Antigone in India: Day Three

Greetings all! I am still in India and am still jetlagged. Even so, I am having a wonderful time learning about another culture. I only wish that I had learnt more about Asian history before coming here.

Yesterday, I spent the morning riding around New Delhi with a driver named Baloo. When I first met Baloo and was told the plan for the morning, I felt uncomfortable. Calling a grown man “Baloo” while he chauffeured me about town and called me “ma’am” sounded like a scene from a racist Nineteenth Century novel, like Around the World In Eighty Days. Despite my reservations, I ended up having a wonderful morning. Baloo and I discussed the weakening dollar, the impact of multi-national corporations on Indian working conditions, and Baloo’s experience as an extra in the epic film Ghandi. After lunch, my mother and a guide joined us, and we visited Humayun’s Tomb, a gigantic mausoleum built in the Persian style.

Today, my mother and I focused our energies on site seeing. The highlight of my day was a rickshaw ride around Old Delhi. My mother and I jammed our derrieres into a small seat attached to the back of a bicycle and took a harrowing trip around streets that were approximately two yards wide. Our ride reminded me that I was no longer in Kansas. We zipped past shops selling saris and exotic birds, people yelled who-knows-what at each other in language that I presumed to be Hindi, and the traffic system lacked both rhyme and reason; people went where they wanted when they wanted and frequently collided. As I took in the energy and chaos, I felt very conspicuous. My mother and I were often the only White people on the street and attracted many stares. Later on in the day, someone asked to take a picture with us because they were so intrigued by the color of our skin.

The last stop of the day was a Sikh temple. Traveling to India has made me develop tremendous respect for the Sikhs. They believe, among other things, that everyone is equal (as a symbol of this, everyone has to remove their shoes and socks before entering the temple; fortunately, they kept the ground very clean), that violence should only be used as a last resort, that it is important to work hard, and that it is important to serve others. The Sikhs take this last belief very seriously. Every day, Sikh temples serve free meals to anyone who enters their doors. The temple that we visited served 10,000 people lunch per day. In addition to sharing food, temples create their own social programs. In Delhi, one Sikh temple was running a program that gave away free potable water. Sikhs have an easy time running their service efforts because they require their followers to contribute their time to the temples.

Tomorrow I am going to leave from Mumbai. I look forward to reporting on how it differs from Delhi.