Lindsay's first impressions of India.

Hello family, friends, and anyone else who happens to stumble upon this blog! 

After much anticipation and hype, I am FINALLY writing my first blog post. It has only taken 2 weeks (including a week of hassle to even get internet access), but hopefully from now on I’ll be able to write every couple of days. The four of us left Vancouver for our co-op placement at Destiny Reflection in Kolkata, India two weeks ago today.  I can’t believe it’s already been two weeks! Time has just flown by! 

(By the way, if you haven’t checked out Destiny Reflection’s website yet [www.destinyreflection.org], do it! DO IT NOW! Also, they’re getting ready to launch a brand new website and product catalogue, so be sure to check back soon! They’re also on Facebook for all you social networkers out there...)

So here is my attempt to sum up the last 2 weeks as succinctly as I can. I apologize in advance for any long-winded ramblings.

Things I love about India:

• The food! It is amazing. Period. I think my new favourite food is palak paneer and cheese naan. So good! Even Dominos pizza is good here (we ordered pizza online for the first time last night, and it was at our door in 26 minutes delivered by a very enthusiastic pizza delivery man).

•  Where we’re staying. We’re staying in the Gariahat neighbourhood of Kolkata, and everything we need is close by, including both a street market and a fancy grocery store. Also, the lady who owns the home we’re staying in, Debjani, is fantastic! She is sooooo good to us and has such a good heart. She has been involved with a lot of NGO work here in India, and is currently the head of United Way in Kolkata.

•  THE CLOTHES!!! Where else in the world can you get away with wearing bright orange tights with a matching tunic and not look like a complete prat in tights? Only in India! The clothes here are AMAZING and soooo full of life and color. Nothing like the usual drab of black and grey I see back home.

•  Hong Kong. I mention this as something I love about India because it is only because we were coming to India that we were fortunate enough to have a 14 hour layover in Hong Kong. We had a great day seeing the city with a friend of Christine’s, and I really hope to be able to go back someday

• I have yet to see a cockroach! This fact has far surpassed any expectations I had. However, I did see children feeding a rat in the street when we were in Mumbai...

• The dancing! We went to a dance show/play last week at a school for underprivileged girls. I think Martyna is planning on telling you more about this, but it was so wonderful to see these girls dance such beautiful Indian dances.

• The festivals. Thus far, we have experienced India as a place of celebration. We landed in Mumbai on the final day of Ganesh Chaturthi, experienced a blessing on the machines during Biswakarma Puja last Sunday (the ceremony involved prayer, food and flower offerings to Biswakarma, the Hindu god of engineering, the burning of incense, and a burnt offering that essentially resulted in a small, very smoky fire being lit inside the Destiny Reflection office!), and look forward to celebrating Ghandi’s birthday, Durga Puja, Kali Puja and Diwali. The entire city is currently preparing for Durga Puja, building huge Pandals (I probably spelt this wrong, but essentially it’s the structure where the idols of the god Durga will be displayed for worship), and buying clothes and gifts. Durga Puja is celebrated throughout India, but the celebration is Kolkata is the largest and most extravagant in the entire country.

• Work at Destiny Reflection. Adjusting to a very slow-paced, relaxed working environment has been a bit of a struggle (essentially opposite to what we often experience in Canada); however, working at Destiny has allowed us the freedom to be creative and take initiative to implement our own ideas within the organization. Also, the girls who work at Destiny are AMAZING! After all the hardships they’ve faced, to come to work every day in such positive spirits is nothing short of remarkable.

• Pantaloons. It’s the Indian version of the North American department store and it’s fantastic!

• Our shower squeegee. It is excellent.

•  Cafe Coffee Day. The Indian version of Starbucks, which is ten times better...times ten! It’s also our new favourite hang-out place.

• Sexy pen man/sexy car man/sexy watch man aka. Shahrukh Khan. He’s basically the Indian version of George Clooney and he’s everywhere! We’re going to see one of his movies tomorrow night and I’m super excited about it. Check him out on YouTube! Type in “Chammak Challo” and click on the first video that comes up (by the way, it’s Akon that actually sings the song).

Things I’m still learning to love about India:

• The heat. I typically shower 2 to 3 times per day because I feel so sticky all the time.

• The pollution and the garbage. However, this is not unexpected and I’m getting used to it.

• The dirt. My feet are dirty. All the time. I’m trying not to let this annoy me too much, and am compensating by washing my feet as often as possible.

• The driving and the honking. People drive like mad here, at least mad compared to how they drive in Canada. I think it’s largely due to the fact that there are basically no road rules, apart from driving on your side of the road, but even that is not followed to closely. There are absolutely no lanes or lines on the road, and on streets where there is no barrier dividing the 2 sides of the road the entire street is basically fair game. And honking is constant. People basically drive with one hand on the horn and use honking to let other cars know they are coming up beside them since there are no lanes to separate the cars from one another.

• Driving on the left side of the road. I’ve been here two weeks and it’s still weird. I always forget which direction to look when crossing the street, which makes crossing the road an even riskier endeavour than it already is.

• People who give you directions, even though they actually have absolutely no idea where the place is you’re trying to get to. The same goes for cab drivers who say they’ll take you to where you need to go even though they have absolutely no idea where the place actually is.

•  Working from 10-6 and then eating dinner at 8 pm. I’m having a hard time adjusting to eating dinner so late, but I will probably be saying the same thing when I get back to Canada and return to working 8-4 and eating dinner at 5:30 pm.

Other things to note about India:

• People are not shy about picking their nose. I have noticed several people “digging for gold” in public places. One time we even had a cab driver who picked his nose the entire ride...he should be friends with the nose picker who studies on the 6^th floor of the library at SFU – they would get along great!

• I have yet to go to an LDS church since coming to India. However, we’re going to attempt to make the journey this Sunday as a group. Apparently it’s in the North part of the city, which is about a 45 minute cab ride from our house. Last Sunday we attended St. Teresa’s Catholic church, which is Mother Teresa’s church in Kolkata. It was pretty neat to see that. We’re going to return to go through the museum they have there sometime soon.

• We spent 2 days in Mumbai on our way to Kolkata. While there we saw the most expensive house in the world and the Gateway of India where a half dozen Indian mean sprung cameras on us. Talk about creeping me out... On another note, we also made two really great friends in Mumbai!

• We have yet to have class with Dr. Ro. We weren’t able to have class this week because we were working at an NGO fair for Destiny, so next week we’re having double the lecture. I’m really looking forward to it!

• Funny story. On the flight from Hong Kong to Mumbai I took a sleeping pill to put myself to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to them serving dinner. So they set the dinner tray on my table-tray-thing and I started eating, but I was still incredibly drowsy. So partway through eating my meal I began dozing. My face was heading straight for my food, but luckily Christine woke me up before I ended up with a face full curry. Looking back on it, the whole situation was rather funny, which is why I’m sharing it with you.

• I survived my first earthquake. On Sunday there was a rather large earthquake that affected Sikkim and the north part of West Bengal. Only aftershocks were felt in Kolkata. At the time I was cooking dinner and didn’t notice anything, but Christine was sitting down and said she felt her chair rocking back and forth. Crazyness.

• Silvia has an app on her iPhone that allows us to listen to any radio station in the world, so we’ve been listening to the Peak every day at work. It’s pretty cool to hear a radio station from home on the other side of the world.

On a more serious note:

•  We were coming home from the grocery store in a cab the other day and we were stopped at a red light when a girl of about 10 holding a baby came and knocked on our window begging for money. We had a car full of food with us, so how could we not give her something? We passed her a package of croissants out the window and she immediately grabbed it and took off running. About a minute later a half dozen more kids came running as fast as they could at the car. When they reached it they started banging on the windows quite forcefully and shouting at us to give them something too. We were all rather shocked by the behaviour of these kids. This also agitated the taxi driver and he began yelling at them and even got out of the car at one point. He was really mad. Looking back on the situation, I still can’t believe it happened. It breaks my heart so much that these kids have been raised under circumstances that have compelled them to act like this. I just wish there was something more I could do for them – a more permanent solution to helping them than passing them food through a car window.

• Poverty is everywhere in India. We were able to see the slums of Mumbai from our plane when we took off from the Mumbai airport. The sheer size of them blows my mind. Also, I saw children and families sleeping on dirty blankets under an overpass tonight.

• There are stray animals everywhere. Today alone I’ve seen cats, dogs, goats, cows and horses. The horses I saw today were the saddest looking horses I’ve ever seen. They weren’t really bony or anything, they just looked sad, which in turn made me sad.

• As part of working with Destiny Reflection, we will have the opportunity to visit the Red Light District of Kolkata. From what I understand it is rather large. Many of the girls come from this area of the city to Destiny everyday. I think this is going to be a very eye-opening, life-changing experience.

I’d like to conclude with a question that I’ve been pondering. This might seem rather random, but it is a legitimate question. What happens to the stuff in the toilet when you flush it? In Canada the answer is obvious. It goes to the sewage treatment plant and the water is cleaned and so on. However, in a country like India that lacks a proper garbage disposal system and proper sanitation and sewers in many parts of the country, I feel like this is a real question to be asking. When I figure out the answer, I’ll be sure to let you know.

If you’ve managed to read this far I’d like to congratulate you on this accomplishment! I had not intended to write so much, but more has happened in the last 2 weeks than I realized and I wanted you to hear all about it. I promise the next post will be MUCH shorter! Thus far, we’re all doing really well in Kolkata and generally enjoying ourselves. We’ll see what excitement the next few days brings...

Sending you all love and hugs from India!

xoxo

Lindsay