Stress, Spice, Sarees, and Sightseeing

In the past week, I have completed (in order):

* one 12-page microeconomics paper

* one 20-minute Cities of Delhi presentation on my final project (transporation in Delhi)

* one 1-hour presentation on the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) in India (microeconomics class)

* one 12-page Cities of Delhi paper

It's been a long week. I've been a little stressed. And a little sleep-deprived.

BUT to balance it out, I've had more mini-adventures.

Wednesday's adventure was just lunch at the Market Cafe in Khan Market with my roommate Rachel and another friend Sara. The reason it was an adventure was because I had whole wheat fettucine with spinach pesto and pearl-cut vegetables. It was delicious.

Thursday was definitely the big adventure of the week. We had our student-planned farewell party themed "Film Farewell," and we pretended we were Bollywood stars. I apparently was again compared to Katrina Kaif (I'll have to buy a poster to put in my room or something) when I was walking down the hall with Cate, but I didn't hear that. All the girls wore sarees, the boys wore Indian clothes (except Jon), and we had fancy, delicious Indian food at one of the function halls at the India Habitat Centre. Sydney didn't sleep at all the previous night because she was working on a slideshow of pictures from the past four months, which turned out to be amazing. I gave her about a hundred of my photos, most of which other people hadn't seen before, so it was fun watching everyone's reactions. We also had thali awards, where every student and staff member was given a superlative or nickname or something similar. The awards were printed on little aluminum-type plates to remind us of all the delicious thalis we've eaten. I turned one corner of the room and made everyone come over for individual portraits, since we had spent so damn long getting ready. (Sarees are complicated.) Since I'm not going to upload them twice, and I already put them on Facebook so that all the other students could see them, you see how pretty we all looked here.

My other Delhi excursion took place today. I was itching to get out of the house since I've spent so much time in my room working, so I finally made it over to the Purana Qila (Old Fort), which I've been meaning to visit all semester.

It was hot, but it was only in the upper 90s today instead of hovering near 110º as the weather has been wont to do of late. The Purana Qila is very pretty, with an interesting mix of landscaped lawns and flower beds mixed with crumbling stone walls and buildings, like in the picture above. The reason why it was so interesting to me before I visited it is that this is the place historians believe Indraprastha was - a city where parts of the Mahabharata takes place. These structures are from around the mid-1500s. The only two buildings that look like they've held up well against time are the Sher Mandal (don't know what it originally was, but it was later used as a library by the Mughal emperor Humayun) and the Qila-A-Khuna Masjid (mosque).

As I was walking along the top of one of the outside walls, I discovered an interesting tree.

After doing some highly scientific research (googling), I discovered that this is the same tree that those funny flowers are from that I blogged about earlier (the ones that fall to the ground in full bloom)! The Sanskrit name is Salmali; it's called Semal or Semul in most of India. It's a cotton tree! I've seen fluffly little balls of cotton floating around Neeti Bagh in the last couple of weeks, but I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Now I know.

But I digress. As I was wandering around the Purana Qila, I made some friends. I resisted the urge to push a boy about my age off the top of that outside wall because I figured getting arrested for murder in India was probably not the best idea. He was with a few friends that I had crossed paths with on the opposite side of the complex, and one of his friends had asked if he could take a picture with me. I said, "No, sorry" and kept walking. This guy, however, decided to skip the asking and just take pictures of me on his cell phone as I was walking by. Which bothers me more than almost anything else in India. I hate it. I always struggle to not rip the phone out of the perpetrator's hand and smash it on the ground.

After that obnoxious incident, though, I made some friends. For a pleasant reversal of situation, I had a cute Indian couple ask me very timidly if I could take a picture of them, rather than them wanting a picture of me!

They were really cute. They were very pleased with the way the photo turned out, and then we parted ways. I'm taking that reaction to mean that I have permission to share this with all of you.

Later, I was walking through the garden outside the fort walls, and a few boys were walking in the opposite direction. They shouted "Hi!" as they got near me, but they didn't try to talk more than that or do anything annoying. About thirty seconds after they passed me, however, I hear running footsteps behind me, and I hear, "Excuse me! Ma'am!" so I turned around. They were all standing in front of me and asked me in Hindi to take their picture. I guess for a few seconds they had been debating whether it was okay to ask me, and then they decided my camera was too awesome for them to pass up the opportunity to be models.

Once again, they just wanted to see the picture, then they ran away looking quite pleased with themselves.

I love when I have willing subjects and don't have to feel like a creep taking photos of people who don't know that I'm doing so. :)

When I had seen all there was to see at the Purana Qila, I walked over to the Crafts Museum. On the way there, I had to go through an underpass because there was a metal fence on the median in the middle of the road. There was nifty art, so I took a picture:

I didn't actually make it to the museum part of the Crafts Museum; there's a village complex that has full-sized models of various types of village houses from all over India, along with other structures (temple, theater, storage shed), so I meandered through there a bit. The next part of the Crafts Museum area was a craft demonstration area, where they had people from all over India selling things. Because it was hot and the middle of the day and there was no one there, I didn't actually get to see any demonstrations, but I got a lot of explanations about lacquer, metalworking, embroidery, leather puppets, vegetable- and stone-based paint colors, and all kinds of fun things. It's very similar to Dilli Haat, which I enjoy. I love being able to talk to the people who actually make the stuff they're selling.

When I ran out of water and energy, I made my way back to Neeti Bagh, where I did some homework and did my laundry in a bucket for the last time! I have enough clean clothes to get me through the next nine days, so I'm not hand-washing clothes again for a very long time.

I wanted to go out and do something fun tonight since I finally have no more papers to write, but everyone else in the house has papers to write for classes I'm not in. So I'm sitting here blogging and going through pictures, and when I'm done with that, I will finally finish reading City of Djinns, which I started forever ago. I haven't had time to read for pleasure in weeks. It's book and early bedtime for this tired larki.

Namaste.

Desert Winds and Spreading Dirt

Weather conditions at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night, April 19th: 90ºF and "widespread dust". This is when it becomes quite apparent that Delhi is, in fact, remarkably close to the desert.

I have had mini-adventures almost every day for the last week, as I planned to. Here's a brief summary:

Wednesday: Shopping at Lajpat Nagar for more light-weight summer clothes so I can attempt to be comfortable in this heat.

Thursday: Community Potluck dinner at the Residence. Not going somewhere new, but I was in class all day, and it was a special event. We had 40-50 people squished onto our terrace in Neeti Bagh, which was decorated prettily. Teachers, board members, the guys who led our rural excursion (Harpreet the awesome Sikh guy and Captain Karma...I mean, Sharma...), and homestay families all showed up. It was a grand old time filled with delicious food. Cate made apple pie to die for.

Friday: In the morning, I went to Akshardham Temple, a Swami Narayan temple complex designed by amusement park people. (It was an optional Cities of Delhi field trip, with one other girl in the class, Harini, and two students not in the class.) One of the stranger places I've been. Ever. Similar to the ISKCON temple I went to during orientation but on a much larger and more ridiculous scale. Unfortunately, I do not have photos because they have crazy security and essentially don't let you bring anything other than money inside, but the website I linked you to above has pictures and descriptions, including the "exhibitions." We saw the animatronic light and sound show of Swami Narayan's life, which was...something. Due to misinformation and unyielding temple workers, we didn't get to do the boat ride and we weren't interested in the movie. We got there at nine, but the temple didn't open until ten and the exhibitions didn't start until eleven. But we walked around the whole place, and it was definitely an experience.

On Friday afternoon, Rachel and I went up to Chandni Chowk in North Delhi because I was sick the day that our Cities of Delhi class went there. Chandni Chowk is a chaotic maze of tiny little alleys you don't even know exist until you stumble upon them, and they are impossible to navigate, and it was all very exciting. Every galii (alley) sells something different. Furthermore, there is a jalebi-wallah on the main road, and the place has apparently been around forever and is really famous. Those jalebis were amazing.

On the way up to Chandni Chowk, we took the metro. I stopped at Patel Chowk (one station away from where I got on) to meander through the metro museum there. Geeky as it sounds, I actually enjoyed it. The layout of the information is funny, and it's fascinating...like how yoga and meditation are part of every training session for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation employees, and the fact that the uniforms for DMRC employees were designed by the National Institute of Fashion Technology. (I actually went here to get some information for my Cities of Delhi project, which is about various modes of transportation in Delhi, but it was kind of fun, too. Rachel even liked it, and she had no reason for being there other than the fact that she was going shopping with me afterward.) Unfortunately, no pictures of this visit, either; also due to angry security man who was already following me around because I guess I looked suspicious taking notes on the information...in a functioning metro station, open to the public, designed to be looked at. Oh well. I stayed out of trouble.

Saturday: Sari shopping! We have a fancy farewell dinner on Thursday, and almost all of the other girls had already bought saris, so I got Kashika to agree to go back to Lajpat Nagar for sari shopping with me (since I had no idea what I was doing and couldn't go by myself). I meant to buy one, but I got two because they were just too pretty! I dropped them off at the tailor's when we got home, so hopefully the blouses he makes will fit me. Sometimes tailors here don't do a very good job.

Sunday: Spent the whole day doing homework. On Saturday night, it took Sam, Sydney, and I about four hours to do one question for our microeconomics assignment...and there were three of them due on Monday. So Sunday was largely spent doing econ, along with some other homeworks. This week = 8-10 page econ assignment, 40 minute econ presentation, 20 minute Cities of Delhi presentation, and 8-10 page Cities of Delhi paper. Sounds fun, right?

Sunday didn't bring new adventures, but I figured that's okay since I went to two new places on Friday.

Monday: More homework, though I got to take a post-breakfast and post-emailing econ assignment nap, which was fantastic. After Hindi class I went back to Dilli Haat, where I did more shopping. Also, I spoke to lots of Indian people, some of whom thought I was British, some of whom thought I was Kashmiri, and nearly all of whom asked how old I was and if I was married. I walked away with a bunch of gifts and three phone numbers. It's sad when the quickest way to get away from unwanted conversation is to just take down some stranger's phone number and say you'll call soon. I'm looking forward to going home and being able to buy things without being interrogated or hit on. I did find an Indian guy who spoke a tiny bit of German, though, which was fun.

Today is Tuesday (again, it has taken me two days to write a blog post), and I did not adventure to a new place because I wasted a large portion of my day attempting to have meetings with my Ramjas teachers. To make a long story short, I left my house just after 10:30 this morning after my first teacher pushed back our meeting by an hour and a half, didn't go to Hindi because my other teacher didn't show up even though I waited a long time for him, and didn't get back to Neeti Bagh until after 3:00 p.m. (without either of my meetings really taking place). Oh, and there was a giant traffic jam, so the ride home from the metro station was really long. It's about 105ºF right now, and after sitting in traffic so long, our auto-wallah decided to stop and get gas about a half a mile from our house. When I finally got home, I took a shower to cool off, and when I got out, the power was off. 

In short, I've had better days here, but the day's not over, so hopefully it will end better than it's been going so far.

As to the second part of the title of this post, there have been mysterious piles of dirt sitting in the park across the street for a couple weeks now. The other day, I realized that they had, in fact, spread the dirt out over the grass, which is what our guard told me they were going to do when I asked if he knew why the dirt was there. I have no idea what the purpose was; they didn't need to level out the ground and they're not re-seeding the grass. It's one of India's unexplained mysteries.

Anyway, I'm off to prepare my presentations now that the power's back on and I can plug my computer back in.

Baisakhi & Lodhi Garden

Yesterday's Baisakhi celebration at the India Habitat Centre was not quite what I expected, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. It was more or less a concert of Punjabi music, and a bhangra group rounded out the evening with one dance. Not as exciting as what I had hoped for, and it was in a very crowded auditorium, so I didn't get to dance.

For being a multipurpose, pretty big holiday (first day of the solar year, harvest festival, Sikh holy day), I was surprised it wasn't more visible. I'm glad it didn't go by without my knowledge, though. Holidays here fascinate me. (Well, holidays anywhere, but here I get to experience new ones.)

Anyway, today I went to the Lodhi Gardens. Trust me; this was a huge achievement that few would attempt. I went during the late morning because it's pretty close to the IES Centre, where I had to be at 1:00 p.m. So I planned my visit around my schedule, not the weather - it was 105 today.

It's a beautiful place, and even though it was quite hot and I had my backpack and my camera with me, I walked around for about an hour taking pictures before I found a quiet shady spot to sit and relax.

The guy in this picture was a drunk bum who emerged from a small grove of palm trees looking for money. I ignored him, went up the steps to the tomb I had been heading towards, and when I came back, he was sitting down there. 

This is Sikander Lodhi's tomb. The tomb and the lawn are surrounded by a wall. Kind of like a fort. The rulers of Delhi were apparently a big deal after they died; I wonder who started all that. Seems to me that they all tried to outdo each other.

I wanted to get some pictures of the flowers in the garden before they all wither away and die from sitting in the scorching sun day after day: 

There were a lot of different kinds of flowers. More photos can be found on Flickr.

I miss Delhi's winter days where the fog enveloped the city in a quieting blanket, and it was just cool enough to make me really enjoy my morning tea. It was so quiet and spooky and mystifying. Now when I wake up at 7:00 a.m., it's already as bright as it is at noon in Massachusetts, and the temperature is already up to about 85. There's a chorus of birds singing in the park and in the trees outside my window; sometimes this is wonderful, but when I want to sleep, it's not. The fruit- and -vegetable wallahs, and the trash-wallah, and the guy who buys old newspapers get an early start so they can sleep away the hottest part of the day. Which I wish I could do. Alas, students do not have that luxury.

I do enjoy getting up early in the mornings, though. I'm always the first one up in my house (except for the cook), so I can sit out on the terrace watching the people doing yoga in the park, read a book, and enjoy the sunlight before it becomes uncomfortably warm. I'm glad I don't have class in the morning anymore so that I'm able to be productive as soon as I wake up; I function much better when I can relax in the evenings rather than being stressed out right before I go to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, it's been a long day, and I'm going to get to bed, I think.

Namaste.

Ramjas College: Failure to Communicate

Greetings, everywhere-friends and family.

I've been quite busy when I got back from Paris (and was sick for a while), so sorry for the lack of updates. (I figured after the last two book-length ones, I'd give you a break as well.) I was going through pictures on my Canon today, though, and I discovered that I had a story there that never made it to my computer!

The last day of classes at Ramjas college was officially March 23. I went there (alone, as my roommate decided to sleep in) for my political theory class, and there was exactly one other boy in the classroom. After about five minutes, I turned to him and said, "We're not having class today, are we." More statement than question. Boy: "Political theory? No, not today." And he goes back to looking at his notebook.

I do a double-take. "Not today? Do we have it some other day? Rahul-sir [what the Indian students call him] told me in an email last week that today was the last class, and that he wasn't canceling any more classes." (After showing up to an empty classroom the week before, I sent a terse email to my professor asking if he could kindly inform me in advance when he was not going to show up.) "No, there's no class today, but tomorrow we will take class. That is the last one," the boy responds.

Great. 

The next morning, my roommate and I trek up to Ramjas for class, and we're greeted by an empty campus, since it's the equivalent of reading period back home. I documented this day until my batteries died in my camera. This is the hallway outside our classroom:

And this is the door to the classroom where we were supposed to be:


Something seemed a little off to me. I had a hunch that something was up. To test my superior detective skills, I peered in through the (very dirty) window, and this is what I saw:


Usually, in order for the classroom setting to be beneficial, the situation requires at least one student and one teacher. My suspicion was confirmed: this classroom contained neither inside its walls with peeling paint. Rachel and I were not pleased. The janitor sweeping the floor looked like he thought we were crazy.

Either the boy from the day before neglected to mention some minor detail along the lines of change of time or location, or he lied to me. Or class was cancelled again and I wasn't informed again.

Whatever the case may be, I'm not entirely sure what day was my last day of class at Ramjas. I've gone a couple times to meet teachers before, but that's because the month of April is an "independent study", which means writing a paper that is the sole basis of my grade for each of those classes.

Anyway, we walked downstairs and looked down another hallway of the (only) academic building. It was lovely and deserted, too. At least it looks pretty and tropical, though!


This is the sidewalk in front of that building. If you turn left at the end, you're at the main gate, and if you turn right, you can walk to the canteen and the hostels.


Instead of having classes, the students we saw on campus were putting up all of these signs:

I waited until a boy finished dusting this before taking a picture. (Yes, he was dusting a poster board that had just been put up.)

On the walk back to the metro station, we go through the main drag of the North Campus of Delhi University, which is a cluster of little colleges like Ramjas. But the walls along that stretch are prime advertising space, and this obviously environmentally-conscious student group decided it was necessary to wallpaper several panels of this wall with flyers for an event hosted by the National Campaign for Combating Terrorism. The best part about this phenomenon (which is not unique to this one event) is that usually these hundreds of flyers are put up at most 24 hours before the event. Usually, it's the same day.

However, spring is in Delhi, which means that pretty flowers whose names I don't know make walking around more enjoyable and pleasing to the eye. My favorite part of the flora during this walk is a giant conglomeration of trees and vines that spills over the wall creating a canopy above the sidewalk. When the vines all burst into bloom with different colored blossoms, it got even better.


Spring is over in Delhi now. Currently, it's plain old hot. It's supposed to be in the low 100s for the rest of the week. I don't call that spring.

We had a fantastic thunderstorm (with intensely appreciated rain) last week. I stood up on the terrace watching the storm one late afternoon, and it was so refreshing. It wasn't supposed to happen, though; Delhi isn't supposed to get rain like that until the middle of May. Hooray climate change in action.

***

In other news, I wrote two fifteen-page papers in eight days. Aside from taking time away from playing in the sun, it was actually quite reassuring that my brain still functions in an academic manner and that I was finally able to find the resources I needed in order to complete the research. (I'll save that story for another day - how impossible it is to find books in this city.)

I'm starting to get all anxious that I only have three weeks left in India (three weeks minus one day now, actually). I've decided that I'm going to make time in my schedule to do at least one fun and preferably new thing every day between now and when I leave, since I don't think I'll get to go on anymore trips outside of Delhi. (Some adventures will be to places I've already been but that I feel are necessary to revisit. Some will be to places I kept saying I was going to visit but never ended up actually doing.)

Today is Baisakhi, the beginning of the solar year. It's a Punjabi harvest festival and also a holy day for Sikhs. This will be my new and exciting event for the day; the taxi is picking me up in an hour to go to the India Habitat Centre for a Baisakhi celebration. I imagine it will be something along the lines of the Lohri festival way back in January, but with more bhangra! :)

Paris: Reflections

I'm actually glad this picture came out a little blurry, even though I tried to keep my hands as still as possible when I was taking it. Life's a little blurry, though, so I think it's appropriate.

I was getting quite frustrated with Delhi before I went to Paris. Classes are frustrating and were stressful for a little while, the city is noisy and dirty and intrusive, and I don't feel particularly close to any of the people on my program. I'm friendly with almost all of them, but I'm not actively included in much of the planning and socializing that goes on. As the semester goes on, the group gets more fractionalized and cliquier, which is to be expected, but I don't feel like I found a niche. I'm not at all on the same page as everyone else most of the time. Based on what I've seen and heard the other students do and say, I don't think I'm here for the same reasons. Or perhaps I am, and they just like to keep those things hidden under layers of other behavior. 

I love to go out and explore on my own, but in Delhi I don't feel safe doing that in a neighborhood I don't already know or anywhere at night. There are still many, many places in India I want to see before I leave, and it's such a hassle to try to get people to commit to a trip and actually make plans. I want to just go do it by myself, but again, I don't feel like it's exactly safe for me to do that. I don't think that anything would actually happen to me if I travelled alone, but it's not a risk I'm willing to take.

All of that played a part in my decision to go to Paris. We had an IES trip scheduled for that weekend that was supposed to complement a class that I never planned on taking and which wound up being cancelled. Everyone was talking about traveling that weekend since we would have a few days off, but after a lot of thought, I decided that it was a better use of my time and money (and better for my mental state) to meet up with Kevin somewhere in Europe rather than have a trip pulled together last minute (and consequently more expensive) for somewhere in India with people I may or may not get along with to a destination I may or may not have chosen. Some of the students did, in fact, go to places that I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I had a strong desire to visit (mainly Kerala and Darjeeling). However, although I probably won't make it to those places before I return to the States in May, I'm certain I made the right decision in going to Paris.

When I landed in Dubai, I realized that I've changed as a traveller. First of all, it's incredibly gratifying to be able to pay for my trip myself. I had been under my budget for my time in India up until I left, and I had started saving last fall as soon as I knew I was coming here, so I had very few qualms about spending the money to go such a long way for only a few days. That feeling multiplied when, two days before I left, I was offered a job I had been pursuing for the past two months. Now I know for certain that I'll be making a reasonable income over the summer and doing something I think I'll enjoy and that could potentially lead to a career after graduation. I enjoy being able to be independent. and I'm slowly becoming more confident in being able to do that from a financial perspective. For a while, I didn't even think I would make it to India at all because of the cost. But I did, and it has been a great investment by my parents and myself, with the added benefit of actually costing less than a semester at the University of Rochester.

Back to traveling. As the plane took off from Delhi, I felt very nervous, and I thought back to my flight to India back in January. I was anxious and tense then, too. I never used to be edgy about flying, but now I'm starting to be. I still love it, but there's always this little part of me that thinks something horrible will happen. I worry when people I care about are flying, too; I guess part of growing up is realizing how easily you could lose anything or anyone and not wanting that to happen. As soon as the plane landed in Dubai, however, I felt perfectly comfortable. The fact that it was an airport in a city in a part of the world I had never set foot in didn't faze me at all. I had looked at my itinerary so many times that I had my flight numbers and gates and times entirely memorized, so I was able to just meander around the airport in the general direction of where I was supposed to be going, people-watching and architecture-admiring and generally just enjoying myself. My layover was fairly quick and uneventful, and before I knew it, I was in Paris.

I had actually heard some rather terrible things about Paris, about how dirty and unpleasant and expensive it was. The expensive bit is definitely true, but I was surprised by how completely and utterly wrong those descriptions were. It was extremely clean, and I don't think it's just because I'm accustomed to the dirt and debris of Delhi. The streets were very quiet, even at night, and though we had relatively little interaction with other people, those exchanges that we did have were with relatively friendly people. I'm sure that part of it had to do with the time of year that we were there; during the height of tourist season, I have no doubt that the city is dirtier, noisier, and more crowded. I found it thoroughly enjoyable to roam the streets, and I actually found Paris rather charming. 

A large part of Paris' charm was simply due to my company. After experiencing at least minor personality clashes on all of my trips in India, it was refreshing and relaxing to be with someone I knew was compatible with me. Each morning we made a general plan for what we wanted to do, but we left lots of room for spontaneity. There's something really comforting about experiencing something you know someone else will appreciate and being able to talk about reactions to different parts of the trip with someone who understands. Neither of us had been to Paris before, so it was nice to be experiencing it together, too. I was happy not to have to worry about arguments breaking out over where to go next or how to get there or how much money to spend on dinner. Those kinds of things can ruin a trip if they occur too often. So thank you, Kevin, for being a wonderful travel companion. :)

Seeing a new city on a new continent also reaffirmed my love of culture comparison and firsthand experiences of different ways of life. I loved that sitting at breakfast in the hostel meant catching snippets of conversations in at least three or four languages. I love seeing the layouts of different cities, how the city planners made use of natural elements, and  how historic monuments are incorporated. For example, the Eiffel Tower appears out of nowhere if you don't approach it from the Parc du Champs de Mars. You're in a neighborhood that could be any neighborhood in Paris and suddenly between two buildings you glimpse this giant structure that happens to be a world-famous landmark. I love watching how people move through different cities and thinking about what and how people choose to preserve the city's history.

In general, I found Paris to be a decidedly worthwhile experience. I'm fairly certain that any city in Europe where I got to meet up with Kevin would have been an amazing experience, but that does not detract from my enjoyment of Paris. Spending time with someone who knows me well and re-igniting my love of travel made me let go of all the things that had been bugging me when I left Delhi, and though I was sick on my return trip, I came back to Delhi with a renewed spirit of adventure. I may not get to do much traveling between now and the end of the semester because of schoolwork and other commitments, but there's plenty of this city that I have yet to explore.

My friend Liz is in New Zealand this semester, and she wrote something in her blog a couple days ago that captured my attention. She was musing about the "great big Why?" of studying abroad, and she included a quote from a travel writer that I think is fantastically articulate, and so I will leave you with that:

"You're coming to realize that travel anywhere is often a matter of exploring half-understood desires. Sometimes, those desires lead you in new and wonderful directions; other times, you wind up trying to understand just what it was you desired in the first place. And, as often as not, you find yourself playing the role of charlatan as you explore the hazy frontier between where you are, who you are, and who it is you might not want to be." - Rolf Potts

(Photo credits for pictures of me: Kevin Gessner)

Intermission: Paris

So I took a break from India for a few days, and I flew to Paris to visit Kevin. The whole journey was spectacular, but let me start at the beginning.

Emirates is a great airline to fly. Some perks that I most enjoyed: hot, damp towels at the beginning of every flight; 600+ movies to choose from in individual touch-screen entertainment systems; airline food that tastes like real food; and REAL-TIME VIDEO feeds of the journey! Seriously, one of the coolest things I've experienced about the actual act of traveling. All four of the planes I was on (all Boeing 777's) had two cameras: one at the nose, and one somewhere along the bottom of the plane. Under the information section of the entertainment systems, in addition to the digital maps tracing the routes and all the stats about temperature, distance, time, speed, etc., there was the option to view either the forward or the downward cameras. So I got to see deserts, snow-capped mountains, seas, and cities from a higher-than-birds-eye view. Well, I didn't see anything on the way back because it was all dark, and most of Europe was really cloudy on the way, but I had a lovely aerial view of the Middle East. It was surreal, and completely awesome. Sometimes technology is pretty amazing.

Dubai is the largest, sparkliest airport I've ever been in. Granted, I've only been in a minuscule percentage of the world's airports, but every inside surface was literally shining, and the pavement that I saw outside (runways, sidewalks, etc.) had zero visible dirt. Crazy. Walking from my arrival gate to my departure gate, I refused all the glitzy duty-free shops, the luxury car raffle, and the $5,000,000 raffle. I stood in awe for a moment at the 3-story, 30-40-yard long wall waterfall with four glass elevators zooming up and down side by side in front of it. I then continued on my way, distracted by the shiny Rolex clocks sticking out of the wall every 20 yards or so, and I laughed at the tiny men in white suits, goggles, and masks suspended very high in the air with the terrible job of cleaning the arched wall of windows. There was a surprising lack of people in the airport, but perhaps that's because of how gargantuan it is. I'm pretty sure all of Logan Airport and then some could fit just inside the part of Terminal 3 that I walked through. (On my return trip, I timed how long it took me to walk from the gate where I arrived to my departure gate: 25 minutes.)

 

I'll skip over the boring flight from Dubai to Paris and the inexplicably long train ride from CDG to the center of Paris. On Friday, the weather was actually quite pleasant, though a bit brisk, so we decided to walk. A lot. We stayed at a hostel in the Bastille district, so after breakfast (bad coffee, French bread, and Nutella that Kevin brought), we wandered out in the direction of the Notre Dame. We walked to Notre Dame, peered around inside, and continued on along the river towards the other touristy things. Since it was a nice day, we admired the museums from the outside. We paused for a little while at the garden at Tuileries, then made our way through the little side streets around the Eiffel Tower. After much standing in line and bundling up against the wind and cold, we found ourselves at the top! The view was amazing. One of the things that struck me was how even Paris is; nearly all of the buildings are roughly the same height and almost exclusively some brand of cream/off-white, so we looked out on a vast sea of grayness punctuated by the green of parks just awakening to spring. It was very pretty, a view made all the more dramatic by the giant clouds overhead.

When we had become thoroughly chilled and windswept, we left the Eiffel Tower and decided to continue walking to the Arc de Triomphe. We spent some time trying to figure out if it was, in fact, a death wish to try crossing about six lanes of traffic in the roundabout to get to the actual monument. Once we finally consulted the guidebook, we found the underground tunnel that is there to prevent that sort of dangerous decision, and we sat and admired the pretty sculptures and beautiful day. (I still think we should have just crossed the road through a break in the traffic, but that's the Delhiite in me talking. I don't think the French would understand this Indian habit of just walking out into extremely busy streets and expecting traffic to stop for you.) Having driven by India Gate several times a week since I've been in Delhi, I can see how people draw similarities. It's interesting to see such similar structures in completely different contexts in different parts of the world. I think I like the simplicity of India Gate better, though the decorative nature of the Arc de Triomphe definitely fits in with its surroundings. 

Next, we walked down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, contemplated shopping for luxury cars, and found a bench to sit on and flowers to look at instead. Turns out that Champs-Élysées is not a good place to shop if you're on a budget. (Please note that we did actually know this beforehand. We just felt that since we were there, we should see what all the fuss was about. It's not very exciting.) While we were sitting, a random French gentleman inquired of the whereabouts of the metro station, which we sadly did not know; Kevin told him we didn't speak French and didn't know where the metro station was anyway, and the man went on his way. A little while later, we felt his pain; the metro station that seemed on the map was a matter of meters from where we stood appeared to have been protected by an invisibility charm. After some searching, we found it and returned to the hostel for a nap before dinner. Dinner was cheap and delicious, and we had a quiet evening, going to bed early because I was busy being jet-lagged and no fun. Looking back at the map, however, I feel I had a perfectly legitimate reason to be tired; we covered quite a bit of ground that day.

On Saturday, we took the train out to Versailles. We were both still tired, so in between the train station and the Château, we stopped for coffee. I paid 4 euros for a cappuccino, which was delicious and completely overpriced. I went back to cheaper-but-still-overpriced espresso after that. Walking up to the Château de Versailles was a little mind-boggling; seeing gold-leaf on everything inside and out was a bit overwhelming. Inside was a further display of opulence and luxury for the sake of luxury. Colorful, regal, and utterly impractical. It was fun to walk through, but I could never imagine someone actually living in a place like that. Although I'm sure some smashing parties were thrown in the Hall of Mirrors.

It was pouring rain when we were ready to leave Versailles and continued to rain when we got back to Paris, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in the Musée d'Orsay looking at famous European art. I found my favorite Monet painting ("Houses of Parliament, Sun Breaking Through the Fog"), which was very cool. I wrote a poem based on it during my freshman year in high school that won an award, so it brought back memories. It was nice to see the original painting in person. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes.

We grabbed some food on our way back to the hostel and again needed an early-evening nap, but we ventured out into the night after that. Stopped for some delicious Nutella crepes on our way to the most bizarre night club I've been to possibly ever. Lace curtains, big oak tavern tables, religious statues, and odd postcards don't even begin to explain. The music got progressively more eclectic (and worse) as the evening went on, but the place had a line down the alley and out to street, and it was overflowing with dancing Europeans the whole time we were there. It was a lot of fun, although I half-expected to hear bad Bollywood songs blasting out of the speakers every time the song changed. :) Since it was no longer raining when we were ready to go home and the metros had stopped running, we walked the couple miles back to the hostel and crashed.

Due to daylight savings time, which I had noted before I left but promptly forgot about upon my arrival in France, we missed free coffee on Sunday morning at the hostel, so that was first on our to-do list after we had eaten and showered. After we were properly caffeinated, we walked a few blocks down to the Sunday street market. I adore street markets of any variety, and I was not disappointed. I was "ooh-la-la"-ed by what I believe to be an Italian produce vendor (since he said, "Buon' giorno!" right before "Ooh, la la!"), which made me giggle. We bought delicious fresh bread made from every grain known to mankind and some awesome Camembert cheese, which was a mid-morning snack (and lunch, and an afternoon snack...). To top it off, we got a scrumptious chocolate tort. There were Spanish boys singing a cappella, abandoning their songs midway to burst out into laughter, and there were old ladies selling daffodils, and there were cute puppies. There was stencil-graffiti on the sidewalk that said "NAMASTE" so I took a picture, and we sort of wandered the aisles gazing at the wide variety of goods available (including one lonely crab, which startlingly turned out to be alive, though just barely, we think). 

When we finished with the market, we went to the Louvre Museum. Though we had walked by it on Friday during our Paris-by-foot exploration and commented on how huge it looked, it wasn't until we were inside the thing that we fully realized how HUGE it is. Large portions of it were closed, and we walked through many, many galleries, but we still saw only a tiny portion. I didn't realize how overprotective they are of the Mona Lisa; it's in a glass case on a wall by itself, with two layers of barriers arcing around it. You can't get closer than about fifteen feet, and there were at least three museum workers/guards (not really sure what they were, but they were official-looking) keeping an eye on the crowd. So we saw it, took pictures of us with the painting in the background, then sought a less crowded area.

After a few hours we decided we were completely visually overstimulated and incapable of properly appreciating any more art, so we sat outside at the edge of a fountain, ate some more delicious bread and cheese, and planned our next move. That wound up being a journey out to Montmartre, climbing up the hill to the Sacre Cœur, and hanging out for a while. It turned into an absolutely beautiful and calm afternoon, so when we were done exploring the church and watching the street performers, we found ourselves a bench on a quieter side of the hill and relaxed for a while.

That evening, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up for nighttime. We came approached it through the Parc du Champs de Mars, which also contains the Wall for Peace monument. It was so pretty. And so cold. But so pretty.

Monday morning was just breakfast and packing, then off to the train station, and I continued on to the airport. My return trip was less fun than the journey there: I woke up Monday morning with a cold (that's what I get for going from 95˚ and dry to 45˚ and rain and wind), and I couldn't find any place in the airport to buy medicine. I spent my last 10 euros on a travel pillow (which was a ridiculous price! but I was desperate), and that allowed me to sleep some on the plane to Dubai, but the descent into Dubai was absolutely terrible. I was unable to pop my ears to equalize the pressure, so I had a pretty terrible headache the whole 40-minute descent, and my nose was running like crazy. It was after 12:30 a.m. local time when I finally made it across the airport to my gate, and I tried to nap in the uncomfortable chairs by the gate, but it was not at all a restful sleep. Once we finally boarded the plane (I had a 4-hour layover), the pilot announced that due to the weather, we weren't allowed to take off. So we were stuck on the plane for more than a half hour before we pulled back from the gate, and then when we approached Delhi, I noticed that we were circling. We made a giant loop around Delhi, about a 30-mile radius, which set us back an additional half-hour behind schedule. When I finally made it through immigration and collected my suitcase, I went to the pre-paid taxi stand, which is supposed to be the surest way to get from the airport to anywhere in Delhi. It wasn't. Though the taxi driver acted like he knew exactly where he was going, and I gave him a landmark in addition to the name of my neighborhood, I somehow found myself on Neeti Marg in Moti Bagh, not at all near Neeti Bagh. I did, however, find out that Delhi has a national rose garden, a railway museum, and several lovely hospitals. And more traffic circles. Always more traffic circles. Anyway, after asking an ice-cream wallah, a random pedestrian, and an auto-wallah, my taxi driver (who spoke no English) finally received directions that he understood, and I eventually made it back to the residence. At which time I promptly took a nap. It was a very long and exhausting journey home, but worth every second of frustration and discomfort.

I loved Paris. I loved getting to see my boyfriend. I loved traveling more and seeing something new and exciting. I loved that I could successfully eavesdrop on German conversations at breakfast in the hostel, and I loved being able to photograph more things.

I had no classes yesterday, so I spent the day doing laundry and catching up on emails and sleep. I feel better today - more rested, and less sick, which is good. Everyone else in the house except one other girl is still traveling, so it's nice and quiet here, which I'm enjoying. My weekend plans consist of actual schoolwork (crazy, right?), writing papers and doing lots of microeconomics reading and remembering all that Hindi that got lost with hearing French and German for four days.

Congratulations if you made it all the way to this point; I know I've been putting up lengthy posts lately. It's hard to be concise and detailed at the same time, and I already feel like I'm leaving so much out. Hopefully between these stories and the pictures I've put up, you get a good idea of what I'm experiencing. I need to tell these stories now before I forget them all or just have too many to tell. :)

Now that I've recorded all the observations, I'll try to get some thoughts up next time. 

Until then, namaste, beautiful people.

P.S. The date on the post is correct. I did, indeed, begin writing it on March 31st, and it took me a full 48 hours to find the energy to complete it. Blogging's hard. :)

Delhi Days

I've spent the last few days here in Delhi, doing Delhi-things. A quieter weekend than most, but a good one.

I've been bringing along my little Canon Powershot in hopes that I'll remember to take pictures of daily life, but I've only rarely been succeeding. However, here's a picture of a major intersection near my house, right by the flyover for the highway and in between Neeti Bagh and Defence Colony, where we go for good food, good desserts, and American groceries.

It's getting hot here in Delhi, so the autorickshaw rides provide a much-appreciated breeze and shade from the sun. I think that's still my preferred method of transportation.

Speaking of autos, I don't know if it's something about me or something about auto-wallahs, but these days I've been getting a lot of "meter se" - price by meter. I also realized that if the auto-wallah doesn't name a price when I say where I want to go, I should just get in and sit down rather than asking how much he's going to charge. Then I point at the meter, say I want the price by meter, and most of the time they switch it on right away. By that time, they've started driving and don't want to risk losing a passenger because they charge too much.

I was going to take pictures at Ramjas one day last week when I was there for classes, but then I remembered how nosy all the students are. Classes are done this week, so the campus should be relatively empty. I'll still be going back to meet with teachers for the independent study portion of my two Ramjas courses, so I'll bring my camera along on one of those days without having to answer a million questions about who I am, where I'm from, and why I'm taking pictures. However, I did take some pictures of these interesting flowers because I see them everywhere:

They come from some sort of tree, and I keep forgetting to ask someone what their name is. They're strange creations; they are these huge, fleshy flowers that fall of the tree right after they've bloomed. They haven't started withering at all when they drop, which is rather peculiar. They're all over the sidewalks, though, so I step on them on a regular basis. My roommate said it feels something like what she imagines stepping on a dead rat to be. I don't think of it in such a grotesque way, but there is something a little eery about it. These flowers behave strangely.

When I'm traveling between Ramjas and the IES Centre in Nizamuddin, I get off at a metro stop by Connaught Place, right in the center of New Delhi. My auto route always goes past India Gate Park, one of the most famous places in the city. It's a giant circular green space with playgrounds, paddleboats on tiny man-made ponds, and lots and lots of ice cream wallahs. The focal point of the park is India Gate itself:

I've heard it referred to as India's Arc de Triomphe. Guess I'll have to go see the latter so I can make my own comparison. :) At any rate, it's a nice part of the city, and part of my daily routine.

At the Centre, we have a black cat who is a stray but basically lives at the YMCA because Cate feeds her. She's pregnant right now and is very noisy, and she likes to come sit in on our classes, which my Hindi teacher doesn't like. She shoos the cat away in very terse Hindi. But she always comes back.

I'm going to steal one of the kitties if they're born before I leave. I want a kitten! And a puppy, and a monkey, and a lizard, and those cute kids from Abheypur...

At any rate.

Another of the very cool things that happens in Delhi is actually just a few minutes of walking from my house. It's called Thursday Market (for obvious reasons: once a week, on Thursdays...), and it is one of the most amazing things in Delhi. The markets are all interesting and fun and cheap, but this one has probably anything I could possibly want or need: food, produce, jewelry, fabric, underwear, safety pins, dishes, cosmetics, bootleg copies of Bollywood CDs and DVDs, spices, posters, incense and puja thalis...the list goes on and on.

This is a spice-wallah. He'll probably be my best friend right before I leave because I want to bring spices home with me, but nothing's labeled and I'm not good enough to identify all of the jars of delicious-smelling powders.

A very small glimpse of the produce section of the market. It's things like this that make me really wish I had a full kitchen to use here...I love raw fruits and vegetables, but it would be awesome to be able to cook with this stuff.

One of my favorite Indian sweets is jalebi, and there is nothing better than watching someone make them streetside, then consuming fresh, hot, sticky, greasy goodness. Like fried dough, only better.

***

On Friday, after an uneventful mid-semester group check-in with Dhyan Summers, the eccentric white woman IES wanted us to have available as our therapist, the whole bunch of us went to India Gate with Harini, our teacher (who will be reading this later as part of my Cities of Delhi project - hi Harini!). We wandered around for a short while and got ice cream, then headed over to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President's house. It's massive - 350 rooms, and the whole complex covers an astounding number of acres for being in the middle of a very large city. Lutyens, the architect of most of British New Delhi, certainly figured out how to do grand displays of power. There are some nifty features, like the base of a statue of Lord Buddha in the main ballroom/hall being in a straight line from India Gate and the base being at the same elevation as the top of India Gate (because the President's House is built on a hill). There was a museum with lots of portraits of important British people, a kitchen museum of presidential kitchen gadgets, and a museum with all the gifts given to India from leaders of other countries. The UAE gave an outrageous jeweled necklace glittering with all kinds of precious stones. The USA gave a glass bowl. Way to go, America.

Something extraordinarily cool about the visit was making our friend Kashika pose in front of a huge portrait of her great-great grandfather...who happened to be the first president of India. How cool is that? Even though the president in India doesn't really have power (it's all the Prime Minister), that is still pretty stupendously awesome.

My favorite part of the visit was the sprawling Mughal gardens. Impeccably well maintained, bursting with color because spring has hit full force in Delhi, and so, so pretty. I wish I had pictures to share, but we weren't allowed to bring cameras or cell phones past the reception area. 

Friday evening we just hung out at home, enjoying the warm evening up on the terrace and the fact that no one was jumping on a bus or a train at some crazy hour of day or night.

Saturday morning I got up early to do homework, then in the afternoon went to the American Center library to get a membership (which turns out is probably a waste of rs. 400, since I don't think they actually have any resources I'll be using), and then went to the most fantastic restaurant in Connaught Place. It's called Nizam's Kathi Kabab, and those people are food geniuses. They take already delicious Indian food, mix it with a fried egg, and wrap it all up in naan, which they then also fry. Sooooo indescribably good, and pretty cheap. 

That pretty much brings me up to date. I spent today doing productive things like homework and housing forms and all that kind of fun stuff, taking advantage of the fact that my roommate went up to the Himalayas for a few days with a friend from home that's visiting. 

As usual, there are some more pictures up on flickr of the events described here.

Namaste. :)