October 13, 2007
Uma, a lovely friend from grad school and just the person you want to know when traveling in India, has called us twice so far, and chatted on-line the same number of times, just to check in and make sure we're doing okay. She's so sweet! Although it's funny to have someone so worried about us after traipsing around for so long. But there's nothing to be blase about while traveling in India.
We're both a little surprised it's been so "simple" adjusting to India. Mumbai, the largest city in India at close to 17 million people, is not exactly an easy place to come into. And with a population of just over 1 billion, set to take over China as the world's largest population in 2035, India can seem really intimidating. We've heard a lot of stories from people who find that while they want to love it, it's just too overwhelming and they end up somewhat scared. Or scarred.
And yet, we're fine. We love it! Admittedly the traffic and noise associated with it are not my favorite (why, by the way, do places where most people are pedestrians always have the worst support for them? There are no sidewalks here and with auto-rickshaws whizzing by every second, it's a little disconcerting.), but people are really nice and the food, as David pointed out, is delicious! I think part of the reason other people have a harder time adjusting when they come here is because they haven't visited other "poorer" countries. For many Westerners, India is the embodiment of the exotic and mysterious, but also a place where they expect to feel immediately at home, and the only non-Western country they may visit. But with so many different languages and cultures in one place, all competing, rather noisily for your attention, feeling at home is not going to be the first reaction.
(As a digression, I have to say it's really hard to call India poor, because while there are some very poor people here, and lots of them, the service level is also as high as in Western countries. It's like calling China or Turkey poor. Sure, they are compared to Europe, but not when compared to Malawi. Economists love to call them "emerging economies" and while I find that term faintly absurd, emerging from what?, an egg?, it does acknowledge a difference between the West, India and truly poor countries like Malawi. I think I prefer the term middle-income countries, though it's not really much better. But anyway.)
Since we didn't expect to feel at home, though, we do love India, and it's been very good to us, so far. All of which was summed up for us when we were at a painting exhibition and sale in Trivandrum, Kerala's capital. A very nice man, one of the painters, came up and started explaining the painting we were looking at. Then he asked where we were from and what we thought of India. When we told him we loved it, he looked surprised, which surprised me. And then he summed it up with a classic Hindu outlook, saying that we enjoyed it because we met people with love in our hearts, so that's what we get back. Karma, or is it dharma, at it's best.
