★ India – Part 2

My journey home after spending over a week in India has kept my mind working overtime. The combination of sensory overload that came with this trip and the downtime that you experience while traveling is to blame. When traveling, there is a lot of waiting. You wait to check out of your hotel, wait for a taxi, wait for the bus, wait for security and airline check in and wait in a terminal for your plane to start boarding. You push, shove and fight for your spot on that plane ride home only to arrive at seat 11c where you continue to wait for 20 hours until you finally reach home.

Not including traveling, I spent 9 days in the country of India and immersed myself in the lifestyle of all three class systems from road side bathroom breaks and street food prepared by hand to sit down restaurants and navigating busy streets on foot and on bicycle and the final part of my trip involved room service and spas in a 5 star hotel where the help greeted me with Namaste at every turn. To give an example of this experience, I paid 5 rupees for a chicken dish with mango juice on the side of the road and played a free match of cricket with a few kids in a neighborhood slum of Mumbai and then paid 60,000 rupees for a hotel room. low income families in India sometimes make as little as 5,000 rupees a year and I dropped many times more than that on a hotel room.

What made India so absolutely breathtaking was the lives of people in each class didn’t seem to me that they were all that different. There are the obvious differences but their culture and lifestyles were all the same. From shack to villa, families ate breakfast together, worked hard at their jobs, took time each day to pray and meditate and you would be invited into someone’s home no matter how rich or how poor. Everyone had something to give no matter how little money they had…there was always food, shelter and clothes to go around even for strangers.

On the cab ride to Mumbai airport this morning, temples were lit up as today is the celebration of a very important god in Hindu culture and lines were queued up since 6AM to give offerings and blessings. We stopped to give our respects as well. Those waiting wore suits, school uniforms and rags.

While we drove along, I received an invitation to join a motorcycle club in Mumbai. Every few months, they do a 5-15 day ride around India in groups of 20. You can rent a motorcycle for $25 a day and everyone looks out for one another. I promised my friends that I’d save up my paid time off at work and look into the trip next year. The excitement of going to temples and cooking food on the side of a highway with a group of adventurers sounds like a dream.

You see, the culture of India that I touched on in my last post has begun to surge through my blood stream and become a part of me. From the hand gestures to driving to day to day interactions and bartering and saying that this pair of socks is too expensive and getting from point A to B first but in a respectful way and all of this day to day has really starting becoming me at least until I get back to America and cutting in line and honking your horn at every car you pass will get me in trouble. I’m starting to feel like the Indian way of doing it is far better.

I arrived at the airport in a rush this morning but bought a bracelet for a nickel for my sisters that was originally priced at a dollar and firmly told 4 guys that I wasn’t interested in my bags being carried. My style of hand gestures and head nod showed them I meant no and they left me alone. Earlier in the week, they would have been more persistent but they knew I was serious now that I have these minor changes in my mannerisms down. I skipped the line and went to the front butting my cart into another one and looked over with and very calm point to my ticket to signify I was running late. He didn’t nod in understanding but he didn’t have to. Simply looking away without saying anything was his way of saying “okay” I firmly yelled out to the group of 50 people in the check-in line that I needed an ink pen for my Indian customs form. Being shy in India won’t get you anywhere and people will just pass you by and never think about helping. I soon had offers for 3 pens and I grabbed one. The Indian army guards checking my bags were being lazy and more concerned with sipping tea instead of checking bags. I raised my arms up, widened my eyes and pointed at the baggage machine and said, “c’mon what’s up!” in a firm but inquisitive tone and they said something back in Hindi but put their tea down and got back to work grumbling. I smiled inside.

Without the change in my mannerisms, this check in process would have taken an hour or more. I was at my gate in 30 minutes. This is how India works From big city to farm country, the only way to get ahead and get things done is to be a bit aggressive but in a respectful way. Failure to do so will get you nowhere. This is survival and everyone works together but you have to speak up. Americans get their feelings hurt too easily and that includes me as well. Someone cuts you off in traffic and you get pissed or someone is aggressive with a store clerk who is being lazy and everyone else blames the customer for losing his temper. Both sides are wrong but, in India, when someone says, “hey wake up” you at least check yourself first to see if you’re really asleep before just getting defensive and firing back. I didn’t see any arguments in India. I saw a community working together no matter how bad things seemed to get. I don’t see this very often in America.

I wish I could take the driving and business practices and day to day people interaction skills back with me to the US but I’ll be labeled as an asshole and that’s just sad because the aggressive nature of how Indians interact is a finely tuned system. No one is angry or mad or pissed off. They’re just trying to get ahead and so is everyone else. It’s really addicting and something I’m going to miss until I go back to India.

For over a week, I ate nothing but Indian food. I never thought I could do it but I did and now I’m going to miss it and do my best to recreate this amazing food at home. Wow. The quality of this food is something amazing. I have my complaints about there being too many carbs, starches and oils in each of these dishes but I was really blown away by how good Indian food is. Actually, a majority of Indians are vegetarians so finding a chicken or pork dish is challenging sometimes but there are a few of them available. Naan bread coated in ghee (butter) is absolutely amazing. Also, the 4 teas a day has really got me addicted to it. Each meal is followed by tea and there’s a 2PM tea break with cookies. After a week, I’m craving tea like nobody’s business so I have some fresh, packed right in front of me tea that’s coming back to the US with me. I have some standard black, English, Chai, Darjeeling and Masalla spices for the chai. I also have a few Indian snacks and bottles of ketchup. If you’ve never had all natural ketchup outside of the US, you’re missing out. Tomatoes, salt and vinegar are the only ingredients. Heinz is disgusting compared to this stuff. I’m also bring back some basil leaves, mustard seed and pepper and I have marble spice grinding bowls for fresh ground spices. YUM!

Sure, I miss the variety of food in America and can’t wait to enjoy a big juicy burger since beef in India is pretty much impossible to find. I miss salads and fresh fruit and eggs and those sort of things but Indian food is really really good and I’d eat it every other day if I was an expert at cooking it. Every day is a bit much. Indian food is very high in a lot of things that are bad for you but I’m realizing that these foods should be had in moderation and we stuffed ourselves at every meal. Also, people eating these foods have been mostly working class people who spend their days outside and you can take in more calories for these sort of jobs. When you stuff yourself with naan bread and lay by the pool for 4 hours, your body doesn’t like that too much.

India is not a dangerous country. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t go. Visually, you can question things sometimes when 30 kids run up to you asking for money while their parents watch and when you see people eating on the side of the road and bathing in murky river water. You see things that might scare you at first but you realize that everyone is a human and has a story to tell and most of India speaks fluent English. There is an importance of learning your hand gestures and being firm about not wanting to buy whatever people are selling. You know that feeling you have when at a car dealership and all of the dealers run to you with deals? Yeah, just put on your game face and say that you’re just browsing. The people of India love foreigners and are interested in your white (gora) skin and want to take pictures of you. Not everyone has a car but almost everyone has a cell phone. You can walk the streets at night and be in the same danger as you were walking around Paris or New York at night.No place is completely safe and India isn’t that much worse than our big cities. This didn’t stop me from roaming the streets at night all alone with no money or camera and just an iPhone buried in my pocket. I kept my legs and arms covered with clothing (showing less skin is good even for men) and I kept looking forward walking briskly to an imaginary location I was heading. People left me alone and some stopped me to ask questions and I had some good conversations. Maintain your focus and stay alert and you’ll be fine. You could feasibly travel the country on a motor bike and be just fine.

I never got Delhi Belly but my friend Paul did. He got sick for 2 days. I had a sinus infection that lasted 24 hours and that’s it. By the time I was on my last day in India, I was eating the fruits and salads and drinking tap water without any issues. Street food wasn’t a problem either. Your body has to adjust from the highly antibacterial America to the very natural and foreign to us bacteria of India. India isn’t dirty but our stomachs aren’t used to these new things and it will make you sick. I think, after a month in India, I’ll be able to eat anything without getting sick as long as it’s cleaned and cooked. The body adapts pretty quickly. Also, my skin that’s been dry sine moving to San Francisco is completely moist and oily again. This seems to be the case where CA and NH are places that are dry and cool so I have to lather up overnight moisturizer on my face every night and moisturize my hands and face every day before heading to work. Florida, Austin and now, India are places that really put the moisture back in my face and I love it! The good news I’ll be in Austin and Miami this month so maybe I can go all month without moisturizer? Anyone that has dry skin can tell you that not having to put on facial night moisturizer is a really good feeling. My face is very happy right now.

I’d like to say more about India but it almost feels like there’s simply too much to review and go over. I have a lot to share but my feeling is that my experiences here will slowly make their way into other blog posts that are coming in the future. I am the sum or all of my experiences so what is written here is inspired by many experiences and I’m pretty sure that India will pop up from time to time in the future. Thanks for reading. I’ve posted a few of my favorite photos from India in this blog post.