Monday, July 17 Real World Delhi, Shopping downtown

During class we just found out our final was on Thursday, not Friday. Good thing they tell us three days prior. The teachers don’t care at all, it’s actually really funny. During the “5-minute” break, teachers all gather in a circle and talk, while the students do the same, neither party wanting to go to class. I was talking to a couple others after class. We thought: What if there was a Real World: Delhi?!? Just imagine Jessica Simpson trying to cook food here. Or going to Chandni Chowk and getting mugged and stabbed. Or carrying around a Gucci purse amidst the largest slums in the world. Or feeling guilty and trying to help every single leper and beggar she sees. Or stumbling back home, alone via motor rickshaw after a night of clubbing in a five-star hotel and getting attacked. Or trying to go to the squat bathroom in a dingy place, using a whole bottle of disinfectant. That’s one Real World I would regularly watch. As much smack as I talk on Delhi, it’s Versailles compared to the festering cesspools that are most other Indian cities. Yes, it’s dirty and hot and smells like burning garbage, but at least it has the modern conveniences of any large modern city. Anyways, after lunch I went downtown with Mariel, Kim, and Alix. We stopped at Kashmir Art, the little shop at which they had bought like eight Pashmina shawls each, and they knew the guy really well. He got us all tea and had us all sit in his shop. I had to go to the ATM and post office, which took forever, and it was raining so I bought this awesome kiddie bumble bee umbrella with antennae. Then these four Delhi-ites came up and started talking to me. They sounded Australian, because they worked in call centers in Gurgaon, Haryana at Australian firms. I thought I was talking to Uncle Stephen and Wendy. I ended up talking to them a while and eventually they took me out to lunch at Four Seasons. They are really rich and consumerist by Indian standards, with nice phones and clothes. They were really interested in me, and got my number so we could party together (they drink 10 drinks every day they claim) when I get back to Delhi, in Haryana, where all the call centers (and all the young rich Indian hipsters) are. I’m really interested in this subject, because it exemplifies globalization and India’s changing economy very well. Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister says, “India is a rich country where poor people live”. True. I want to go to the call centers to see it at work, and maybe even see if I can work there (they said a lot of foreigners work there in high positions). After that I went back to Pashmina man’s stall and he invited us for chai. We walked through these alleys to his small three-room house. The living room was the size of my dorm room, and housed god posters and statues, the proportionately huge TV, couches, coffee table, and lots of textiles. Their family, including the wife, uncle, son, and daughter, are all from Kashmir, but live half the year in Mussoorie to pray on tourists like us. They were really nice and gave us chai and snacks before taking us out to dinner at a local restaurant, which was dirty so I was hesitant to eat everything. I had mutton, paneer, rice, naan, and dal. They love dal here. It was nice of them to be so hospitable, that’s India for you. Well, almost, considering we made him the richest man in Mussoorie. We went to a dessert stand while this Sikh man (who claimed to be a lion) took pictures of us with his lens cap on, and told us he hated my friends but liked me, while he then stroked my chin. Aaaaaahhhh! I told him to get out of here. Then we walked all the way up to Dev Dar, which was extremely hot. Today was a really good day, I got to spend time with Indians and see how they lived; this is what I aim to see in India more than anything else. Well, besides the Taj Mahal. We were walking back from Dev Dar and they didn’t see me in the dark, so I mumbled something, and they all freaked out, and Kim was like “Who’s there”, while Mariel without saying a word, sprinted up the hill. It was hilarious/I felt horrible.