First impressions of Delhi
on REM Zoe Lara (in India) (India), 20/Sep/2010 03:46, 34 days ago
I have chanced upon internet just this morning so here are some rushed first impressions. Miss you, I have an indian mobile number now - email me for it.In a nutshell, I am still trying to get around the culture shock! VSO gave me extra luggage allowance, so in my extra suitcase I took my favourite poets and political philosophers (to try to write a book) and a year's supply of cocoa butter (because I like the smell). The cocoa butter exploded on the book so now my favourite political philosophers are soggy and there are flies buzzing around the suitcase.I have nowhere to live yet, so I am staying in a sort of hostel and living under a big mosquito net. It's called the Indian Social Institute. The first morning, I woke up, took my malaria tablets and was sick in the sink (I then read the instructions, which said that doxycyclone shouldn't be taken on an empty stomach). I recovered and was picked up and taken to the office of the organisation I am working for. The roads in delhi are a crazy mess of rickshaws, taxis (with wheels falling off), motorcyclists (three to a motorbike, with the one without the helmet - often a small child - sandwiched in between) and everywhere horns honking and whistles blowing and street children snaking around the traffic playing catch. There are lanes - but the the drivers scissor over them at will and often just to keep one another guessing. Raj - my driver for the first day, who used to work at the british high commission and thus bubbles with contempt for Mahatma Gandhi - told me that honking a horn is more about announcing your presence than signalling danger "which you have to do sometimes if the driver in front of you is lazy or only has one eye or is on his mobile phone".I have been given curry for breakfast each day so far. Yesterday, I went to the main office of the NGO I am working for, ASTHA, where a woman in a bright salwar kameez (the modern alternative to a sari, huge brightly coloured paajama-like clothes that show less belly button and shoulder than saris) took me out to look at flats. I spent about five minutes in the office before we drove outside with Raj. There has been heavy, monsoon-like rain in delhi for the last few months, so there is moss and mould growing on the indoor office walls, and dusty computers that nobody seems to be using, and little space to sit and work. The back office was crowded with brightly-dressed women drinking powdered buttermilk, and there was braille on the front door (the organisation works with a portion of the 70 million disabled people in India). A small, beautful lady called Joti, dressed in a sari every colour of the rainbow, floated out of the back door to help me find flats, along with Mary, the only other westerner working at ASTHA. Our small army of four - Raj, Mary, Joti and I - traipsed up and down fire-escape style winding staircases and ducked dodgy low-hanging wires. The third place we went to see was up four flights of stairs, and when we got to the fourth, we were overcome by a pungent smell of rotting animal corpse. Raj started giggling in horror and leapt back down the broken staircases with the deftness of a local. My soon-to-be co-workers - left behind with me, standing in corpse-dazed stupor - bravely ducked throgh the entrance to "sweep" the room for bodies before I went inside. No luck just yet finding somewhere to live.I am lost every minute I am here and have no map yet. The men in the market stare at me, openly, and I am advised not to wander outside after dark, or to take buses, in case of "groping" in crowds, or worse. Children with huge brown eyes knock on car doors and try to peddle magazines to put money together for food, or to hand money to whoever controls them. I have seen glimpses of slums when ducking underneath the flaps of my autorickshaw, but I am yet to be confronted face-to-face with the sprawling poverty I have glimpsed, when I am brave enough and feel safe enough to walk there myself. In the VSO office, they tell me that of India's 1 billion population, 450 million live below the poverty line, 46% of children are malnourished, 200 million never make it even to primary school and about 5 million are HIV positive. India ranks 72 out of 172 in the TI corruption index, and I am told that there are 60 million tonnes of grain - given as aid to the starving - lying in gutters outside of Delhi, dumped by the government because they couldn't afford to distribute it. Some of that money has been spent instead on building sports stadiums to host the commonwealth games, which start in the city next month. The President lives in a palace bigger than any I have ever seen, and I know that when I can separate the dizziness of these figures from the dizziness of culture shock, this will overwhelm me.Let me know your news! I will check the internet when I next can.love,Zoe