India In Review: The Plight of a Brown American in India

Despite it's status as my motherland, I never felt a strong draw to come to India. When I knew I was coming to Asia, I added it to the long list of countries I planned to visit because... you can't go to southeast Asia and not visit India. My original plan was to spend eight days here. I had it all mapped out. A day here, a couple days there, eight in total and then I'd be off. I ended up spending 27. And not because India was that particularly great, honestly. A lot of it had to do with poor planning on my part, and forgetting to take into consideration the amount of time it would take to travel. I mean... India is BIG. Like... really big. Let me put this in perspective for you:

India's outline superimposed on the United States
... and some of Canada... and  some of Mexico (via buzzfeed..com)

This all seems so obvious, but it worth saying aloud. India isn't this singular entity of India like I used to think about it as from half-way around the globe in my comfy San Francisco apartment. The different parts of India are very, very different. And I wanted to make sure I saw all of the things I had originally set out to see, from the north all the way through the south. Which meant I was here for a month. I still didn't see everything. Some places I wish I had spent less time. Other places I still didn't get to see at all. But overall, I'm happy with the way this trip turned out.

A lot of what you hear about India is totally true. There is poverty everywhere. Everywhere. People talk about how in India you can see the extremes of wealth butted up right next to each other. My friend KB explained that the reason you see slums surrounding multi-million dollar homes is because the people that live in those slums are the people who built those mansions, so they live close by out of necessity.

I'm reminded of an episode of The West Wing where Donna goes to visit Gaza and is reporting back to Josh. "When you get... into the streets, what hits you about Gaza isn't the overcrowding or poverty. What strikes you is something else: idleness. The sense of the people waiting but with no expectation. It's hard to convey."

I'll caveat all of this by saying that while I was here for almost a month, my interactions with the locals were almost exclusively limited to transactional encounters: hostel proprietors, shopkeepers, waiters, cab drivers, ice cream guys, and ticket sellers, so that likely is coloring my perspective on the situation. But I saw a lot of people here who don't seem to have a lot to do. I don't even know that "idleness" appropriately captures it. I think "resignation" is better. People seemed resigned to live the hand they've been dealt. Even the shopkeepers sit outside of their shops all day, waiting for the couple of sales they might make in a day and not doing much else beside talking to the shopkeeper next door. I guess it's no different than a lot of places in the U.S. but somehow it feels... sadder because it's in India.

There's also a sense of comradery and intimacy among the people here that you don't see in the U.S. Complete strangers talk to one another as if they've known each other their whole lives. People can sound like they're arguing when really they're just having a normal conversation.

I can imagine that it must be incredibly difficult to be a woman here. Most everything seemed to be done by men. Occasionally there'd be a woman in a position of authority, but they were few and far between. Rape was a topic that was a common occurrence in the news. I honestly don't think it's any worse a problem here than it must be in many other parts of the world, but I think it get's a little more attention here because 1) I think there's a bigger international spotlight on India than there is on a lot of other countries, and 2) India is a lot bigger, so as a sheer numbers game, it happens more often here than in smaller countries, but still makes national/international news. Still, I met plenty of female travelers who told me about how many people they knew were shocked and scared to learn that they were traveling by themselves through India.

The servant class is fascinating to me here. Like in Bangladesh, it's totally normal to have servants and drivers here. While staying with KB, I heard her explaining to one of her servants about how the Earth revolved around the sun. This servant was a teenage girl. It's hard to say how much of her lack of educational opportunities had to do with her being female and how much had to do with her just being part of a lower class, but in either case, it was maddening and saddening to see. Servants don't even really interact with the people the serve, outside of anything transactional. They might talk a little, but not really. They're there to serve, not be friends. It's amazing. Amazing in the "I'm amazed that that's how this works," not amazing in the, "this is awesome!" sense.

Personal space and personal hygiene are also very different here than they are in America. By personal space, I really mean lack thereof. There are no physical boundaries between the people here. When you're waiting in line, the person behind you is always pushing your forward. And not by accident, they are actively pushing you forward, even if there is no place forward for your to move. It's not rude in this culture, it's just how it is. Body odor is also all around you. I never got used to it, but it also wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be in most cases. But sometimes it can almost knock you off your feet. No one here seems to notice.

I ate with my hands more and more as the trip went on. If you've never eaten a full meal with your hands before besides buffalo wings, I highly recommend trying it at least once. You feel connected to your food in a way that you don't get when you're one step removed when using utensils. You get to know your food on a deeper level. The consistency of it. The temperature. The texture. It adds a completely new layer to one's gastronomic experience. If you do try it out, don't be shy. It's not like eating a bag of Cheetos where you try to only use two fingers to minimize the amount of Cheeto dust you have on your hands. You've got to dive right in. Get a little messy. Remember, you're going to wash your hands when you're done anyways, so have at it. Also remember, there's no wrong way to do it.

Certain aspects of the infrastructure are huge problems here as well. Most of the places I went to were one giant trash dump. A story I left out of my experience in Amritsar was when I was killing time before heading out to the Attari border. I bought some ice cream but I held onto the wrapper until I could find a trash can because I refused to contribute to India's pervasive trash problem. I finished the ice cream and went to another shop to buy water. After I purchased the water, I asked the shopkeeper if he knew where I could throw away my trash. In response, he waved his arm out in front of him, gesturing toward the vastness of... the street behind me. Which was already filled with trash. Later that day, I had an almost identical experience after I returned from the border. I was holding onto the plastic water bottle, and one of the friendly locals went out of his way to tell me I should put the bottle behind the tire of a parked car so that it would get crushed.

The train system here is abysmal. First off, the booking system could use a massive overhaul. If I'm in India's shoes, there is no question in my mind that I invest a few million dollars and a few months to hire an IT consulting firm to redesign the flow of train bookings. The payoff in efficiency would be enormous. As a foreigner, it's incredibly difficult to book your own tickets. You're basically forced to go through a third party. It's almost impossible to book a ticket a couple days in advance, you've got to do it way before that. And then there's a limited number of last-minute tickets that become available for purchase at a certain time of day, so there's a mad dash to get them before they're gone. For a significantly higher price. Some train classes you don't have an actual seat, so you have to get their early and rush to get a good place in line so you can guarantee your spot on the train. There's a officer there with a long wooden stick to beat anyone into submission if they're out of line, or trying to cut the line, or get too rowdy. Trains are also perpetually late for what seems to be no good reason.

Sanitation is a disaster. Water is a disaster. Public safety standards are a joke. Construction workers don't wear helmets. They're just guys off the streets who needed jobs.

All of this is to be expected in the third world, but it doesn't have to be like this. And I have to imagine this is changing. I'm sure if I had come here 10 years ago, today it would look completely different. The last time my dad was here was a decade ago. When I was making this trip, he warned me that it would be hard to get cash because there are no ATMs. But of course there are ATMs! They're everywhere! Progress is happening, albeit slowly. I saw this ad in an airport from HSBC and I totally believe the headline is true:

It was a totally unique experience being a brown American in India. It definitely had it's pluses and minuses. On the one hand, if you weren't paying too much attention to how I was dressed, you wouldn't immediately know I was a foreigner. This meant I got hassled on the streets waaaaay less than a lot of the other travelers I met. Fewer people asking me for money or trying to sell me something (though I still had quite a few people doing both). It also got me out of some hairier situations because I could play the dumb foreigner card. On the other hand, once people realized I was a foreigner, I was treated the same, if not worse, than other foreigners. As soon as I opened my mouth to talk, prices became doubled. I got a huge variety of reactions from people when they found out I was American. Some people were in disbelief. I got the question "are you sure you're not from India?" more times than you would think. Other people would get frustrated. Why wasn't I talking to them in Hindi? I know you're from America and you don't know Hindi, but... why don't you know Hindi? I know you don't know Hindi but... why aren't you talking to me in Hindi right now? There were even some twinges of anger or disgust. People's body language and tone of voice were conveying an impression of, "how dare you not speak Hindi right now, stupid American." I also totally caught some people way off guard. When I was exploring Delhi with met my first hostel friend, a white Englishwoman, she would talk to me in her English accent and the people around would look and think "oh, an English tourist." But when I spoke back to her with a strong American accent, those same people would do a total double-take and you could tell were thinking to themselves, "WHAAAAAT!?!?!?!"

It's been an interesting role reversal being in India. If you look at me from a sociological perspective, it would be fair to say that my race (genetics) is Indian but my ethnicity (culture) is... American. It might seem kind of weird to think of "American" as an ethnicity, but it is. And I really do identify more as American then I would as Indian or Guyanese. So in America, I match ethnically, but looking totally different racially. In India, I match racially, but am totally different ethnically. At home, I often forget that I look totally different than the white kids I hang out with. I remember one time back in high school I was having a conversation about how at lunch the school yard was fairly segregated by race, with "us white kids" on one side of the lunch area, before I realized I had lumped myself in with "us." I guess it's the product of growing up in middle class America constantly surrounded pretty heavily by white people. In India, I often forget that I looked the same as these people. It's hard to convey how weird that it, by the way, not remembering how you look to other people. When I saw Indians in India, my brain thinks "foreigners" which is closely connected to "doesn't look like me."

This was my first time really being surrounded by brown people for an extended period of time. This must be what it's like to be white in America. Which I guess I never really knew because I'm not white. I think the self-image I have of being American is what has made it so hard to identify people who look like me. Which then also feeds into the very confusing mental state of not knowing how much I really should be identifying with this culture. Regardless, I understand India so much better than I ever did before. And I understand a piece of my history so much more than I did before. I think one of the biggest takeaways is that mentally, I need to stop denying that I'm Indian when people ask me where I'm from, and rather embrace the fact that I've got a long, rich history with this country and it's people. I might not know exactly which people or where in this country specifically, but that doesn't really matter.

I grew a lot as a traveler as well. This is my first time traveling outside of the country on my own and I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. And I did. (To some extent. I still knew people in a few places here who helped me out along the way. I think Cambodia will be the real test though. I don't know anyone, don't speak the language, and don't look like the people.) I booked hostels, navigated transportation, made friends, organized my own trips, fed myself, washed clothes, (washed myself!), kept myself relatively healthy, changed money, avoided getting mugged, avoided getting arrested, exposed myself to new cultures and experiences, and became a lot more comfortable with being on my own. I was sick here. A lot. And it rained here. A lot. And I got cheated here. A lot. I could have gone without all three, but I do think they contributed to the sense of "if I can do this, I can do anything" that I'm taking with me from India.

50 Things I hadn't done a month ago:
1. Lived out of a backpack for a month straight
2. Worn the same two sets of clothes for a month straight
3. Visited a Hindu temple
4. Took part in a Hindu religious ceremony
5. Walked through the streets barefoot
6. Saw the home of Mother Teresa
7. Went to Victoria Memorial
8. Explored an Indian slum
9. Got a shave
10. Ate a cheese naan
11. Celebrated a birthday by myself
12. Taken a train for 24 hours
13. Used an Asian-style toilet
14. Stayed in a hostel
15. Made hostel friends
16. Ate a Maharaja Mac
17. Used Indian rupees
18. Purchased a foreign phone
19. Rode on the back of a motorbike
20. Visited Jama Masjid
21. Almost got arrested
22. Visited the Red Fort
23. Climbed over a barbed-wire fence. Twice.
24. Got lost in an urban jungle
25. Had the best biryani in New Delhi
26. Rode in an auto (the Indian kind)
27. Meditated in the Lotus Temple
28. Visited the Taj Mahal
29. Learned how hand-crafted rugs, marble work, and tapestries are made
30. Visited Qadian
31. Went to Bahishti Maqbara
32. Visited Hoshiarpur
33. Climbed up the White Minaret
34. Visited the Golden Temple
35. Fell asleep in the Golden Temple
36. Rode in the back of a van with a malfunctioning door
37. Saw the Attari border closing ceremony
38. Went to the premier Indian vacation spot, Goa
39. Befriended an Indian shopkeeper entrepreneur
40. Went to the land of my people (maybe), Kerala
41. Became someone's first international friend
42. Saw a Kathakali show
43. Went to Jewtown
44. Got an Ayurvedic massage
45. Took a 6-hour cab ride
46. Went to an Indian hospital
47. Stood on top of a waterfall
48. Visited the Connemara Tea Factory
49. Went on a spice walk
50. Rode an ELEPHANT

Thank you, India!

How it started

How it ended

Someone Made a Lifesize Replica of my Puzz-3D Puzzle

The Taj Mahal totally photobombed my shot in front of this awesome pool

Many years ago, I built a Puzz-3D puzzle of the Taj Mahal. It had 1,077 pieces. Today I went to a building that looks just like it, but that someone decided to make out of a whole lot more than 1,077 pieces. Also, it's like... at least three times as bigger.

I caught a train this morning at 6am to Agra. Brutal. The owner of my hostel told me that it wouldn't be a problem to find an auto at that time of morning because there aren't a lot of people who are using autos that early. I was skeptical so I left a little early and it's a good thing because it took me about 20 minutes and a half-mile walk to find one. Also there were numerous stray dogs viciously barking at me as if I was creeping in on their home turf. Get outta here, dogs. You don't own this street.

Whoa, that's a big building

I had planned on hiring a driver and a guide for the day so when I was immediately deluged by people when I got off the train at 8am, I wasn't as taken aback as normal. I found a guy that spoke decent English who took me out to a booth to pre-pay for a car for half the day. It turns out, this guy wasn't going to be my guide or my driver, but luckily the guy who hopped in my car and proclaimed himself to be my guide did actually speak decent English. His name was SK and he actually ended up taking me to a lot more places than I had originally intended, which meant I actually got to see a lot more of Agra than I would have on my own.

View of the... South? gate from the Taj Mahal

Our first stop was the Taj Mahal. It's hard to describe how stunning the building is, but it really is a truly magnificent work of art. It's made out of 5 kajillion tons of marble and used advanced alien technology to achieve perfect symmetry on four sides even though it was built in the 1600s. It's certainly the most impressive man-made structure I've seen in India and the second most impressive I've seen in the world (the first being the church La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain).

We got to wear this sweet shoe covers, yea!

The Taj has a pretty interesting story behind it. (Disclaimer: This is the story my guide told me, so I haven't independently verified the claims made through the rest of this story.) The Mughul king Shah Jahan had three wives. The first two were arranged marriages but his marriage to his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal was a love marriage. Of course, this didn't stop him from keeping a rather sizable harem (it's good to be king, I guess). She had like... 14 of his kids and died while popping out the last one. On her deathbed she requested, among other things, that he build a monument for their love (the other things were that 1) he didn't get remarried and 2) that he take care of their kids). The monument took 20,000 workers 22 years to build. Yikes.

In case you were wondering, the inside of the Taj Mahal is just a big room with a tomb for Mumtaz Mahal in the center and for Shah Jahan on the side of hers.

As was all the rage for Muslims who built big buildings in India back in the day, there's also a mosque on one side of the Taj. This one is regularly used and I was able to offer some prayers while I was there. It's been a pretty cool and unexpected element of my trip to be able to say prayers is so many iconic mosques.

Obligatory tourist photo of me holding the Taj Mahal

My tour guide was awesome in taking photos for me and knowing where all of the best spots were. A handful of them came out pretty nicely. The one big drawback to this guy was he was kind of creepy and got increasingly creepier throughout the day. Which is kind of unfortunate, but not really one of those things you can prescreen for at the train station. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Crazy marble stuff all done by hand

After the Taj Mahal, my guide took me around to a bunch of local artisan shops to show me some of the work that he claims is only done in Agra. At each place I went to, there was a proprietor who first showed me about how their craft was done (all of them were done by hand, regardless of the craft). This was inevitably followed by a lengthy hard-sell to buy their goods, which was unfruitful for them, but learning about all this stuff was pretty cool for me. First we went to a shop that makes incredibly intricate marble works.

If you mess with this dude's rug he will cut you

Then we went to a rug shop where I saw a dude hand-weaving a rug. I had NO idea how long a hand-woven rug takes to make (literally months of non-stop work) but they are beautiful when they're finished. There's a part of me that's like "cool, there's definitely something special about rug that's made by a guy who spent nine months of his life going this" and then another part of me is like "there are machines that can do this in literally less than a day, this man is wasting his life and also his rug is going to get sold for like... $1,000." Handmade crafts as a whole, for the most part, I've always been kind of skeptical of. Yes, from an artistic perspective, they're a worthwhile endeavor. From a functional perspective, I've heard countless times about the quality of handcrafted work but... can't you get even better, more precise quality from a machine at a fraction of the time and cost? After the rug place, we went to another place that does fine needlepoint work with metallic threads.

Around noon, my guide took me to a restaurant where there was a dude, Jackie, with a tabla drum singing songs in Hindi. He was really talented but I didn't recognize anything he played. After a few songs, he asked me if I knew any Bollywood songs so I asked him if he knew my favorite one "Tujhe Dehkha To Yeh Janna Sanam" and he did! He then did a few other songs from that genre/era of music that I definitely recognized. He definitely turned what was an otherwise average meal of chicken korma into a really memorable experience.

My creeper tour guide at the Red Fort

After lunch my guide took me to one more artisan shop that sold jewelry and showed me this black stone that creates this four-point star in the light. Which you can only get in Agra. Except I'm pretty sure you can get it lots of other places around the world because I'm pretty sure I've seen it before. My guide finally took me to the other place I wanted to see in Agra, the Agra Fort (sometimes also called the Red Fort, though there's also a Red Fort in Delhi, so... that's confusing).

Obligatory tourist photo from the
Red Fort of me holding the Taj Mahal

This jewel was apparently in some 007 movie.
They claimed it's a real stone. Which they
just leave out for people to touch with no
security. Yup. Totally real.

The Red Fort was pretty awesome. It's big (not as big as the one in Delhi, but more awesomeness per square foot). The Red Fort was used as a palace for a bunch of years. You can also see the Taj Mahal across the river from the Red Fort. Fun fact: Shah Jahan's son took over power from his father and imprisoned Shah Jahan inside of the Red Fort for eight years; luckily, he could still see the monument he built to his wife from his placial prison.

After the Red Fort we went to even more shops, which at this point was getting tiresome, before finally dropping me off at the train station. I'm taking another overnight train to my next destination: Amritsar. At least this time, I'm not a total train noob. Minus the creepiness factor of my guide, Agra on the whole was a lot more awesome than I was expecting.