Shimla, or How We Learned to Defend Ourselves

As we teeter tottered up the mountain and motion-sick Hannah tried desperately not to throw up our nutritious breakfast of cake, oreos and potato chips, the temperature dropped as we wound our way up the Himalayas.  At one point we sat in traffic for more than 15 minutes without moving.  All the other passengers on the un-airconditioned bus crept forward to see what was causing the holdup.  After they all sat down and we were still motionless, Hannah and I stood up to see two drivers of cars that had been waiting in the traffic had gotten into a fender bender and were starting to fistfight. As they were pulled apart, we laughed and waited patiently to move on.  When we finally went forward, we saw that what had happened was a bus going in the opposite direction had broken down and all of the cars going against us had moved into our lane, making it impossible for anyone in our land to advance.  In any case, we were eventually on our way again and by the time we reached Shimla, we were starving and so grateful to be on solid ground.  We checked into a hotel from the guidebook, put down our stuff, and headed straight to the town's main street in search of Cafe del Sol, a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet for its variety of foreign food, including Mexican! Finding it sooner than we hoped, we ordered a burrito and nachos and a quesadilla, and, let me tell you, I don't think I've ever enjoyed a tortilla more in my life.

Happy to be at Cafe del Sol!

We spent the rest of the day wandering the streets, going to the Tibetan Refugees' Market, full of brand knockoffs, going in and out of little shops on the main street, admiring the beautiful hand work on pashmina shawls and salwar kameez, we retired early after our day of traveling and meandering, enjoying a beer in the comfort of our hotel room and passing out by 9:30.

We woke up the next morning at 8:00, stopping first at the nearby travel agent and buying tickets for the evening bus to Dehra Dun, from which we would continue on to another hill station, Mussoorie. From there we walked a few kilometers, including several steep, uphill climbs, eventually reaching a small art museum containing beautiful relics of India dating from several thousand years ago to the present. It was a diverse array of art and we really enjoyed ourselves.  We had thought of continuing on to the recommended Viceregal Lodge, a historic building known for having been the place where the treaty for Partition was signed.  However, when a man, (who turned out to be from Malviya Nagar N-Block!) whom we asked for directions pointed to a grey building on another mountain, we gave up and decided to walk to another recommended spot, called the Glen.

Retracing our steps, we returned to a fork in the road with a sign pointing to the Glen and headed downhill.  The walk was lovely, despite being on a paved road, with foliage so green it looked like it had been painted.  Every so often the trees would open up, revealing the misty valley below, and, occasionally, the meadow/cricket field/helipad called Annadale.  After a while, we noticed that a young guy who appeared about 18 or 19 was walking not too far behind us, but being that there aren't too many actual trails in the area, we didn't think anything of it, assuming he was headed to the same place we were or somewhere near it.  Seeing that he seemed to know where he was going, I asked if he knew where the Glen was, and he said it wasn't far, pointing to a footpath just up ahead.  At this point we had been walking downhill for over an hour and I was seriously concerned about my physical ability to climb back up the mountain, considering the effects of the altitude on my breathing and my general complete lack of any type of fitness. We started down the footpath, which opened into a clearing, and saw a (clearly homemade) sign that said "the Glen" and pointed left.  Still having no idea what this "Glen" actually was, Hannah again asked the guy whether we were far, and whether there was a road at the bottom from which we could find a lift back up.  He said that the only way back up was the way we came, and that it wasn't too much further.  As we continued our descent and the path went deeper into the woods, the guy behind us started to walk with us, at first asking the questions we always get of "where are you from?" and, to Hannah, "how do you speak such good Hindi?" We answered him as tersely as possible, and soon he was creeping us out with questions like "what hotel are you staying in?" After about five or ten minutes of us trying to ignore him, he said something to Hannah in Hindi that made her stop in her tracks.  I had no idea what he'd said but I saw Hannah's face and tone change completely, as she said words like jao (go away) and got in his face.  He shook his head and pointed in the direction we were headed in, at which point Hannah turned around and headed back the way we came.  I followed her and after a second, she stopped, overwhelmed and upset.  She finally related that he had blatantly propositioned her, and had refused to turn around, insisting that he wanted to continue his walk. We practically ran up the hill, as Hannah especially was very freaked out by the whole experience.  It's not that anything would have happened--there were two of us and one scrawny him, but to be in such an isolated place and have your surroundings and sense of safety invaded like that was shocking and disturbing. When we got to the main road, we stod and waited for one of the many taxis and tour vans we had seen on the road coming down, and as we stood waiting, Hannah glimpsed the creep hiding behind a tree, watching us; he must have taken a shortcut back up to the road.  By the grace of God, an SUV full of women appeared after only a minute or two and Hannah jumped into the road to stop it and were quickly motioned to pile in.  No sooner did we close the door of the car did Hannah burst into tears, so relieved to be in a car moving away from that place and that guy, and overwhelmed by how scared she had been.  I think the people in the car were taken aback by Hannah's reaction, saying things like "it's no problem," and "it's no big deal." But it felt like a big deal to us, and Hannah in particular felt extremely invalidated and upset by this response that it was nothing to fret over.  When we got out of the car at the top of the mountain, we felt a need to tell someone in uniform about what had happened, and the first such person we saw was a military guy stationed in the nearby base.  When Hannah told him what had happened, he smiled and shook his head.  "For this, you're upset?" he said.  Hannah started crying all over again, dismayed all over again at his indifference.  "Was he your friend?" he asked. "NO!" we yelled. "We have never seen him in our lives before!" I was so mad by his complete lack of empathy upon seeing how visibly upset Hannah was about what I consider a very legitimate trespass.  Frustrated by my limited ability to communicate due to the language barrier, I asked if he spoke English and he nodded. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??!" I yelled.  What I really wanted to do was push him or slap him to see if he would wake up from his alternate reality where propositioning young girls for sex in an isolated place in the middle of the day is acceptable, but I settled for giving him a lecture in English that he in no way understood.  "This town makes a ton of money off of tourism," I said.  "We are two foreigners here, spending our money and patronizing this town, telling you that we felt very threatened while seeing one of the town's major tourist attractions, and you're saying that it doesn't matter.  How is that OK to you?" In retrospect, this soldier was absolutely the wrong person to approach; he had no prerogative to help us, and it really wasn't his duty to help us out, not that there was really anything he could do (or even that we especially wanted him to do!). But when you see that a person is upset, even if it is about something you don't particularly care about or think is important, how can you treat them with so little empathy? His reponse, or lack thereof, made the experience all the more unsettling, as it was such a stark example of how low a priority women's safety is here for so many.

We made our way back to our hotel, where we told the travel agent, that we had gotten to know a little, what had happened. He was very sympathetic and agreed that we had every right to be upset. Days later, when I relayed the ordeal to my mom, she pointed out the problematic nature of our needing external validation of our experience.  Hannah and I are two bold, sassy and smart college graduates, in India on a prestigious government grant as ad hoc cultural ambassadors.  We have written theses, won awards, and each have stable support systems at home, not to mention each other, to back us up and be there for us.  Why, then, did we need strangers in Shimla to confirm what we knew for a fact to be true: that our safety was involuntarily compromised and a creepy, stupid kid had objectified us to the point that he felt it was OK to defy major social norms and presume he could treat us in such a disrespectful and invading manner.  Part of the need to tell an authority certainly comes from in ingrained notion that police, despite corruption and shortcomings, are generally there to protect us from harm; that the State monopoly on violence is justified because the State will defend us.  Not so in India, and often in the US. Even in Delhi, there is no real emergency 911-type number which you can call and receive immediate assistance. During our Fulbright orientation in Delhi, we were told by the US Embassy representative in charge of all Embassy security-related matters that the police were not whom we should call in an emergency.  He said it was important to know someone in our neighborhood, whether a landlord or kindly neighbor, that would be able to assist and guide us if something should happen. And of course we both knew all of these things, the cultural differences, the untrustworthy authorities, but in that moment, what we sought was some kind of official stamp of approval that yes, we had been justified in being freaked out and yes, we had every right to be hurt and angry at having our walk ruined by that arrogant asshole.

Determined not to let this incident ruin our day, we decided to eat our feelings (at Cafe del Sol...again) and engage in some retail therapy before heading up to see Jakhoo Temple.  Lunch, followed by ice cream for Hannah and cake for me, was delicious, and we bought some beautiful clothes at the nearby market.  As it started to rain, we headed to a taxi stand to take us up to the temple, famous for its 180 foot tall statue of Hanuman, the monkey god to which the temple is dedicated.  Emerging from the cab in the pouring rain, the first thing we saw were monkeys. EVERYWHERE. The sand-colored Rhesus monkeys had been visible all over Shimla, but suddenly it seemed like we had happened on a monkey convention of sorts, and we understood why the guide book had recommended renting a stick to ward them off.  We went in the small temple at the food of the hill, across from the main temple, leaving our shoes in the little cage outside and latching the door to prevent the monkeys from stealing them.  Literally.  As we walked in, an unfortunate man was furiously trying to lure down a monkey from the eaves who had stolen his flip flop when he failed to lock it in the joote ghar, or little cage for placing your shoes when you go in the temple.  

The offending monkey with his loot

By the time we came out of the temple, the offending monkey was sitting all the way on the edge of the rafters, chewing happily on his new flip flop and gazing contentedly at the increasingly disgruntled one-shoed man, who was now cursing profusely and pretending to walk away, saying, "Tata!" We laughed and laughed, a relief after the morning's events, and then Hannah asserted that there was "no way in hell" she was going up to the temple "unprotected," and we shelled out 5 rupees each for some sticks. At this point it was raining hard, and many monkeys were seeking shelter under the walkway leading up the hill to the temple.  As they approached us, we shook our sticks and alternated between yelling and laughing, fending them off and stopping to catch our breath.  The temple was cool, and it was funny how the temple devoted to a monkey god would be so crowded with actual monkeys. The rain caused the structures to be encased in a thick, swiftly moving fog, so that our views constantly changed and images in the distance were appearing and disappearing all the time.  The sound of the rain, the low volume of people, the smell of the pine forest around us lent to a sense of magic, and we left the temple feeling empowered by our sticks, weapons against thieving monkeys and all things evil.

We emerge victorious! Thanks, sticks!

The rain had stopped by the time the taxi took us down the mountain, and we slowly made our way back to the hotel, stopping for coffee and getting sandwiches to eat on the bus.  We collected our stuff and wound down through the old market, asking every other person for directions to the old bus terminal, from which we would get a local bus to take us to the new bus terminal where we would board our bus to Dehra Dun via Chandigarh.  Hannah and I got on the local bus, which was pretty crowded when we got on, and stood on the stairs to lean the wait of our bags on the rail.  as SOON as the bus started moving, literally 20-30 more people jumped on the bus before I could get out of the way, nearly every one stepping on my feet and ungraciously pushing against my face. The only advantage was being by the door, so I could stick my face out the window and not smell the aroma of 378946247678 people crammed into such a small space.  After a fair bit of running around, we found the right bus and took our seats.  The first few minutes of the journey were fine, as we left Shimla and started down the mountain road towards Chandigarh.  But it soon became clear that the ride that had been so scenic, if rocky, on the way up during the day would be dizzying and pitch dark on the way down.  Prone to car sickness, Hannah was soon writhing with nausea, feeling claustrophobic and trapped when the man in front of her leaned his seat all the way back so he was practically in her lap. She felt better at the rest stops and made it over three hours on the bus before her stomach succumbed and she vomited into a plastic bag I held for her, which dripped all over both of us.  She felt terrible for puking on me, but I assured her that it was no big deal, and that she wasn't the first person to ever throw up on me (thanks, Aileen!). Hannah was not a happy camper, and I felt terrible that there was nothing we could do but wait it out.  As all of this was going on, the bus was stalling with more and more frequency, often jerking forward five or six times after every time it braked.  We reached Chandigarh after five hours, about halfway to Dehra Dun, and people got off the bus to stretch their legs and use the bathroom.  I saw that there was a crowd of guys standing around the front of the bus peering at the hood, looking into what I assume was the cause of all the stalling.  I thought nothing of it, but after ten or fifteen minutes, instead of seeing people get back on the bus, passengers were collecting their bags and getting off, and it soon became clear that this bus wasn't going anywhere any time soon.  Having left Shimla at 8:00 PM, it was now 2:00 in the morning, and people around us were saying the bus company may send another bus.  I rolled my eyes and saw that many of the people from our bus were running towards a newly arrived bus, un-airconditioned and so packed with Indian men that limbs seemed to stick out of windows in every direction.  After consulting with Hannah, we made an executive decision to give up on Mussoorie, ask for our money back, get a room in a nice hotel and go home the next day.  When another bus pulled up, as rickety and packed as the first, the bus agent offered us a seat on it.  "What about all these people, don't they need seats too?" Hannah asked, gesturing to the ring of men standing around watching the interaction. "No," he responded, "they're just here to look at you." Ahhhh okay, all clear. We quickly gave up on getting our $10 back, got in an auto and, after rejecting the roach motel the driver tried to take us to, pulled up to the Sunbeam Hotel, a vision of paradise.  As we showered and delighted in our air conditioned palace, we realized how grateful we were to not be on the bus, to be comfortable, that the bus broke down in the largest city on the route, a place we were already familiar with.

Happy in our hotel

We slept until 2 the next day, collected out things and headed out to get a train ticket.  The travel agent we came across informed us that he could not book us a ticket, as the train was to leave in less than four hours and the bookings close four hours before departure; we would have to go to the station and buy it in person.  We headed for the train station, praying for the luck to obtain precious tickets and get back to Delhi that day.  We walked up to the ticket booth, waiting patiently behind the long lines, when a glorious angel in the form of a station agent came and pulled Hannah out of the line.  Not sure of where she was going, I stayed in line, and then found her ten minutes later, holding to tickets for the 4:20 train to Delhi and beaming from our good fortune. The agent, seeing she was foreign, had taken her to the back and sold her tickets then and there.  She paid 136 rupees for two tickets (about $2.50), less than what we had paid to take an auto from the hotel to the station.  They were for "general boarding," the last car in the train reserved for last minute tickets and generally occupied by men who were poor. But the agent told us to sit in the Sleeper class and pay the conductor the difference in fare when he came around.  We sat in an empty berth, from which I yelled at several men who tried to take our picture, and when the train started moving, we couldn't believe our incredible luck.  Finally!  

The journey was uneventful and lovely, passing through the farmland of Punjab and Haryana, villages and towns and orchards.  We watched as day turned into night, as men played cards and children fell asleep on their mothers' laps, as chai wallas and snack vendors and tchotchke hawkers and eunuchs collecting money for blessings passed through the train's aisles at each stop.  Hannah and I listened to music, pausing every once in a while to chat, reflect on the past few days, as the world around us passed us by. We arrived at our apartment around 10PM, dusty, exhausted and full of stories and relief to be home. Over the previous five days, we learned that sometimes a stick is a good thing to have, that good food and solid sleep can be an amazing cure, and that when you travel in India, you often have to just throw up your hands and say, "plans, schmans." Despite many trials and tribulations, our trip was overall a beautiful adventure that I will not soon forget.

Delhi Belly

***WARNING: This post is not for the faint of stomach.  In attempting to describe my experience I have included details which may or may not induce nausea.  Read at your own discretion, but note that the grossness is over by the second paragraph.***

Alas, I have been jinxed by all my grateful affirmations for not getting sick.  Two nights ago, after falling asleep with some stomach pain, I awoke to a fierce rumbling in my tummy.  While trying to find relief, I wound up projectile vomiting all over the bathroom floor, in an extraordinary maneuver that Hannah calls the "Two-For-One Special."  Trying not to wake my poor roommate, I cleaned the floor, then lay down to rest and gain energy to brush my teeth again.  No sooner did I brush my teeth than round two of Vom-A-Thon 2012 began, landing fortunately in the appropriate receptacle this time.  When I woke up the next morning my stomach felt like someone was grabbing my guts from the inside.  As Saturday is a weekday here, I called out from school, along with my roommate, Hannah, who was having gastrointestinal issues of her own.  I got a little bit of sleep, having had such a rough night, and Hannah was feeling well enough to make me some plain pasta and bring me cold water when my bottle ran out.  I was so lucky to have someone there to help me out and commiserate about not ever wanting to eat Indian food again.  Even now, 24 hours later, the word "dosa" makes my stomach churn and groan.  How delicious at the time, but how nauseating the next day.

Hannah and I spent most of the day watching movies on her computer, whining to each other about belly pain and making each other laugh with funny stories and observations about our ridiculous situation.  I was fortunate enough to be able to Skype with a bunch of my Corrymeela family, as a bunch of my fellow long-term volunteers are having a mini-reunion in Northern Ireland.  It was so great to see their faces and hear about their lives; a reminder of the good things I am also missing by taking this great opportunity.  We all cracked up when my roommate Hannah, a Georgia native who went to NYU, heard the conversation and asked if Paul, the Center Director at Corrymeela, had "special needs," realizing a moment later that it was "just his accent."  (When he told me about meeting the Queen and watching her shake hands with Martin McGuinness, Hannah went, "of England?? No he did not!")  In the evening, I felt well enough to eat some eggs.  But to my chagrin, all the precious eggs in our refrigerator had been eaten!  Tangi had just started washing her hair, which those of you with her type hair will know is a two hour process, Patricia had just walked in the door and Hannah was a sickie like me.  But I was really hungry!  I put on clothes over my pajamas and ventured to the "supermarket" around the corner, praying I wouldn't suddenly puke all over the place.  When I got there I of course couldn't find anything I was looking for, had to have people help me find the most basic items, and then had to convince the guy at checkout to give me eggs in a carton and not loose in a plastic bag.*  I probably wasn't outside more than 15 or 20 minutes but I was totally exhausted, sweaty and too drained to be hungry any more.  I took a shower, made myself eggs, and, in typical fashion, called my mom.  Hearing her voice made me feel better, as a mother's voice is apt to do, and then Hannah and I resigned ourselves to watching Parks and Recreation until we fell asleep.  
I woke up this morning ravenously hungry, made myself more eggs (and potatoes!) and relished not feeling like I wanted to tear out my insides.  Yay!  I've taken it easy today, and am just so glad to have survived my first gastrointestinal shitshow (literally) relatively unscathed.

*Yes, this actually happened.

Bev Koof Gora

I am so lucky to be spending this year with really great people who make me laugh.  During the past few weeks I have laughed harder and for longer than I have in a very long time.  Part of it has to do with the ridiculous nature of the situations we have found ourselves in during this period of adjustment, from the hours spent waiting and waiting and waiting for forms, decisions, copies, traffic and each other, to being dropped off on the side of the road at night by a rickshaw driver with engine trouble.  I honestly don't know what I would do if I was not with people who could laugh with me at the absurdities that I constantly encounter in my life here.

BS Collections: The Latest in Bullshit Fashion

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the other ETAs came down with a strain of tonsilitis that was not kidding around.  My roommates and I had him come to our apartment, where we forced him to rest, made him tea, and waited to see if he got better or worse.  When he woke up the next day, his throat was almost closed--he couldn't drink water and breathed with difficulty.  I immediately called the doctor overseeing the Fulbrighters in Delhi, whom we had met during orientation, who told us to come see her right away.  I asked her for directions on how to get to her hospital and she responded with: "It's near USIEF, the auto driver will know." Now, USIEF, the Fulbright program center, isn't tremendously far, but it takes a solid 45-60 minutes to get there, and it's faster and cheaper to take the metro there rather than an auto all the way.  Sean and I took an auto to the metro, rode in a car jam packed with what felt like half the male population of Delhi, emerged in Connaught Place (Central Delhi), and flagged down an auto.  The first auto walla asked for two hundred rupees, at which point Sean, even in his miserable state, laughed in the guy's face.  Auto wallas are notorious for overcharging anyone they think they can, especially foreigners. If the original price seems unreasonable, asking a few different drivers will give you a sense of just how unreasonable the offer is.  So when the next few auto wallas came up with similar offers of 150 and 100 rupees, we knew this hospital was not as near to USIEF as we had thought.  When the fourth or fifth auto driver said "Ah, yes, Malviya Nagar," Sean and I had a mutual conniption.  We called the doctor to ask if we, in fact, had just traveled an hour only to go somewhere 10 minutes from where we live.  "Yes," she said, when we asked. "In Malviya Nagar, close to USIEF."  Eighty rupees later, we emerged from our auto literally two kilometers from our house.  The doctor was very apologetic, sorry for the chukkars (circles) she made us do, thinking we were starting at USIEF. At that point all we could do was laugh.  You can't make this stuff up!

Copyright, schmopyright! Hannah rolls with it.

Tonight my roommates and I went to dinner in a lovely (read: gentrified) neighborhood near ours called Hauz Khas.  After walking around for a bit, we decided on a rooftop restaurant overlooking a lake, which served a variety of Western and Indian food.  We ordered drinks, realizing that the "cocktail" list did not include alcoholic drinks (duh?) and looked at the menu.  We had left the house late so it was already around 8:45 when we got to the restaurant, and we were very hungry. Our drinks arrived.  Ten minutes passed.  Twenty minutes passed.  Finally we flagged down a waiter and asked if we could order.  He looked at us like we had three heads, bringing over another waiter to figure out what we were requesting.  "Food!" Tangi said.  "We would like to eat food at this restaurant!"  The waiter took our order and didn't write it down, at which point we somehow knew that Patricia, the first to order, was more than likely to be forgotten.  My biryani made it to the table within about twenty minutes, and was delicious, followed by Tangi's and Hannah's orders about 15 minutes later.  Sure enough, Patricia's food was nowhere to be found. The following conversation then occurred:
Patricia: Do you have my order?  Is my food coming?
Waiter: No. No, it is not.
When he walked away, the four of us died laughing, and fortunately there was plenty of biryani to feed poor Patricia.  

Then there was the time Sean and I went grocery shopping at the supermarket near our house and both realized upon checkout that we didn't have enough money to pay for everything!  We laughed and laughed, doubled over and teary, though I am sure the employees were less amused by the bev koof goras, stupid foreigners.  I am also starting to miss the days when the only phrase I could say in Hindi was Menduk mai mera dil tordiya, or "a frog broke my heart."  Or the time when, instead of saying mat chuo, "don't touch me," I said mat chuha: "Don't, mouse!"  Behold, the joys and trials of foreign exchange.

Everyone deserves a Stripe Tease now and then!

This place is a madhouse sometimes, and you can either get annoyed and be angry, which is of course sometimes unavoidable and appropriate, or you can take it for what it is and laugh like crazy. Welcome to India! Here's hoping I can keep laughing.