mamasewingcircus.com

200 rupees.

They are like Starbucks – one on every corner.

It just occurred to me that I didn’t take pictures of my view. I’m on the 7th floor just below the smog belt. That is a gas station and a major road, and what I believe are houses. I’m unclear on who lives in that kind of house – I’ve been told upper middle class – so Engineers??

A car ad.

In a city with over 13 million residents shoved into 500 square miles, there is no wonder that personal space is “very less”. I find this constant flood of people exhausting. Every last square inch of the city is filled with people on foot, in autorickshaws, in bike rickshaws, on wagons, in cars, on bikes, in trucks, on tractors,… A wall of pollution (both diesel and sound) fills in the gaps left over, and like the humidity, it weighs heavy on you long after retreating into private spaces. (Even the food I’ve eaten tastes like the stench of pollution.) According to census data, 24% of this population in Delhi is considered part of the backward classes – i.e. the abysmally poor living in those tiny makeshift huts. Much of their lives happens on the street. Driving in the morning, you can see people brushing their teeth with sticks, bathing in cisterns or buckets, cooking. If I had a dollar for every person I’ve seen using the outdoor latrine, I’d no longer have to work after today.

Doug sent me a picture of his commute this evening. The sunsetting over the traffic in the bay area just seems so calm in comparison to Delhi. No wonder yoga started, here. I find myself constantly trying to seek out calm and quiet, retreat from the sensory overload. In backwoods in the states, you can go outside to be at one with your thoughts; here, one must retreat deep inside.

There are many reasons traffic is so bad in India. I’d say amazingly, infrastructure is not the predominant reason. One of the vendors we are looking at is located in Noida, Uttar Pradesh – just over the river from us – so we had a longer commute through a mildly more rural area, today. We happened to be driving back from a meeting this afternoon when the cows (sheep and goats!!!!) were coming home.

Just like everything in India, the cow situation is complicated. According to the natives, it is illegal to keep cows in Delhi, but you can see from my video, they are quite prevalent, roaming the city in small packs and sometimes alone. Why isn’t the law enforced? Aside from transportation and dairy, cow patties are a major source of fuel for the backwards classes. These cows are their livelihood. Take the cows away from those who have them and you’ve basically written them a death wish. There are similar struggles with child labor and education. Although school is compulsory for children under 16, I’ve seen many children roaming the streets, selling wares, and some even digging ditches at all hours of the day, when they should have been in school. Send them to school and they’ll likely go hungry. Keep them on the streets, selling, and they are stuck on the streets for the rest of their lives. I appreciate these are all problems we solved in the United States a hundred years ago, but our population was much smaller and our economy more established.

Click to read. India is happy.

Totally. Just still so happy that Obama is our next president.

I don’t recall if I mentioned that the other night we left after dark and had a near death experience navigating the pitch dark tiny marble-lined stairwell to the office as not only was it not built to US code and each step was set at it’s own non-standard height, but there were giant pipes twisted across the steps. Well, I vowed we’d leave earlier each remaining day, but as we walked down tonight at dusk they had installed two giant fluorescent bulbs to light our path. Fresh exposed wires and all!

I love the British infused politeness, here. A sign over the exposed wires awaiting placement of a sconce:

My celebratory dinner of dosas at Sagar. Yum. Lets just hope it stays where I put it.