India: I Love it and I Hate it

That’s what my roommate Ann said, a few days into our trip. I don’t think it’s possible to go to India and not come away a different person. My Western viewpoint may have colored some of the behaviors as more mean-spirited than they actually were, and for that, I'm sorry.

The way we live in America is so incredibly privileged: imagine all the asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks of your town, the landscaping outside your house completely non-existent: everywhere, dirt, or mud, broken concrete and bricks. This is the every day world of most Indians. 

extra fancy,
Raj Mandir Movie Palace
photo: Pamela Munger

There’s no trash pickup. The gutter or rail track is your very public bathroom. Fancy public bathrooms are porcelain-covered holes in the floor, with garden hose and no toilet paper (that’s why Allah gave us a left hand); many along the way were nothing more than holes in the floor open to the gutter outside, draining into the ground and into the drinking water.

Fifty Rupees is a lot of money to most people; that’s $1. Because of the near-constant barrage of people wanting your money, it seems that India welcomes you with open palms. The idea of India as a great destination for budget travelers is both true, and an illusion. You will pay for absolutely everything, and everyone expects a tip. If India could figure out a way to bottle air, it would be sold for 100 rupees a liter, like the water. And you would probably have to crush the bottles after use as you do the water bottles to keep them from being refilled and resold at the village tap. On the other hand (the right one?), even with all the things you must pay for, you can easily get by here on less than $70 a day, including a decent hotel and meals. You can call it greedy, or enterprising; desperate or sensible.

Bathing, Delhi

I don’t know whether people tried to trick me because I was an unescorted Western woman, or whether it was the norm. I was overcharged in three different restaurants. In the Channa market, I paid 500Rp for two bracelets costing 250Rp, and instead of giving me change, the guy threw two less-fancy bracelets in the bag, told me what a deal I got, and turned his back on me. In retrospect, it WAS a deal (and I ended up wishing I had bought more), but I felt cheated, because I knew I was paying several times more than an Indian would pay, and I was forced to buy something I didn’t ask for. The same with the hotel: as I was leaving a tip, the doorman told me I owed for a bottle of water from the room. News to me—Ann paid for a bottle of water from the room before she left. When either of us tried to enlist a rickshaw driver, he would give us a price that was far too high or agree to a price than insist we owed him three times as much when we got out. All the public buildings we visited had higher prices for non-Indians. 

Wall fresco at Red Fort, Delhi

The crush was mainly in Delhi and Agra, and of course it wasn’t all bad: there were random acts of kindness, like the young girl who paid two rupees so I could use the bathroom in the Lodhi gardens, or the free food at the Sikh temple. But so often people looked at us Westerners with disgust. There’s a real disconnect between need and pride. Their persistence and refusal to acknowledge “no-means-no” caused a rapid and desperate decent into rudeness when I couldn’t get “no” across. They think we’re spoiled and mean; we think they want our money and hate us for it. I do know that everything is based on family connections. And as foreigners, we’re here today and gone tomorrow. My first taxi driver told me sincerely that Indians are very nice people. 

ladies of the Temple, Karauli
Photo; Joseph Trinidad

Perhaps it’s true and, coming from the West, we misinterpret a lot of behavior.

I can tell you that in Jaipur, “no” actually DID mean “no”, and in the village of Karauli, defensive behavior wasn’t even necessary: people were genuinely welcoming and warm. Perhaps the big cities breed more desperation, more grasping, and more anger. I'm reading a book that I started before my trip--however, it now makes so much more sense to me: "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers" (Katerine Boo) is about the lives of a group of slum dwellers in Mumbai. As of 2008 when the book was written, the educational and business reforms that are bearing fruit now were not even a decade old. However, the deal-making and pay-offs that many of us would consider to be corrupt were--and are--in full swing. If anything, it made me recognize the same behaviors in America--it's simply more hidden. 

India is not a country that’s easy to understand. It seems barely out of the feudal age, yet the fantastically carved stone palaces of the wealthy speak of brilliant achievements in the arts and sciences, and everywhere colorful saris light up the drab and muddy land. Women are the flowers of India, but remain second class citizens at best, in spite of the romantic Bollywood stories. I love it and I hate it.

To see specific reviews of guides/travel companies, places to eat, stay and shop in India, see my custom guide to the golden triangle on GoGoBot.