Merry Christmas

I hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas.

Some of the Best Facial Hair.

Delhi

As I was traveling around India I kept on meeting many people who didn’t enjoy their stay in Delhi. Most hated the city and wanted to leave as fast as they could. The strong reaction to Delhi came from the immediate exposure to all the extremes of India all condensed into one area. The cultural clash is immense and it takes a while to learn the new rules of life. I heard stories of people not being taken to their Hotels or being grossly over charged for their taxi fair. The dirtiness and the decay, the extremes of poverty and wealth and the masses of people all trying to pry something out of you is quite overwhelming. Beggars at the traffic lights banging on the windows of Lamborghinis asking for alms, the previously mentioned traffic, and homeless sleeping on traffic isles is very challenging for those, like myself, who had come from lands of order where many of these extremes are not on display. Everywhere there is noise. There is a constant barrage of car horns and diesel engines, dogs barking and people arguing. If you are staying near a mosque or a Jain temple you will hear the call to devotion or songs of devotion that begin at five in the morning. In India it is only possible to find inner silence. Staying in or around Old Delhi sees all of these extremes even more compressed. Delhi is a quick awakening to India and can be a punch in the face.

My experience of Delhi differed to those of my fellow travellers. I was very fortunate to not be thrust straight into the unfamiliar. I too could see all the extremes, however it was kind of from a distance. It was not until I had arrived in Kolkata that I fully experienced what others did in Delhi.

My travel began with in a spare room of my cousin’s flat in a more affluent part of town. My cousin, Tim, works for the Australian High Commission in Delhi and as such had access to the trapping of being a diplomat abroad. To keep the household running smoothly a housekeeper/cook is needed. A personal driver is also very necessary.

While Tim was busy at work I would spend the day exploring the town. My first few days were taken up by discovering the many forts, mosques, temples, monuments and markets of the city. Leo, Tim’s driver, would take me from one destination to the next without the slightest complaint. Some of the monuments, forts and places of worship were very old and in various states of repair. Others were quite new, showcasing a modern India. Favourites were the Kutb Minar and Safdarjung’s Tomb both remnants of the once great Mughal Empire now only seen through monuments. Houz Khas Village (great restaurants and knick knack shops) and Old Delhi were also favourites however when I had experienced enough of the Indian craziness I could get back into the car and drive somewhere “quieter.”

I was able to ease into the untried and untested while still having all of the comforts of home. I was able to experience India from afar. I was in the ‘diplomatic bubble’ where I could eat familiar foods and live in a familiar environment and take daytrips into the unfamiliar. Being nervous about the culture shock, this was a luxury that was greatly appreciated. When I travelled out of Delhi I did get thrust into the middle of life in India however I felt that I was more prepared and could more easily land on my feet.

All this being said, the luxury I had saw someone who could show me around the city. There was a lot of solo discovering however I had the knowledge of a ‘local’ as a backup and was directed to the nicer restaurants and places to explore. Delhi gets stuck in your psyche and it is hard to leave.

More pictures of my time in Delhi:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=251627&id=696291670

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=251632&id=696291670

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=251253&id=696291670

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=251819&id=696291670

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=252010&id=696291670

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=255310&id=696291670

A great book on Delhi: City of Djinns: A year in Delhi. By William Dalrymple.

Pictures from the Bazaar

One week in Delhi: First impressions.

When arriving in Delhi tired and hungry just off the plane from Australia, the first thing that I noticed was the smell of smoke. It wasn’t the familiar smell of wood fires but rather something new and foreign. The smoky odour didn’t immediately strike me as unpleasant it was just unknown. At first I thought that it was stale cigarette smoke from the indoor smoking rooms within the airport however, once outside, it became evident that it was ever precent. It was the smell of the home fires of the 20 million people that live in and around the city. It was a foreign smell because it was not wood that was being burned. In a climate wood is in short supply the most common form of fuel is dried cow manure a readily available resource. I am told that it is a smell that is present all year round. It is the smell of Delhi.

When walking around the streets the scent smoke and a general smell of rubbish and decay are quite often over powered by more pleasant odours. The smell of spices and cooking (both curries and sweets) aand incense and Chai tea seem to reach out and welcome you to Delhi and India with open arms. The pleasant smells and the worm sweet taste of Chai draws you away from the dirtiness and hustle and bustle of the street and allows you to relax and indulge in a moment of peace before once again stepping out into disarray, and being a tourist not yet attuned to the rules of life in India, stepping out into uncertainty.

Delhi seems to always be busy and in a perpetual state of chaos. When driving from the airport, after arriving at 3.30 in the morning, the well-known rules and relative order of Melbourne driving to were nowhere in sight. Being a passenger on the Delhi roads was an intense experience. Everyone uses the road with whatever means of transport available. In a country that has a large poor population this means that on the roads are many bicycles, and horse or buffalo drawn carts. There are trucks and busses, motorbikes, scooters, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, and any other form of transport that has wheels or hooves or moves in some way. One of the first things that become immediately obvious is that you have to give way to people coming on to a roundabout and not the other way around. Doing a left hand turn from a right hand lane, even if you have to cross three lanes of heavy traffic, is not only acceptable but accomplish by all forms of transport no matter how fast or slow. No one pays any attention to the lanes that are marked on the road with everyone meandering through the traffic in a frantic effort to find the fastest rout home. At night when the traffic is slower red traffic lights no longer indicate “stop” but rather they are more of a “give way” signal. It was a lot to digest so early in the morning.

Amongst all the chaos of the roads there are further obstacles through which the drivers have to navigate. Appallingly maintained roads are a problem common through most of the parts of India that I have seen, however in Delhi it is only the occasional large pothole. The most common obstacles are the previously mentioned turning from the right hand lane. It is not uncommon to see random animals sitting in the road (these are quite often cows who seem right at home in the middle of the road) and pedestrians who don’t see a six-lane motorway as an obstruction to their journey. I don’t think that I saw anybody use a pedestrian crossing.

Amongst all this chaos the greatest tool of communication on the road is quite obviously the horn. To the untrained observer there appears to have evolved horn etiquette and even rules. There is the polite short honk that gives slower drivers a chance to move out of the way. This honk is the most common and is habitually utilized. Two short honks are used to convey a certain amount of annoyance that the slower driver didn’t move out of the way quick enough. After the two short honks it is the long honk that is employed with great force to broadcast anger and severe annoyance at stupid or carless driving decisions. Within these three systems there are many variations on the theme adding noisy to an already exhilarating journey. If travelling in an auto-rickshaw the sound of the road is increased exponentially due to the fact that you are in an open vehicle.

Driving in Delhi was described to me as being part of a large school of fish. Everyone is weaving in and out of the traffic all going in the same direction as part of one giant organism. After my initial shock of the first day I began to see that there was a technique to driving on the Delhi roads. Drivers seemed have a great sense of spatial awareness. Once you get into the new motoring headspace and forget all that you have previously learned about driving, the journey becomes alright and almost normal. New Delhi lulled me into a state of acceptance when travelling and allowed me to concentrate on the other unfamiliar life rules of life in India. I saw how the system worked and I was at ease as a passenger for I fully trusted the driver. This was all to change. The sub-continent has a way of obliterating all preformed ideas and notions and hastily learned rules of life. As a tourist you are forever challenged and put to the test. This is the magic of India.

India, a love story.

Before I came to India I was a bit nervous and didn’t know what to expect. To prepare I read an article portrays the experience of many western on the sub continent. It has been my experience in the short time that I have been here and that of many foreigners that I have encountered along the way. The story was published in The Australian on October 09, 2010.

Mad for Mumbai

Living in India is like having an intense but insane affair, writes expat
Catherine Taylor ...

TONIGHT, as I waved my high heel in the face of a bewildered taxi driver, I
thought suddenly: I am absolutely nuts in India. It's a thought I have
often. Someone or something is always going nuts, and quite often it's me.
I was trying to get a taxi driver to take me home, a mere 500 metres away,
but it was pouring with rain and my shoes were oh-so-high, and it was late.
He, of course, was having none of it; no amount of shoe-waving and
sad-facing from a wild-haired firangi was changing his mind, when suddenly I
remembered the magic trick - pay more than you should. "Arre, bhai sahab, 50
rupees to Altamount Road? Please?" And off we went.
I have lived in Mumbai for almost three years. It was my choice to come - I
wanted offshore experience in my media career and India was the only country
looking to hire - and I wanted a change. I needed something new, exciting,
thrilling, terrifying. And India gave that to me in spades. In fact, she
turned it all the way up to 11. And then she turned it up a little more.
To outsiders, living in India has a particular kind of glamour attached to
it, a special sparkle that sees people crowding around me at parties.
"You live in India? My God, really? I could never do that. What's it like?"
The closest I have come to answering that question is that it's like being
in a very intense, extremely dysfunctional relationship. India and I fight,
we scream, we argue, we don't speak for days on end, but really, deep down,
we love each other. She's a strange beast, this India. She hugs me, so
tightly sometimes that I can't breathe, then she turns and punches me hard
in the face, leaving me stunned. Then she hugs me again, and suddenly I know
everything will be all right.
She wonders why I don't just "know" how things are done, why I argue with
her about everything, why I judge, why I rail at injustice and then do
nothing about it. She wonders how old I am, how much I earn, why I'm not
married. (The poor census man looked at me, stunned, then asked in a
faltering voice, "But madam, if you're not married then… who is the head of
your household?").
I wonder how she can stand by when small children are begging on corners,
how she can let people foul up the streets so much that they are impossible
to walk along, how she can allow such corruption, such injustice, such A LOT
OF HONKING.
But she has taught me things. She has taught me to be brave, bold,
independent, sometimes even fierce and terrifying. She has taught me to walk
in another man's chappals, and ask questions a different way when at first
the answer is no. She has taught me to accept the things I cannot change.
She has taught me that there are always, always, two sides to every
argument. And she was kind enough to let me come and stay.
She didn't make it easy though (but then, why should she?). The Foreigner
Regional Registration Office, banks, mobile phone companies and rental
agencies are drowning under piles of carbon paper, photocopies of passports
(I always carry a minimum of three) and the soggy tissues of foreigners who
fall to pieces in the face of maddening bureaucracy. What costs you 50
rupees one day might be 500 rupees the next, and nobody will tell you why.
What you didn't need to bring yesterday, you suddenly need to bring today. Your
signature doesn't look like your signature. And no, we can't help you. Come
back tomorrow and see.
It's not easy being here, although I am spoiled by a maid who cooks for me,
and a delivery service from everywhere that ensures I rarely have to wave my
shoes at taxi drivers. I buy cheap flowers, trawl for gorgeous antiques, buy
incredibly cheap books; I have long, boozy brunches in five-star hotels for
the price of a nice bottle of wine at home, I have a very nice roof over my
head … on the face of it, it would seem I have little to complain about.
But then, I am stared at constantly, I have been spat on, sexually harassed,
had my (covered) breasts videotaped as I walked through a market, had my
drink spiked, been followed countless times. I have wept more here than I
have ever in my life, out of frustration, anger, loneliness, the sheer
hugeness of being here.
But the longer I stay, the more I seem to relax, let go, let it be.
But I do often wonder why I'm here, especially when I'm tired, teary and
homesick, my phone has been disconnected for the 19th time despite promises
it would never happen again, when it's raining and no taxis will take me
home. But then a willing ride always comes along, and we'll turn a corner
and be suddenly in the midst of some banging, crashing mad festival full of
colour, where everyone is dancing behind a slow-moving truck, and I won't
have a clue what's going on but a mum holding a child will dance up to my
window and point and smile and laugh, and I breathe out and think, really,
my God, this is fantastic. This is India! I live in India! She hugs me, she
punches me, and she hugs me again.
Yet I know won't ever belong here, not properly. I know this when I listen
to girls discussing what colour blouses they should wear to their weddings -
she's Gujarati, he's from the south, she's wearing a Keralan sari. I know
when my friends give me house-hunting advice: "Look at the names of the
people who already live there, then you'll know what kind of building it
is." (Trouble is, I don't know my Kapoors from my Kapurs, my Sippys from my
Sindhis, my Khans from my Jains). I know this when my lovely fruit man (who
also delivers) begs me to taste a strawberry he is holding in his grubby
hands and I have to say no, I can't eat it, I'll die… I know I will never
belong because, as stupid as it sounds, being truly, properly Indian is in
your DNA.
I marvel at how incredibly well educated so many of them are, how they can
all speak at least three languages and think it's no big deal, how they fit
1000 people into a train carriage meant for 300 and all stand together quite
peacefully, how they know the songs from every Hindi film ever made, how
they welcome anyone and everyone (even wild-haired, complaining firangis)
into their homes for food, and chai, and more food.
I've seen terrible things - someone fall under a train, children with
sliced-off ears, old, old men sitting in the rain nursing half-limbs while
they beg, children covered in flies sleeping on the pavement, beggars with
no legs weaving themselves through traffic on trolleys, men in lunghis
working with their hands in tiny corridors with no fans in sky-high
temperatures. I've read heartbreaking things, of gang rapes, corruption,
environmental abuse. I've smelled smells that have stripped the inside of my
nostrils, stepped over open sewers in markets, watched a goat being bled to
death.
I've done things of which I am ashamed, things I never thought I would do. I
have slapped a starving child away, I have turned my head in annoyance when
beggars have tapped repeatedly on my taxi window, I have yelled at grown men
in the face. I have been pinched and pinched back, with force. I have
slapped, I have hit, I have pushed. I have screamed in anger. I have, at
times, not recognised myself.
I've yelled at a man for kicking a dog, and yelled at a woman who pushed
into a line ahead of me when I wasn't at all in a hurry. When a teenage
beggar stood at the window of my taxi, saying "F… you madam" over and over,
I told him to go f… himself and gave him the finger; once on the train I let
a kid keep 100 rupees as change. I am kind and I am cold-hearted, I am fair
and I am mean, I am delightful and I am downright rude. I am all of these at
once and I distress myself wildly over it, but somehow, India accepts me.
She has no time for navel-gazing foreigners; she just shoved everyone along
a bit and made room for me.
She has no time to dwell on my shortcomings, she just keeps moving along.
And then, and then. I've been to temples where I've sung along with old
women who had no teeth, I've held countless smiling ink-marked babies for
photos, I've had unknown aunties in saris smile and cup my face with their
soft, wrinkled hands, I've made street vendors laugh when I've choked on
their spicy food, I've danced through the streets at Ganpati, fervently sung
the national anthem (phonetically) in cinemas, had designers make me
dresses, I've met with CEOs and heads of companies just because I asked if I
could. She hugs, she punches, she hugs again.
In short, I have been among the luckiest of the lucky. She keeps me on my
toes, Ms India, and I have been blessed that she let me stay for a while.
She wanted me to succeed here and she gave me grand opportunities and
endless second chances. She willed me forward like a stern parent. She
welcomed me. And when I leave, because I know I will one day, I will weep,
because I will miss her terribly. And because I know she won't even notice
that I am gone.