What I learned on my trip to India

Hi, do you like my outfit? It’s nice, isn’t it. I feel so feminine in it. Exotic even. When I wear this outfit to work, very often an Indian person will ask me if I’ve been to India and I will say, “Yes, yes I have.” And they will say, “You went for business”. They don’t ask, they state it, like it is a fact. 

So, I say “No, I went there on vacation.” They usually nod in an understanding way and tell me, “You took extra days after business”. “No, just vacation.” It is so interesting to watch them comprehend this...unexpected information. I literally had one guy say, “Noooooooooooooo. WHY????” I learned that people don’t believe me when I say I went to India on vacation.

Look at this fancy food! Another thing I learned is that I can gain weight even though I’m eating completely vegetarian.

Mahi and I took the train to Bengaluru (Bangalore) so that I could meet many of my colleagues I work with all the time but have never met. Driving in Bengaluru is unlike anything I had ever experienced before, but being an aggressive driver myself, I wasn’t scared or worried. https://photos.app.goo.gl/ifo3hMByZuxepRNq8

I appreciated the way everybody just knew what to do. I was quite the picture riding on the back of Sharief’s motorcycle wearing my Ann Taylor pin-stripped suit. Sorry, no photo. You’ll just have to imagine it in your mind. We went to Nandi Hills after sleeping overnight in a room provided by Mahi’s mother’s employer. It is a rather large insurance company and apparently this is a perk, or benefit. There are simple, single rooms available in most large cities that cost you nothing to use. You just need to reserve it ahead of time. Nandi Hills is beautiful and was the first time I’d ever seen monkeys outside of a zoo. Careful, they will come down and steal your food. 

The train going back to Chennai was several hours late resulting in us not departing until 2 or 3am. I won’t lie, it was misery. Such tardiness in the US is a rare and not tolerated, but in India, it is part of every day life. My spoiled rotten self was indignant at being delayed, I was hungry (Mahi’s family is vegetarian, so none of the food was familiar), on top of being jet lagged, and then there was the bathroom incident…I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say toiletries are handled differently than I am accustomed to and when my bladder woke me up in the middle of the night, I forgot about that little detail and found myself in a predicament for which I only have myself to blame. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I wanted to go home. 

I made my way back to my wood plank with 2” vinyl mattress suspended by chains between two other wood planks and cried myself to sleep. The third time my hips woke me up to do my pancake flip, I could see it was no longer pitch-black outside. I crawled out of my bunk to wake up Mahi. I don’t know if I can sufficiently describe just how cramped it is inside these trains. Suffice it to say that the best I could do was stand in the isle and wiggle Mahi’s feet. Poor Mahi. I am easily 20 years older than her, but now she had to deal with me like one would a homesick child. I was crying and slinging snot and people were looking at me and I didn’t even care. I was decided. As soon as we got back to Chennai, I was going to change my ticket and go home. I didn’t care how much it cost. I tried to get sympathy by texting my husband, but when he replied, “I tried to tell you how different things were over there…” That was not the right response. Don’t worry, we’re still married.

But Mahi and her cousin pampered me, and Mahi took me to go eat pasta at this British restaurant, and I got cake for dessert and we stopped at this little market where I found gummi bears, tuna fish, mayonnaise, crackers and sweet pickles. Stacy can make tuna salad. All is not lost. She will survive India. Praise Tuna!

We traveled by combination of auto-rickshaw, bus and train. This is actually a rather large auto-rickshaw because we had luggage. We left Chennai and started our tour of Southern India. First stop, Nagercoil. Before going into any where, you must take off your shoes. Before going into temple, you need to wash your feet. Men have to take off their shirt. Single men have three strings they wear at all times that traverses diagonally from the left shoulder across their chest. Married men have six.

Next was beautiful Kanyakumari.  While standing in line I noticed that the idea of personal space is much smaller than what I’m used to. In fact, you don’t even have to put forth effort to walk when in a queue. The crowd will move you forward, touching all parts of your body in the process. We went to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. According to local legends, it was on this rock that Goddess Kumari performed austerity and where Devi Kanyakumari’s footprint is impressed into the rock. 

As we went further and further South, I noticed the people got darker so when I walked around, I, well, I stood out a little bit. Okay, I’ll admit it. I stood out A LOT. People stared. Men, women, children…it didn’t matter. This was the kind of staring where you feel it, ya know, so you look around and you catch their eye, but they don’t look away.  Now, that isn’t something that I’m used to.  I don’t typically get that kind of reaction when I walk down the street. I’d wave at people when I’d catch em doing it and consistently either they would immediately look down and away like, “Crap, I’m busted” or they’d smile and wave back. Now, that was awesome! Then, they’d want to take a selfie with me. Mahi apologized, “I’m sure that must bother you.” I reassured her, I didn’t mind. “I’m a rock star! I’m Beyonce!” India taught me what it was like to be Beyonce!

I noticed a lot of men wearing a black veshti. This means they are on the Sabarimala temple pilgrimage. During the 41 days of Vratham, the devotee has taken a vow that includes a lacto-vegetarian diet, be celibate, abstain from alcohol, not use any profanity, control anger, not cut hair or nails, and must help others. They are expected to bath twice in a day and visit the local temples regularly and only wear plain black or blue colored traditional clothing, but he does not wear sandals.

There were cows and dogs and goats walking around freely and no one thought anything of it, but when we saw white people, and I can honestly say that we saw white people a total of five times on our two week trip, each time my friend’s mother would nudge me, point, and say, “Your people.”  

Now, there is this train that goes over the ocean…https://photos.app.goo.gl/GkonVLmFrLqK6pBAA If you are impatient, go to the one-minute mark…

On our way back to Chennai, we stopped at the Sri Ramanashramam and we climbed up Arunachala "The place where lord Shiva manifested" in our bare feet. https://photos.app.goo.gl/m9eu8CGrAuwfqRNCA

I bought a sari and I got a tattoo.

I realized something when I was preparing for my trip. I was mentally going through the exercise of imagining my arrival into India and it went something like this:

"Passport, please." "Sure, here you go." "What brings you to India? Business." "Um, no, vacation." Raised eyebrow. "Where are you staying?" "With friends, sir." "Your friend's name?" "Mahi." "And her surname?" Pause. "Well...it starts with a 'S'...and it is really long..."

I realized this was bad. Really, really bad. Six years I have known my friend and I hadn't put forth the effort yet to be able to spell her last name, much less pronounce it correctly? So, the absolute best thing I learned BEFORE my trip to India, was how to spell and pronounce my friend's entire name: Mahalakshmi Sundararajan

My "tung-a-chee" (which is little sister in Tamil). What kind of sister would I be if I didn't have a picture of her when she first woke up?

These are only the very highest of highlights of my trip. I learned more about myself than I thought was humanly possible. If you ever get a chance to go to India, do it. It is a life changing experience.