Indian Polo Championship 2007

Talk about feeling out-of-one’s-element. First of all, my knowledge of polo was limited to the simple facts that the sport is hazardous, and that it involves an elite crowd, horses, sticks, and something akin to a puck or ball that is meant to be knocked into a goal. Second, prior to attending the Indian Polo Championship a couple of weeks ago, I would never have believed that the noise level anywhere in this country actually fell low enough to hear oneself think. But I left the awe-inspiring event with a few lessons learned: peace and quiet in Delhi can be found on the racetrack during a match; horses are marvelous animals; and Dattas are descendants of the Mohyals, who were cavalrymen, suggesting to some that I should make a fine polo player. Maybe in my next life. Finally — Sikhs wearing kilts. Need I say more? Oh, and in case you were wondering, Royal Johor beat Kingfisher First 9-8.

On Giving Thanks

I felt pretty jittery and unsettled during Thanksgiving week here, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. I had crowded the fact that it was the third week of November out of my brain, but that wasn’t so hard to do in this lifestyle; I spend quiet moments fretting over whether water will come out of the faucet when I turn it on, how I’m going to get from place A to place B without getting ripped off (meaning that I’m not sure if my accent will reveal that Hindi isn’t my first language), and whether I’ll find meaningful work here, to give a few examples. But I’ve already digressed.

Thanksgiving week was rough because this was the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from my family, the first year I wasn’t celebrating the occasion in my mom’s kitchen. It didn’t help that I was getting daily reports from her about the preparations — the event would be at its smallest this year with a mere 22 people in attendance; she had been wooed away from the mashed potatoes out of a box by my very insistent brother and sister-in-law; she was trying out some new fancy Williams Sonoma recipes that I had forwarded her (never expecting that she’d actually take them up); the turkey was being injected in surgical fashion with some complex masala mixture — you get the idea. It was mouth-watering, soul-wrenching torture.

I endured. I even got onto Skype with the whole lot of them that night, as they lazily led their satisfied, over-extended bellies into the study to chat with me for a moment before returning to their wine and pumpkin pies.

Two nights later, my father flew into Delhi, and three days later, a few of my close relatives here gathered for a small get-together. Unlike the usual Delhi buffet style setup, the dinner table was set for all attendees. I didn’t catch on. As I was walking in, my uncle was asking my aunt who was going to do the cutting, and where. Crap, I thought. It’s someone’s birthday, and I’m clueless as to who the cake is for. Yeah, I still didn’t catch on. It wasn’t until Papa, assuming that I was smart enough to have figured out that he had imported Thanksgiving dinner for me, announced that the turkey he had brought along weighed a solid 14.5 lbs that my jaw dropped.

There it was all being laid out before my widening eyeballs: sweet potato pudding, mashed potatoes (real ones, not out of a box), stuffing (with sausage), brussels sprouts with pancetta, a loaf of melt-in-your-mouth pumpkin bread, cranberry sauce, gravy, and a whole 14.5 lb, juicy, masala-injected turkey. And enough leftovers to last us until my sister arrives. (That’s right, I have pretty high expectations for the contents of her luggage now, as well!)

I couldn’t even wait until everyone had served themselves. But before I dug in, I squeezed my eyes shut. Most parents might lament about how bummed I was to miss Thanksgiving this year, some might even joke about FedExing me some leftovers, but only my parents would cook a full parallel meal, pack it in layers of Ziploc, freeze it, stuff it into the suitcase, transport it clear across the planet, and arrange for a Thanksgiving dinner in Delhi, all because their daughter was moping about the lack of availability of pumpkin pie in India.

I give thanks for my wonderfully insane parents.

The Inevitable Delhi Belly

I had to catch it at some point, the inevitable Delhi Belly. You’ve probably at least heard of it, if not experienced it yourself. I’ll spare you the details, since they’re not pretty, but my weak stomach knocked me out for the entire day, just as long as I needed to break the several-day-long hiatus I had taken from the blog. The unfortunate part is that my Delhi Belly came along with a Classic Hangover — the terrible puckered parched pounding kind — and the realization that I had drunk dialed my parents, of all people, upon returning from the wedding Sangeet that put me in both conditions of poor health. Now, on to more interesting subjects than the state of my stomach:

K and I weren’t the only ones with a wedding to attend here last night. The city is nuts with wedding fever. Apparently, there were over 10,000 weddings in Delhi yesterday.

Wednesday was seen as one of the best days to tie the knot. “The Gods wake up from their four months’ sleep. The whole day is auspicious,” Daya Shankar Prasad, a Hindu priest, told the Times of India, referring to the first wedding season day.

It took us one hour to travel about 4 kms, even though our taxi driver rode the shoulder the whole way alongside the white horses being directed from one barat to the next in all their finery. I assume we can look forward to the same kind of traffic every night for the next few weeks while the gods are awake from their slumber and the auspicious wedding period continues.

“People here are so HORNY!!!”*

Photo courtesy of Flickr

Yes, you read that right, but like the rest of this country, let’s practice creative use of the English language. What’s spoken here is actually Hinglish, a language that bears a mild resemblance to any other form of the language, but that’s a different topic for another day. I’m lucky enough to be one of the few women new to Delhi who hasn’t yet had a run-in with anyone’s overactive/underutilized libido, so I didn’t mean that kind of horny. This title references the sights and sounds of the streets of Delhi, which, to my surprise, are reminiscent more of a beautifully (or tragically) choreographed circus act than a (dis)organized component of transportation infrastructure. Allow me to explain.

The population of the city is around 13 million, with an “extended” population (kind of like an Indian extended family, maybe?) of about 22 million. About 60 percent of the city travels by bus, which means that the other 40 percent resorts to private cars, motorcycle, scooters, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws (a.k.a. the Indian hybrid), or their two feet. So despite the fact that there are some very impressive and shiny lines painted in the middle of the road, the term “lane” is not in a part of the Hinglish vocabulary. As a result, cars, buses, rickshaws, cows, bicycles (need I go through the list again?) take advantage of every little nook and cranny of road space, which extends from the fences (and the people taking a break from their long journey home to urinate on them) on one end, right up to the front door step of the homes or markets or shops or little booths or Cold War-era concrete office buildings or whatever else might be on the other end.

Here’s where the neatly choreographed circus act comes in: imagine that you’re approaching an intersection, and the light changes to yellow. People alongside you are honking like crazy, encouraging or demanding that the person in front of them, to their left or right, or dammit anywhere else in their way, forge through. You don’t make the light. You stop, about 6 inches from the person in front of you, with anywhere from 6 inches to a couple of feet between you and the person on either side. You wait. In a few moments, an autorickshaw chugs up alongside you, maximizing those two feet. On your other side, a scooter put-puts up, taking full advantage of those 6 inches on your other side. Slowly but steadily, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles wade their way to the front of the pile of people waiting at this light. The autorickshaws squeeze in behind them. You’re surrounded, with about two inches of your own space to spare. The light is still red. Cars shut off their engines. A small child with a painted moustache sidles up to your window, knocks, does three backflips, and knocks again. The gentleman (more creative use of language) to your right, on his motorcycle, turns to his side, coughs up some nasty stuff, and launches it as far as his oral muscles can manage. Another knock on your window. This individual is selling Spiderman masks and boxes of tissue paper. The light changes to green, and the scene changes to something akin to a Nascar race. Everyone starts up their motor, revs their engine, honks their horn for no reason at all (or maybe there is a reason… anyone have any insight?) and takes off. Beautifully orchestrated scene, no?

While we tried to interpret some of the road etiquette (or lack thereof) on our ride home last night, K’s cousin Little C gave us a few tips:

1. “Law” is another flexibly used term.

2. The horn is your voice to the road world, best used to say “I’m here.”

3. It’s ok to stop anywhere — on an overpass or underpass, in a right turn region (remember, there are no lanes), just because you feel like it.

4. If someone yells at you, perhaps because you cut them off, stole their parking spot, or otherwise raised their ire, the second best response is to look at them and mouth, with a twist of your wrist, “Kya hai?” (“What?”) The best response is just to feign ignorance.

5. If you give anyone else the right of way, you’ll never even manage to leave your driveway. Just go.

* This quote is attributed to Dr. CP, whose exclamation during a visit to India as a child elicited many giggles from her relatives, but is so incredibly appropriate.

The Delhi Monkey Menace

The last thing Delhi needed was more fodder for the remark: “there are a bunch of monkeys running this place.” But the fact is that monkeys do indeed run this place, especially, as the NYT points out, when it comes to the highly touristed monuments, which boast the greenest trees to climb in and the coziest walls of ruins to perch on. Even at the President’s Palace, guards are apparently placed as much to ward off the monkeys as to defend against human intruders. And these monkeys, “cute” as they may seem to the foreigners, are nasty buggers. They pillage, bite, scream, snarl, and generally terrorize people.

Though the overpopulation of small yet aggressive monkeys has been a local irritation for years, city officials were seemingly incapable of taking effective action against the threat. Politicians hired and trained bigger monkeys to go after the little ones, courts published orders demanding action and deadlines, and the city issued bounties on captured monkeys, but alas, monkeys continued to reproduce, and their progeny proceeded with biting people, stealing alcohol, invading hospitals, and generally wreaking havoc. Meanwhile, the city couldn’t convince the nearby states to take in any of the few wild animals, or refugees, if you will, that Delhi officials had managed to trap, and release them into their bountiful forests. And so it went. Until, that is, the city’s deputy mayor fell to his death from his balcony while being threatened by four such Simian intruders last month. The city quickly hired 35 municipal monkey catchers, and divided them into teams to haul the monkeys into monkey prison.

The Delhi monkey menace has emerged largely as a result of two fascinatingly disparate aspects of India’s current personality: it’s booming economy (which has led to deforestation for residential and commercial developments as the Delhi human population mushrooms), and its deep-seated religious beliefs, which to some devout Hindus means that monkeys are to be revered, and thus, fed.

What a place this is… I can already see the “Do Not Feed the Monkeys — They BITE!” signs during the Commonwealth Games… and can only imagine the BBC commentary “Well, it’s quite a zoo out here…Oh, OH goodness! A little monkey just stole that lady’s hat!”

(A special thanks goes out to PS and VK for encouraging me to write this!)