about the day with the girl from my program and have a long chat with my homestay sister.

To continue my summing-up, I love India. It definitely takes some getting used to—I swear the first two weeks in Delhi I stumbled around with my mouth open in shock/disgust/awe/amazement. India is exciting, and fascinating, and beautiful, but as our program director puts it, "its not all elephants and jasmine." Also, I'm not going to lie—India at times has definitely made me want to throw in the towel, sit down in the dirt next to the nearest pile of trash and cry. There's a lot of grey sludge and creepy men and fear of strange diseases, but all of those things are so small compared to everything else. Everything here is an adventure, and I'm starting to have more stories about India than I can remember. Plus, there's Mother Dairy Kulfi on a stick here. What can beat that?