I guess Gina was not sure what she was in for when she decided to come with me to India. She had just finished her schooling and wanted to intern at some institution in India for a few months before starting with University next year. She could help in a Girls' Home that I was connected with. And she could also see a bit of India. Sounded like a good plan... But then...
Her problems started long before she even landed as her passport went missing after she submitted it to the Indian Embassy for her visa. Anyway, it appeared miraculously a few weeks later and taking that as a good omen, she decide to fly out with me to Guwahati at the end of September. Vistara allowed two suitcases per passenger, she didn't have enough for even one! I happily told her I would take a third along on her behalf -- I seem to be able to fill any number of suitcases when I am returning home from Germany :-). But she would be staying here till March 2023, how could her suitcase with all her belongings not weigh more than 15 kilos? Well, I decided not to speculate on the subject since I had no idea; She told me she added a few more books to fill her suitcase in the end. Seeing my lot of big and bulky luggage filled to the last cranny at the train station, she commented, it really looks as if you are relocating to India!
Nothing could have prepared her (or for that matter me) for the heat and dust that awaited us at Delhi. Germany had cooled down to 12-15 degrees by the time we left and here we were suddenly in the scorching Delhi heat of 35 degrees Celsius at 7 am in the morning. How come the sun is so high up already, she asked me disbelievingly. Well... we are in the tropical zone, you know, was my lame answer. She found Delhi airport very very stressful -- she waited politely for her turn in the queue at immigration, so long that we almost missed the connection. I had skipped my immigration queue by telling everyone about my short connection! But I forgot to tell her to do the same. The chaos during the security check at Delhi airport left her completely exhausted. How can you cope with so much stress, she asked me. I don't cope, I told her. I start getting headaches the moment I land in India. I pointed out the Himalayas to her on our way to Guwahati. She looked super impressed. Those peaks are literally above the clouds, are they not?
Well, I hoped Guwahati would prove to be gentler on her. But no chance of that. The heat was equally intense, and the humidity made it worse. She immediately could feel the difference -- it is a heavy moist atmosphere where it is hard to breathe. On the way she commented on how green Guwahati was and the amazing trees we crossed at the Dighali Pukhuri. We got home, I had warned her that people would treat her differently; that she should be prepared for just about everything. Her polite hellos and hi were met with uneasy silences...those around did not know how to communicate with her. They had no English, she had no Assamese or Hindi. I had not imagined it could be so complicated, but it was. Everyone tried to be nice to her by carrying her bags -- but that was not what she was used to. She liked to be independent; she liked to carry her own bags. Didn't we do that all the time in Germany?
I set up a mosquito net for her that night, and showed her how to tuck herself in. When I asked her how she had slept the first night, she said she was not sure. She was jetlagged and exhausted. But every time she dozed off she would wake up to the noise of the whirring ceiling fan and not know where she was and where that sound was coming from. It would take her a while to figure where she was and she would then fall asleep again, only to be awakened by the sound of the whirring fan. She had never seen a ceiling fan in her life and had never slept under one. She was just not used to it. I suggested she should come into my room which had an air-conditioner, but that she found even less comfortable. She assured me that she would get used to the sound of the fan in a few days and she has... But she didn't quite know what happened one morning when she returned from the bathroom to her room to find her bed nicely made and covered! Why did someone enter her room in her absence, why did someone make her bed for her? She was not used to any of it. She would have done it herself. I told her that she would have to get used to people walking in and out of her room for no good reason.
The next issue was food. She was vegan, which on the face of it, is no big deal in India, since much of our food is vegan in any case. But it was hard to get people to understand that the spoonful of butter or ghee that they would happily add to most dishes at the end, even dal or vegetables, would make the vegan dish non-vegan. What will she eat then if she doesn't eat fish and meat and also no milk and eggs, many asked me. The rest, she happily reassured them. One trip to ODC and Gina declared that she had found more vegan stuff to buy here than she could find in a typical supermarket in Germany. That was a relief. But be careful with drinking water, I had warned her already in Germany. And when in doubt, ask me, I had told her. So whenever we went somewhere she would hold her glass and wait for me to give her the all clear before drinking. And one time she came running to me in great consternation -- what happened, I asked her? I drank some water that was given me without thinking, she told me. What will happen now? She looked completely distressed. Calm down, let's hope the water was okay. Nothing happened. And in the Girls' Home she had no complaints except that the portions of rice that they gave her were much too much for her. But since she did not want to waste anything, she had eaten everything on her plate at every mealtime; as a result of which she was feeling quite sick! In the end I had to teach her the line 'bohut besi hoise... olop koimai diya' to save her stomach from bursting.
Then came Durga pooja and Gina flooded me with many questions about what is pooja, who is Durga, why does she have ten arms and what are the priests doing and what do the mantras mean etc. She had no idea what was going on at any given point of time also why people were doing what they were doing. While trying to answer her queries I realised that I had very few answers for her many questions, I also understood that each year we go through the motions of going to see pooja etc. without really understanding what we were doing and what sense it all made. In the end, Gina was happy with the colourful gaiety under the pooja pandals, the big crowds and the fun that people were having...she was sad about the goddess being immersed in the water and about all the non-bio degradable waste that also got dumped along with the goddesses in the river.
In the pooja pandals and also elsewhere, people would look at her and start speaking to her in Hindi if they had no English. Since she did not have any Hindi or Assamese she did not even realise that people were making an effort to converse. But sometimes, even when people spoke English, there were problems. Seeing her pale and fair complexion, one kind lady who had only the best intentions at heart asked Gina to eat well since she was obviously running low on haemoglobin! And another time, a smart and supposedly highly-educated gentleman asked Gina whether Germany was divided along caste lines or tribal lines! When I reminded him that the caste system is a peculiarly Hindu phenomenon he refused to be fazed and told me that the caste system existed also among Christians! I changed the topic and kept praying to God that the gentleman might not get it in his head to ask my little ward about the most obvious topic given she was from Germany -- Hitler!
As the days went by I realised how difficult it must be for Gina to cope with India where absolutely everything was different. It was a complete culture shock. And when even I, the one person she believed she could rely and trust, let her down, she did not know where to look for help. For instance, one day she asked me whether she could go for a walk on her own and if yes, in which direction she should go. I told her. After she returned I asked her how her walk was. She told me that had a nice walk even though she did not find the road I had asked her to walk on. I told her it was impossible since there was only one road and she must have walked on it. She then asked me whether the road I had asked her to walk on had a footpath. I told her it didn't. That was the problem. Since Gina is German and I had asked her to go walking along a particular road, and she believed that I was German enough, she assumed that the road must have a footpath. Since it didn't, she imagined she had not found the road I had mentioned!
Before I end another hilarious incident -- one day, soon after her arrival, we went to register Gina at the local Police Outpost since she is a foreigner. All went well; before we left the In-Charge of the Police Outpost told us that he would come to the Girls Home personally later to check whether Gina has been provided the basic facilities. It had got dark by the time they arrived in the Girls Home evening; Gina was sitting on the floor doing yoga and was terrified to find some policemen marching into her room apparently to check on the facilities. After they had looked around and were satisfied they sat down in the Office outside; rather than leave after finishing their work they stayed on and proceeded to teach Gina Assamese! Gina had not expected Assamese lessons from the local Police and did not know what to make of it!
I'm sure she will have many more stories to share before her three months are over. So much for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment