etaindesigns

One of the fringe benefits of having a brother who is going to marry and Indian is of course the opportinutiy to travel to his fiance’s home country for the engagement ceremony. Indians put a big value on family, and love to party so this is as good as an excuse as any to have fun.

First impressions: -Smog. No sooner than the plane touched down than I begin to smell the nasty sort of diesel fuel-ish aroma of out-of-conbtrol pollution. We arrived at night in the dead of January and once we disembarked we could see the brown hazy fog not only outside but inside the terminal!

After a couple crazy phone calls to a cab arranger who is also a friend of the fiancé, we are meet outside the gate by a guy named Satish who promptly introduces himself, grabs my suitcase and takes off across a double 4 wide set of pickup lanes in heavy traffic. I’m chasing my suitcase and the ‘rents who also came along for this adventure are tagging along far behind.

The only problem with this arrangement is the Indian tendency to defer to the wearers of the silver hair. It doesn’t help that my father is stone cold deaf and my mother has a hard time with the accent.

As an example Satish puts my folks luggage in the trunk of a 20 year old Toyota, and mine on top, not tied down in any way to the luggage rack! I climb in the front and off we go. My brother said this was good time to take a nap if the driving scares you and he was not kidding.

The main weapon when driving in India is the horn. Staying in your lane, entering intersections in a timely and polite manner on signal –optional. Apparently there are only sealtbelts in the front, where I am riding, whether that I a good thing or a bad one (since I get to see all the play-by-plays of the Indian version of gridlock traffic) is up for debate.

One consolation is that the speed limits (if there are any?) are realtively slow. 60 km/hr on the express, often a lot less right down to dead stop, depending on traffic.

The roads are also shared with trucks of all shapes, sizes, three-wheeled motorized rickshaw wanna-bes, scooters, pedestrians and cows! -Don’t hit the cows! Traffic stops for these sacred animals in the one country where they are not likely to end their lives being made into hamburger, by motorcar or otherwise.

Jan, 7^th 2013,

Our first full day in India. A day of delays cancelations and diminished expectations followed by triumph….

…Punctuated, by jet lag, we are all slow to get going. The brother who has been here for about half-a-week already, manages to get us down to breakfast before it closes.

We meet the fiance’s parents and much younger brother “Sam” very briefly. The future in-laws seem like nice people but too soon to tell really. Fiance is nice so I’m not worried, really.

We visit Gandhi’s tomb. A popular place. It is customarily required here to take off one’s shoes before entering sacred sites as they touch the dirty unclean, and we comply, even thought this site is entirely out-of-doors. A very simple fitting monument to a man who wore only one piece of cloth at a time during his life, one he made himself. A man who singlehandedly did more to change the world and India than most others in it and who would probably think this structure of rememberance ostentacoius if he was alive to see it.

The rest of our day is stymied by closures (the Red Fort is closed Mondays) and the lingering threat of some sort of civil unrest real or imagined. There have been demonstations in response to a particularly brutal sexual assault case that has made the news both here and internationally. The victim has died in hospital in Singapore and  India gate is closed to all access on foot or car. We have to make do with a fleeting drive-by from our hired car. This situation doesn’t change for the 5 day duration of our stay.

Hunger and the need for a restroom in a country without many clean public facilities drives us to an early dinner, local cuisine, and then shopping –for silk fabric in traditional prints. I leave with an armful. About $200 worth but would be 4 times that back home…

Mixed day but ends on a high note… I love fabric shopping… Still in pain from being forced to eat curry on airplane -thanks United for lying to me about the availability of special meals on the Newark-Dehli route. We’ll be taking a foreign carrier next time.