India
We arrived in Delhi and collected our luggage then went out to the waiting area. Deepa was supposed to meet us and chill until our next flight (domestic to Guwahati). Well my dad and I waited for hours and hours, and there was no sign of Deepa. I was rather worried that something had happened to her, because we'd been in email contact and I'd told her of the itinerary change just before leaving Houston... and then, around about 1 or 2am (we'd been there since 11:30pm or so), I saw her walking (gorgeous girl that she is, who could miss her) through the waiting area.
Turned out she'd been waiting *outside* all that time, and it had never occurred to her to come in, nor had it occurred to me to go out. What precious hours we lost. I was very very upset with myself... but ecstatic to see her. A kindly, rule-bending (surprise surprise) guard let her sit in the inter-terminal waiting room with us, but, alas, she could not board the bus to the domestic terminal.
The bus, that was something. It *looked* like one of those chartered buses, you know, with the huge baggage storage space on the sides... but no. If you bent a bit and looked under it, all the space beneath the bus was actually empty. No floor, no cubbies, just air behind those giant doors. So everyone's baggage was piled *inside* at the front of the bus. And women in dresses and saris had to climb over mountains of luggage to get off the bus at their desired terminals. Once again, I was astounded by the shit Indians put up with in their everyday lives. It frightens me to think what might have happened if there had been an accident or fire on the bus. But there wasn't, and I am therefore able to make these comments after the fact. The strange and hazardous bus situation is just one small example of the many reasons India is not the vacation and tourist hot-spot it could be.
The best part about Delhi (besides seeing Deepa) were the glimpses of the city through the bus windows in the wee hours of the morning. What a mess. Buildings peeked out from behind foliage, as if they knew they were intruding, and well, even I get a thrill out of the exotic, foreign sights and sounds of India.
The wait in the domestic airport... not so exciting. The flight, unbelievably cold. We flew Air Deccan. Very cheap, I recommend it. But if you take Air Deccan, be sure to have a sweater or blanket accessible inside the plane as well as some food. We were surrounded by Indians. Indian Indians. I wasn't uncomfortable, not like I am around ABCDs, it was more mixed. On one hand, I was disgusted by their filthy habits, their rude ways; angered at the way they don't follow directions and how everyone assumes the rules don't apply to *him* (even when breaking them endangers everyone on the flight). I was amused (in a condescending way) when everyone flipped open his/her phone as soon as we landed (before we'd been given permission) and proceeded to call their waiting parties and speak in loud, I-am-the-only-person-on-this-cramped-plane voices. On the other hand, I like the way they (most of them) smell. Spicy, earthy, woody... like home somehow, even though my 'rents' home doesn't really smell like that.
My mom's side of the family came out to meet us at the Guwahati airport. It was my first time there in seven years. At first, on the drive from the airport to my grandmother's home, on the new highway, I thought things were different, better. The countryside along the highway is absolutely gorgeous. Assam is veritable jungle, and the sprawling hills are blanketed with tropical plants and trees of all varieties. To the side of the road, little shanties and shacks look confused and lost in all that wilderness, fishing nets hang on poles or submerged in marshes, the skeleton for the National Games stadium is being erected... It's all very charming, in it's discombobulated Indian way,
until you notice that the hills have great blocks of red earth carved thoughtlessly out of them, left bare and exposed to the elements. That they're shrouded in haze. That the highway is littered with refuse and that the tents all along the feeder house the hungry and homeless.
And Guwahati itself...
The streets are mud; knee-high piles of trash line the curbs; the dust is so thick that I'd blow my nose and the tissue would turn black (graphic, I know, but I'm trying to tell you what it's really like). I would occasionally attempt to brush sweat from my neck with my fingers, and my fingernails would be full of dirt. Where does all the dirt and dust come from, you ask?
Assam's hills are red clay. They cut down trees and make their quarries and don't take any preventative measures. The rain comes and washes everything into the river, onto the streets, and then it dries and floats on the air and coats everything.
My grandmother's house relies on a well, ground water, which they have to pump intermittently to keep the water running (no hot running water, for those of you unfamiliar with Indian conditions). They'd keep bowls of boiled water for my dad and me, and every morning we would refill our bottles. But there was always sand in our drinking water, from that well, and I can only wonder what *doesn't* get boiled off... what seeps from the surface - the plastics, the paints and cleaners, the modern chemicals - into the river, even into, possibly, the ground water. And let me say that it is *ridiculous* that Guwahati should be on the banks of a river as large (you can't see the other side) as the Brahmaputra and that its residents have to rely on *ground water.* The city can only provide each household half and hour (max) of water a day. And the electricity? Comes and goes. And if it goes at night, you haven't a chance of sleeping (no a/c, just fans, and did I mention Assam's a jungle?).
These people pride themselves on their cars, on their fancy-schmancy cell phones, on their cable television, on their computer/IT jobs... but they don't have sanitary, potable, running water. They don't have reliable electricity. A girl can't marry who she wants. A baby is abandoned in a stranger's garage. A customs agent asks us our caste and feels it's necessary tell us he's a Brahmin (in, yes, the 21st century). An arthritic woman has to climb two flights of stairs to reach her bedroom. A girl child is sent to live with strangers and work in their kitchen and is referred to as "that."
Now I can't help but love my family, but even they make me so angry. They just sit there and take it, and when we point out how they shouldn't have to live, what their government should be doing for them, the corruption, the laziness, the inequality, the prejudice, some even have the gall to say "What do you know? You don't live here." Well granted, my cultural preferences are certainly American when it comes to manners, decorum, even certain standards of cleanliness. But I don't think whether or not *every* child deserves the best health care, education, and upbringing possible is really a matter of debate. Not that America has achieved this ideal, not that it could ever possibly be achieved (there are too many variables in the equation), but India doesn't even seem to take steps in that direction. Because they don't seem to share the opinion.
Deepa told me that India offered America $5mil for Hurricane Katrina relief. Well, certainly this is one blatant example of America failing to take care of its own. But I have yet to see India *ever* take care of its own. Put your money where your mouth is, I say. $5mil won't do squat for America, but it could probably do a hell of a lot for India.
But what do I know? I don't live there, and I don't study it. All I know is what I saw, and what I saw makes me angry. Angry angry angry. Not just for the sake of my family. For the sake of the gorgeous environment they are destroying. For the sake of the stranger, the (likely low-caste) servant girl whom no one else seems to think about, who will spend her life washing other people's dishes and never having dreams because she can't even conceive of something different until she's married off to make more poor souls just like her.
They have their Bollywood and their beauty parlours and their Von Dutch paraphernalia, and they think they're as good as or better than the West. The only thing they've learned from the West is superficiality, and I'm ashamed that that's what the West has passed on best.
Turned out she'd been waiting *outside* all that time, and it had never occurred to her to come in, nor had it occurred to me to go out. What precious hours we lost. I was very very upset with myself... but ecstatic to see her. A kindly, rule-bending (surprise surprise) guard let her sit in the inter-terminal waiting room with us, but, alas, she could not board the bus to the domestic terminal.
The bus, that was something. It *looked* like one of those chartered buses, you know, with the huge baggage storage space on the sides... but no. If you bent a bit and looked under it, all the space beneath the bus was actually empty. No floor, no cubbies, just air behind those giant doors. So everyone's baggage was piled *inside* at the front of the bus. And women in dresses and saris had to climb over mountains of luggage to get off the bus at their desired terminals. Once again, I was astounded by the shit Indians put up with in their everyday lives. It frightens me to think what might have happened if there had been an accident or fire on the bus. But there wasn't, and I am therefore able to make these comments after the fact. The strange and hazardous bus situation is just one small example of the many reasons India is not the vacation and tourist hot-spot it could be.
The best part about Delhi (besides seeing Deepa) were the glimpses of the city through the bus windows in the wee hours of the morning. What a mess. Buildings peeked out from behind foliage, as if they knew they were intruding, and well, even I get a thrill out of the exotic, foreign sights and sounds of India.
The wait in the domestic airport... not so exciting. The flight, unbelievably cold. We flew Air Deccan. Very cheap, I recommend it. But if you take Air Deccan, be sure to have a sweater or blanket accessible inside the plane as well as some food. We were surrounded by Indians. Indian Indians. I wasn't uncomfortable, not like I am around ABCDs, it was more mixed. On one hand, I was disgusted by their filthy habits, their rude ways; angered at the way they don't follow directions and how everyone assumes the rules don't apply to *him* (even when breaking them endangers everyone on the flight). I was amused (in a condescending way) when everyone flipped open his/her phone as soon as we landed (before we'd been given permission) and proceeded to call their waiting parties and speak in loud, I-am-the-only-person-on-this-cramped-plane voices. On the other hand, I like the way they (most of them) smell. Spicy, earthy, woody... like home somehow, even though my 'rents' home doesn't really smell like that.
My mom's side of the family came out to meet us at the Guwahati airport. It was my first time there in seven years. At first, on the drive from the airport to my grandmother's home, on the new highway, I thought things were different, better. The countryside along the highway is absolutely gorgeous. Assam is veritable jungle, and the sprawling hills are blanketed with tropical plants and trees of all varieties. To the side of the road, little shanties and shacks look confused and lost in all that wilderness, fishing nets hang on poles or submerged in marshes, the skeleton for the National Games stadium is being erected... It's all very charming, in it's discombobulated Indian way,
until you notice that the hills have great blocks of red earth carved thoughtlessly out of them, left bare and exposed to the elements. That they're shrouded in haze. That the highway is littered with refuse and that the tents all along the feeder house the hungry and homeless.
And Guwahati itself...
The streets are mud; knee-high piles of trash line the curbs; the dust is so thick that I'd blow my nose and the tissue would turn black (graphic, I know, but I'm trying to tell you what it's really like). I would occasionally attempt to brush sweat from my neck with my fingers, and my fingernails would be full of dirt. Where does all the dirt and dust come from, you ask?
Assam's hills are red clay. They cut down trees and make their quarries and don't take any preventative measures. The rain comes and washes everything into the river, onto the streets, and then it dries and floats on the air and coats everything.
My grandmother's house relies on a well, ground water, which they have to pump intermittently to keep the water running (no hot running water, for those of you unfamiliar with Indian conditions). They'd keep bowls of boiled water for my dad and me, and every morning we would refill our bottles. But there was always sand in our drinking water, from that well, and I can only wonder what *doesn't* get boiled off... what seeps from the surface - the plastics, the paints and cleaners, the modern chemicals - into the river, even into, possibly, the ground water. And let me say that it is *ridiculous* that Guwahati should be on the banks of a river as large (you can't see the other side) as the Brahmaputra and that its residents have to rely on *ground water.* The city can only provide each household half and hour (max) of water a day. And the electricity? Comes and goes. And if it goes at night, you haven't a chance of sleeping (no a/c, just fans, and did I mention Assam's a jungle?).
These people pride themselves on their cars, on their fancy-schmancy cell phones, on their cable television, on their computer/IT jobs... but they don't have sanitary, potable, running water. They don't have reliable electricity. A girl can't marry who she wants. A baby is abandoned in a stranger's garage. A customs agent asks us our caste and feels it's necessary tell us he's a Brahmin (in, yes, the 21st century). An arthritic woman has to climb two flights of stairs to reach her bedroom. A girl child is sent to live with strangers and work in their kitchen and is referred to as "that."
Now I can't help but love my family, but even they make me so angry. They just sit there and take it, and when we point out how they shouldn't have to live, what their government should be doing for them, the corruption, the laziness, the inequality, the prejudice, some even have the gall to say "What do you know? You don't live here." Well granted, my cultural preferences are certainly American when it comes to manners, decorum, even certain standards of cleanliness. But I don't think whether or not *every* child deserves the best health care, education, and upbringing possible is really a matter of debate. Not that America has achieved this ideal, not that it could ever possibly be achieved (there are too many variables in the equation), but India doesn't even seem to take steps in that direction. Because they don't seem to share the opinion.
Deepa told me that India offered America $5mil for Hurricane Katrina relief. Well, certainly this is one blatant example of America failing to take care of its own. But I have yet to see India *ever* take care of its own. Put your money where your mouth is, I say. $5mil won't do squat for America, but it could probably do a hell of a lot for India.
But what do I know? I don't live there, and I don't study it. All I know is what I saw, and what I saw makes me angry. Angry angry angry. Not just for the sake of my family. For the sake of the gorgeous environment they are destroying. For the sake of the stranger, the (likely low-caste) servant girl whom no one else seems to think about, who will spend her life washing other people's dishes and never having dreams because she can't even conceive of something different until she's married off to make more poor souls just like her.
They have their Bollywood and their beauty parlours and their Von Dutch paraphernalia, and they think they're as good as or better than the West. The only thing they've learned from the West is superficiality, and I'm ashamed that that's what the West has passed on best.
posted by Bibhatsu at 04:31
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