I could probably live the rest of my life without another drop of rain ever touching me again and be perfectly content. I've reached my quota. But today there was so much rain that I couldn't be annoyed at the minor inconveniences of walking through ankle deep water to get to the main road, which has disintegrated before my very eyes over the past 2 rainy monsoon months in Delhi. Today the rain was so ridiculous that it took me an hour to get to my house--a journey that is usually a 20-minute stroll, a 15-minute walk.
Here's how I found myself knee deep in the shit:
I was over at a friends house, doing some trip planning for the beginning October as we have a 2 week break from Deli University. "Why?" you may ask. Well, you see, this year Delhi has the honor of hosting the Commonwealth Games. They can only be described as what I like to sum up as the Olympics for former British Colonies; tramady (tragedy + comedy) ensues. The entire city has been under construction since we've been here. New overpasses, metro stops, sidewalks, wiring, painting. Everything you can imagine. Makeshift scaffolding crafted out of bamboo. Mini-Machu Picchus made of bricks eroding away under the torrential downpour, completing their life-cycle back to red clay. Styrofoam pallets eroded too, into chunks and pebbles thrashing about in the filthy puddles gone mad with the excess water. Like a sea of green house gas evaporated icebergs, but covered in a film of foodwrappersmangopitsbannanapeelspetrolexcessfecesofthehumanandanimalvariety.
But to get out of the simile and back to the (sur)real. Today, or tonight I must say. As I left my friend's house the wee downpour began, though there had been a steady drizzle all day. Usually I walk back to my house from the metro, but as night had fallen, my shoe had broken earlier in the day--from rain destroying whatever was holding it together (faith? optimism? Elmer's?), and it was raining, I opted to take an auto-rickshaw. But fate would have it otherwise as the mere 3 auto rickshaws that even dared near the newly forming rapids near the metro entrance were filled with passengers like a lifeboat on the Titanic (too soon?). A few bicycle rickshaws approached. After losing the sprint once, I thought I was home free (not technically, for the ride up the street from the metro bike rickshaws are a 15 rupee splurge compared the 5 rupee rides in auto-rickshaws). I asked, "Bayaa, Batra chalogaye?" (Brother shall we go to Batra--the movie theatre near my house) and he said "Baithiye" (sit) and I said "kitna" (which is the abbrev'ed form of how much) and he said "sattar" (70) and I was like "kyaa?! bis!" (What?? 20 rupez) and he just shook his head and I shook my head and went back under the awning. Then the rain got worse so I posted up near the back of the crowd and finished a chapter in the book I'm reading (about the goddess Kali, seriously obsessed with her). Then it let up. Snagged a bike rickshaw for 50 rupez, essentially the cost of a kilo of tomatoes and half a kilo of onions, to put it in perspective.
The water is so high that me are holding their khakis up to their knees, where the water is lapping after each car makes any kind of movement (did I mention that traffic was a total clustercuss?). Cars are honking constantly (typical, but especially futile considering the weather conditions, making it excessively pointless) and car alarms go off. I am in a matrix of small 4 doors (silver is the color of choice here), motorcycles with 2 or even 3 young men straddling the struggling beast, little Vespa-esque scooters, old rusted Hero bicyclists, huge city buses white with two thin horizontal stripes running down the middle of its shell dividing top and bottom sometimes with windows smashed out running until they literally can run no more, a few auto-rickshaws that seem to hover on the grey-brown water, a myriad of walkers (much less common when there's no downpour) and other bike rickshaws proving their efficiency in all weather conditions.
Some motorcyclists had to get off their bikes and walk them through the streets or on the 2 foot center divide (also rapidly eroding due to the fact it is made of a line of concrete slabs leaning up against mud and maybe a few rocks here and there) because their exhausts were inhaling water and their engines were starting to smoke. For a quick second I thought that the bike right next to my rickshaw was going to explode or something because it was smoking up so bad and I thought about how devastating it would be to lose an eye because of that. But he turned off his bike and started walking. Those brave souls that walked probably didn't want to wait in the traffic, or pay the exorbitant monsoon prices for hallowed admission into any kind of vehicle. It could've been me, really, when that police SUV sped past us heading north bound on the deserted southbound side of the street (because that would mean people having to leave via S on Dr. Mukhergee Nagar having to walk through the rain to their cars to escape the neighborhood into something that could be even more fearful in the concrete maze of Delhi). It could've been me, really, when the SUV not only splashed the people on the center divide, but drenched them from head to foot. 5-foot tidal waves like big blown kisses from the drivers via the tires in bliss with the dirty-grey...paani (water!). The guy closest to me that got drenched did a classic "Are you serious?!" gesture and sighed at the heavens and continued on his way.
Times were slow, I started singing to myself. Or I guess you could say I was serenading the rickshaw-walla. Braided my hair and enjoyed the ride. A little Monk nun (Biksuni) in a little Docker's khaki colored rain poncho and matching rain hat saw me peeking out under my little red rickshaw roof and gave me a big, adorable smile and a wave. SO ADORABLE. I was already in the zone of this-is-so-ridiculous-that-I-am-getting-zen-Buddhist-on-this-and-maybe-even-enjoying-it-because-it-is-so-ridiculous stage and her smile brought me into the this.is.so.ridic.it's.awesome stage. Water was up to my feet while sitting in the rickshaw (something like 2ish feet from the ground?!). The center divide was no longer visible under the newly born sea, see? Those who had been navigating their ways home on it appeared to be dogged and dogmatic Christ-like walking on water while wheels drowned. Bikes were stalling and so were cars. Men pushing rickshaws out of the mess, searching for some higher ground. And all the while, amid this seeming chaos people watched from the sides of the streets. Sometimes clutching umbrellas trying to gain strength for their eventual submission to the fact that they would get wet somehow or another on their way home. Some cozied up in restaurants or the neighborhood Cafe Coffee Day (i.e.: India's version of Starbucks).
Eventually we arrived to the stretch of the street that isn't constantly flooded--maybe it has some whisper of a drainage system?, and cruised up towards Batra and my home. In front of one of the sweet shops a group of young guys probably in the mid-20s, were splashing and playing on the side of the street since they were already all so soaked anyways, why not take it the max? It was pretty awesome. One guy tackled his friend into the water and the guy in the water dragged his assailant in with him and then the other friends got in there too. I thought I was the beach for a second. No, really. So mirthful! Then it was time for me the get back into the rains, though I was already soaked (the little rickshaw roof doesn’t cover your legs or protect you from being in the splash zone of motor vehicles, nor does it help when its raining sideways, nor does it help when you go through a big ditch that it sheds all the water it's been keeping between you and the bursting sky on you all at once from that sudden deep-ditch jolt). I paid my rickshaw-walla a few crumpled 10 and 20 rupee notes and held my Ali Baba pants up to my knees.
And I was knee deep in it. And then my sandal broke even further submerged in that water and I was floppin around on one good foot, trying to keep the other sandal from totally slipping away. As I neared my street the water receded, and collected in pools instead of drowning the entire street like it had on the main road. I was still singing to myself and a guy right behind me with some of his friends was singing too. He caught my stride and said "nice huh?" and I said "pyara mausum" (cute weather, literal translation). And he said "oh you know Hindi" and I said "thori Hindi aati he" I have acquired a little Hindi. "Nice Hindi" he says and I continue home, no more than a minute away I'd say. Belt out some Rilo Kiley and traipse up to the third floor of ol' 907 Mukhergee Nagar.
I drip in through the front door tell my tale to my enthralled housemates. And I peel off my soaking clothes that smack on the floor with a satisfying, engorged slap. And then my roommate Alyssa says, "Oh my god you're blue." Turns out the shirt I was wearing today, borrowed from dear Nina, hadn’t been washed yet. And if you didn't know, everything in India bleeds its die. All over the place. Like a dog in heat. Buckets of laundry (no washing machines here, sorry!) bleed together. It is a crime here for any fabric to maintain white. I'm starting to think that the whole hippies are obsessed with India thing is all backwards. My theory? India forcibly turns people into hippies by dying their formerly white clothes into Berkeley Telegraph Ave wet dreams. And then monsoon rains dye my body blue. Can you imagine! A sheen of blue hue seeped into my torso. The color of a dying Navii in the movie Avatar. Not that vibrant blue, but a blue-y grey. Subtle. Call me Susan Sarandon already.
If you're wondering...it’s still raining right now. We'll see what more destruction the rains bring. Supposedly the Yamuna River (which runs through Delhi and is oh so close to my neighborhood) is a just .2 meters from 1978 levels--the highest monsoon recorded in recent history. Awesome!
xoxo
Soggy Delhi Dime
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Wine, Water, Milk and Honey
So this past weekend our study abroad program took a long weekend to visit such sites as the Amber Fort, Jantar Mantar, the Agra Fort, the Tomb of Akbar the Great in Sikandra, and the TAJ! It is incredibly difficult to describe the all-encompassing, intricate, delicate, splendid, immense, meticulous, towering beauty of each of these sites. They are the relics of the Mughal Empire—a Muslim kingdom that held power from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s before the British colonized the subcontinent. As result many of them have been preserved pretty well—at least the red sandstone and marble structures have not been plundered or eroded, but the rich carpets and liquid gold paintings are details that have faded. It was stunning to go to Akbar’s tomb, our last stop on our intense touring itinerary, and see a fabulous mix of sand stone and marble architecture and go into his tomb and see some of the fantastic paintings with some gilded gold edges still preserved. The Mughals had TASTE. Anyways, I digress.
I’m titling this post Wine, Water, Milk and Honey because when these epic tombs were designed (including the Taj Mahal) they included little moats on all 4 sides of the structure so that those four liquids can flow into the tomb in the after life. BEAUTIFUL! But for myself and my study abroad companions it would be something more like Kingfisher, Pani, Paneer and Julabi. Kingfisher being the national beer of India, Pani being the Hindi word for water, Paneer being Indian cottage cheese which appears in infinite dishes here in the form of little cubes (a visual trick! They look just like tofu chunks!) and Julabi being a delicious Indian desert.
Also, I must apologize for not updating this little blog since I’ve been back in Delhi (about a month). It’s been difficult for me to just sit down and write because there is always something happening. I find myself in a constant state of processing new information: new smells, new sites, new human interactions. Everything. When I have downtime I find myself reading books (just read Island by Aldous Huxley—SO GOOD) or trying to read the news or watching movies. And all of these activities are just consuming more intellectual material to process. And then there’s the difficulty of trying to establish regular routines (um why has it been nearly impossible to find a yoga studio near my house in North Delhi??!). Plus traveling for long weekends—the weekend before last I journeyed to McLeod Ganj, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is located. Whilst there I finally had a really good Ashtanga yoga class and learned how to make Momos (steamed Tibetan dumplings).
Anyways I don’t want to make this too absurdly long so I will recount a typical day-in the life and a brief account of last Thursday because it was crazy.
DAY IN THAA LIFE
Alright, so I live in North Delhi, aka Old Delhi. Where the streets are winding little mazes and the three and three storied structures are cozied up wall to wall painted all kinds of colors with intricate wrought-iron gates and balconies for everyone. A different family lives on each floor of the buildings—like mini apartment buildings. I live on the third floor of a mint green abode with 6 other students from my program. The apartment has marble floors and a fan in every room (no AC but the fans are usually sufficient). We have to order 5-gallon water jugs about every other day since the tap water isn’t safe to drink. We cook on a little propane-powered stove that evokes an aura of a really serious camper. Once we wind our way out to the main street there is a shopping complex—kind of like an Indian strip mall—with cheap restaurants, pharmacies, some clothing stores, general stores and all kinds of posters and billboards for law classes and tutoring for an array of subjects (it takes about 30 minutes to walk to Delhi University from our house, needless to say there are many students in our neighborhood). But once we make it across the street after dodging auto-rickshaws, passenger cars, city and state buses, bike-rickshaws and infinite motor bikes, there is a row of sabzi-wallahs (vegetable sellers) where we can buy all kinds of fruits and veggies for super cheap. My typical dinner consists of Nina and/or I making lentils and sautéed okra or eggplants or tomatoes or green beans or spinach or potatoes or mushrooms and any combination thereof. Plus fresh garlic, onions and green peppers of course.
So on a typical school day I will wake up around 815 (aka the crack of dawn). It will be AT LEAST 80 degrees in our room. (Side note: I don’t know if you know this about me, but I love the heat. If I had to choose it’d be 85 degrees all the time. In short, this is the country is fulfilling that desire. I bought a sweat rag to deal with when the sweat inevitably starts dripping off my face while I walk to class, so no problem there!). Okay so I’ll wake up, down some water, eat some Museli (basically granola) for breakfast, get dressed (always modestly. I have had my legs totally covered the entire time I’ve been here. When I’m feeling like I can handle all the extra-unwanted attention I even show some shoulder.), walk out to the main street, hop in an auto-rickshaw down to the road that the University is on for 5 rupees a ride (our house is about 15-20 mins walk to that street + 20 minutes to get to class so I take a rickshaw if I am running a wee bit late), walk to class, learn about ancient India, eat lunch at the University’s Holistic Food Center (stuffed parantha + veggies + sprouted laddoo for desert. For 27 rupees. Dank!), hop on the metro for 3 stops down to Hindi class at the study center (basically an apartment in a nice little neighborhood where we have class, a little computer lab with 6 ol’ PCs that have to be coaxed into functioning at all, and a library with past students’ paperbacks and textbooks), learn Hindi, metro back home, do some yoga in the living room, make dinner, read/study/movie/go out (hope you liked that run-on sentence). Then do it all over again. But I only have class MonTuesWeds so my other days are like today: waiting for everyone to get ready to go on some shopping/art/site-seeing adventure. Which takes forever. Maybe its just after this weekend traveling in a group of 30 but I don’t think I will ever travel with more than like 4 people. It’s too infuriating.
CRAZY LAST THURSDAY
10 am: Wake up, eat cereal, troll the internet.
11 am: shower.
Noon: depart for Pahar Ganj, aka the main bazaar near Connaught Place in central Delhi. Buy the last of my travel tickets for the 2 week break we get off for the Common Wealth Games (http://www.economist.com/node/16793611?story_id=16793611&fsrc=rss). Eat delicious samosas.
3 pm: Begin the journey to find this urban art exhibit in a little gallery that I had read about earlier in the week. Happen upon some sort of strike/demonstration for I had no idea what (though I read the news paper a few days later and discovered it was a hoard of farmers protesting an imminent tax-imposition). Make eye contact inadvertently with one of the protestors in the street while walking along the sidewalk and he chucks an empty 1 ltr sprite bottle of Sprite at me and charges towards me yelling something to his comrades, one of which who grabs my hand and tries to pull me away from Nina. It was really jarring. Especially since we had no idea what they were protesting and it all happened so fast. I wasn’t really concerned anything that bad would happen since their were police monitoring everywhere, but it was really surreal experience. I don’t know how I incited any passions in those men, but I guess being a comparatively wealthy white woman in enough for any form of harassment here. Anyways, finally find the gallery and it is AWESOME.
5 pm: Head to Manju Ka Tila, the Tibetan refugee settlement in Delhi, for dinner. Eat a delicious meal of Tingmo (steamed bread), veggie thupka and broccoli in garlic tomato sauce. For a mere 205 rupees! Thats under 5 dollars for an amazing meal for two in a nice sit down restaurant with adorable Tibetan waiters. ONLY IN INDIA.
730 pm: Take the metro back to our place in North Delhi. While walking home along the main road a pack of 5 year old boys start grabbing our posteriors (but mostly Nina's) and she yells “NOT OK” and a guy on his bike rickshaw pulls his bike over and starts telling the boys off in Hindi and chasing them, as well as another guy who was walking behind us in the street. The 5 year old perverts scatter and Nina and I are like “Whaaaaat?”
I could go off on more, but the day calls.
Leave your address if you want a postcard!
XOXO
I’m titling this post Wine, Water, Milk and Honey because when these epic tombs were designed (including the Taj Mahal) they included little moats on all 4 sides of the structure so that those four liquids can flow into the tomb in the after life. BEAUTIFUL! But for myself and my study abroad companions it would be something more like Kingfisher, Pani, Paneer and Julabi. Kingfisher being the national beer of India, Pani being the Hindi word for water, Paneer being Indian cottage cheese which appears in infinite dishes here in the form of little cubes (a visual trick! They look just like tofu chunks!) and Julabi being a delicious Indian desert.
Also, I must apologize for not updating this little blog since I’ve been back in Delhi (about a month). It’s been difficult for me to just sit down and write because there is always something happening. I find myself in a constant state of processing new information: new smells, new sites, new human interactions. Everything. When I have downtime I find myself reading books (just read Island by Aldous Huxley—SO GOOD) or trying to read the news or watching movies. And all of these activities are just consuming more intellectual material to process. And then there’s the difficulty of trying to establish regular routines (um why has it been nearly impossible to find a yoga studio near my house in North Delhi??!). Plus traveling for long weekends—the weekend before last I journeyed to McLeod Ganj, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is located. Whilst there I finally had a really good Ashtanga yoga class and learned how to make Momos (steamed Tibetan dumplings).
Anyways I don’t want to make this too absurdly long so I will recount a typical day-in the life and a brief account of last Thursday because it was crazy.
DAY IN THAA LIFE
Alright, so I live in North Delhi, aka Old Delhi. Where the streets are winding little mazes and the three and three storied structures are cozied up wall to wall painted all kinds of colors with intricate wrought-iron gates and balconies for everyone. A different family lives on each floor of the buildings—like mini apartment buildings. I live on the third floor of a mint green abode with 6 other students from my program. The apartment has marble floors and a fan in every room (no AC but the fans are usually sufficient). We have to order 5-gallon water jugs about every other day since the tap water isn’t safe to drink. We cook on a little propane-powered stove that evokes an aura of a really serious camper. Once we wind our way out to the main street there is a shopping complex—kind of like an Indian strip mall—with cheap restaurants, pharmacies, some clothing stores, general stores and all kinds of posters and billboards for law classes and tutoring for an array of subjects (it takes about 30 minutes to walk to Delhi University from our house, needless to say there are many students in our neighborhood). But once we make it across the street after dodging auto-rickshaws, passenger cars, city and state buses, bike-rickshaws and infinite motor bikes, there is a row of sabzi-wallahs (vegetable sellers) where we can buy all kinds of fruits and veggies for super cheap. My typical dinner consists of Nina and/or I making lentils and sautéed okra or eggplants or tomatoes or green beans or spinach or potatoes or mushrooms and any combination thereof. Plus fresh garlic, onions and green peppers of course.
So on a typical school day I will wake up around 815 (aka the crack of dawn). It will be AT LEAST 80 degrees in our room. (Side note: I don’t know if you know this about me, but I love the heat. If I had to choose it’d be 85 degrees all the time. In short, this is the country is fulfilling that desire. I bought a sweat rag to deal with when the sweat inevitably starts dripping off my face while I walk to class, so no problem there!). Okay so I’ll wake up, down some water, eat some Museli (basically granola) for breakfast, get dressed (always modestly. I have had my legs totally covered the entire time I’ve been here. When I’m feeling like I can handle all the extra-unwanted attention I even show some shoulder.), walk out to the main street, hop in an auto-rickshaw down to the road that the University is on for 5 rupees a ride (our house is about 15-20 mins walk to that street + 20 minutes to get to class so I take a rickshaw if I am running a wee bit late), walk to class, learn about ancient India, eat lunch at the University’s Holistic Food Center (stuffed parantha + veggies + sprouted laddoo for desert. For 27 rupees. Dank!), hop on the metro for 3 stops down to Hindi class at the study center (basically an apartment in a nice little neighborhood where we have class, a little computer lab with 6 ol’ PCs that have to be coaxed into functioning at all, and a library with past students’ paperbacks and textbooks), learn Hindi, metro back home, do some yoga in the living room, make dinner, read/study/movie/go out (hope you liked that run-on sentence). Then do it all over again. But I only have class MonTuesWeds so my other days are like today: waiting for everyone to get ready to go on some shopping/art/site-seeing adventure. Which takes forever. Maybe its just after this weekend traveling in a group of 30 but I don’t think I will ever travel with more than like 4 people. It’s too infuriating.
CRAZY LAST THURSDAY
10 am: Wake up, eat cereal, troll the internet.
11 am: shower.
Noon: depart for Pahar Ganj, aka the main bazaar near Connaught Place in central Delhi. Buy the last of my travel tickets for the 2 week break we get off for the Common Wealth Games (http://www.economist.com/node/16793611?story_id=16793611&fsrc=rss). Eat delicious samosas.
3 pm: Begin the journey to find this urban art exhibit in a little gallery that I had read about earlier in the week. Happen upon some sort of strike/demonstration for I had no idea what (though I read the news paper a few days later and discovered it was a hoard of farmers protesting an imminent tax-imposition). Make eye contact inadvertently with one of the protestors in the street while walking along the sidewalk and he chucks an empty 1 ltr sprite bottle of Sprite at me and charges towards me yelling something to his comrades, one of which who grabs my hand and tries to pull me away from Nina. It was really jarring. Especially since we had no idea what they were protesting and it all happened so fast. I wasn’t really concerned anything that bad would happen since their were police monitoring everywhere, but it was really surreal experience. I don’t know how I incited any passions in those men, but I guess being a comparatively wealthy white woman in enough for any form of harassment here. Anyways, finally find the gallery and it is AWESOME.
5 pm: Head to Manju Ka Tila, the Tibetan refugee settlement in Delhi, for dinner. Eat a delicious meal of Tingmo (steamed bread), veggie thupka and broccoli in garlic tomato sauce. For a mere 205 rupees! Thats under 5 dollars for an amazing meal for two in a nice sit down restaurant with adorable Tibetan waiters. ONLY IN INDIA.
730 pm: Take the metro back to our place in North Delhi. While walking home along the main road a pack of 5 year old boys start grabbing our posteriors (but mostly Nina's) and she yells “NOT OK” and a guy on his bike rickshaw pulls his bike over and starts telling the boys off in Hindi and chasing them, as well as another guy who was walking behind us in the street. The 5 year old perverts scatter and Nina and I are like “Whaaaaat?”
I could go off on more, but the day calls.
Leave your address if you want a postcard!
XOXO
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)