-It is 5am on Saturday, the 5th, and the jet lag
I had fairly successfully avoided until now has finally caught up with me, so I
decided to include some of my thoughts from our first day on this group
tour. Braving Delhi traffic in a tour
bus is a markedly different experience than driving in a small car. I spent a lot of time not looking at what was
going on when we were being driven that first day. Since there is always a jumble of cars not
quite in their lanes and pedestrians trying to cross the tangled roadways,
being in a car was an immediate experience.
By contrast, observing the traffic scene from the height of a bus, you
are much more removed from the whole scene.
What you cannot remove yourself from is the plight of beggars in
India. Wherever you go, there are poor
women and children who approach you and it is terribly sad as you really can’t
do anything for them. One young woman who
approached us with a young boy near the Sikh Temple had a very badly burned and
deformed face. I couldn’t help wondering
if someone had thrown acid at her face.
Interestingly, when I asked our tour guide, Ritu, about the woman and
whether she might have been purposefully burned or if, as another tour member
suggested, she may have been maimed by her handler, Ritu made reference to the
movie Slum Dog Millionaire as a short cut way of explaining the situation.
A few more words on the Sikhs. At least in their written literature that we
were given at the Temple, they appear to be a religion much more accepting of
women. Their stated philosophy is that
woman is believed to have the same soul as man and has an equal right to grow
spiritually and participate in religious rituals. Sikh women also do not wear veils and at
least the official Sikh policy is that dowry is not permitted.
I had brought some things for Nina, the daughter of my
friend Debby Roumell, who is spending a semester in Delhi. Last night Nina and her roommate came to our
hotel to pick up her stuff, and Steve and I had the chance to chat with
them. It’s wonderful to see the ease
with which college kids adapt to very different environments from learning to
speak Hindi, to getting around Delhi to adopting a more modest style of dress. Nina and Julia were wearing their “Indian
Clothes” which they had bought here.
They were wearing jeans and sandals as kids anywhere do but they were
both conscious of needing to wear tops that were not low cut and did not allow
too much skin to show. At one point,
Julia noted that when she saw her knee in the mirror, her immediate thought was
that she needed to cover it. - AHS
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