|
~~~ ~~~
|
New Delhi, India
India was culture shock. Some of my best friends in the US are Indian, and they are some of the warmest, friendliest people I know. I was very much looking forward to meeting more wonderful Indians, but I left India glad to have escaped. I'm not trying to insult Indians, just to give my superficial impressions as a traveler. According to my passport, I left the day after I came, since I arrived a few minutes after midnight on Day 1 and left a few minutes before midnight on Day 2. That was still enough time to explore New Delhi and take a trip out to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Having spent all of 48 hours in India--and thus being the authority on the matter:)--, I can understand why Apu decided to come be a Quik-E-Mart owner even though he graduated first in his Cal Tech class of 7,000,000 with a doctorate (BTW, that's the Calcutta Institute of Technology). Life in India is hard, and--having taken a lesson from the Egyptians--too many people seem to think tourists exist solely to make life easier. Entrance to the Taj Mahal is USD20 and there are fees for video photography--like at the Pyramids--that are equally outrageous. You won't hear "backsheesh" every 2 seconds in Delhi like you will in Cairo, but the people are not hesitant to demand money. It's a major contrast to the warm personalities of Indians living in the US, but I never saw anyone in India do anything out of the goodness of his heart. Frequently men will just start doing things and then demand an exorbitant fee. Any offer to help has a price tag attached, and even if you haggle a rate at the beginning, it won't be valid at the end. A man with the airport taxi company actually had the nerve to tell me that the Rs. 20 ($0.44) for carrying my rollaboard twenty feet was too little. My friends with more experience than I in traveling through India encourage me to get over it all. As a person taking a journey of learning and discovery, India was the only place where I felt that the people I met (except in the tour companies, of course) were by-and-large openly hostile towards me. It was the perfect opposite of the Dubai dockyards. The sad thing--and other tourists I met agreed--is that so many people in India try to steal from tourists that tourists, expecting always to get ripped-off, are hostile to honest people. The sadder thing is that, as much as I vowed "never again," I feel terrible knowing that I can do something about the fact that people are forced to live as they do in India--living in lean-to tarpaulin-walled shacks, sleeping on road islands and atop busstops, and having entirely inadequate food or sanitation. On one hand, I can't believe that I came so close to signing a Peace Corps commission and spending 2 years in a place like India, but on the other hand, I can't believe I haven't done anything substantive to help the "other half." After my day in Delhi, I escaped to the outdoor, rooftop hotel swimming pool desiring nothing but to crash. As I laid my towel on a lawnchair, I saw a flickering light bulb and some activity under a bridge across the street. My American instincts told me that I was seeing a drug deal. No, drug dealers don't lay down and cover with blankets--this was somebody's home. Brigitte is fond of reminding me, "to whom much is given, much is expected." Being thrust into a moral dilemma of this sort is a big reason why I took this trip. I had trouble relaxing that evening.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||