India Recap

We know, you’re probably thinking ‘enough already on India, move on!’ but we’re not done just yet.  There is so much to say on this country of opposites, so much we loved and hated and just a few more things that we’d like to share on this blog.  A few others we’ll leave for face to face discussion and S is working on a letter to the Indian government with some ideas on how to remedy the garbage problem so we’ll leave that out too :). 

too bad we can't zoom in to the interlocked fingers!

We’ll start off with some light humour before we get to some of the heavier thoughts we need to share. So, not sure how many of you have seen Russell Peters’ stand up, but for those of you that haven’t (you must! Here’s a link to a sample on youtube but check out his newest release Red White and Brown on DVD) he’s Indian but was born and raised in Brampton Ontario (yes, y’all, a fellow Torontonian of sorts :)), and his stand-up discusses some of the cultures he grew up with in Brampton and of course, he talks about his fellow Indians.  So, let us tell you if what he says is true:
1.  Do Indian men hold hands?  Oh they most certainly do and not only do they hold hand but they     interlock their fingers!!
2.  Are the guys ‘macking’ chicks while holding hands? They certainly try and it’s possibly the funniest thing in the world to see!
3.  Does it smell like shit at the airport? While we did not arrive by plane and we didn’t notice any particularly bad aromas at the Mumbai International airport as we were leaving, we can say that the country as a whole was not as overpoweringly smelly as expected.  However, when you walk by an old pile of garbage or a new urine puddle (as men urinate wherever they want) or the wind wafts the odours of these to you, then it smells pretty terrible.  We guess that it must be worse in the dead heat of the summer so we’re happy we visited the north in the winter and can’t really comment on much of the south as we didn’t go too far south. 

4.  Do all the men wear dress pants and flip flops? Yes, all the men wear dress pants, flip flops and you can’t forget the collard shirts.  Plus they have these woven shiny wool or polyester sweaters and vests that come in an array of colours but pink and red definitely dominate.  It’s a uniform that we even noticed on the Indian men in Singapore and Malaysia!  To get a better idea of what this style is like just picture an Indian John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.
5.  Do they shake their heads from side to side when happy or meaning yes? Yes, and it is quite addictive as S started doing it a few weeks into the trip!
6.  Do they twist their hand in a circle when they want to question something, such as “what is this”?  Yes, they do twist their hands to ask “what is this” but we did not notice this gesture as often.   That being said, the first time we saw this was on our bus from the Nepali border.  The bus attendant was hanging out the door yelling the destinations while twisting his hand wondering if anyone was interested in jumping on :).

Some of you must also be wondering about the Hindu holy animal, the cow.  As they are a holy animal they cannot be killed (and if you kill one intentionally or accidentally you will have to pay a huge fine and possibly jail time!) and that means that they are free to roam everywhere and we mean everywhere!  As you probably guessed, that means no beef either so what we found a lot of in both Indian and Nepal is buff, which is water buffalo meat.  It can be a lot tougher than beef depending on how it is cooked.  Before we move on from cows we have to tell you about an incident S had at a bus stop in Karnataka.   There was a smaller cow walking around the bus stop and smelling everything and anyone sitting around. Well, S decided that she didn’t want any of the cow snot on herself or her bag so she got up and blocked her backpack from the cow. Well this cow, who has probably never been stopped from doing anything in its life was not too happy about this at all so to show its disapproval it put its head down and started head butting S’s thighs out of the way (thankfully the cow had only very small horns)!! S got scared and jumped up over the bench to the other side, well, the cow was not satisfied and followed S around the bench to continue to show her who’s boss.  S understood and kept out of the cows way after that!

Some of you may be wondering about security issues in India with the shooting and bombings that have occurred in the past between the Muslim and the Hindu groups.  While there was a bombing at the main ceremonial ghat in Varanasi just a few days before our scheduled arrival and we were worried about going into Varanasi at first when we arrived we did not feel unsafe or that there was any tension while we were travelling around the country.  Granted there are policemen with machine guns patrolling the train stations and trains and there is tight security before entering the Delhi subway and there were a lot of policeman around the ghats in Varanasi (particularly the main ghat that got bombed where they have a Hindu ceremony every night), from what we could see the Muslim and the Hindu Indians seemed to coexist peacefully.  

An extreme you notice right away in India is the severe poverty of many of the people and in the major cities this is mixed right in with some of the wealthiest people in the world. For instance, in Mumbai people are living everywhere, such as the ramps to and from the subway station (cooking, playing with their kids and just hanging out while the world walks by) and just down the street one of the wealthiest people in the world is building a 27 story house!!  In Delhi we really noticed it as it is quite cold and a lot of people are just wearing thin pants, slippers (if even that, many are barefoot) and a shawl/scarf wrapped around their upper bodies and heads to keep warm.  What you also notice are a lot of fires (wood or garbage) burning along the sidewalks to keep people warm.  It was really an awakening experience.

woman mixing cement while man plays with child

We can’t end this recap without mentioning a few things S noticed being a woman in India.  First thing was all the staring but having talked to single female travellers we discovered that we were lucky to have been travelling together as they had more than staring to deal with.  As well, as in Morocco, hardly any men spoke directly to S and directed everything to M, including asking M what his wife’s name was rather than asking S directly.   This took a lot of getting used to.  Does this tie in with the place of women in society or is this a respect thing?  We’re not sure. Overall, as we saw in Nepal, the woman were modest in their appearance (in Nepal all women wore skirts and in India most wore saris or tunics over pants) and we would say 99% of the women had long hair tied up and all the little girls we saw going to school in their uniforms (all kids wear uniforms to school) had the same hairstyle: braided pigtails.   Now you would think that with this girls are girls attitude the women would be treated chivalrously but no, that wasn’t the case as we saw the women doing a lot of hard labour while the men sat around!!

Finally, just like in Nepal, men are chewing and spitting paan everywhere!!  Paan, for those who have never come across it, is a betel leaf chew wrapped around a lime paste and other spices and is said to aid in digestion and freshen the breath.   It is very obvious who chews paan regularly as a red food dye inside the paan stains your mouth and teeth red and as people don’t swallow the red liquid and spit it out, it also leaves red stains all over the streets, walls and sidewalks!

All in all, with all its extremes of scents, flavours and colours (as I’m sure you could tell from all our previous posts) we absolutely loved India.  It is a stunning country with an extremely rich history and a definite challenge for all your senses.  We absolutely recommend giving India a go!!

the most common way to advertise in India (and Nepal)

the Indian sedan

hard at work