I'm Fine, People

Just a quick post to say that there was a huge earthquake in northern India but that it was way north of Delhi, in Kashmir, northern Rajasthan and parts of Pakistan.  No casualties have been reported so far, but didn't want anyone thinking I might not be OK.  I'm OK! My fellow ETAs, however, have not been as chipper.  Sean came down with a really terrible case of tonsilitis, but I went with him to the doctor and yesterday we locked him in our apartment (literally) so he was forced to rest.  He took my bed and I slept in Tangi's room, and this morning when was feeling better and went home I washed the sheets with boiling water.  (Seriously.  I boiled water and poured it into the washing machine).  He is much much MUCH better today, thank goodness.  One of my roommates has pinkeye, while the other started taking antibiotics for a sore throat.  Apparently the onset of the monsoon causes a lot of people to get sick, as well as a lot of bugs to come out which can lead to some nasty ailments. (Dengue, anyone?)  Tangi and I are holding strong, though, I wear bug spray religiously like it's going out of style and seem to have been spared for now.  Yay!  Mangoes are still delicious and we had an awesome watermelon the other day.  My Hindi classes are going well, though we are in class four hours a day and are moving so quickly, so as to learn as much as possible, that it's very difficult to keep track of everything we're learning.  Patricia made an amazing curry tonight for which I cut 62378476264827 onions as finely as I could, as we don't have a food processor.  But even the onions didn't make me cry!  Will write a longer post soon, just wanted to alleviate any potential undue panic.  I leave you with this picture of a street cow.

Eve Teasing

For our first day off since our arrival in India a week and a half ago, the girls and I decided to head to Chandni Chowk, a large bazaar/shopping street located in Old Delhi. We got a late start, leaving the house around 2:30 PM, took the metro and arrived in what I can only describe as another world.  We had exited our largely middle class neighborhood in South Delhi and entered into what was described to me by two of my roommates as much of "the rest of India."
As blonde Hannah, Black Tangi and redhead Patricia and I walked down the street, we were stared at and people kept trying to take pictures of us.  We walked down the main drag and headed towards the Jama Masjid, Delhi's largest mosque, located on a hill overlooking the famed Red Fort.

We had come prepared, three of us wearing conservative kurtas and bringing scarves with which to cover our heads.  The towering, red stone structure of the mosque sits atop giant square steps, and was in a way reminiscent of a Muslim, Indian version of the Sacre Coeur in Paris, a picturesque place of worship at the top of stairs overlooking the whole city.  Though we tried to hide our cameras to avoid the ridiculous "camera fee" that applies only to foreigners, the overzealous attendants were very forceful about refusing us entry without the 300 rupees.  So we saw the mosque in shifts, Hannah and Tangi going in first while Patricia and I held the bags, then switching when they were done.  As Patricia and I waited outside the mosque, groups of boys and men literally followed behind us trying to take pictures; some surreptitiously while others as openly as could be.  The inside of the mosque was lovely--traditional Muslim architecture with lots of arches and two minarets.  It was clear that people go there just to hang out; families and couples were sitting in the shade on the balconies having picnics, napping or chatting.  The sky was very blue, a rare sight in Delhi, and looked beautiful in contrast to the red of the building.  Though the soles of my feet got a little burned from walking barefoot on the hot stone of the courtyard, I was glad we had come and seen it.  Our friend Sean met up with us on the steps and together we ventured into the bazaar, which was far from the variety and cool finds we were expecting.

 

The market was mostly clothes, what seemed like surplus goods for cheap products intended for sale in the US or Europe.  Plastic shoes, underwear and bras, jeans, t-shirts, linens and dishes, but all of a dollar-store quality.  The place was packed; at times we held on to each other's clothing and bags to stay together.  As we walked, several men again tried to follow us and take pictures.  All four of us girls had men try to touch us, but we yelled out and physically pushed people out of our way.  Tangi became very freaked out and as soon as we emerged from the thick of the market, we got in an auto and made our way back to the metro (though our driver dropped us off pretty far away and we had the pleasure of finding the station on our own).  The experience in the market completely soured the experience for Tangi, and I offered to accompany her home, while the other three left to go to a park in South Delhi.

Having had more travel experience, Hannah, Patricia and I are far less sensitive to this kind of harassment, and are in some ways more cautious about what we wear.  Traveling in places like India, or Bolivia, or Ecuador requires you to harden yourself to a lot of circumstantial realities: cat-calling, called Eve teasing here, invasions of personal space (whether intentionally harassing or not), the sight of malnourished children living on the street, or rail-thin stray dogs digging through garbage.  I know that this kind of hardening is necessary not only in order to survive here, but also to be able to appreciate joy in other things without feeling a sense of guilty dread simultaneously.  Yet it feels in some way a betrayal of what I have been conditioned to think and feel: no child should go hungry, no animal should be abused, don't let anyone ever invade your personal space, you have a responsibility to others.  Of course Tangi had every right to be as shaken as she was, and she was definitely targeted more than me and the other girls.  But what is the balance between rightly feeling violated, and letting it completely ruin your experience?  Of course I am NOT talking about serious abuse or assault here, and I don't plan on ever going back to that specific market.  But this is certainly not the last time we will be targeted as foreigners, as women, as people perceived to be tolerant of this behavior.  To be less sensitive, to not let this incident ruin my day--is this compromising my integrity?  I really am loving living here and I want to see so much of India.  But this line is one I will walk every day while I am here and I am constantly checking the balance for my own comfort.

In which it rains and we explore our neighborhood...

I woke up from a nap the other day to two text messages.  One was from Sean, my fellow ETA, which said: "monsoon!   rain check?"  The other was from a college friend named Sim who is from here originally and moved back after graduation.  It read: "The first rain is the best thing about the monsoon."  I thanked my lucky stars as I looked out the window and saw the streams of water falling from the sky, as I realized that this tremendous heat was on its way out.  I walked outside in my schmancy new rain jacket that I spent too much money on at Paragon; at this point the rain had abated from a downpour to a heavy drizzle.  A giant puddle had formed in front of the apartment building and a boy of about 5 or 6 was timidly walking through it when his father motioned for him to jump.  He splashed with delight, echoing the happy cries of the kids that filled the playground across the street, outside not in spite but because of this overdue first rain of the season.  The fact that it came just after we had finished our (hopefully) final major bureaucratic ordeal, spending four hours in the Foreign Residents' Registration Office (FRRO), made it all the sweeter.
Leaving the house with Tangi to go to our first Hindi class was amazing--for the first time since we arrived, we weren't choking on the heat, or sweating before we got to the end of the block!  The air was fresh and fragrant and the breeze felt cool on our skin.  Despite being one of the largest cities in the world and being located in the heart of a subcontinent consumed by a monsoon for several months every year, Delhi lacks a sufficient drainage system, and the ground that had been dust yesterday was now soft and muddy.  Large puddles had formed every few feet, making the road an obstacle course not just for trying to avoid the puddles, but for trying not to be near a puddle when a car, motorcycle, scooter, auto, stray dog or any other moving anything while it went through the puddle.
The Hindi class was awesome, though it is a difficult language to learn, especially because there are so many sounds that are guttural or otherwise difficult for English speakers to pronounce.  We spent two  and a half hours learning grammar and an hour and a half practicing reading and writing the script, and I never knew four hours could go by so quickly!  So far I have learned how to count to 10, apologize, say go away, say don't touch me, say my name and where I am from, and of course the essential: menduk neh mera dil tordiya, which means, "a frog broke my heart."  (seriously.  Long story.  It took me forever to remember that phrase.  Time wisely spent!)

After resting for a bit at home after class, Hannah and I took a walk to explore our neighborhood, now that we finally know how exactly to get back to our house and don't get hopelessly lost every single time we go home!  We walked through the narrow streets towards the market, keeping our eyes out for Nice Tailors, the recommended seamster, and a wine and beer store, as they are called here.  Taking our time and strolling without a clear agenda, we reached the main street of Malviya Nagar.  When we turned just off the main road, we found ourselves in the heart of a pedestrian market we hadn't known existed.  There were vegetable wallas with produce much fresher and prettier than we had seen on carts around the neighborhood.  There was a whole row of stalls selling only dupatas, the light scarves Indian women wear flowing down their backs.  Another row held stall after stall of tailors, with men diligently stitching perfect, straight lines using shiny black foot pedal sewing machines that are sold in the States merely as decor.  Several shops had only trimmings-- ribbons and buttons and patches with embroidery in turquiose, gold and magenta. Piles of fabric in a million stacks, each with a distinct pattern and ready to be made into saris and suits.  After walking for a bit, I bought dumplings from a guy selling them from round, steaming tin containers called tiffins; a dozen for 30 rupees (about 50 cents).  As our neighborhood is not touristy at all, we saw no other foreigners during our three hour walk, except for, ironically, two Mormon missionaries.  We left the market and walked to the main road in search of sharab (alcohol) a scandalous endeavor for women in India.

After asking some men selling PVC pipe about its whereabouts, we found the walla, bought some beers and tried to get home via the route we take to the metro, not our usual way home.  Hannah was "sure" we were going the right way, but after about 15 minutes, when I did not recognize any landmarks, she asked for directions to Malviya Nagar N-Block.  "Malviya Nagar?" I heard them say.  We had walked into a completely different neighborhood.  Tired at this point and ready to be done walking after three hours, we tried to flag down an auto, of which there were few, laughing so hard at having walked to a completely different place.  I had forgotten my water bottle and already finished Hannah's water, so I went into a corner store to get water, only to find that what they sold were two liter bottles.  Armed with my new, infant-sized water bottle, Hannah and I finally found an auto to take us home, and we rested our dusty feet as we passed a group of men butchering live chickens, a mosque, a cluster of bicycle rickshaws, and plenty of people taking a snooze in the shade of their awnings.  Something tells me that Mr. Rogers wasn't talking about Malviya Nagar when he sang about the people in your neighborhood.

The Road to Hell is Paved With Red Tape

I am convinced that the unofficial pastime of India is bureaucracy. Or waiting. Either way, the last week has been full of both.  As a foreign residents, we have to register with the government within 14 days of arrival.  Considering the complicated ordeal necessary to obtain our visas, the process to register is ridiculously involved, requiring three copies of the application to register, four passport photos, three copies each of the passport and visa, a copy of our lease, a utility bill, the grant award letter and the acceptance letter (two different things), a signed letter from our school confirming our placement, and our firstborn child*.  I went with my roommates yesterday to the Foreign Residents Registration Office (FRRO-- they also LOVE acronyms here) where we waited outside under a tarp with about 50 other people and a man yelling incomprehensible instructions into a microphone. When they called us up, we got another number, and waited on another line, at the end of which they told us they would not look at our papers until the passport photos had been glued to the application.  I ran outside to this little table where there was a pot of glue, elbowed my way through the 15 men from Afghanistan waiting to use the glue, grabbed the pot and brought it inside for my cohorts to use, after which every other person in the line used it as well.  When they eventually did look at our papers, they bobbled their heads and announced that we could not register without a work contract and that our visa type (which we were informed to apply for by Fulbright) prohibited us from registering.  After some forceful reasoning on our part and several calls to the program office, the bureaucrats would not budge, and insisted we go to the Ministry of Home Affairs to get our visas amended.  Cool.
At 9AM the next day, we show up at the program office, where a senior staff person meets us and comes with us to the Ministry of Magic(/Home Affairs).  We go through security.  We get a number.  We wait. We watch as Bharthi,  the staff member who came with us, shakes her head and finger many times and argues with someone behind a desk.  We continue to sit in the DMV-style waiting area, practicing Hindi script and whining about waiting.  We move to the next room where we get another number and more head shaking occurs.  Bharthi asks for Patricia's passport.  Patricia gets her passport back.  Bharthi asks for Sean's passport.  Sean gets his passport back.  Then she needs Patricia's again, and Porter's.  Then they come back.  This series of transfers happens about 10 times before "ID numbers" scribbled on the back of an envelope are handed to us and we are told to return to the FRRO the next morning and give them the ID numbers, which they will somehow use to get the message from the Ministry of Magic(/Home Affairs) that they can register us.  We'll see how that turns out.

This process, mind you, comes after a week of endless paperwork and copies of every document we have ever received, in order to get a phone and Internet.  For both of these basic communication devices, the six of us, with two very kind Indian facilitators, students who volunteer their time to help us out with this setting up stuff, spent over two hours in un-air conditioned offices experiencing power outages, a regular occurrence in the midday heat. Both when getting phones and again when getting Internet, each of us had to submit passport photos, copies of passports, visas, leases and letters.  Each time, we only spent about five minutes per person actually interacting with an employee; the rest was just watching them put our papers in a neat pile and do their own thing.

This great book I am reading, called In Spite of the Gods, laments the inefficiency of the infamous Indian bureaucracy, citing the fact that while a third of Indian produce rots on its way to market because of the roads being in such poor condition, the state of Uttar Pradesh employs in its highway department one person for every 1.25 miles of road.  At the rate we've gone, I am surprised two-thirds makes it to market at all!

***UPDATE: After four and a half hours at the FRRO and a lot of finger shaking and coercing on Bharthi's part, they finally granted us our registration. Yay!


*maybe

Indeed.

HEAT

I can truly say that there is nothing that could have prepared me for this heat. The air feels (and sometimes smells) like you are walking on the ventilation grates over the subway in New York in the middle of the day in the middle of the summer. Nothing can cool you down outside. Even the wind blows hot air in your face and does little to cool the ample sweat pouring from every pore in your body. Though the humidity is not as bad as I thought it would be, standing outside for even five minutes, whether in the sun or the shade, makes you desperate to get out of the heat. Walking even a few blocks leaves you exhausted and thirsty as hell; it gives you a serious appreciation for the street sweepers, outdoor vendors, rickshaw drivers, security guards and everyone else who makes their living outside, let alone the countless women, men and children who live on the street. The monsoon season will thankfully begin in a few weeks, before which I will have to relegate myself to being a hot, sweaty mess every time I set foot outside.


The past week has entailed meeting after meeting, a time consuming orientation that involved lots of practical training in teaching English, briefings on Indian education, and plenty of advice on how to not get assaulted/robbed/taken advantage of/into any trouble. By the weekend we were so eager to be done with being talked at and desperate to begin getting set up in the city, that we had completely forgotten the fact that two thirds of the group would be heading elsewhere in India. We suddenly found ourselves saying goodbye to people we had just met and become attached to in this foreign world.


The good news is that the four of us girls left in Delhi have chosen a very nice place to live, in a neighborhood called Malviya Nagar in South Delhi. The two boys will be living in a two bedroom, as one of them is a Mormon and isn't about to share a residence with females. The girls I live with are lovely: Hannah went to NYU and is from a suburb of Atlanta, Patricia is from Bellingham, Washington and went to Whitman, and Tangiah is from South Orange, New Jersey and just graduated from Spelman. I am sharing a room with Patricia, which is fine, as I had such a positive experience sharing a room last year and in general don't need much alone time. Our sharing a room allowed all four of us to pay significantly less rent (about $250/month) and to live in a very well-maintained apartment that ETAs have lived in for the past three years, when the English teaching fellowship began in India. It is fully furnished, with dishes and cooking utensils, a microwave, a purifier to make tap water safe to drink, and even a small library of books left behind by former fellows. Hannah commented that it feels like there were guardian angels that were looking out for us before we came! My sheets feel like sandpaper and I still haven't figured out which switch is for which light/fan/water motor/water heater/outlet/panic button, but there is air conditioning(!) and clean, hot showers and a lovely home in a lovely neighborhood.

One problem I have encountered in Delhi is that apart from the major roads, none of the streets really have names. Home addresses are according to blocks, as in our house, which is number 11, N-Block, Malviya Nagar. As a result, people, including cab drivers and the auto wallas have absolutely no way of knowing the ins and outs of every single neighborhood in Delhi. I should also explain that auto wallas are the guys who drive auto rickshaws, also called indian helicopters, which are the ubiquitous green and yellow three wheeled scooters with a bench in the back and a canopy. To ride in an auto is to entrust the walla with your life, in as literal a sense as possible. In any case, getting home in an auto requires you to know very specifically how to get home. Because we are so new here and had been driven to our home exclusively by drivers hired by the program center, we had a vague idea of where we live but not a specific knowledge of how to get there. As we made our way home in an auto from a big market in a neighborhood called Lajpat Nagar, we ended up driving in circles through the neighborhood, the driver stopping every 30 feet to ask for directions to get to N-block. I'm pretty sure Indians are like Argentines in that if they don't know exactly where you want to get to, they will make up directions rather than admit the defeat of not knowing. After nearly an hour of driving around, the driver announced that there was a "mechanical problem" with his auto and he could not drive us anymore. I will never know whether he just said that to get us out of his hair or whether he did end up stranded with auto trouble in the bowels of Malviya Nagar, but either way, we were out 90 rupees and walking on foot. I would swear sometimes that some guardian angel is looking out for me here, because I honestly can't say how we found out way home within minutes, or how the four of us managed through the dark at the end of a long day and avoided getting hit by one of the many maniac drivers in this country. Arriving home, sweaty, dusty and exhausted, the only thing I could feel was gratitude for successfully surviving this city one more day, and for the glorious air conditioning that flooded my skin with relief when we finally got home.

New Site, New Sights

Namaste! Welcome to this blog, an exploration of my adventures as I explore this crazy world and experience for myself just how big or small it really is.  To those of you who have followed this blog in the past, welcome back, and I will sincerely try not to drop off the face of the internet after the first three months, as I clearly did in Northern Ireland.  For those of you slightly out of the loop (or senile?), I have been fortunate to receive a Fulbright to spend the next nine months teaching English in a public school in New Delhi, India to children in grades 6-8.  The Fulbright is a government grant, founded by Arkansas senator J. William Fulbright in 1948, with the aim of sending US citizens abroad and bringing foreign nationals to the US, to teach or conduct research, in order to foster mutual understanding between Americans and their fellow Earth dwellers.  What this means for me is that the government gives me a round trip flight to India and a monthly stipend in exchange for teaching the kiddies some English.  Not a bad deal!  Thanks, taxpayers!

Last week was a total whirlwind, in which I flew to Austin, Texas for the pre-departure orientation, left early to attend my student's graduation and finish out the school year at Clear View, and then slept nearly 17 hours on Saturday.  The rest of my weekend was spent saying goodbye to those I could, running around purchasing last minute supplies, and frantically packing everything that could POSSIBLY fit into my suitcase and 65 liter backpack.  Packing to live for a year in Delhi was a much more complicated process than I had anticipated.  Not only did I have to include plenty of winter clothing (a fleece, down coat, wool sweaters, thermals, hats and gloves), as the temperature can drop to the 40s (Fahrenheit) and buildings are poorly heated and insulated, but my inner worrywart (and outer worrywart in the form of my mother) insisted that I arrive prepared for any biological or natural disaster within any range of probability.  Not to mention the 150 tampons I felt compelled to include, after every suggested packing list I read said to include them. (For reals.  Sanitary products here better be bad enough to have made the schlepping worth it.  But I digress).  After stocking up on Tylenol, Advil, DayQuil, NyQuil, hand sanitizer, sunscreen, bug spray, Immodium, Cipro, anti-itch cream, Bacitracin, Sensodyne toothpaste (my teeth are sensitive!), flossers, index cards, post its, funky pencils to give to students, the five books given to us by the State Department as teaching aids, two journals (thanks, Aileen and Clear View!), six pairs of shoes, one LED mini flashlight, two cameras and zero extra muscles for the haul, I was prepared for an apocalypse in which I would have to teach the survivors to speak English.  India would be a breeze by comparison, no?

When I arrived at the gate in JFK, i was greeted by four fellow English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) on the same Air India flight via Paris.  The 15+ hour flight was uneventful; I watched five movies and slept no more than an hour, sat next to a lovely older couple who had to get up about 10 times for me in my effort to stay hydrated.  Arriving at the newly renovated Indira Gandhi Airport, I was surprised by how clean and well-organized it was in contrast to what everyone had told me to expect (pre-renovation).  One thing i will say is that the man who checked my passport at passport control acted as if he had never seen a passport before.  He picked it up awkwardly by the corner, confused when he found my expired UK visa and flashing his eyes between my face and the appropriate visa for about five long minutes. I was the first one of the ETAs to approach the agent and the last to leave!  Weird.  In any case, as the five of us emerged into the crushing Delhi heat (despite the fact that it was 7PM), I felt an inner warmth as my long-awaited hope to see this country was fulfilled.  Despite my obvious fatigue and stiff neck, the heat reminded me of how far back my interest in India goes and how satisfying it was to see this place I had heard and read so much about.

Those of you who knew me as a child will remember that I sought out and wore bindis on my forehead starting around age eight or nine, I think.  From the international themed birthday party my mom threw for my sixth(?) birthday to witnessing the constant flow of my Israeli relatives and friends to and from India, this country has been in my consciousness far longer than most.  Though Indian food is not my favorite, it is the senses of sight, smell and sound that I seek to overwhelm with input, from the vibrant colors of clothing to the constant sound of car horns wherever you go.  No matter what, I am in for an adventure.