oh delhi belly

so in addition to everything else that I've experienced in Delhi, I've experienced yet another thing: HOSPITALS.

The main problem with foreigners visiting India is that you will certainly get sick. It doesn't matter if you don't drink the water (which you shouldn't) or are careful of your diet and wash your fruits well and all of that - it just happens. There's too much bacteria here that our bodies don't know how to handle. I've been sick with various stomach issues before on the program, but this last Wednesday I pretty much checked myself into the hospital because I didn't think that I could tough it out with ginger tea this time. I'm feeling fine now, and barring any random terrible thing happening I should be able to leave tomorrow morning. The hospital is really quite nice, and the nurses here are extremely kind to me - I'm going to miss them when I leave. I'm ready to go though. There's only so much time that I can spend in bed, believe it or not.

I might as well take this chance to update everybody on my spring break, even though that happened a good three weeks ago. My friend Deborah and I decided that we wanted to go to Darjeeling, which is in the state of West Bengal very close to the border to Nepal, and while we were in the area we might as well visit Kolkata (Calcutta), because if you're in India you have to. It's too important to miss. So we flew to Kolkata and stumbled around Sudder Street, which is where most of the tourists stay in the city. Our hotel was... not the best, but ok. The most remarkable thing about the area though was Karim, a 13 year old girl who lived on the street. She helped us find our hotel after the one we had made reservations for fell through (typical India...) and showed us around the neighborhood, introducing us to the women that she lived with and shooing away the ubiquitous Indian men that gawked at us. It was a complicated relationship though - the first night I helped her buy baby formula for her little brother, which was more expensive than I had guessed, and after that everybody on the street knew who we were and asked us for money. Deborah and I helped Karim and her mother out a bit more, buying them rice and lentils, but somehow that wasn't enough for them either. One moment it would be "Thank you sisters, God bless you," and the next would be "but one more thing..." It put us into a difficult position, because on one hand they really were facing some considerable problems. In addition to oh, not having a house yet having four children (Karim is the oldest) to care for, Karim's father has TB and they don't have the money for medicine. Plus the money for shoes. Plus the money to make sure that the kids stay healthy enough to stay in school. And and and...

The thing that I've learned about India is this: nothing is simple, and the closer you look at anything, the more complicated it gets. Because almost everyone who begs for money has these problems, or similar ones. And there's only so much that two people can give. That's the bitch of it.

Outside of Sudder Street, we explored a lot of Kolkata. We went to the Armenian church and found an abandoned synagogue nearby; we went to the used bookstores crowded College streets; we visited the Botanical Gardens and saw The Great Banyan Tree, which is I think the biggest tree in the world; we went to Kalighat and saw where Mother Teresa worked; we wandered around the Victoria Memorial and watched couples make out under every single tree; and we went to St. Paul's Cathedral and the Academy of Fine Arts.

A few awesome people that we met along the way:

Shurjendu - this is Anila's (one of the girls on our program) friend from back home who has relatives in Kolkata. We had dinner with him and Anila our last night in Kolkata in this really nice restaurant called Peter Cat (god knows why) where I had my first gimlet.

George - we met George outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, where he works as the groundskeeper. He told us that we were a little too early for visiting hours, but we ended up talking and having chai with him. He's probably one of the most interesting people that I've met in India - he's over 70, grew up in Goa, worked his ass off to get his two daughters through college/graduate school, and loves to dance with his wife, to whom he's been married for nearly 50 years. An amazingly sweet guy, deeply spiritual, and I hope that I can be half as cool as he is when I'm all grown up.

That's it for part 1 of spring break - I'll tell you all about Darjeeling in the next post. But first! A few pictures!



Deborah and me with Karim's mother, who gave us henna!















Here's Deborah with George!

agra and more

so a little thing happened where I sat in a bus for 4 hours with the end result of SEEING THE TAJ MAHAL. you can see my lovely pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/lucinda.stroud/ as well as photos I took while on the road to Agra. In driving to Agra we passed through the more rural side of India which we had seen little of in Delhi, and in some ways it's another world. There are people literally living in shacks by the side of the road that are smaller than my bunkbed at home. There are entire villages that you can see for a few seconds while passing by - barber shops, water pumps, children naked in the street, old men resting on bed frames, women crouched and working. And cows, of course, simply sitting, or pulling carts beside the buses and motorcycles, and herds of goats, and chickens, and camels (!), all mingling with the traffic. The traffic here is crazy and hectic, yes, but in a way it freaks me out less than traffic in the States - people use their horns here as a means of letting the cars ahead of them be aware of their presence rather than being royally pissed off. I'm learning that when the people around me are calm I tend to not panic, even if I can barely hear myself think. And one of the main features of Indian culture is a sort of calm pragmaticism. If you know of a way to make an extra dollar, you try it until someone stops you. If you see an extra meter you can edge forwards on the road, you take it. Things don't always work, naturally - I saw the result of a car accident on the way back from the Taj Mahal where one of the small cars was entirely decimated by a truck that had overturned completely. I can't imagine how there would be many survivors.

But enough of that. I WENT TO THE TAJ MAHAL.

You enter the Taj Mahal complex through the gatehouse. Architecturally it's absolutely brilliant; if you walk in the exact center through the archway, the main building of the Taj is revealed to you gradually, step by step. First you see the center building, then two of the surrounding towers, then the other two, then the mosque and corresponding empty building on the other side. And the size is unbelievable. That people could have built something like this... amazing.

A few facts you might not know about the Taj:
The main building and surrounding plaza is built entirely out of Indian marble, which is the hardest in the world. Not only is it incredibly hard; unlike Italian marble it's completely non-porous, meaning you can touch the marble all you want and no harm will come to it. In fact, the way that the Taj is kept clean is by simply washing it every few years with soap and water; it washes off with no residue. The gatehouse and mosque are built of sandstone and thus have to be periodically repaired/maintained.

Speaking of the mosque, although there are perfectly symmetrical buildings on either side of the Taj, only one is properly situated to face Mecca. The other was built entirely for the purpose of maintaining the symmetry of the entire complex and never served any purpose whatsoever.

The Taj took 22 years to build. After completion, the king's son who succeeded him deposed his father, who spent the rest of his life mostly in prison. He's buried at the Taj beside his wife.

(This is the bit I liked the most) Around the archway of the gate house is a long line of Arabic script; this is repeated around the main arch to the Taj and much of the inlay throughout the building. It turns out that all of this writing consists of 14 passages from the Qu'ran detailing mourning and the humility of man before God (suitable texts for a mausoleum); there are 14 passages because the queen the Taj was built to honor bore the king 14 children, dying while giving birth to the last (who also died). Language is beautiful, and I love how it was worked into the architecture. The way religion mixes with architecture is fascinating.

Visiting the Taj Mahal was definitely the highlight of my weekend, but other cool stuff happened as well. I was complimented by the yoga instructor that visited the residence for my technique and had one of the most physically challenging yet spiritually significant sessions that I can remember. I also washed my socks and underwear by hand out of the same bucket I shower from. In short, fulfilling and challenging. This has been a long post so I'll sign off now, but be sure to check out the pictures and leave comments here if you have any questions about any of them. I'll be working on rearranging some of them into individual albums.

arrival

so! I'm in New Delhi.

Left Kansas City a bit after 2pm on Friday, Jan. 4th. Arrive in Newark a few hours later - kind of a shitty airport frankly, but still better than KC's. Found a burrito place and got a veggie one with guacamole. Never managed to get to Chipotle this break - that will have to be rectified upon my return.

Found the gate in Newark and hung around there for an hour or so, sneaking glances at all of the other people waiting with me. A lot of them were Indian, unsurprisingly, but the word "Indian" is so misleading, because there is so much variety there. North India, South India, rural India, Muslim India, Jain India, Sikh India... and even these are gross generalizations. Anyway.

The flight was ... unmemorable, really. Even now looking back on it, it seems to have taken place in some sort of limbo without time; we left Newark at night and landed in New Delhi at night too, so in a way it was as if no time had passed. But of course it had, around 12 hours of it. Spent part of it watching "Knocked Up" and simpsons episodes available on the nifty little tv built into the back of the seat in front of me; most of the rest of it was semi-sleeping. Before unboarding we were handed sheets of paper we would have to fill out to get through immigration and customs - in doing that I found a few other IES students on my flight: Amanda and Beth, who also goes to UPS. We met up again after unboarding and found Laura, also an IES student. Immigration and customs were disconcertingly easy. The airport we went through, Indira Gandhi International (named after the only female prime minister in India; her story is interesting to examine, especially in light of Bhutto) was very much under construction. There was a sense of dust and smoke everywhere, and that didn't stop when we went outside. During winter the nights in Delhi are foggy, which combined with the dust from all of the construction everywhere and the smog makes for pretty poor visibility.

Driving to our IES residence was a bit harrowing. The traffic actually wasn't bad at all since it was so late; even though lanes are pretty much considered loose suggestions to Indian drivers, I actually felt really at ease with the traffic. Everyone knew what they were doing, from the motorcycles to the farm trucks to the autorickshaws to the taxi I was in, and even though there was honking everywhere none of it really seemed in anger, which is what most distresses me about US traffic. So it wasn't the driving that scared me, or even the driver... for the most part. I only became unsettled when our driver decided to stop following the other taxi that was taking students to the IES residence and struck off on its own. Then all of the horror stories I could think of crowded into my head - we were going to be robbed, raped, whatever, by this driver that I don't think spoke any English, or just left in the middle of New Delhi at night. In any case, that all turned out fine, but it was still worrying.

But Delhi!

There are stray dogs everywhere, trotting along and minding their own business. I saw at least seven around the airport and on the way from the airport to the residence, so this morning when I ventured out and actually saw pet dogs on leashes it was a bit unexpected. People make their homes wherever they can. I saw more than a few mud shacks among the construction sites. And there's graffiti, in both Hindi and English (strangely enough, the English writing was advertising classes in English, but it would be necessary to read English to understand where it was being taught in the first place...). The birds here are different, and there are some squirrel/chipmunk animals that run around our house.

I'll update later with pictures of our residence and info about what I do today. Meep!