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.

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XOXO