India

In the weeks before my trip to India, I was told to prepare for the unexpected. Instead of taking this advice to heart, the futility of the suggestion merely motivated me to try to figure out exactly what to expect.

But within one hour of arriving, I realized it was true. Short of tattooing the word patience to the inside of her eyelids, there was no preparing for the culture shock that the born and raised American girl would experience when dumped into the heart of Delhi.

I got my first preview of the organized chaos that I soon learned was the Indian way at the gate in Newark, NJ. As soon as the initial preboarding announcement was made, dozens of Indians began forming a mob (‘mob’ is not hyperbole) around the entrance to the temporary rope aisle the Continental employees had constructed with those retractable seat-belt-like barriers.

From a safe distance away, tucked in the corner next to a shoeshine station, I watched as the man checking boarding passes repeatedly reminded the passengers that their row had not yet been called and asked if they could step aside to let the other passengers through.

Once on board, the situation was no more relaxed. The combination of new fees for checking luggage and the strangely shaped overhead baggage compartments that refused to house more than a single roll-away suitcase resulted in an immediate shortage of storage space for carry-on bags. By the time I made it to the back half of this enormous aircraft that spanned nine seats across, traffic had become two-way. People began pushing themselves and their armloads of luggage back towards the front of the plane in search of empty storage bins. I quickly stashed my bag above my head, still three rows in front of my seat.

I squeezed my way to my seat near the window, removing myself from the center of the action, and sat back to watch the chaos ensue for the next hour or so. Apparently this had been expected because even though we didn’t push back from the gate until almost two hours after “departure” time, we touched town in Delhi a full thirty minutes ahead of schedule. I suppose that’s Continental’s contribution to organizing the chaos.

Disembarking the plane was only slightly better than boarding had been, and I quickly became separated from my seat mate and temporary best friend of the last 14 hours. Outside the plane, without the restriction of the narrow airplane aisles, navigation was even more difficult. It wasn’t that the crowd was bigger than anything I had experienced before, but it moved differently.

Walking down the streets of New York City, there is an overwhelming number of people, but they all follow the same set of social rules that we somehow learn early in life. The result is an amorphous blob of people that appear as a single organism with amoeboid-like movements. Despite the occasional bump of shoulders or sudden traffic jam as a result of an oblivious tourist stopping to take a picture of the oversized guitar outside the Hard Rock Café, the people flow through each other with an ease that belies the true density of the crowd.

In India (or at least in the airport full of tired travelers), this is not so. There is constant disruption to the stream as people suddenly and inexplicably stop, slow down, turn around, or otherwise break the social rules to which I am so accustomed. Patience, I thought to myself. Patience…

Finally, I made it to customs, only to watch the people in the lines around me shuffle forward at a rate that appeared like cars flying down the highway from my vantage point in the SLOW lane. Patience…

Ok, through customs, my first priority was a bathroom. I found the nearest ladies room and pushed my way in to find two women who I assumed to be waiting for one of the two working stalls. As I stood there, three more women came in and stood directly in front of us. The two original women then left as one more entered the room. This last woman had her timing down right. Just as she stepped in front of me, a stall opened up, which she didn’t hesitate to take. I glanced at the others (who had already cut in front of me) to see if they were similarly frustrated by the woman’s disrespect, but they were too distracted by the other stall freeing up, which they of course slipped right into. I sighed. Patience…

I found my ride and we headed to the car that was waiting to take me to the guesthouse where I would be saying for the first week. I quickly learned that the crowds of the airport were just a preview. The roads of India were the main attraction. Apparently, the white dotted lines mean very little to the drivers of this country, with three or four cars lining up across the two lane highway. Motorbikes then filled in every open gap that remained. An arrhythmic beat of car horns sounded throughout the forty minute ride, but drivers took no notice. It was just part of the soundtrack of the organized chaos of India.

At long last, we arrived at my room. I had left my house a little over 24 hours ago, and I was exhausted. Despite the fact that it was only noon at home, I had no trouble falling quickly into a sound sleep in my paper-thin bed that was a good two inches shorter than me.

After a frustrating morning of stares, glares, and language barriers, I was grateful to meet up with a friend of a friend who was currently living in Delhi doing graduate research. She knew enough of the local language to bargain us an acceptable price on a tuk-tuk, or rickshaw, ride…or as I like to call it, a ‘risk-all’ ride.

Crammed three across in the back of a green- bottom- yellow- covered, motorized tricycles, we clung to our seats and our lives as the rickshaw swerved in and out of the other equally sporadic drivers. At one point we were actually headed down the wrong side of the street (which, confusingly, is the right side) into two oncoming lanes, if you can call them that, of traffic. I counted five incidences that would easily have been accidents in the States, but somehow the drivers here knew just what they were doing, even if no one else did.

With my heart still racing, we finally arrived at the Defense Colony, a ritzy part of town, with gorgeous homes, nice parks, and a great market. We grabbed a great Indian lunch at a small restaurant in the main market area. We ordered three different dishes, and within minutes, the table was full of traditional South Indian cuisine.

All social etiquette abandoned, elbows flying, we reached for bits of idli (cooked, packed rice cakes), uthappams (a large pancake filled with onions and tomatoes), and a sampler platter known as thali that came with three pieces of poori (big, round, hollow bread), a bowl of rice, and eight or 10 ‘sauces’ and dips I can’t name and couldn’t even begin to describe. The overriding theme of the meal was dipping some kind of bread or rice in some kind of spicy ‘sauce,’ vegetable, or yogurt. It was an exorbitant amount of food, but for three small girls, we made an impressive effort, and in the end, we had all filled our bellies for less than $7 total.

After lunch, we stopped at a group of street vendors selling food and drink from small carts, known as dhaba. It felt more like the blacktop at recess than a street corner in Philly. Food was being served on disposable flatware, but it wasn’t really ‘to go.’ Indians of all ages were sitting around, enjoying the street food that comprised 90% of their diet or otherwise hanging out with their friends who manned the carts. That is, until we walked in.

With everyone’s uncensored, barefaced attention, we made our way to a vendor selling freshly brewed chai. After a brief negotiation of price (we settled on 14¢ a piece), he shooed the flies from the pot and poured in mixture of milk, tea, and ginger. Served in plastic dixie cups, we carefully accepted our steaming teas and found a seat in a nearby park to enjoy. But the moment was tainted: as I sipped my drink, I was silently preparing myself for the rickshaw ride home.

It’s a bit strange the way the people here take such effort to clean. In one of the dirtiest cities I have ever visited (both in terms of dust and litter), two common practices strike me as a bit peculiar.

First, people are absolutely obsessed with washing their cars. Every morning, dozens of Indians are out in the streets, wiping their cars down with a rag and a bucket of water that is barely clean enough itself to get the job done. And with the driving as crazy as it is, dust is a permanent fixture in the city, making their efforts to keep their vehicles clean valiant but completely futile.

Also, locals are constantly sweeping the dirt in front of their shops and homes with straw brooms that look straight out of a witch’s wardrobe. They shove leaves and litter into the street, only for the zooming traffic to throw it right back.

Dirty, but organized… I thought.

I felt like I had just stepped out of Bloomingdale’s evening wear department. My friend and I had just spent nearly an hour trying on shirt after shirt after dress, being waited on hand and foot by the local shopkeeper, Dilip. We walked out beaming from the experience and satisfied with our purchases of 15 shirts, one pair of pants, and one dress. The difference: the shop was the size of my parent’s master bathroom, and all told we spent less than $100.

It’s true that even a glance at an item on the sidewalk will indicate enough interest for the marketplace people to jump at the opportunity to sell you everything they have to offer. And it’s true that a simple ‘no’ gets you next to nowhere it fending off their aggressive sales. But there’s a silver lining: if you actually want to purchase something, you’ll receive better service than you could ever hope to afford in America.

We managed to spend nearly the entire day shopping in a five-block strip in Delhi’s Connaught Place market. Although most of the shops were still closed up when we arrived at 10:30am, within an hour, the place was bustling with the organized chaos to which (troublingly) I was becoming accustomed.

Tiny shops filled to the brim (and spilling out the door) with shoes, clothes, jewelry, scarves, carved masks, wooden boxes, brass trinkets, and more lined the main street, with many more shops dipping back along the side roads. Shopkeepers stood in front of their shops, coaxing passers-by inside with promises of quality products at incredible prices. Children and women roamed the sidewalk, their goods strung around their necks and arms, following shoppers (especially white ones) for upwards of two blocks sometimes, begging for a purchase. In all cases, their original asking price was about three times what we ended up paying, and I still had the feeling we were paying the ‘white man’s price.’

After a full morning of shopping, we stopped at small restaurant for another fantastic Indian lunch. Today we tried vada, fried rice donuts with, of course, a spicy kick; dosai, a thin crepe-like pancake stuffed with potatoes, onions, tomatoes, or any combination thereof; and another thali, the sampler dish we had tried on our first day. Once again, the food was delicious and cheap, and we had our fill for less than $3 each. (Good thing too, given how much we’d managed to thin our wallets at the market that morning.)

Every good day starts with a good breakfast. So far, we’d been surviving on granola bars from home until lunchtime around noon or 1pm. What did Indians eat for breakfast? we wondered.

Turns out breakfast is included with our stay here, something we’d totally missed out on for the first four days. So we rang up the caretakers of the guesthouse, who immediately came down to fix us some tea and coffee (ahh, my first coffee in a week), but then they disappeared again. Maybe we hadn’t made ourselves clear.

I was learning that our communication frustrations stemmed from more than just a language barrier. Mannerisms and facial expressions also differed vastly between the Indian and American cultures — the gestures I had relied so heavily upon in Italy last year often proved completely fruitless. A head bob, for example, indicates an affirmative response, and looks suspiciously like our head shake, a well-known (but apparently not universal) ‘NO.’

We rang them again, and when they returned, we tried to explain that we wanted something to eat. At first they pointed to some bread on the counter. Toast? Yes, that’s a good start, but do you have anything else? Omelets, they suggested. Yes! Perfect. Thank you so much.

But just a few minutes later, they were gone again. Thoroughly confused, I decided to give up for now and head down to the nearby phone booth to make my daily phone call to the States (with the time change, first thing in the morning was the best chance I had of reaching home). But I didn’t even make it to the corner when one of the caretakers turned into the driveway on his bike, a bag of groceries swinging from the handlebars. Breakfast!

Sure enough, he had run out to the market to purchase our breakfast of eggs, toast with jam and butter, and a fresh banana. It was simple but delicious, and a welcome reminder of home.

After a morning of sight seeing, including stops at the Bahai Temple and Humayun’s Tomb, we caught a tuk-tuk to the Lodhi gardens. We had thought three people was a full car, but we were now four! With one person hanging out the side, we managed to cram all of us into a single rickshaw. The poor thing could barely make it up the only hill in town – a 300-yard overpass on the highway.

Finally we made it to the park. It was really incredible how the stark contrast between the bustle of the streets to the calm of the woods had such a dramatic effect on my mood. It was a pocket of tranquility in the hectic life of the city. And like breakfast that morning, the familiarity of woods was almost like stepping out of Delhi straight into my own backyard again.

The brick paths of the woods eventually led us to sprawling lawns, speckled with Indians enjoying this lazy Sunday. Kids played ball; women rested on blankets; some people were even practicing martial arts under the shade of a large Neem tree.

While the park certainly had its similarity to those at home, it wasn’t without its touch of India. Large, Indian monuments sat at the center of the lawns, topped with traditional bulbous towers. And after only a few minutes of sitting down for a card game, we already had our first group of young Indian beggars.

A young Indian girl started performing gymnastic tricks of incredible flexibility and what had to be some kind of double-jointed-ness. She was soon joined by a young Indian boy, tapping on a drum slung over his shoulder and swirling a pompom on a string attached to his hat. After a short but entertaining performance, the couple started asking for money.

They were followed up by another group of young Indians, this time four boys. They were very polite and seemed to take a genuine interest in us as we used a quick guide to Hindi to attempt to converse with the oldest of the boys. But again, it soon turned into a plea for money. The boy began inching closer and closer to our bags, which we pulled closer and closer to our bodies. I was beginning to realize how poor India really was and the impact that had on daily life in Delhi.

After the boys left, we had yet another guest, but unlike our previous visitors, this man wasn’t interested in anything we had. He was interested in what we were doing.

Standing over my left shoulder, he silently watched us playing our card game. He asked if he could watch us play for a while, pulled a neatly folded piece of newspaper from his pouch, laid it on the ground, and sat down on top of it. Dirty, but organized, I thought to myself.

He started naming the numbers and suits of the cards in Hindi and insisting that we repeat him. This carried on for another couple of hands until finally he took the deck of cards and started turning them over one-by-one. He pointed to each of us, one at a time, asking us to name the suit and sometimes the number. He excitedly congratulated every correct answer and pushed on through all 52 cards. By the end of it, we could all say hearts, clubs, diamonds (and ‘stone’), king, queen, and a half a dozen numbers, and he could proudly say that he was the one who taught us these skills. I really don’t know who gained more from the experience, but I’m sure it’s one we will all remember for a very long time.

This morning, a group of us headed over to the Red Fort, near Old Delhi. We were only eight this time, (after the madness of yesterday, we learned the value of smaller groups) so we caught three auto-rickshaws for the hour-long ride.

Amazingly, the first two rickshaws arrived nearly simultaneously. We wandered just inside the gates to get away from the bustling street. As we waited for the last of our group to arrive, a young Indian couple came up to me and said something in Hindi while pointing to a camera. I assumed they wanted me to take their photo in front of the fort. No, no, no, he said, repeating the word ‘photo,’ this time pointing at me and then his wife. He wanted me to pose for a photo. Got it. Seemed slightly strange to me, but I realized that I was the only blonde girl in sight. And hey, who doesn’t like to feel like a celebrity every once in a while?

Well, it turned out to be a little more frequent that ‘every once in a while.’ Within just a few minutes, a group of teenage boys came up to me asking for a photo, and despite the initial promises of ‘just one photo,’ I proceeded to stand next to four boys, one at a time, while their friends (and mine) snapped away on the camera. Maybe I should start charging for this, I thought.

Just a little while later, we noticed that a large school group of boys was staring at me. I stepped in front of them to snap a picture of my fan club, and they went absolutely crazy, screaming, giggling, jumping, and otherwise trying to attract the camera’s attention. I felt like Justine Timberlake coming over to greet a group of teenage girls: we’d moved beyond fame and now bordered on irrational obsession. After a few minutes, we started to move on, and they followed closely, making no attempt to hide their stalking.

Eventually, we lost our Indian shadow and made it back out to the streets, where we received plenty of stares as always, but not the open interest the boys had shown us inside the fort. We crossed the street to enter Old Delhi, a very different and separate part of town that has a large Muslim population and the largest mosque in India.

Now these are the crowds I imagined of Delhi. Times Square on New Year’s Eve; worse, if possible. Masses so thick you barely have room to breathe; stimuli of every form coming from every direction at every moment that your senses are quickly saturated with Indian life; filth that made your skin crawl, figuratively if not literally – Old Delhi was an experience.

We fought our way in through one of the three remaining gates of the deteriorating city walls only to find ourselves jammed up by a line of carts full of clothing. Hand-pulled carts carrying sweaters, pants, socks, shirts, and more were squeezing their way through a narrow gap between a couple of parked cars; the same gap we were trying to traverse. It was quickly made clear that we were the ones in the way, which, as it turns out, could have been our motto for the day.

When we finally made it through, we were hit with the reality of a slum. There’s nothing like a visit to one of the poorest parts of the world to make us appreciate the privileges we’ve been given and the life we have back home. On top of the sensory overload we experienced in the bustle of the city, our psyches were tested as our emotions were pulled in every imaginable direction: fear, compassion, disgust, guilt, anger, love, naivety, and heart-wrenching homesickness.

Those who had the energy to move didn’t stop moving, hurrying about for 18 or more hours a day to earn maybe a handful of rupees with which to buy a meal for their families from the street vendors, who were also struggling to make it to tomorrow. The food they served was covered in flies and they were forced to use the dirty street water to clean their dishes.

Women clung to their crying babies, already four months pregnant with their next child. Where were these babies born? Where were they conceived?

Then there were those who didn’t have the means to work. They lied on the streets, behind the street carts, wherever they could find a few feet of open space. Sometimes, a cloth covered their faces so you couldn’t be sure if they were just napping or if the eternal sleep had finally claimed them. One man, without the energy to stand up, rolled onto his side to relieve himself, getting as much on his trousers as the curb where he rested.

And if what we saw wasn’t enough to elicit an irreversible change of perspective, the smells of the slum would finish the job. The stagnant stench of struggling life, of creatures living and dying in their own filth, pervaded the smog that suffocated this depression. The occasional pleasant scent of the fried food of the vendors was immediately replaced by gags of excrement and stale urine.

We were still in a state of shock (cultural, economic, and emotional) when we made it out of the slum and entered the busy street markets in the heart of Old Delhi. This area was a bit livelier, with everyone scurrying about at a pace on par with a gang of NASCAR drivers stuck in the DC rush hour. Again, sights, sounds, and smells bombarded us as we got shoved through the streets. It reminded me of the advice given in the Poisonwood Bible: just stick out your elbows and let the crowd take you; that way you won’t get trampled in the rush. Stopping for pictures was a treacherous endeavor.

The market, known as Chandi Chowk, is divided into sections based on the goods being sold: silver, silk, ribbons, spices, etc. It felt strangely like Venice, with narrow streets lined with tiny shops full of color and commerce, but not without about that distinctly Indian flair. Goats, cows, dogs, and donkeys wandered through the streets. Monkeys scampered about on power lines that were so tangled it was hard to imagine electricity passing through them without igniting the shops full of flammable fabrics directly below.

At long last, we made it to our destination: Karim’s. The restaurant only dates back to 1913, but the cooking comes directly from Mughal emperors, as far back as the 1520s. Cooking for Mughal dynasty was an inherited position, and the chefs traveled with the Mughal dynasty until the last king, Bhadur Shah Zafer, was dethroned in mutiny of the British East India Company’s army in 1857. The ancestors of Karim’s current cooks fled the British violence and took up residence in an area now known as Farukhnagar. In 1911, Haji Karimuddin moved back to Delhi and started cooking once again, opening a small dhaba that sold just two items (alu gosht and daal served with rumali roti) and eventually establishing the Karim’s we visited today.

“I want to earn fame and money by serving the royal food to the common man,” Karimuddin said, and as far as we could tell, that’s exactly what he did. The restaurant was set back from the busy street a little alcove of eateries that had all stemmed from the single small dhaba Karimuddin started nearly 100 years ago. Awards and reviews from food critics all over the world lined up along the back wall of the main seating area, raving about the food, service, and cleanliness of the establishment.

Slowly, a group of about 25 of us trickled in, once again imposing our American presence on the people of India. At least at this popular attraction, they were equipped to deal with such large groups, and within 30 minutes, our table was piled high with some of the most authentic Indian food Delhi has to offer, including what appeared to be a giant, slow-roasted turkey leg (at least we assume it was turkey as none of us had ever seen a three-foot-tall chicken). The meal was topped off with individual servings of cold rice pudding that were absolutely delicious.

After lunch, we visited Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India. The view from the top of the steps gave an honest depiction of the density of the crowds we had just experienced, and it was no less impressive from this safe distance. We completed the day by renting a couple of bicycle rickshaws to help us more fully explore the markets and sites of Old Delhi. After that morning’s experience, we decided it safer to yield to the touristy suggestions of an experienced tour guide. None of us wanted (or needed) a second trip through the suffering slum.

I looked at my watch. 5am. But this time it wasn’t because my body hadn’t adjusted to the time change. It had, and I didn’t want to get up, but in just 30 minutes, we were catching a bus to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, and I wasn’t about to miss out on it.

I splashed some cold water on my face, threw on the cleanest clothes I could find (at this point in the trip, my options were limited), and headed out to the lobby to meet up with the rest of the group.

Agra was only 220km away, but with the omnipresent traffic in India, the drive took over four hours. Our first stop was Akbar’s Tomb. Like all Indian architecture, the structure was impressive, but what captured my attention were the animals. Around the gardens, dozens of endangered deer grazed on the lawns, and everywhere (the gardens, the trees, the pathways) were hundreds of monkeys that were not so endangered. Like squirrels on a college campus, these monkeys were accustomed to the constant flow of people in and out of the monument they called home. After a quick glance at the tomb, I spent the rest of my time watching and photographing the monkeys: mothers and babies; young ones playfully running in circles around the chiller, older animals that relaxed at a distance, disinterested in anyone that didn’t come bearing gifts of food; and the aggressive juvenile males darting back and forth to one another’s perches at opposite ends of an ancient aquaduct…all with their distinctly human-like facial expressions and body movements.

The next stop: the Taj Mahal. I never understood the emotional reaction some people have to incredible pieces of architecture until today. I guess I still don’t fully understand it, but I can now say that I’ve experienced it. The second I stepped through the gate and saw the magnificent white marble glowing in the distance, my heart skipped a beat. My breath caught. It was absolutely stunning.

After many stops along the way for photographs, we finally made it to the base of the monument. We donned shoe covers and headed up the stairs to the terrace surrounding the main building, the mosque to the west, and the guesthouse to the east (added for symmetry).

I took the opportunity to step away from the group. Like the Lodhi gardens, it was another pocket of tranquility in the midst of a chaotic country. A cool breeze came off the river that ran behind the complex, accentuating the feeling of separation from the India I had known for the last week. These are normally the situations that I cherish for the linguistic creativity they lend to their descriptions, but there are no words to describe what I felt being inside one of the world’s most exquisite sites. I walked back to the main gate to admire the monument from afar for the rest of the short time we had before heading back to Delhi.

On the way home, we stopped by a marble working factory. We were escorted down to the basement where we got to see two men working on a marble tabletop. One man cut elaborate designs into the marble with a small scalpel-like tool. The white marble was painted red so he could see where he had cut and the pattern he was creating. The other man spun a metal wheel which he used to shape the precious stones to fit perfectly in the cut marble. The piece would eventually be secured in the marble using a natural glue made of a mixture of oil, lead oxide and wax, and the red color would be clean away to reveal the final product.

As I watched them work, I was easily impressed by the speed at which they were able to create such minute details. Even so, a small tabletop like the one they were currently working on would take between 300 and 700 man-hours, depending on the intricacy of the design.

At long last, it was time to return home. Because of the hour, we were in for an even longer drive than we had that morning. Within minutes of hitting the road, the rocking bus had nearly everyone deep in a typical, exhausted tourist coma.

I woke up on Thursday morning to an inbox full of worried emails. Terrorists in Mumbai had attacked a railway station, a restaurant, a business complex, a hospital, and two high-end hotels all in the span of about an hour. As our group gathered in the lobby around 10am to catch a bus to the first of the wedding events, we watched the BBC tell the story. At that point, at least 80 people had been confirmed dead, including two terrorists and the chief of Maharashtra’s Antiterrorist Squad, and the terrorists were still holding hostages inside both of the hotels.

It was a surreal morning, and it felt a little difficult to forget about what was taking place less than 1,000 miles away. But we boarded the bus and headed to the bride’s parents’ house for the Mehendi, a traditional event during which the women received henna tattoos on their hands and feet. When we arrived, the stress of the outside world evaporated as we stepped through the draped entry way and into a whole new world. Flowers lined the driveway, colorful chairs and couches with contrasting throw pillows littered the yard, and conversation and laughter filled the up the space with an air of celebration and life.

Many of the girls had already received their henna and sat around with their hands held out to dry. Men stood about, sipping on blood marys and chatting about the day’s upcoming events. The bride sat in her throne under a canopy of colored flags, as two young Indian men worked on decorating her hands and feet with intricate and elaborate henna designs.

After more than three hours of eating, drinking, and socializing, we headed back to the hotel to rest up for the night’s Sangeet, the pre-wedding party. It was a good thing too, as we ended up dancing our way to almost two in the morning.

At 6:30pm, we again gathered to catch our bus to the farmhouse where the Sangeet was being held. Almost everyone showed up in newly-purchased Indian garb. Saris, suits, scarves, and kurtas (or panjabis) filled the lobby with the vivid colors so characteristic of India…and they were all being worn by a group of sloppy, post-college American white kids. I wondered if we would draw fewer or greater stares dressed like this.

When we stepped off the bus, I once again felt as though I had just stepped out of a ramshackle, colorless house into the brilliantly vibrant world of Oz. Lights covered the trees and bushes led the way to the marigold archway that served as the entrance to the party. Huge orange and gold canopies covered a large eating area, bar, buffet, and lounge area with chairs and couches as well as cushions for relaxing on the ground. Servers walked around with just about every drink you could think of and pots of delicious, hot, Indian hors d’oeuvres.

Everyone was just getting in and settled when the bride, Rhea, walked in. She was absolutely stunning, dressed in a vivid red and gold corset, full-length turquoise skirt, and matching turquoise scarf. Her hair was pulled up with an elaborate, rhinestone hair pin, and a charm fell down from her hair and rested just below the part on her forehead. She immediately had the attention of the entire room, and Tyler, the groom was no exception.

As she made her way through the crowd, stopping every other second to pose for more photographs, the music started up and the party began to get into full swing. After just a half hour or so of mingling, the group was drawn together as some relatives and close family friends gathered and began playing drums and singing in Hindi.

One by one, a man called for the bride and groom’s loved ones to dance, while everyone clapped and cheered them on. Once he got through the immediate families, he called for aunts, uncles, cousins, and finally, all the friends. By the end of it, everyone was on their feet, dancing to the cadence. There was no doubt about it: I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

It was then time for the organized performances, which turned out to be more like the most fun talent show I’ve ever attended. First, the African music ensemble, that both the bride and groom were a part of in college, reunited on stage to perform some of their old songs. More than twenty ensemble alums had gathered at this wedding, and for most of them, it was the first time they’d see each other in years. Led by Sowah, the ensembles leader of the last 22 years, they quickly fell into their old rhythms to create some of the most intoxicating and unique music I have ever heard.

By the middle of the performance, members of the audience were taking turns on stage, once again dancing their hearts out. It was really incredible to see the clash of cultures unite on stage, with splashes of Indian and western dance moves grooving to the African beats.

After the ensemble, it was time for the choreographed dance performed by some of the bride and groom’s friends, myself included. A dozen of us took our places on stage and proceeded to give a spectacularly uncoordinated performance. But we drew plenty of laughs and by the end of it, we had filled the stage with the rest of the guests, and the dance party that lasted the rest of the night was finally underway.

At the end of the night, we had all eaten our fill, drank the good whiskey and wine, danced till we dropped, and otherwise exhausted all possible outlets of fun. When the groom announced that it was time to go home, we were all a little disappointed, but none of us had the energy to protest. After one final song, we gathered our things and headed back to the bus. One more day had come and gone in India, and we were all glowing from the experience.

I sat up in bed and surveyed the room. Clothes, scarves, bengals, and a hodgepodge of marketplace purchases littered the room, a stack of dirty breakfast plates teetered haphazardly on the table, and a pile of empty water bottles accumulated in the corner. I laughed. In my two quick weeks here, I had definitely taken on a bit of the Indian organized chaos myself.

As I began the arduous task of packing up everything I had come with and nearly twice as much stuff I had acquired over the course of the trip, I tried to think of one word that would sum up my experiences here. One-word exercises are never easy and clearly I’d have to expand upon my answer to everyone at home, but in the spirit of simplicity (something I’d been craving since arriving in Delhi), I came up with ‘edifying.’

There’s no question that this world was different from my own. So different, in fact, that halfway through the trip, I stopped trying the find the similarity and finally started to embrace the disparity. Like A Christmas Carroll taught us all so long ago, there’s no better way to learn about one’s life than to view if from the outside. And believe me, India is about as far outside as you can get from the good old U.S. of A.

So what had I learned? Intellectually? Morally? Spiritually? Two things stand out: perspective and, as I probably could have predicted in my first 12 hours, patience.

We had run the gamut of emotions, from the guilt-ridden depression of our walk through the slum to the electrifying high we all experienced at the joyful Sangeet. But what hit me harder than any of those unforgettable events were the children I saw every day, struggling to survive, begging for money well past the point of exasperating annoyance, being refused time and time again by the stingy, white visitors. Yet, in spite of these hardships that would surely break any one of us, they would run back to their friends, smiling and laughing (perhaps the one truly universal gesture), hardened to the vastly diverse socio-economic scale on which they were rock-bottom.

You’d have to be, I guess. It must be a learned survival tactic for these kids to be so impervious to our seemingly despicable lack of compassion. Despite our repeated snubs, we were far less resistant to their suffering. While I may have appeared unaffected on the outside, every new child, hand outstretched, fake tears in his eyes, hit me like a brick in the pit of my stomach. My stresses and worries at home suddenly paled in comparison to the hardships that these children faced every day and now, to me, seemed like a welcome distraction from the guilt of privilege we struggled with each time we interacted with these kids.

Patience was a lesson that was learned across the board in India. From the chaos of the trip over to the even more frustrating trip home and everything in between, there’s no doubt that my breaking point for daily aggravations had shifted. Out of necessity, that is. I couldn’t have survived a single day in Delhi, nevermind two weeks, if it hadn’t.

While the examples are not limited, let me just share one story that occurred near the end of my stay that really epitomizes the differences in customer service between the American and Indian cultures. It was the last night and the last of many eventful bus rides. We were headed to the International ??? for the wedding reception, the most formal of all the wedding events. All dolled up and rearing to go, we boarded up with plenty of time for a prompt entrance…or so we thought.

After 20 minutes and two U-turns, the bus driver finally stopped to ask directions. He hopped off the bus, rattled off something in Hindi to a man standing on the side of the road, and returned in a flash, seemingly with a newfound exuberance representative of success.

But just two blocks down the road, the bus stopped again. And again, the bus driver hopped off the bus, this time with his assistant in tow (they always came in twos for some reason). We ignorantly assumed he was once again asking directions, but after 10 minutes and no sight of our drivers, we decided to investigate. We found them a block down the road, relieving themselves and smoking cigarettes, seemingly with no intention of coming back to the bus!

When we finally managed to reach someone who both spoke Hindi and knew how to get to the reception, the bus made yet another U-turn and drove less than two minutes down the road in the opposite direction. We had been less than a mile away the entire time.

We should have known by that point in the trip that nothing was easy, but somehow, India still managed to surprise us every day. Our best weapon against the culture clash of 20-something Americans traveling en masse in the heart of Delhi was patience, and we had all gained a healthy serving of that.

Yes, it had been an amazing adventure, but I was ready for the familiarity and comforts of home. I was ready for a long, hot shower and some fresh, clean clothes and, above all, my very own warm, cozy bed to crawl into. I was ready to wash my body of the inescapable dirt of Delhi and release my mind of the constant turmoil I’d experienced in the face of poverty and the shame I’d felt for luxury of a middle-class life in America. And I was ready for the simpler and slower but much more efficient pace of American culture once again.