Delhi: A Different Experience

I've been in Delhi for about two hours now. But, I can already tell my experience of India will greatly differ in this city. In Kolkata, I had little interest in "seeing the sites" and when I did venture out to barge in on worshippers in Kaliguat Temple and take numerous pictures at The Maidan, it was always colored with some level of frustration and stress. My taxi cab was hot. The driver often lost and neither of us very capable of solving this little problem. There seemed to be no real traffic laws in the city, which has to be the most congested metropolis I have seen yet in my travels. It became apparent from the first 15 minutes in the Kolkata airport that black women with gigantic red afros don't make it out to Kolkata often. People STARED at me as if I were some inexplicable creature from some bizarro world they had only assumed existed in fiction. No, I do not drift into the melodrama for which I am known and loved when I say this. I was a constant point of interest in Kolkata. Children stared at me in awe. Men asked me to get into their cars. (Well, in all fairness, that was just one ridiculously cocky fellow who seemed overly offended when I ignored his looking at me as if I were a lamb kebab and gesturing for me to: "Come. Come. Madam, you come.".) Women looked me up and down and sometimes talked about me to each other in Bengali or Hindi as I wondered why my presence created such a stir. I do not regret any of my time in Kolkata, mind you. I am just clear on the real benefit of being in the city. My fondest moments in Kolkata were spent dialoguing with the three women who would enlighten me on life for women in their culture. I valued the six nights I spent in Kolkata because it fulfilled (in a way I could have never imagined) my rather abstract goal of traveling across the world simply to see what women thought of their lives. A means to do more than have my girls read a book set in India and then write an essay about it.

Delhi "feels" different; only a two-hour plane ride away, but a different vibe already.

So far, in Delhi, I have deduced: THERE ARE TRAFFIC RULES. People follow them. I imagine there must be some sort of routintely inforced penalty for breaking traffic laws since in my taxi ride from the airport every car on the road drove in the same direction, as if this were the most logical way to conduct one's self on a highway. Drivers didn't use their horns every 2 seconds as a means of articulating what THEY planned on doing or what they needed the rest of the haphazardly moving vehicles to do so they could get to where they were going. There are plenty of paved roads. Modern buildings. Only a few curious looks from locals and hotel clerks alike. I imagine them thinking: Hmmmm....wonder where she's from cuz it damn sure ain't India.

The college student who I've been working with to organize this round of interviews has had some sort of complications from a recent surgery. A dutiful young lad, Santosh had his friend email me (as he was being transferred to anoter hospital!) to take over for him. The friend, Sahil, apologized profusely for the inconvenience his friend's illness would cause me and wanted to know what he was supposed to do in Santosh's place. I had planned on knocking out the four interviews here in Delhi within the first few days so I could get my actual work done before I used the car and tour guide I hired to "see the sites." Looks like that will be flip flopped. Already, a different experience from Kolkata. Sahil may not be able to get to my hotel today to work out the semantics of the interviewing/translating so I must press on and be a tourist until he can adjust his life enough to assist me.

It will be tough, but I will make the best of my situation. I have a camera and the uniform of "the tourist." Yoga/Gym pants, Old Navy t-shirt. Sneakers. Tomorrow, when I go out to be the person I routinely mock, I am debating if I will wrap up my 'fro like I did those last few days in Kolkata. I am truly curious if Delhi is simply more "modern" and cosmopolitan, therefore not as floored by the sight of nappy hair attahed to a woman who does not seem to understand just how nappy her hair is.

We shall see.