India

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Well, it really wasn’t even the best of times. Before arriving in India, the administration and faculty on ship try to prepare you for India in the sense that it is often the country to offer rich cultural experiences and some of the most profound sights of people, poverty, and foreign life. I was so excited to go to India, and for no particular reason. For me, it was just always one of those places you hear a lot about and think about going to. After the on ship warning of something along the lines of “If India doesn’t offer you the life-changing experience you’re looking for, then none of the countries will.” I was so excited to see so much and be utterly amazed by something. I felt ready to see things that would make my heart hurt, stomach churn, and the tears come falling down my face. I expected India to be like this, but it wasn’t. And to be quite honest, I was a disappointed.
India turned out to be the place where I felt more targeted as a female, as a tourist, as a “rich American,” and as a white person. Each of those has their own story. A friend and I hired a rickshaw driver for the first night and the following day. We knew it was risky, but thought to ourselves that we were on this adventure and were ready to be adventurous. For a night that started off so fun and so promising, it really turned out to be a big miserable catastrophe. The took advantage of us as people, lied to us more times in one night than I can count sheep at night, and cheated us out of a lot of money. Now, the traveler in me is trying to stay calm and remind myself that this could have been expected and that “it’s all a part of the experience” (that phrase haunts me now). In the end, after demanding that he take us back to the ship in Chennai, my friends and I ended up there around 4am, perfectly safe, but soaking wet from the midnight rains. As we arrived at the ship, about 100 students saw our tired, jaded, wet faces as they prepared to leave for their fantastic four day trip throughout India, including a visit to the Taj Mahal. And that was just my first night.
The next day, I didn’t exactly run off the ship with anticipation to do anything. I had vague plans to visit the Taj Mahal, but they didn’t work out. Later in the day, a group of us went to visit a temple and later grab some dinner. (Dinner in India is relatively late, between 8 and 11pm.) Even the temple visit didn’t go so well. Shortly after we arrived, a man approached another girl and I and asked us what we knew about the temples and we, being experienced from our adventure the night before, shooed him away expecting that he only wanted money. Minutes later, the other people that were with us, not knowing that we just “got rid of him” began talking with him and agreed to let him walk around with us and offer his knowledge about the temple, religion, etc. After one lap around the temple, he said that we each owed him 100 rupees (an obscene amount for India). He began shouting at us as no one paid him. My friend and I knew the deal and had gotten ourselves out of it earlier on. We left the temple immediately to avoid him and I ended up having to steal my shoes back from the shoe keeper who was harassing the people with us for money for “watching their shoes.” (You can’t wear shoes in the temple, so we all had to leave them outside the area. After all of that, we never got to actually go inside of the temple. It was ridiculous.
We went out to dinner. I couldn’t read the menu and finally just ordered something. It wasn’t bad, but sure had a surprise spice in it that set my mouth on fire about half way through my plate. The rickshaw driver we had hired asked the waiter to ask us if we would buy him some dinner. We did. He ordered it to go and we all paid, and then left. On our way back to the ship, he pulled his rickshaw over to the side of the road and asked us to grab the food out of the back. He gave the food to a little girl who hesitantly approached the rickshaw as he called to her. She took the food from him and ran back to the sidewalk, by a man who shared a blanket with her, and we drove off. THAT made me think. I thought about how much we had agreed to pay him for the time we hired him. I thought about how much that little bit of food actually cost and that those people were going to share it. I wondered if it would be their only meal for the day. I wondered if the driver knew those people. Were they his family? Did he see them sitting there and give it to them for another reason? I will never know. But it astounds me to think about the possibilities that lie there. When we got back, we went to pay the driver the price we had agreed upon before we got into the rickshaw. He laughed at us, asked for more than ten times as much, and got angry when we refused to pay it. I, putting aside the feelings of what I was thinking about, was angry that I was about to be ripped off AGAIN! I know that these people are working hard, that they are much poorer than poorest people I live by, but I still didn’t have the money to fork over to them just because they thought they could get it out of some ignorant Americans. We refused to pay more than we agreed and the man refused to take the money. We walked away from him and he left us alone. He never took our money for that four hour hire. I think he expected us to feel bad and eventually offer more, but we were just irritated.
The next day I had an overnight trip to a village to in Kancheepuram. The trip was to visit RIDE, an organization that works to get kids out of child labor and back into the public school systems. The trip was good and I had a good time. We visited one of the bridge schools on the first day. I had a great time interacting with the kids, even though one of those little rascals had sneezed in my mouth while we played the camera game. I played “slap hands” with a few of them (that’s what I am calling it, but I am referring to the game where the other person has to move their hands from on top of yours before you can slap them). We had some great food at our accommodation. We slept in an open room in the guest house of the RIDE organization. The next day, we got up early and had good food at breakfast. It was then that I started to really feel the effects of that sneeze in my mouth. My throat was soar and I knew I was getting sick. I knew right when the kid sneezed, it was inevitable. We went to a village and walked around with many of the locals as they gave us a tour of the place they all call home. We saw the laboring work they do, the animals, the kids, and the things they call houses. Some of them weren’t too bad, some of them were. Everyone in the village was extremely welcoming of us and excited for their kids to meet Americans. Many of us had things to give away. I gave out several pens (I can’t believe what a huge hit those things are), yo-yo’s, and some postcards and notebooks from school.
We went back to RIDE for lunch (delicious again), and then stopped at a silk shop (that doesn’t sell products of child labor) before heading back to this ship in Chennai. On this trip, I was able to see how tedious of a job it is to run a silk weaving loom and actually make something. It is incredible. I also learned the harsh reality of Indian traffic as I watched a girl nearly get run over by a motorbike while trying to cross the street to use the bathroom at a Shell station. Crossing the street in India is perhaps the most dangerous thing to do there. Seriously. **Oh the things we do for regular toilets.