Humayan's Tomb

Humayan's Tomb

September 10, 2016

Today we got an eyeful! After hours of research and discussion, we decided to visit Humayan’s tomb in New Delhi, only 15 minutes from our apartment. This is a 15th century Mughal mausoleum that looks like a palace and hundreds of VIP Mughals are buried there. (Mughals were Muslim Turks and Persians who occupied northern India for a few centuries.)We were disgruntled at the ticket counter to learn that domestic visitors pay 30 rupees while foreign visitors pay 500 rupees for entry! Inside the gates were several ancient buildings and a splendid stone wall. There was one brownish stone domed mausoleum that matched the wall. We saw a Muslim man in his white hat and robes talking on a cell phone walking on top of the wall with palms and other massive trees behind. So picturesque. Another group of friendly Indian teenagers literally told me to watch as they did daring parkour jumps along the wall. I was charmed. Of course we had to find the ancient stairs and walk the wall as well.

Isakhan's tomb near Humayan's tomb.

Through another gate and we saw Humayan’s tomb, which predates the Taj Mahal and which locals say is about 70% as magnificent. Under the domes were 8 arches with lattice stone work to let the breeze through. While it was brutally hot and sunny outside, the tomb was cool and breezy inside. Several rooms held raised stone coffins. We spent an hour or two looking around then walked across the street into a totally different world towards Karim’s restaurant.

The sun shone down on hundreds of men wearing immaculate white hats and tunics/salwar-kameez talking and going about their business. Vendors at the street side were selling fruit and purple flowers and the street was lined with shops that as usual gave me sensory overload. A boy walked by with two decorated goats on a leash, and dozens more goats grazed in a tiny area behind a fence. We asked for directions to Karim’s and were pointed down stairs into a tiny alley of shops selling clothing and handkerchiefs, with tailor shops and bead necklaces. The amazing thing is we were the aliens walking through normal life for these people. I felt like I was in a national geographic movie, but this was real life. So I didn’t try to take pictures of people. Little children selling flowers and persistent beggars followed us with babes in arms. A few sat on the ground, maimed or crippled. Christy says one woman with a baby asked for money for ice cream for her child.At Karim's we ate mutton, which usually means goat meat in India, and I wondered if we had seen the source of our meat.Our lunch was superb and a bit problematic. Even though the goat was boneless, it wasn’t sinewless and we had to pull shreds of meat from other parts. The power went out twice during lunch but never for long. With our curries, they served us a plate of sliced red onions with lemons and green chutney. When I asked the waiter what the chutney was for he said it was for the onions. It took me a minute to realize the onions were a salad. I had been mixing it all in with my goat and roti and that worked too. I think it was a clean neighborhood. I don’t remember trash strewn about or bad smells. I feel so blessed to have witnessed such a scene. I wonder if even God is fascinated with His variety of children. His view is infinitely wider and deeper than mine.

I lifted this from google images but I swear the kids are even cuter in real life.

From this marvelous scene we took an Ola cab back to our favorite, modern materialistic air conditioned upscale shopping mall and movie theater. We wanted to see Sully, about the pilot who landed his plane on the Hudson River, but it’s for 18 and over in India, no exceptions (PG 13 in the US.) So we settled for Pete’s Dragon in 4D. It was a fun escape but nothing like walking through that old neighborhood by Humayan’s Tomb.

P.S. Scott has a Hindi-English app that sends him one English vocabulary word a day. Today's word is "crop" and the example sentence is "This land is out of crop." :-)

Big Basket and IMAX

I'm a Big Basketeer! Big Basket is an online grocery service that I love, although I still try to do most of my shopping in the local brick and mortar shops. Prices are comparable to physical shopping. Delivery is free if you spend over 1000 rupees (about US $15), otherwise you pay a 20 rupee delivery charge. Express delivery in a couple of  hours also costs 20 rupees (30 cents). Big Basket requests that we don't tip the delivery men.
Scott is convinced that Snickers (35 rupees/ US 50 cents for a big bar) is a nutritious snack for those wanting to gain weight so he takes pleasure in eating one every day. He encourages Danny to eat one daily, and surprisingly, Danny doesn't want to . He craves variety. In any case, one week all the shops in our market were out of Snickers. We quickly ordered some from Big Basket and the next week both our market and BB were out of Snickers. We're convinced that we caused a Delhi-wide shortage. My friend the grocer alerted me when I showed up at his shop and Snickers were back on the shelf. I've got a deal with this grocer that if I spend 2000 rupees in his shop then he'll have the groceries delivered. That's when I load up on 1 liter cartons of Tropicana 100% juice and unrefridgerated milk, peanut butter and jam, tomato puree and bags of flour. I carry the eggs, loose in a  plastic bag.

We've been to the movies twice. We've only found one theater that shows movies in English and it's in a huge new 3-story mall about 30 minutes away. They have a giant IMAX theater where we saw Interstellar. It was awesome! The mall is clean and air conditioned and full of glitzy shops, including Fabindia. It's more ultra-modern than any mall I've seen in Utah. I imagine that Dubai has malls like this. I suppose the US probably does too.

Fabindia has great traditional and western style Indian clothes.

First Impressions

We have two of these loveseats. Our apartment came furnished.

I'm going to copy from my first impressions of India and our apartment from another file.

15 August 2016

Snippets

When I look out our new living room window, this is what I see. It’s a 4^th floor view, with a narrow white marble balcony across the whole front. Directly across I see roofs and sides of more apartment buildings. We might call them condos. The taller ones look pretty run down, but our neighborhood is mostly made up of 4 story apartments of different design. It's urban, which I'm not used to.We have some green vines dangling down from pots on the roof, and better yet, a park across the street. All I can see of it from my window is tall trees, but inside is a small oval brick walking path and many flowers and benches. There’s a run-down paved section with a miniature volleyball or badminton court. No net. [I’ve since seen young men playing cricket there.] Just outside the front door is a generator or some electric noisy box that I’ve dubbed Hell’s evil exhalations. It’s not on today, but usually it’s blowing out hot hot wind right onto our front door in already hot hot weather. You know that lovely feeling that you get on a hot day after a cool shower when you step out and your skin feels cool and tingly with evaporation? Well, here you don’t get that because it is so warm and humid. Today it rained early, and the sun is shining now for the first time all week almost. Our apartment has cool white marble floors, two big bedrooms and a small one that Christy is sleeping in. Each of the big bedrooms has an attached bath with shower heads high and drains on the floors. There's no division between the shower and the toilet. The toilets have a separate sprayer on a hose for hygienic convenience. I think being able to wash down the whole bathroom and squeegie it down the drain is a good system.  One more closet holds a toilet, sink and mini washing machine. Our full baths have a glassless screen window that lets hot air in all day. I’ve seen chipmunks and pigeons preening on the window sill. The beds are very hard. Is that supposed to be good for us? The air conditioners work, but the landlady keeps telling us to turn them off when we’re not using them. (She lives with her family on the first and second floors.)The ac units are the same style that we just had installed at home. [Silly me. Hell's evil exhalations is our living room ac condenser unit. It drips into a bucket that we have to dump twice a day. All just outside our front door on the landing.] We're very happy with our apartment.

We have a maid named Meena. She comes every morning to mop the floors and dust. She speaks little more English than I speak Hindi so we cannot communicate. Except I did ask her using body language if she has children and she said Yes, holding up three fingers. I held out a hand low and then high. She held out her hand high, then low, then in between. We pay her 3000 rupees ($45 US) per month and she gets two days off. We told her thru the landlord that she can have every Sunday off as well. A man comes every morning but Saturday to pick up the trash from outside our door. I think he’s called a picker. He sorts thru the trash and recycles and composts what he can and sells any scraps that are valuable. We're paying him 150 rupees per month. Can that possibly be right? That's less than $3. I hope he services the whole block. We'll have to give him a bonus.

Buying chicken at INA

Mutton, or goat meat.

Yesterday I slept a lot of the day with a mysterious dizziness and fatigue. It occurred to me that I might just need more calories. This heat flattens the appetite and the food is simply much less rich here; very little meat or cheese. We've all gone down a size or two.

Today I triumphed by making myself go out to the meat market for boneless chicken breasts. We're eating chicken about twice a week and virtually no other meat. Any time we go out or order in we get meat.  I've never seen beef for sale in any form. The sale of beef is illegal in some parts of the country, since cows are holy to the majority. I rode in an auto rickshaw for about 20 minutes to get to the famous INA Market. This is upscale and has goods from all over the world. Every shop has someone with excellent English and many employees speak other world languages as well. I saw a Chinese couple today but no other white people. The produce is more varied than in my neighborhood; they even sell lettuces. In addition to chicken, I bought Nutella, Japanese medium grain rice and a few plastic storage dishes. But chicken was my main object in going. The guy in the back of the photo below cut off some breasts for me. The guy in front weighed my chicken on a balance scale and took my money. INA is a covered outdoor market with concrete floors and tiny ally-ways with mini-shops shelved floor to ceiling with wares.The ground in the market is wet, because they clean the floors every morning. But by the meats, you can see that the water is mixed with blood from the slaughtering. I felt my skirt wet against my ankles while I was waiting for my chicken. Ewww.

Chicken.

My most tender beggar day

Today I had the best encounter with a beggar ever!

The day started well. I took a bicycle rickshaw to Bluebells to exchange my library books (another important perk). My rickshaw driver was young and healthy and he sang Indian sounding songs as he peddled along. From Bluebells I walked towards Modern Bazaar, an upscale grocery store that sells boneless chicken. I hadn't actually been there, but I'd ridden past it and I sort of know the area. I never found Modern Bazaar, but I did find myself at Kailash Colony metro station, and from there I walked to an uppish-scale market that I like. They have Grand Bazaar, a grocery store that sells some foreign foods, The Big Chill, which sells safe/clean milkshakes, and Maxim's Bakery. I bought a footlong pizza at the bakery to try for dinner tonight, along with two pieces of "squidgy" Belgian chocolate cake. Outside of the grocery store I smiled at the cutest grimy little beggar boy ever. He looked about 10. He had bright eyes and a dazzling smile and I shook my head.

Dealing with beggars here is tricky. Organized crime has organized begging, a subsection of human trafficking complete with women holding drugged droopy babies and cripples and children who hold onto you and plead with their eyes. It's pretty awful. My sources have said try to find other ways to help socially in India so you don't support human trafficking. It's pretty grim and I've mostly steeled my heart against it. (There are also children selling dish towels and trinkets and such at intersections. They walk among the stopped cars knocking on windows trying to earn a few rupees. There's usually a supervising adult in sight. I don't know if it's legal or not.) Anyway, this kid was pointing into the grocery store and looking at me and pointing. I thought, maybe he's hungry. I'll go see what looks good to eat. He was pointing at the ice cream freezer. That's fun. I chose a little cup of mango ice cream and held it up to see if that would win me another smile. The kid was standing outside the store because the ubiquitous door attendant wouldn't let him in. He shook his head and pointed again with big gestures. I asked a store clerk to find out what he wanted. The first clerk said no but another clerk stepped out to talk to the boy. It turns out he was pointing at the big bags of whole wheat flour used to make flat breads here. The clerk held up a bag of flour. The boy jumped up and down and smiled happy communication success. The flour cost 180 rupees, less than $3. I paid for it along with my microwave popcorn and chocolate milk powder, and the clerk took it out to the boy. I followed shortly and the boy was waiting with the flour bag on one shoulder, to say "Thank you," the way they do with the drawn out short a sound. Pretty sweet. Even if he is working for someone, they've all got to eat. How much sweeter if he has a mother to take it home to. God bless the children on the street.

Eid and The Hindu news

Seen in The Hindo: India's national newspaper since 1878:

"City hospitals quiver under chikungunya strain". That's a mosquito-born virus that is here in epidemic proportions.  Hospital patients are even having to share beds.

The Indian Supreme Court has ordered that the government finalize a policy to end mass sterilization camps by December 31, 2016.

Three cheers for External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj who intervened to help a Pakistani refugee girl attend school here.

I read that Nepal's Prime Minister is a former Maoist Rebel leader. That doesn't sit well with India's government, but EAM Sushma Swaraj is reaching our to find common ground.

US soldier Chelsea Manning made it into the paper. It seems the Army caved in to her hunger fast and has agreed to let Manning have her gender transition surgery.

We had two holidays last week.
The kids were out of school for Eid. When I asked the fruit wallah at the market what it meant he said "It is for the Muslims. It is for the cutting of the goat." Google confirmed that there are two Eid holidays: one celebrates the end of Ramadan; this one is connected with the pilgrimage to Mecca and commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac where a ram was provided. Muslims sacrifice lambs, buffalo or goats and donate the meat to the poor.

The other holiday was a whole festival honoring Lord Ganesha (the elephant god of prosperity?) and it climaxed in people all over India going down to the rivers and immersing Ganesh idols in the water. Something like that. We saw colorful plastic elephant gods for sale on roadsides and in markets all week.

A typical day and Bluebells

The grounds at Bluebells:an oasis from urban noise, crowds, even cows.

Friends at home say they want to hear about my day to day life here. That suits me because it's my day to day life here that I truly enjoy. On the good days. Most days.

On a typical weekday, I wake up to my alarm at 6:35 to be up for Danny and Christy as they get ready for school. One fantastic perk of Scott's Fulbright-Nehru grant to teach and do research here at the India Statistical Institute is a connection with the Bluebells International School, It's an academically rigorous K-12 with forward thinking teachers and a beautiful campus. Even though we came in mid-term, Bluebells Principal Mrs. Suman Kumar agreed to let D and C attend some classes  for electives credit at home and also use the school's research/computer lab to do their online classes from Timpview. India has a lot of very competitive national testing that D and C are skipping. They like going to school even though they are the only white kids, except three kids from Turkey. They're hanging out with bright teenagers from  Cuba, Laos, Madagascar,  Indonesia, Vietnam, and of course, India. Generally,  the schools in Delhi are English immersion.I think. At Bluebells, if the kids get caught speaking Hindi, they have to write a 1000 word essay, but it's not enforced. On Teachers' Day, students from class XII taught all the other students while the teachers prepared a talent show assembly for the students. Danny taught 4th grade English and got a major award, well, a certificate for "secured 1st position in teaching primary school." We're so proud of our boy! Christy is the star of the soccer team. They've had two practices and the only scheduled game got cancelled. They put Christy on forward and the coach told the girls the kick off strategy was for Christy to boot it straight into the goal. Hmmm. Christy also got to make an announcement on the school radio. I definitely get the feeling our kids are , what, mascots? Show and tell? In any case, they both have a safe, clean, beautifully landscaped place to go every day with kids their own ages and lots of  work to do.
Which is more than I can say for myself.

The classroom building at Bluebells.

Back to the schedule:
Danny and Christy walk out at 7:10 to catch their bus in front of the nearby market and they're home most days by 2:45. At 7:10 I offer to make Scott a PBJ for work and he always says yes. He goes into work sometime between 8am and never; he usually works one day a week at home and otherwise he's gone by 10. Or 11. And home by 6:30. Or 11. That's my Scotty.

My washer.

I do a mini batch or two of laundry every day and haul it up one flight to the roof to hang on the lines. I'd enjoy the gentle breeze and the views up there if it weren't always so blasted hot, and it won't be. I learned to pay attention to weather from inside the house after my clothes on the line were soggier when I went to bring them in than when I had taken them up. I had to start over, starting with the spin cycle in my mini-machine, for which I am most grateful.

I go to the market almost every day. I've made a few friends there: the fruit wallah; the Mother Dairy man; the tailor who parks his sewing machine under an eave; the adult son of the owner the main grocery shop; the boys in the copy and printing shop (the boys are between 20 and 40, I'd guess, and only one is friendly, but I'm there all the time since we don't have a printer.) There are very few women working in the market. I know which store has 4-packs of toilet paper and which has Lays potato chips for Scott and which has good shampoo options and which has envelopes. Today I found facial tissue. A triumph. I'm genuinely pleased with my problem solving today. Bless all the people who can speak to me in English. I'd be helpless.Or I'd study Hindi in earnest.

After Danny and Christy come home we talk a bit and they both escape to their phones for a while then have a snack then dig into homework. I read or start dinner or fall asleep.

We often watch a netflix episode together before bed. I'm only now feeling settled enough to realize I need to find something meaningful to do outside of this flat. Teaching English is probably what I'm most qualified for and I don't have a work visa so it will be service.

That's enough drivel from Delhi for one day. I'll post it and see if I regret it.