28th Birthday in New Delhi

I really wanted a margarita, so we headed for Ruby Tuesday's. (Surprisingly, Ruby Tuesday's has several New Delhi locations - who'd have thought?) It was a poor decision - the drinks weren't very good. But they did have real taco chips.

Keep your drink, just give me the money

Do you ever have one of those conversations—when chatting with someone on a plane, traveling in another country, or talking to an elderly (read: socially conservative) relative—where you just stop giving your real opinions or reactions? Because you can’t be bothered to explain to this person why their whole world view is massively flawed? And then walk them through the refutations of all their inane counterarguments? And you feel some guilt about your Raskolnikov-esque intellectual arrogance and unassailable belief in the superiority of your world view? But, since your belief in the superiority of your own world view is, in fact, unassailable, there isn’t much you can do about it? And, plus, you just compared your liberal, anti-humanist, hubris to a Dostoevsky novel. So can anyone really doubt whose worldview is better thought-out here?

Being, as I am, a future PhD in political science [la-di-da tossing of hair here], I run into this problem at home when people start talking politics. But in India the problem is omnipresent because people’s social values are SO different from mine. It’s like I’m trapped at a six-month meeting of the Christian Coalition. Except with white guilt.

This has all been brought into focus recently because my sister Merideth is really into communicating with people. I have a long history of being less in favor of this than Merideth, going back to the days when I used to hide in our mom’s closet when strangers rang the doorbell. But I believe my position has become more tenable over time.

For example: two days ago, one of the neighbors from our building saw us at a coffee shop and sat down to talk. And asked us what our religious orientation is. Now, I have seen this man around the building before. And I blithely claimed to be a Protestant in order to avoid having a conversation. (I’ve given my landlord the run-through of my wedding. With Adam sitting right next to me. Like I’m going to have trouble lying about this?) But Merideth – bless her open-to-having-interactions-with-other-people soul – goes and confesses to ambivalence on this point. And then we have to hear his opinions. (He recommended we read The Purpose Driven Life. We could have been in Oklahoma!) Which, of course, spirals into him discussing his opinions of the moral degradation of the US in general. The part of me that has opinions gets prickly and defensive on this point and wants to argue that the divorce rate is probably unacceptably low in India. But most of me prefers to nod along.

And then there is the young chap who Merideth started talking to at a coffee shop a few days ago. (Without me. I wouldn’t have let this conversation start. I bought this ring for a reason.) This young chap primarily wanted to know all about American sexual practices. And why there were so many Russian women in “sexy videos”? Merideth apparently tried to explain that she found pornography objectionable. (Deaf ears, girl. Deaf ears.) And reported, in response to my concern, that the whole conversation had a big-sister-kid-brother tone to it. I told her I was sure that was how it appeared to her.

I feel vindicated by his persistent stream of text messages since that time. (Which, sensibly, are going unanswered). That is another problem with countries where people don’t date: the men have no idea (a) that the hurdles that must be cleared in order to have sex with a white woman are not quite so trivial as “sexy videos” might imply and (b) in which track league they should even think about trying to run the hurdles. And, naturally, it is really only men who approach strangers for conversations. Which makes it even more infuriating.

Would I be a bad cultural ambassador if my standard response to questions about my religious and moral views was “Have you even read Crime and Punishment?”

Parental Units: Incoming!

So, tomorrow my parents arrive in India. Mostly, they are going to be on a package tour—starting Tuesday afternoon I can load them on the bus with the other tourists and they will be safe inside that magical tourist bubble where India is merely an “enchanting journey through exotic sights and sounds” or whatever. But they are arriving on Saturday night, however, to have some extra time to sleep off their jet lag and to see their daughters.

The travel agent who booked their tour could have, naturally, fixed them up with a few extra nights in the tour group hotel. But Delhi has very high hotel fees, especially now that it is tourist season. (Read: less than apoplectically hot). And the tour company, no doubt weary of complaints from scandalized Schenectady empty-nesters, insists that 3-star in India doesn’t mean 3-star in the US (which is completely true) and so refuses to book anything but 5-star Delhi hotels for its clients. And those go for about $400 per night, plus hefty luxury tax.

Now, I have a long experience with my parents and the thrifty vacation. They are really a do-it-yourself pair and tend to feel scandalized by the premiums that the tourist & recreation industries charge in exchange for convenience and ease-of-use. Their bête noirs are bellboys, doormen, taxis, and concessions stands. If my parents, lost in the middle of the Serengeti without food, water, or a map, were offered a taxi ride for a clearly-greater-than-marginal-cost fee of a hundred dollars: they’d keep walking.

So, there was no way my parents were going to pay a thousand dollars to spend two nights in Delhi. My mother’s words were something along the lines of “we’re campers: we’ll just sleep on your floor.” Not realizing that, if I could somehow get a running start, I could long jump the length of my room.

Anyhow, after a lot of avoiding the issue, I booked them a hotel a few blocks away for about $100/night.

But I’m nervous about the whole thing because, if you didn’t know India, you’d think the hotel was a dive. My parents are, truly, pretty good at going without creature comforts. But one thing I have learned from India is that one tends to judge the safety of one’s surrounding by the perceived affluence. And the perceived affluence of India’s mid-range hotels is, roughly, somewhere between shabby house-of-ill-repute and nice-ish crack den. And it takes awhile to convince oneself that it is safe to nod off within walls that are visibly molding. It doesn’t help that India’s under-employment & the family-run business culture dictates that every non-international hotel employs exactly seven times the number of employees that are strictly necessary. And so about nine listless, idle, twenty-something men are staring at you as you check-in, move through the halls, get breakfast... And then there is my neighborhood. Which is really quite safe. But, again, it takes awhile before you can look placidly out onto an alley strewn with smashed glass, dog and cow feces, garbage, weeds, old leaves, and shanty housing and think “Wow! There must be trees someplace!”

Basically, even though my parents will be fortified with the bracing tonic of having saved $800 from the grasping paws of the evil tourist industry, I’m afraid they will see the place and have a heart-freezing moment of “We’re going to die here.”

Or, worse, “We are not paying $100 a night to stay HERE!” And then insist on coming home with me.

Back at it

Once again in Delhi!

I've been back for a week and I'm mostly resettled. Some things have been roughly what I have come to expect -- such as the comically epic process of getting the internet in my new room (4 days, 9 people, 6 house calls) -- while others have taken me a bit by surprise. For example, it is genuinely chilly here. I'm wearing my scarf as we speak. Who knew?

I have made one big change already: I am not rehiring the maid for cleaning. By the end of last year, the feeling of violated privacy was looming so large for me that I would only let her in to clean about once a week. And since she came twice a day everyday, that was a lot of time spent hiding. It also did not help that the maid who cleans this building frequenly seems to be enjoying a private joke in what can only be described as cackling. (I am going to keep sending my clothes out to be washed because I can just stick those outside my door and avoid too much interpersonal stuff).

Also, even though I was getting these twice-a-day, everyday cleanings for my money, I was not completely satisfied with the product on offer. Because there was no soap involved, more just rubbing the floor down with water. Which is really less like cleaning and more like diluting the dirt.

So, when I got in, I set out to really scour my apartment - I bought a western-style mop, surface cleaner, floor cleaner, dish soap, and air freshner, plus scrubbing items. It did occur to me, though, that my maid might have had a point in avoiding all of this stuff. First, I don't really know what's in any of these products. Probably one-part bleach, one-part DDT, and one-part that chemical that causes flipper babies. So maybe I'm not really making a net gain in the healthfulness of my room. Second, some of the surfaces in my room don't really seem to be meant to be cleaned. In particular, the paint (or white-wash) on the walls, window ledges, and doors starts to slough off if it is moistened or even subjected to modest friction. Again, is it really smart to go around wiping the soot off these surfaces if I'm also giving myself lead poisooning?

Still, why worry about what can kill you tomorrow if you can get rid of what makes you mildly uncomfortable today?

One further note on my new attempts to do more of my own home-making here in Delhi. I bought mint-scented dish soap during my shopping without really noting that there was anything unusual about that flavor. Because mint and cleanliness definitely go together in my mind. But upon further reflection, cleaning products that involve mint are usually for your teeth, like gum and toothpaste. I don't think I've ever seen surface cleaners or dish soaps in mint. And as soon as I started doing the dishes, it started to seem like a very strange choice. All my dishes smell like candy canes now. Not a bad smell, but one not what I expect from dishes after they are washed -- it if kind of like having plates that smell like bubblegum or chocolate chip cookies.