One thing that has become evident to me over the last two weeks: my life in India continuously balances itself out. This idea is hard to explain without specific examples, so I will offer two anecdotes of events that occurred recently.
This past Tuesday, as I was walking to my language school, I saw a man drop a 50 Rupee bill. He hadn’t noticed, so I picked it up and handed it to him. I didn’t think anything of it, as 50 Rupees is less than one U.S. dollar. I went on with my day, and had a particularly difficult three-hour language class. I will admit that I left school fairly stressed and a bit distracted. I entered the metro station by swiping my card. In the Delhi metro stations, when you swipe your card, the amount of credit you have pops up on a screen that is very easily visible to the person behind you in line. I had put 500 Rupees on my card the day before (which is quite a lot to put on a metro card, but I use the metro multiple times a day and it doesn’t make sense to constantly put more money on it.) There is no doubt that the woman behind me in line saw that I had such a large amount on my card when I swiped into the station, and yet when I somehow dropped my card while walking through the gate and failed to notice, the woman behind me picked it up and chased me through the station to make sure I got it back. This small act of generosity turned my day around. I thanked her profusely and got onto the train with a smile.
As I commuted back home, this event made me think about how everything in my life here seems to balance out eventually. You can call it karma, a coincidence, or sheer dumb luck, but it was perfectly serendipitous that I had returned money to a random man earlier that day, only to have my metro card returned to me a few hours later. More generally, I have had some very stressful days here, and somehow something good always occurs shortly after that reminds me why I am here.
Another anecdote that demonstrated this ‘balancing act’ happened about two weeks ago. Laura and I went to Lajpat Nagar (one of the large markets in Delhi) in search of plastic chairs for our terrace. A few people had recommended this particular market for plastic chairs, but after over two hours of searching in the pouring rain (which involved wading through three inches of water in the flooded streets), we hadn’t seen a single plastic chair. We surrendered and returned to our apartment, drenched, empty-handed, and defeated. The next day, Laura and I went to the market in our neighborhood (which is only ten minutes away) in search of food for dinner. Turns out, this particular market doesn’t have many food stalls, so we were about to give up and go to a different market. As we were about to head back, I saw a giant sign that read, “PLASTIC KURSIYAAN” (kursiyaan means chairs,) with every type of plastic chair imaginable inside the store. Laura and I laughed hysterically before purchasing four chairs from the store, and lugging them back to our apartment. Finding those plastic chairs has been one of our biggest accomplishments yet, despite the fact that we found them after we had given up looking.
This past Tuesday, as I was walking to my language school, I saw a man drop a 50 Rupee bill. He hadn’t noticed, so I picked it up and handed it to him. I didn’t think anything of it, as 50 Rupees is less than one U.S. dollar. I went on with my day, and had a particularly difficult three-hour language class. I will admit that I left school fairly stressed and a bit distracted. I entered the metro station by swiping my card. In the Delhi metro stations, when you swipe your card, the amount of credit you have pops up on a screen that is very easily visible to the person behind you in line. I had put 500 Rupees on my card the day before (which is quite a lot to put on a metro card, but I use the metro multiple times a day and it doesn’t make sense to constantly put more money on it.) There is no doubt that the woman behind me in line saw that I had such a large amount on my card when I swiped into the station, and yet when I somehow dropped my card while walking through the gate and failed to notice, the woman behind me picked it up and chased me through the station to make sure I got it back. This small act of generosity turned my day around. I thanked her profusely and got onto the train with a smile.
As I commuted back home, this event made me think about how everything in my life here seems to balance out eventually. You can call it karma, a coincidence, or sheer dumb luck, but it was perfectly serendipitous that I had returned money to a random man earlier that day, only to have my metro card returned to me a few hours later. More generally, I have had some very stressful days here, and somehow something good always occurs shortly after that reminds me why I am here.
Another anecdote that demonstrated this ‘balancing act’ happened about two weeks ago. Laura and I went to Lajpat Nagar (one of the large markets in Delhi) in search of plastic chairs for our terrace. A few people had recommended this particular market for plastic chairs, but after over two hours of searching in the pouring rain (which involved wading through three inches of water in the flooded streets), we hadn’t seen a single plastic chair. We surrendered and returned to our apartment, drenched, empty-handed, and defeated. The next day, Laura and I went to the market in our neighborhood (which is only ten minutes away) in search of food for dinner. Turns out, this particular market doesn’t have many food stalls, so we were about to give up and go to a different market. As we were about to head back, I saw a giant sign that read, “PLASTIC KURSIYAAN” (kursiyaan means chairs,) with every type of plastic chair imaginable inside the store. Laura and I laughed hysterically before purchasing four chairs from the store, and lugging them back to our apartment. Finding those plastic chairs has been one of our biggest accomplishments yet, despite the fact that we found them after we had given up looking.
In other news, I have officially completed three weeks of Urdu training. On September 1, I went into the language school to take an ‘assessment test,’ which essentially ended up being me realizing how much I have forgotten over the past year. Nonetheless, my instructor (Ali) chose to put me in the Intermediate level because he believed that once I started practicing again, it would come back very quickly (I am doing private tutoring so being placed at ‘intermediate level’ simply means that I started with a more advanced textbook and teacher.) Ali was right, and by the end of the first week, I was reading just as well as I did last summer when I studied in Lucknow for two months. My first week, I began with stories called “My House” and “Mr. Pony,” and now I am reading stories about the origins of life, Alexander the Great, and partition. Three hours of private tutoring per day is mentally draining, but it is clear that it is working. My other instructor, Raza, gets really excited and bangs on the desk when I read and translate a sentence properly. During the first week, this didn’t happen often, as he would have to help me work through the script, grammar, and vocab very slowly. Now, he is banging on his desk continuously throughout reading class, as I can translate most sentences correctly on my own.
Generally, life is very normal. When I first found out I would be moving to India for a year, I expected constant grand adventures. But as I continue to settle in here, I have to remind myself that I am not a tourist anymore. This time isn’t like my previous visits when I had to cram all the monuments and museums into a month-long period. I have to keep reminding myself that I live here now, and that it’s okay if I am not constantly involved in some cultural activity or seeing a famous monument. Don’t get me wrong, I have already participated in countless incredible events across the city: I’ve seen both large-scale Bollywood movies and small independent films; I went to a used-book sale in a radical bookstore called ‘MayDay Café’; I have attended countless talks about a variety of subjects; I went to a Sufi music night at a restaurant called ‘Shalom’; and many more. But every so often, when I am tired from language class and the heat, I have to remind myself I am living here for a year and think about how I lived when I was in Claremont, Denver, or Salt Lake City. I didn’t feel pressure to visit museums and lectures every day. Delhi is my home now, and it is finally starting to feel that way.
I joined a gym, where I go every day and people have started to recognize me and say ‘hi.’ I ride in the “Ladies Only Compartment” of the metro everyday and I have started to recognize some of the faces of other females who travel at the same time. I go grocery shopping. I watch TV. I study at cafes. I wash dishes. I take out the trash (which often involves circumventing the lizard that has chosen to live in our garbage bin.) When I don’t feel like cooking or going out to eat, I order delivery and don’t feel guilty for doing so. These are the kinds of things I would have done in Claremont or Denver that I have simply adapted to fit my life in Delhi. I can’t say I am completely settled yet, but I can say that after a month living here in Delhi, I finally don’t feel like a tourist anymore.