How to India??

---

Alright, a second post within a week. This is looking optimistic. I'm mainly trying to keep this up until I reach Mumbai and my grandmother, because I'm sure I'll have something to talk about there. Also I keep having random bursts of rumination about various experiences here that I find quite interesting, so it might be good for me to write them down. I might keep a piece of paper handy so that I'm not always sitting awake in bed at some ungodly hour trying to write out something that's vaguely entertaining to whomever actually reads this.



Our time in Delhi was actually quite short. My knowledge of the city was actually quite brief, apart from knowing that it's the political hub of the country. We did end up seeing a fair few of the main government buildings, which were quite impressive in their own right, but still far from the highlight of the sights here.



Actually I really need to get this off my chest before I go any further. I saw a squirrel today. I touched a squirrel today. I HAND FED A SQUIRELL TODAY. I can't describe why this is such a big deal to me, but it was actually such an amazing moment. Most people don't know me to be terribly excitable, but in that moment, I felt the way that an excited person might feel. Outside New Zealand, squirrels are not uncommon by any means. But there's something so tremendously endearing about them, that I feel goes quite appreciated. They're the critterest of critters, and once you're felt the joy of having them grab your hand with their little fingers, you might gain insights into the mind of an animal person. India has a lot of animals around in urban areas.. Lots of pigeons and stray dogs, wandering cows, goats (which I also am really fond of), and more. I think my fondness for animals started in India at a very young age, when I would befriend stray dogs and cats, and show general fascination for any wildlife around me. I'm certain this was one of the main reason for me turning to a vegetarian lifestyle (no one in my family is even remotely vegetarian). Hopefully I'll encounter a few more animals.. There were talks of camel rides, flying foxes and hopefully an elephant or two.



The squirrel enthusiasm was a tad out of place, I realise, and I shouldn’t be surprised because none of my friends could really comprehend my excitement. I'm travelling with a bunch of guys from high school and university, whom I've known for quite a while. There's 5 of us on the trip, with varying degrees of Indian competency, and capacity to deal with me. The one who organised the trip is probably the most fluent in Hindi, and is quite familiar with getting around India. Two others are reasonably fluent in Hindi and have travelled to India numerous times. Oh and we have one Alim, who so far has been a liability on our books, but is working hard to catch up. His level of Hindi is unknown, but I swear I've hard him answer this mum when she's tossed a bit of Hindi at him.



The awkward thing about my language competency is that it can backfire on my earnest endeavours to navigate social encounters. As most of you know, my skin colour does make me stand out in my graduate programme at work, but at first glance I appear to be quite the local here (until they literally take a second glance). But more often than not, my tentative engagement with the local businesspersons is met with a flurry of Hindi, that they don't immediately realise is spoken at me rather than to me. In a number of instances, I can probably figure out what they mean by key words, context and some luck (the key to succeeding in most social encounters). In one situation, I was being checked by a security guard who said vaguely "Apna(your) eidee (??) utareen (remove)". Alright, so my technical Hindi isn't great.. He probably means my shoes, glasses or coat. Let's go for coat, probably wants to check for concealed stuff. Sadly, taking off the coat leads to laughter followed by "No no sir, your Eidee (ID), your passport please", and in Hindi to his colleague "why is he taking off his clothes", which is a fair enough question at that point.



Due to blah blah British history blah education, English is relatively well spread in India, and oddly enough, integrated into the local dialects. It's hard to explain how this works, but often key words, phrases or even full sentences will be in English. There is some method to this, either to emphasise parts, or just cause the English word actually fits better. What this can also mean is that I can have a conversation with someone who is speaking 80-20 Hindi/English, and respond in 20-80 Hindi/English, and enough data moves between our brains that we have some idea of what the other wants. Of course, I'm trying to fit in as a local, and the other person doesn't want to admit that can't do what I ask, so how accurate this exchange of information is can be fickle, since neither party stops to check. I'm confident that if I needed, I could definitely traverse around and only get medium skammed. The good thing is that as long as I appear to be relatively capable, they wont try an scam me with their colleagues to my face. They'll have the decency to do it with marginally more effort behind my back.



Apart from Alim, all of us were born in India, but none of us have really been to this part of India. Funnily enough, the area that were travelling around is the one that most people probably connect to India, due to the picturesque nature of the sights, and how visually striking the buildings and monuments are. I'll post some photos either with this blog, or on Facebook soon which will make this clear.. When I traveled to other countries, I was always surprised about how the locals couldn't give me advice about the 'must-sees' in their area.. I've probably seen more of Europe than the average European local, but I still get travel advice from foreigners for visiting hotspots in both NZ and India.



The funny thing about this is that out of all the places I've been to, I've always tried to have a more holistic experience, and now this is somehow the most 'tourist' that I've ever felt in any country. Not in a bad way.. I'm not stuck in crowds of people, or ushered around like some kind of goat in a larger herd of other goats. We are able to travel at our own place, but we'll be definitely just sticking to the highlights. India is one country where I'll allow myself this luxury because the clichéd path here is the one of the untravelled local, which is basically how I spent most of my young years. Having lived behind the scenes for a fair amount of time, it feels pretty nice to be a part of the feature presentation.



Ok to be honest, this post was a bit of a train wreck from the start since I only remember to do it at night, and I'm actually falling asleep during most of it. I have very little memory of writing that squirrel chunk.. And I swear I wrote a bit about food that seems to have deleted itself, maybe fore the best. Once I get this fluff out of my system, I want to write a bit about the places we saw in Delhi/Agra, and a bit about the who experience in a more structured way.



Thanks for reading I'll try to make the next on less incoherent xoxo.

---