By Kate Wallace, 1/21/2015. I was warned that getting off the plane and to a car would be one of the most overwhelming experiences of my life. I was told no one would speak english, it would be incredibly crowded and I had to guard my money and purse. As the plane landed the butterflies in my stomach grew and grew. Usually I’m anxious to get off a long flight but this time I took my time, trying to put off the inevitable. I power walked off the plane through the airport, looking straight ahead and not saying anything or making eye contact with anyone. I don’t think I noticed at the time because I was so focused on surviving the airport, but it really wasn’t that busy. A guy kept saying “miss! miss!” and I ignored him and walked past him, only to then realize he worked there and was pointing me in the directions of customs, and gave then gave me directions in english. A little bit awkward. I’ve been here for a couple days now, and this is the first of the many moments I have had where I realized I got a lot of inaccurate advice.
My contact there, Matt Beck, picked me up from the airport. After chatting for a while he said he was happy I wasn’t a closed minded westerner and that they were worried I would be so afraid I wouldn’t want to do anything. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was just being a polite Canadian; I definitely was afraid of everything. He told me the city is just like New York or any other big city safety wise, and not to worry, if I was reasonable about it I would be fine. He said to expect to get a little bit sick but it happens to everyone.
The house Matt lived at was nothing short of incredible. It was huge, with a big front lawn, fancy old cars and I was staying here for my first night and then heading to Goa. This was my first introduction to Indian hospitality. The family welcomed me as if I was their long lost Canadian daughter. They had an incredible dinner prepared for me, of which I only ate about a teaspoon of each dish thinking that even though it tasted incredible it could also kill me. After a 14 hour flight I was pretty desperate for a shower, but couldn’t get the water to warm up or get the head of the shower to turn on. I decided that all the showers in India must just be cold. My relaxing post flight shower turned into me crouched under the tap of freezing cold water.
In the morning I sat down with the family and was given a crash course on India’s history over tea and breakfast. I had more or less no prior knowledge of India’s history and was fascinated by the history of India and Pakistan. This is one of the first of many instances when I realized how much I read about other countries like Pakistan and made opinions without fully understanding the history and the root of the problem.
I heard stories from the father of how his family had to move from what is now Pakistan because they were Hindu and had to relocate to the area that stayed India. I learned a lot about the relationships between Muslim and Hindu people, and the history of the tensions between the two religions. I’m not sure how to put this diplomatically but some of the views towards the Muslim population in India were a lot stronger than I expected. After reading up on what has been happening in Kashmir the last 20 years I realized how biased my breakfast history lesson was to the Hindu Indian population. Everything was the Muslims fault, they were the ones who were violent, who were taking land, they were trying to take land that wasn’t there, who were hurting the peaceful Hindus. After doing more reading on the issue I got a more well rounded view where I could see the positive and negative actions of both parties.
I was also given a history lesson about the Sikh religion. They were described again and again as the “funny guys with the (makes motion imitating swirly ice cream above head).” Clearly there were racial tensions here too. I was later told that the history behind this, long story short: some of the Sikh population wanted to become their own country in a region in India, India said no, the Sikh population was keeping weapons in one of their temples, the Indian government went with tanks and got the weapons, and then a Sikh person assassinated the Prime Minister. When I have wifi access I’d like to google this to see if there was more to this story, since again it was very one sided towards the Indian Hindu population.
Speaking of race: I was then introduced to a big great dane. The black dog was named Obama. He was given his name on the same day the first African-American President of the United States was inaugurated into office. I’m not sure if it was meant to be a compliment or an insult, but I was not about to tag the White House in that instagram picture.