Today was the first day of class, so I got up at 7:30 and took a shower…oh no, wait…I gave the servants all my underwear to wash on Saturday and they haven’t washed it yet because there’s no soap, meaning that I will have to wait another two days wearing the same pair of underwear. In ascertaining this information, I had to bypass talking to Rahul Jain, dressed in nothing but a pair of tighty-whiteys. So Ro, Puran, and I went out to the Metro and went to the campus and took rickshaws to the Political Science department. We got there before 9 and waited around for a while and found out there was an orientation for the students today. There was a Korean class being held in the room (labeled Room #1 with a piece of paper and Scotch tape), and the other teacher said that it was a Chinese class that didn’t even end until 9:30. My mom called me and said “Okay, I’ll let you go because I know you have to go to class”. On that note, we waited for TWO hours in the classroom for the class to start. We tried to sleep on the stairs and in the desks, but it got so monotonous. We kept hearing through the “grapevine” that the teacher was on her way but stuck in traffic, but our efforts were “fruitless”. I should hang myself for that pun. But instead I just sat there complaining. We ended up leaving before seeing if the teacher had shown up, after hearing that attendance wasn’t going to matter. Not to mention, this is the FIRST day of class of the year! Who does that?! Rahul Jain said that Delhi University was the best college in India. But that actually makes sense, because I found out that tuition here was 100 Rs per month…that’s $2! Apparently all the rich Indian students go abroad for school, leaving reservation tribal students, reservation students from backward castes, and lower or middle class Indians. In addition, if it’s that cheap, it begs the question: What are they doing with the $7,000 we paid for EAP fees? Paying for the Hindi and study center’s electric bill? I actually think that how the system works is that they give the whole $500,000 that we all pay in fees to Vijay, who then goes out and buys whatever we need. I’ll give you a breakdown of our expenditures:
| Description | Amount | Totals | Percent |
| YWCA Hotel | $500 | $25,000 | 10% |
| YWCA Restaurant | $500 | $25,000 | 10% |
| Dev Dar Woods | $300 | $15,000 | 6% |
| Landour School | $500 | $25,000 | 10% |
| EAP Study Center | $200 | $10,000 | 4% |
| Reciprocity Student | $0 | $0 | 0% |
| University of Delhi Tuition | $20 | $1,000 | 0.4% |
| Side Trips | $100 | $5,000 | 2% |
| UC Regents | $500 | $25,000 | 10% |
| Bob Goldman | $200 | $10,000 | 4% |
| Vijay | $2,180 | $109,000 | 44% |
| Total | $5,000 | $250,000 | 100 |
Why do you think Vijay never wears the same Polo shirt, he’s always being chauffeured around, and he’s in such a good mood all the time? Our parents would be ecstatic. Ok, forget the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are being embezzled by the University of California and the resident liaison. Back to school, though. But seriously, with professors not showing up on arbitrary class days, I don’t know how anything gets done. It has to be the most unintuitive system I’ve ever experienced. As mentioned earlier, there are no campus maps in circulation, the building has no name, there are no room numbers for the classes, no one knows where anything is, and professors don’t show up whenever they feel like it. It was incredibly boring. So boring that we’re going to bring things to do while we’re waiting: like Yahtzee, cards, and if worst comes to worst just, alcohol. So our first day of class consisted of us going to school and not actually having class or teachers. So we left and went to Nirula’s and got a bun and a pea-sized chicken patty. We got back and there was nothing to do. I went to the study center to use the internet for two hours, before coming back to the house so I’d be here when the internet guy came. I am unhealthily obsessed. While at the study center we told Vijay things weren’t going well, and he called Rahul on the spot and said “Oh hi, I called to see how things were. Have you given the students everything they need? Ok, so everything will be there in two days? Good, so I’ll come by and see how things are working out.” Vijay = Baller, I love how he will beat them into submission. Speaking of beating people, on campus there is a little square building in which the police sit. The label on the box is “Police Beat Box”. Basically, if they see or suspect you of doing something they don’t like, they’ll throw you into that room and, yes, beat you with their batons. If you confess, good; if not, oh well, they just keep beating you as they please. I’m so glad I’m living in a country that needs police beat boxes. And I’m even gladder that I’m a student of political science, which means I’ll be studying the methodology and practice of laws and policies of governments and institutions that foster this advanced and fair justice system…the Police Beat Box. At home we discussed getting a cook. Ro’s parents are going to find us a cook, who will buy food and prepare dinners for us during the week, and even pack lunches for us if we want. The cons: Tara feels like we should be self-sufficient and able to make food ourselves (aka a guilt trip for being pampered back home, and punishing all of us for it). The pros: The cook costs close to nothing in labor, she knows where to buy ingredients and won’t get ripped off, she has time to properly wash and sanitize everything, her profession is cooking Indian food so she’ll cook us tasty food, cooking for nine people is a huge task, I don’t want the kerosene stove to explode in my face which happens on a regular basis in India, I don’t want to go out every night and eat hardy or greasy food, I don’t want to end up eating Mac & Cheese or Ramen every night, we will treat her as a decent human being and not our subservient slave as do other Indian families, it’s normal for most upper or middle class Indian families to have cooks, and we can still cook whenever we want. I think I have made my point. And then, the boy servant Rajesh, came in to sweep the room. All the girls think it’s immoral for him to be doing this, and told him to go because they should clean up. I agree child labor is wrong, and that you should be able to clean up your own mess. But I also understand that things work differently here. Like with cleaning your own dishes, of course you’d clean up after yourself in the United States. But here there is a tremendous excess of labor. People are willing to serve you, and this is a normal job in India. A whole caste, making up the bulk of the Hindu population, is ascribed to be servants. Unfortunately, nothing I do will change that. The little boy is paid, and is lucky to be living in a nice house, free of desperate poverty like millions of others in India. His parents probably struggled in their lives, and are probably too poor to send him to school, so I respect what they did for him. Why is it not immoral for the maid staff in a hotel to be paid to clean your room? It’s the same thing. So no, I’m not going to feel inhumane because I’m having someone do their paying job cleaning up after me. But I am troubled that he is a child servant. And this is in a very educated, Western, posh household in a large urban area. In rural, backward areas I can’t imagine how they treat servants. Anyways, it is so hot in Delhi that all you want to do is lie in your own sweat. That is one thing that you can’t see from pictures; the fact that the heat is so stifling that even though you always want to be active and see everything in India, you just don’t have the energy. This is why everything takes so long in this country, and why people are always late. I see this trait as a major drawback to development in India. I fear that its climate will retard India’s rise to becoming a world power; it deters labor-intensive activity, it creates a culture of socially-acceptable laziness and tardiness, diseases can flourish all year, crops are more susceptible to failure, it strains resources (notably water), and it is harsh to man-made infrastructure.
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