139 Days

139 days in India is not enough time to understand and embrace this great country. Yet each day, I am getting closer to a more personal, even intimate relationship with this vast exotic land. I have held my breath at her many wonders; I have sighed in frustration at the unfathomable ways of her people. As a barometer, I go through each day with countless highs and lows.

This is India. A land to explore and discover, a land that delights and frustrates, and in the end, a land to love.

Driving through the streets with Joginder, I glimpsed the ugliest on the streets of India. With fresh eyes, I saw broken down buildings with absent windowpanes. I saw rows of makeshift tents on sidewalks. I saw ramshackle brick homes haphazardly sitting atop garbage strewn hills. I saw her sacred cows feeding off rubbish mountains. Leprous, dirty beggars constantly knocked on my window. Very young mustachioed boys performed somersaults to amuse car passengers into sparing them a few Rupees. Mothers begged with hired and drugged babies on their hips. Walking through the streets and markets of India, I have swatted flies away from my path and suffered through the swirling dust in the air. I have tried to ignore the noise of loud unfamiliar music. I have smelled the heavy oils in the sidewalk snack carts. I have dodged persistent vendors. What a rude introduction to India!

We moved into a beautiful new home at the end of D block; a contemporary flanked on two sides by parks with mature trees. Situated around all this green, I knew I had picked our private paradise to bring calm back into our lives, our haven away from the dust, dirt and chaos of Delhi. But nothing is easy in Delhi. Everything must be a struggle if only so that satisfaction at each minor victory is that much sweeter. Yes, indeed a new home where everything is shiny and everything works. How could we both have been so wrong? New meant untested, unresolved, unfinished, undone! Nothing in my years with 24 moves could have prepared me for this challenge. Before the month was over, we had taken showers with a mere trickle of water, showers with frigid water, showers with scorching hot water (it did not seem to matter which way the fixture was directed), and even half showers with barely enough water to rinse off the soap suds! We have slept in stifling heat because the generator did not kick in. We have slept to the hum of the generator that would not turn off. We have awoken to a flood in the kitchen because the plastic pipe used in the geezer* had deteriorated in the heat. And worst, at 7:20 a.m., I unwittingly opened the door to four horrifying hijras** with their loud "namaste madame" pushing their way into my home while the morning guard stood uselessly downstairs. (That truly merits another post on this blog!) All this made me less fond of India; I contemplated giving up, moving back to my beloved Singapore where everything was clean and everything worked. I was exhausted from the constant assault of the unpredictable. I had no desire to live like this, to live in a place where all my energy was directed at pure survival.

And yet, as though with invisible hands, time has worked out the chemistry of things.

139 days.

Very slowly the pieces of our lives are falling into a semblance of order. These days, my driver Ambrose navigates the streets dexterously. I take a nap in the back seat and have learned to be oblivious to the ugliness outside my windows. Survival means numbing yourself to what offends. It means dulling your senses so that what used to move you in bitter ways no longer has a hold on you.

Closing my eyes to the repugnant has allowed me to see anew. I admire the abundance of fruit and vegetable vendors along the sidewalk markets. The fruit vendor who naps blissfully with his melons at mid-day makes me smile. i admire the industrious block dhobiwallahs*** who eke out a living with their heavy coal irons ironing clothes for a mere seven-and-a-half cents apiece. Local markets where the chemist, grocer, kitchenware man, and electrical supply man, nod as acquaintances make me feel that I am starting to belong to this wild, untamed, chaotic Delhi. Men huddled together, their heads stylishly wrapped in unexpectedly colorful turbans make a perfect photograph. I admire the women dressed in perfectly coordinated sarees. I see a different picture now.

Life in India, how mysterious, how exotic, and how exciting it is all going to be! It has taken me 139 days to discover that India is my world.

At least for now.

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*hot water heater
**eunuchs
***ironing men