Arriving in India

Arriving in India

When the captain announced that we were landing in Mumbai, I had finally begun to realize I was going to be in India for 9 months. Looking out through the window, it could have very easily have been Israel or the hills and canyons surrounding Malibu during the summer, but it wasn’t. As we landed, the first I saw were the dilapidated slums that surrounded the airport’s boundaries. After a bit of a wait at the baggage claim with my other fellows, we moved into the domestic flight terminal, picked up Dafna who had come to Mumbai, and waited for the our next flight to Ahmadabad. The wait was long. Not so much because of time, but we were all so tired (other like me flew from the West Coast to London to Mumbai), regardless of our state we all began to bond. I found out Talya and I both knew Daniela; I thought it was so ironic that I would meet both of them on AJWS programs. Soon enough we were off for Ahmadabad.

We first saw Masha, David, and Sunita waiting for us outside of Ahmadabad airport, and things became even realer. They had hired cars to take us to Kotrob Ashram, and I’m guessing it will be on of the few times that I would be in a four-wheeled vehicle while I am here. The ride to the ashram was horrifying for me; Ahmdabad, and to a lesser extent Pune, seems to have traffic guidelines rather than laws. To understand what I’m speaking about you have to have some idea of what it’s like to be on the streets here.

There are of course some general “guidelines” but the only things that are certain are everyone moves and stops for cows in the street, and the bigger the moving form of transportation the more freedom it has to do as it wants (street transportation includes: buses, trucks, elephants, auto-rickshaws, cars, three-wheeled trucks, camels-carts, motorcycles, bicycles, ox-carts, bicycle rickshaws, and hard-carts). You would figure that with all these different kinds of transports on the road, people might be a bit more cautious…not at all. Drivers are always weaving through traffic, motorcyclists are on cell phones, and it’s not uncommon to see someone going against the flow of traffic. It’s easy to judge coming from America, but the fact is India has a population of over 1.1 billion people, they all can’t get driver licenses, everyone has to get to places, and how are the police supposed to enforce laws with a population this size? Another not so awesome aspect of the streets is that many vehicles are not well maintained, and so they release a nasty cloud of black exhaust. It is also the norm to see people ride motorcycles without helmets, and on the motorcycles you can see up to five people on a bike—a little child in the front, then the father driving the bike, an old child, then the mother holding on to her baby with one arm, as she hold on to the back of the bike with the other. It is certainly disturbing for me to see such a thing, but I have to remind myself that the average Indian family cannot afford a car, so they have to work within their own means.

Anyway so the ride to ashram was the first time I would experience the roads, and on top of that I was a bit sleep deprived and very hungry.

When our caravan of cars entered the ashram, I felt as if I had left a rave and entered a monastery, just an enormous sense of relaxation, peace, and safety. All right girls would be living in a dorm together, I shared a room with Dave, and Masha and Sunita stayed in a room next to us. That night we had a brief introduction to Ramesh-bhai (bhai means brother), and went out for a much desired meal. All of us passed out when we got back.

---

---