I have been trying to write a follow up blog to my last post two months ago but I honestly don't know how I feel about India. Some days I wake up so angry that I have to live here and sometimes I am truly fascinated to be able to have this experience with my family.
I will never love India. I can say that without hesitation. Apologies to my husband, and his family who all lived here 30 years ago and still have magical memories of the country. Different city, different decade, different experience. This is considered a hardship post by the US Department of State. It is labeled thus for a reason.
I have to bleach my vegetables, take my chances with local meat products, or whatever is on offer at the commissary, and live in a house that I would have been delighted with 20 years ago but now, a three bedroom apartment built roughly 50 years ago just doesn't scream "I've made it". As I write this, my housekeeper, who shows up sporadically since she is always having some kind of crisis, is mopping the floors. I know what you're thinking. Poor me, I have a housekeeper. If I didn't, I'm certain I would have left months ago. Everything needs to be cleaned here every day. It's dirty. I don't know how the dirt gets in but it does. And, now that it's trash burning season, the air is a putrid mix of noxious fumes and dust. The poor people in the slums cannot afford to heat their huts so they burn garbage to keep their children warm at night.
My younger son, Ewan, had his first soccer game the other day and I offered to walk with him to the field at the British School, which is just down the street from our school, and close to the compound. I had never been there and so we set off hoping to find it. We did find it, it is located just past the enormous slum stuck between the two schools. Apparently, the workers who came to Delhi to build the schools put up these make shift homes close by and then just never left. Generations have now lived there. I cannot believe that I had never seen it before. I could certainly smell it but I thought that was just the natural smell of New Delhi. We passed by tiny little boys playing cricket in the filthiest clothes I've ever seen. They seemed happy and even said hello. Amazingly, they didn't ask for money or food. People were coming and going, children were playing and laughing, if I hadn't seen the actual slum, I'd have thought it just an ordinary neighborhood with kids playing on the periphery.
I do what I can, I know I could do more. I also know what my limits are and there are some days when I wonder if I will make it through this posting intact. I actually wonder if prolonged exposure to a place like this could make you bipolar? I am just not one of those people who is comfortable going out to lunch and spending more for one meal than most of these poor people will earn in a month. I feel guilty but I also like to eat lunch out sometimes so I get angry, then I feel sad. I know I have to carve out a functioning and happy life here for my boys and my husband, and I do. But, I sing a little less, never have impromptu dance parties in the kitchen anymore and drink way too much red wine. I know it will get easier once I wrap my head around the fact that I cannot fix this place. I always thought that I would be one of those people who would change the world or make a huge difference in someone's life. I was spared in Christchurch because I had something really important I had to do on earth.
Coincidentally, today is my anniversary. I've been married to a great man for 19 years and we have two amazing children. I suspect that the lives I am meant to enrich here are theirs. And that, I can do.
I will never love India. I can say that without hesitation. Apologies to my husband, and his family who all lived here 30 years ago and still have magical memories of the country. Different city, different decade, different experience. This is considered a hardship post by the US Department of State. It is labeled thus for a reason.
I have to bleach my vegetables, take my chances with local meat products, or whatever is on offer at the commissary, and live in a house that I would have been delighted with 20 years ago but now, a three bedroom apartment built roughly 50 years ago just doesn't scream "I've made it". As I write this, my housekeeper, who shows up sporadically since she is always having some kind of crisis, is mopping the floors. I know what you're thinking. Poor me, I have a housekeeper. If I didn't, I'm certain I would have left months ago. Everything needs to be cleaned here every day. It's dirty. I don't know how the dirt gets in but it does. And, now that it's trash burning season, the air is a putrid mix of noxious fumes and dust. The poor people in the slums cannot afford to heat their huts so they burn garbage to keep their children warm at night.
My younger son, Ewan, had his first soccer game the other day and I offered to walk with him to the field at the British School, which is just down the street from our school, and close to the compound. I had never been there and so we set off hoping to find it. We did find it, it is located just past the enormous slum stuck between the two schools. Apparently, the workers who came to Delhi to build the schools put up these make shift homes close by and then just never left. Generations have now lived there. I cannot believe that I had never seen it before. I could certainly smell it but I thought that was just the natural smell of New Delhi. We passed by tiny little boys playing cricket in the filthiest clothes I've ever seen. They seemed happy and even said hello. Amazingly, they didn't ask for money or food. People were coming and going, children were playing and laughing, if I hadn't seen the actual slum, I'd have thought it just an ordinary neighborhood with kids playing on the periphery.
I do what I can, I know I could do more. I also know what my limits are and there are some days when I wonder if I will make it through this posting intact. I actually wonder if prolonged exposure to a place like this could make you bipolar? I am just not one of those people who is comfortable going out to lunch and spending more for one meal than most of these poor people will earn in a month. I feel guilty but I also like to eat lunch out sometimes so I get angry, then I feel sad. I know I have to carve out a functioning and happy life here for my boys and my husband, and I do. But, I sing a little less, never have impromptu dance parties in the kitchen anymore and drink way too much red wine. I know it will get easier once I wrap my head around the fact that I cannot fix this place. I always thought that I would be one of those people who would change the world or make a huge difference in someone's life. I was spared in Christchurch because I had something really important I had to do on earth.
Coincidentally, today is my anniversary. I've been married to a great man for 19 years and we have two amazing children. I suspect that the lives I am meant to enrich here are theirs. And that, I can do.
