more about india

so now that i've talked in depth about my first day in india, it's
time for the rest of my visit. on the second day, i left the ship at
4:45am to head out on a three day journey to the northern part of the
country to visit dehli, agra and the taj mahal.

our three day itinerary looked pretty much like this:

day one -
*fly from chennai to dehli
*have lunch at a hotel in dehli
*take a train from dehli to agra
*see the taj mahal at sunset
*have dinner and spend the night at a hotel in agra

day two-
*visit the agra fort, the "baby taj mahal," and a hindu temple
*shopping stop and lesson on the making of rugs from kashmir
*lunch at the hotel
*visit to a deserted city
*dinner at the hotel
*train back to dehli and to our hotel
(i have the names of all of these places written down, but i can't
find the paper right now, and i figured most of you will be more
interested in my personal reflections and not the proper names of
some of these sites.)

day three-
*bus tour of new dehli
*visit to the ghandi museum
*lunch at the hotel
*flight back to chennai

it was a really busy and high paced trip, but i really enjoyed the
sites that we were able to see. the taj mahal is extremely
beautiful, and maybe i'm just a hopeless romantic (stupid bleeding
heart always gets me in trouble), but it's incredible to think that
it was built out of love by one human to another. seeing it at
sunset was incredible; the only downfall was that by the time we got
inside, there was little natural light, so it was extremely dark (in
case you were wondering, there's no electricity in the taj
mahal...very unlike the taj mahal in atlantic city, whose electric
bill for one month could probably feed all of india for the same
amount of time.)

the other sites, though lesser known, were still incredibly
interesting. the agra fort is built around a number of palaces, one
of which is where the creator of the taj mahal was held prisoner
until his death by his son. to add salt to his wounds, his cell had
an amazing view of the taj. the hindu temple was extremely beautiful
and the carvings on the outside were so intricate. part of it was
still under construction (it was originally built forty years ago,
but according to our guide, it has been under construction since then
because new additions are continually being added.) there were
workers surrounding the building, carving the marble and cleaning the
panels in preparation for it being added to the temple.

unlike all of these other places that were constructed from marble,
the deserted city is made entirely of red sand stone. this city was
once used as the capital of the moghul empire, but when the water
supply ran out, the emperor moved the city back to agra. now, the
remains of this city are completely deserted except for the tourists
who come to look around.

dehli is extremely different from agra. agra is very poverty
stricken, while dehli (at least new dehli) is much more of an
affluent city. we saw a lot of the government buildings and
surrounding monuments, and it definitely had a washington, dc feel to
it. the highlight of the day was by far visiting the ghandi museum.
this museum is located in the home in which ghandi lived while in
dehli. this is also the site where he was assassinated. not only is
this museum full of such wonderful information about ghandi and his
fight for human equality, but it is also full of spectacular
interactive mutli-media displays. it was really a great museum, and
i definitely wish i had more time to wander through it.

so, that is the quick and dirty about my overall trip to the northern
part of india, but that really doesn't touch upon any of my personal
reflections and experiences. i feel a little anxious about trying to
convey what i'm feeling about my time in india because so many
thoughts and feelings have gone through my head during the past five
days that i'm not sure i can do them justice or even make sense of
them. but, as always, i'm definitely going to do my best to share
and also try to be really honest about both the goods and the bads
that i was/am feeling.

what stands out to me about my time in agra is the extreme poverty
that i saw. i also saw so many things that are so different than the
type of world i'm used to, most of which is related to the poverty,
but were definitely difficult to swallow. and on top of dealing with
my own feelings throughout this trip, i was also challenged by how
some of the students were dealing with what they were seeing. a lot
of them spent a good amount of time being really negative and
judgmental about what they were seeing, and though cognitively i know
that was their own way of dealing with culture shock, i was still
triggered (i hate that word, but it definitely seems to fit in this
case) by a lot of what they were saying.

the first eye opening experience was our train ride from dehli to
agra. we had been told by the tour guides that we were booked in a
second class non-air conditioned car. well, in case you were
wondering, india is HOT, so none of us were particularly excited
about spending three hours on a hot and crowded train car. and when
the train arrived, the heat seemed to take a back seat to other
details that were now clear about our mode of transportation.

the train car was extremely beat up and rusty, far from what any of
us would have expected by the phrase "second class." it was a
sleeper car, so the seats were bench seats that sat three people, and
the bench was actually the bottom bunk of the three beds on that
wall. the seats were dirty, and the car was infested with mosquitos
and roaches. in addition to ourselves and the other passengers,
beggars wandered up and down the aisles throughout the entire
voyage. i'm not sure that any of us had ever ridden in such
accommodations. the closest i've ever come is a bus from atlantic
city to new york, which, before this, would have probably come to
mind when second class was mentioned. while i wouldn't necessarily
jump to ride on that train again, i surprisingly was pretty fine with
it except for the heat. i just curled up on my "bed" and slept.
some of the students had a harder time than that though, especially
when they went to use the bathroom and realized they had to pee in a
hole right on to the tracks. i didn't have to use the bathroom
(fortunately...briana and public bathrooms are never friends), but
peeing in a hole in the ground reminded me of my first trip to
europe. our first day in italy, we stopped in verona for an
afternoon, and when we finally found a public restroom, we discovered
that it was nothing more than a hole in the ground. so it was kind
of fun to watch the reactions of the students who had clearly never
encountered this before and remember having that same reaction ten
years ago.

much more eye opening than any mode of transportation were all of the
other details surrounding us as we travelled. while taking the
train, we passed endless heaps of trash woven between the places that
people live their everyday lives, like their homes and shops and
fields. a student told me she couldn't understand why there was so
much garbage everywhere. she wondered if the indians just didn't
care as much about keeping things clean. i offered her the idea that
the reason our trash wasn't thrown around everywhere is because we
have government programs that pick up our garbage and take it away.

more disturbing that the endless amounts of trash was the endless
amounts of people that i saw urinating and defecating on the side of
the road. the first time i witnessed this, i thought maybe i was
seeing an isolated incident. but after the sixth or seventh person,
i was really taken aback at how common and accepted this was. how
much do i take for granted the fact that seeing someone pee or poo in
public is something that rarely happens (unless you're camping, but
how frequently do i camp?) i've spent enough time in american and
european cities that i've seen the occasional urinator or walked down
a side street that overwhelmingly smelled like urine, but this was
very different.

but the most disturbing and eye opening thing that i saw while in
agra were two dead bodies. these were two separate occasions. the
first was when we were walking down the street that leads to the taj
mahal. there were people everywhere...mainly beggars and vendors.
but as we were walking, there was a group of three people sitting on
the side of the road, and in front of them was a dead body laying on
a "gurney," covered partially with a sheet. i almost couldn't
believe what i was seeing, and fortunately or unfortunately, i didn't
have time to really process it because one of my students stopped to
take a picture. i had to grab her and move her along and try to get
her to understand why that wasn't necessarily the best choice she
could have made. the second body was later in the trip, also on the
side of the road. i don't even know if i've formed the words yet as
to how it felt to see that. again, it's clearly something that i
take for granted that i can go throughout the day without seeing any
bodies laying around town.

i'm realizing now that i really wanted to offer more of my personal
reflections about what i was seeing, but really all i've done is
retold my story. throughout all of this, i can't say that i was
really feeling anything about what i was seeing. i think i was just
seeing and was void of any emotion about it all.

the other aspect of the trip that was difficult were all of the
beggars we encountered. i've encountered this type of solicitation
in europe and in brazil, but there seemed to be a lot more of it
here. the people were very persistent, which really challenged most
of the students because they weren't able to just say no and walk
away. it became even more difficult when the beggars also had
visible physical deformities, such as elephantitis. the amount of
haggling and begging was so much that everyone was very overwhelmed
and frustrated each time we got back on the bus.

as i was traveling through india, i kept thinking back to my tour
guide in venezuela and what he said when a student (who also happened
to be on my india trip) made a comment about how poor the people of
coche island were. his response to her was, "these people aren't
poor, they just live simple lives." it made me really think about
what standards of life we assign to the way others live. a lot of
the students made comments about how being in india made them realize
how much less they need to live and how much unnecessary crap they
have. what i found ironic though was that once the bus came back to
the hotel, everyone immediately swarmed toward the shops to spend money.

on our first day back on the ship, the professor who teaches global
studies offered some of his own reflections from his time in india,
and he said, "i am left wondering whether i actually sympathize with
these people or if i just want to sympathize with them." i had to
wonder the same question for myself.