So much for keeping the blog updated on this trip. I will spare you any excuses – none of which are sexy.
India. Oh, India. Or, Delhi, rather (as on this trip I did not leave the city). You are so full of everything loud. Constant honking, tv sets blaring, live “music” set at the highest decibels, demonstrations with men on megaphones, people speaking at one another in a volume that in every other country could be considered yelling…. Even the telephone and door bell in my hotel room are insanely loud. When you have to weigh the worth of your hunger against the need not to jump out of your skin at the arrival of some Chicken Tikka, there is something slightly off.
The most strikingly loud, and my most favorite, thing about India, though, is the colors. Bright blues, yellows, oranges, and reds splash across every frame of view. From the clothes, to the advertising, to the Bollywood film ads on every channel, to the house paint that splashes the sides of homes at every income level – the most beautifully (perhaps because so unexpectedly) on the 8x8 stone walls of homes in slums. As we sit in traffic on the way to our conference, I want so badly to snap a photo. It’s a perfect shot: up on a hill in the slum just a few hundred yards from our four-star hotel, a woman dressed in mustard yellow pants, a purple and red tunic, and a charcoal gray cardigan is squatting in front of her turquoise-painted home. She is washing several steel bowls from a bucket of water, presumably gathered from the open drain just down the street. Off to the side, 4 children ranging from maybe 2 to 8 years old play with 3 stray puppies. Yes, a perfect shot. But alas, I sit on my hands and leave my camera in my bag. While beautiful and no doubt useful in upcoming publications, it would be an unfair shot, one stolen with absolutely no justifiable source of permission. And so, instead, as we drive away, I close my eyes and go over each detail of the scene in my head, forcing myself file away the image that will never be printed, but still be thought about, no doubt reinforcing the importance of the work I feel so lucky - and proud - to be doing.
India. Oh, India. Or, Delhi, rather (as on this trip I did not leave the city). You are so full of everything loud. Constant honking, tv sets blaring, live “music” set at the highest decibels, demonstrations with men on megaphones, people speaking at one another in a volume that in every other country could be considered yelling…. Even the telephone and door bell in my hotel room are insanely loud. When you have to weigh the worth of your hunger against the need not to jump out of your skin at the arrival of some Chicken Tikka, there is something slightly off.
The most strikingly loud, and my most favorite, thing about India, though, is the colors. Bright blues, yellows, oranges, and reds splash across every frame of view. From the clothes, to the advertising, to the Bollywood film ads on every channel, to the house paint that splashes the sides of homes at every income level – the most beautifully (perhaps because so unexpectedly) on the 8x8 stone walls of homes in slums. As we sit in traffic on the way to our conference, I want so badly to snap a photo. It’s a perfect shot: up on a hill in the slum just a few hundred yards from our four-star hotel, a woman dressed in mustard yellow pants, a purple and red tunic, and a charcoal gray cardigan is squatting in front of her turquoise-painted home. She is washing several steel bowls from a bucket of water, presumably gathered from the open drain just down the street. Off to the side, 4 children ranging from maybe 2 to 8 years old play with 3 stray puppies. Yes, a perfect shot. But alas, I sit on my hands and leave my camera in my bag. While beautiful and no doubt useful in upcoming publications, it would be an unfair shot, one stolen with absolutely no justifiable source of permission. And so, instead, as we drive away, I close my eyes and go over each detail of the scene in my head, forcing myself file away the image that will never be printed, but still be thought about, no doubt reinforcing the importance of the work I feel so lucky - and proud - to be doing.
