Sue here. Our third and final day in Delhi. Norm is doing a great job of describing our activities (read his post from today first), so I am just going to add some of my first impressions of India (warning: this is more of a reflective post, so feel free to skip if you are not remotely interested in how India is making me feel!).
Delhi was perhaps a challenging place to start our journey. This city assaults the senses like no other place I have been to. Our photos will never do it justice – it has to be experienced. The sights, sounds and smells combine to create a rich and challenging encounter with humanity. What has made the biggest impression on me so far? Without doubt, the community kitchen at Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, a Sikh temple, where an army of volunteers provide meals for around 10,000 people every day. What an example of faith in action. (By the way, thanks for including such a flattering photo of me Norm!). Other memorable experiences include our guide Jai’s careful explanation of the tenets of Hinduism, which showed me that there are more similarities than differences in what we each believe. I was also struck by the contrast between the chaotic bustle of day-to-day life on the streets (for example the market area in Old Delhi) and the serene paradise of the gardens at the Red Fort and Humayun’s Tomb – confirming the importance of retreating from the hustle and bustle of life to find some peace. And then, there is the traffic. We have decided that there is a set of rules for driving here that neither of us understand, but that seem to ensure that collisions are mostly avoided, even when they seem inevitable. The lesson? Find out what the rules are in new situations!
Before we came, I was nervous about the apparent dissonance in spending a lot of money on a month-long vacation to a place where people are dying on the streets for lack of food. To be honest, I didn’t really want to come. But Norm convinced me that it would change my life, and I am beginning to see how that might happen. Signs of extreme poverty are everywhere (once we step outside the sanitized confines of the hotel). Most heart-breaking today was the sight of a little boy, not more than five years old, weaving his way between cars in busy traffic trying to sell his bunches of flowers, with no sign of a supervising adult. Even crossing the road is a terrifying experience here and the sharp contrast with our regulated lives in the West, where such abandonment of a child would result in rapid intervention by social services, brought home to me the depth of inequality in our world and this is just one of many examples we have seen so far. What am I going to do with these embarrassingly new insights? I don’t know yet, but Norm says he has noted significant improvements since he was last here 20 years ago, so clearly things can change. There is also a vitality and sense of community, that is hopeful. So I feel that I have already learned a lot in just three days. Watch this space.
On an entirely different note, a few people have let us know that they have tried to post comments to this site, but have been unable to do so. Please forgive our technological inadequacies – we have no idea how to enable this but will communicate with the blog master and see if we can make the necessary adjustments. Meanwhile, please feel free to send us messages via text (Norm - 507 993 2347, Sue 507 250 0143), Facebook messenger, or email (npdavies1@hotmail.com).
Moving reflections Sue
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