So I know it’s been a while, but this post is about to be jam-packed. I recently returned from a trip to India, and I had a truly life-changing experience. You might be thinking, “yeah, sure, that’s what everyone says any time they step outside the country nowadays,” but I’m being completely serious when I tell you that the trip was eye-opening and thought-provoking in so many ways. In addition to being a moving experience, my time in India was just really fun. I had a great time with my friends and the whole group, thirteen students, got really close. We formed a sort of family within the first few days there, which is important and unbelievably comforting in a country that is foreign in every way. Throughout the whole trip, one reoccurring theme was present: ridiculous things. In a place where everything is new and different, one is able to only grasp a few of the countless details. I am a person who appreciates all things ridiculous, and beyond the beauty, art, and culture of the country, the one thing that I managed to find in each place we visited was the absurd.
Let’s start with my arrival in New Delhi. It was 9:00 pm and I was absolutely exhausted. I had just stepped off of a sixteen-hour flight from Chicago, nonstop, and had been drifting in and out of sleep for the past few hours. My neck was sore, I was lugging around a bag that was larger than I was (which, by the way, continued to grow throughout the 18 days as I added more and more scarves to the load), and I was hungry from having turned down the Indian styled airplane food. Somehow, vegetable paneer doesn’t sound as good when it is coming from a flight attendant. Anyways, we boarded a bus in a strangely warm and noisy place and were driving through the streets back to the hotel when I suddenly became very uncomfortable. I looked out the window of our large tour bus and noticed that there were no lanes. Let me correct myself: the lanes exist only in theory. No matter where we went, a two lane road turned into a four and a half lane road as there were cars, motorized rickshaws, busses, motorcycles, bicycles, and cows all squeezing past wherever they could find space. And red lights are optional. That’s terrifying.
We left New Delhi a few days later to go to Varanasi. When we were there, we learned that India is filled with metal detectors that serve no purpose. Every time that we entered our hotel, we walked through a metal detector that made space ship noises. We all expected to be stopped or asked to take out our cameras, but instead we walked right on through, past the man with the large mustache who waved and smiled all day long. After arriving, we had a few hours to rest, and then we went out into the cities on rickshaws. I felt bad, because somehow it just seemed cruel to ask a man who looked half my weight and a good head shorter than me to pull my friend Maggie and me uphill through the most crowded city I have ever seen. But Rickshaw Rick barely even broke a sweat, in one hundred degree weather!
We walked through the winding roads and through the markets all the way down to the Ganges. After taking a boat ride along the river, we returned to the rickshaw drivers to be taken home, and that was when I learned my most important lesson: don’t talk to strangers. I know that every child is taught that since they are old enough to talk, but apparently eighteen year-olds need to be reminded of this crucial rule. As we were being bicycled through the packed streets, where cows have the right of way and people will hit you with their motorcycle before they will stop, two nice-looking young men pulled up along side us on their motorcycle. We got to talking and they asked us where we were from and what we were doing in India. The people are so friendly; it seemed harmless enough. But that all changed when, after twenty minutes, they were still riding next to us and asking us to meet up later on. Maggie and I started to feel uneasy, and so we began to ignore them in the hopes that they would leave us alone. It didn’t work, and we soon realized that they were following us. Rickshaw Rick took detours and side streets, sped up and slowed down, but we couldn’t loose those creeps. Finally he pulled over and pretended to fix something while the stalkers went up ahead. He leaned in close to us and said, “If they try to grab you, punch them.” At that moment the situation became very real to me. I turned to Maggie and said, “Do you see me? I can’t punch anyone!” Maggie looked back and said confidently, “I was made for this,” so at least I was in good hands. The creeps followed us back to the hotel, at which point we bolted for the useless metal detector and went inside to hit the buffet. Getting stalked really makes you work up an appetite.
So I was stalked around the country: at the Red Fort in Agra, at a palace in Jodhpur, and even asked out by the zip line guide in Udaipur. I never got used to that, but learned how to avoid it. The other thing that I never could get used to was the fact that people in India were interested in me. Not just me, of course, the whole group, but still. What is it that made us interesting at all to Indian people? They were the interesting ones! But everywhere we went people wanted to talk to us, take pictures with us, and shake our hands. We would be approached by large groups of Indians who would throw their arms over our shoulders, sometimes without asking, and smile while their spouses took countless shots to document the moment. We took pictures with families at the Bahai Temple in New Delhi, with Indian young adults at the Taj Mahal, and with a group of Chinese Monks at Buddhist sites outside Varanasi. Sometimes, people just whipped out their cameras and phones and took pictures of us as we walked by. One of our chaperones explained that the people who lived in villages never saw Westerners unless they traveled to the big cities, so they would take pictures with us and go home to their families saying, “Look! I met American celebrities!” And who can really argue?
The most uncomfortable, however, were the people who would hand us their babies. They would walk up, shove an infant into your arms, and point at the camera. The first time that this happened, in New Delhi, all of us were shocked and we laughed about it all day. It became a reoccurring theme throughout the trip, though, and within a week or so it had happened to most of the girls. Someone would step onto the bus after visiting some sight and say, “I had my first baby picture.” Though it never happened to me personally, I believe I was the only girl in the group of eight who never had a baby thrust into my arms. I don’t know if I seem less trustworthy than the others, but for some reason, I never had a baby picture. Maybe next time.
Apart from all of my strange experiences, India opened my eyes to beauty that I have never seen before. We watched craftsmen at work: replicating Mogul Miniatures, weaving silk saris, creating handmade woven rugs, dying fabrics, and forming vases from hunks of clay in a matter of seconds. I saw landscapes that seemed too picturesque to be real and architecture with a level of detail that could give you headaches. The one thing that constantly struck me, however, is the beauty of color. Everywhere we went, we were surrounded by the most brilliant hues. So buy a tote bag and bring some brilliant color into your life, because sometimes we all need a little color to add a little joy into our days.
-Emma
