Toilet roll and eggs
on Roundabouts in Delhi (India), 19/Dec/2010 21:00, 34 days ago
I’ve officially been in Delhi a week now and I don’t feel like I’ve actually done all that much in terms of how much I would achieve in a normal week in London but in Delhi terms, adjusting to a new lifestyle, a new home, new job, new faces, new food, new language, new sounds and smells, this has felt like cramming several months into one week. Perhaps the oddest thing about it is the jumping back and forth from the world that I’m used to – modern English speaking office, internet access, shopping malls – into the unfamiliar – the street poverty and small children as young as three that weave through some of the busiest traffic intersections in Delhi to approach your rickshaw and ask you for RS.1 (less than a penny), standing out as a white western woman, new languages, new smells and tastes and sounds. During previous experiences abroad I’ve either been totally immersed in the new world I’m living in to the extent that I have no access to or evidence of the world I’ve come from, or I’ve been lived a relatively similar life just in a different country. Here I haven’t yet worked out how to reconcile living in between the twoworlds.Of course the thing that most people at home seem most interested in so far is how my stomach is bearing up and have I got Delhi belly yet. Those kind of details are not really for this blog but so far my usually cast iron constitution seems to have won through, although I'm sure I'll come to regret saying that later. My main problem is knowing where to go to buy what. My flatmate Zoe introduced me to some of the local stall holders near our flat and explained who sold what - this person for eggs, this person for toilet roll, but last night I still came back with a random combination of crackers, toilet roll and some peanut butter brittle, not exactly the making of a particularly nutritious meal.