willful nomad

So it's already been almost three weeks since I arrived in Delhi, but it's finally time to start the blog.

And thus it begins.

I'll import the note I've already published on facebook and start publishing here first. Some notes will be longer accounts of travels, others will be short snippets of things I encounter just in day to day living in a place as diverse and baffling as India.

It's been a crazy three weeks for a number of reasons, but I feel like I'm ready to get this show on the road.

That said, read and enjoy, whomever you are.

Penny
-Willful Nomad

"The best word to describe Bombay is 'relentless.'" I had flown in a half hour earlier and had been taken by the view from the window; it reminded me of a less mountainous Vancouver, all seaside and hills. But now I was receiving an initiation-by-auto with Varun in one of Bombay's famous traffic jams. "Oh, and it smells like fish, because of the sea, and rusting iron. And sweat."

If I were asked to hang the whole of my five days in Bombay on one thing it would be the traffic. I spent hours in the car! It wasn't all bad, mind you – getting from the airport to Divya's house was the single greatest rickshaw ride of my life, what with the banana stop over and the five hundred metre rumble the wrong way down a one-way street. But some of it was downright frustrating. People pay even less attention to traffic lights than they do here in Delhi—unless there's a cop around, of course—and after coming to a standstill all the cars start moving again in one large pack. And in some cases, once you're in a traffic jam, there really is no way out but through, which means you can spend an hour doubling back on yourself if you missed a turnoff.

But enough with the moaning.

Over those five days I got to meet some pretty amazing people. All of them young, all of them working in the creative arts or business, actors, musicians, designers… Hanging out with them in Candies or cross-legged with a magazine in the Bagel Stop made me feel strangely at home, and if I could afford a flat in Bandra I'd live there in a minute. Bandra is this winding area with tiny roadside stalls, nice old houses, and a really relaxed feel—much more casual than the rest of the city. I also found a Coffee Day that now occupies a particularly soft spot in my heart; it's right on the water on Carter Road and when you sit on the patio you can feel the breeze coming off the sea.

The bunch of us managed to create some adventures over the weekend. There was the 5am maggi (read: Mr. Noodle) and guitars session at Nyka's place followed by a drive to Amby (sic?) Valley. This was all after a late night party so we were wiped to begin with, but what else is to be done when the sun's rising other than pile six in the car and drive into the mountains? The views were spectacular out over the inlets and the winding treed roads felt a bit like a parched version of the roads outside Victoria. We stopped on the way at a food outlet for tea and some kind of breakfast concoction that tasted amazing but I still can't name it… 7am at the highway food stop and we were clearly the only car there like us. Young. Haggard. Hung over. It was glorious.

We also spent an afternoon in the arcade playing pool and going bowling. It was strange being one of three female interlopers in an all-male pool room, and I've never seen a table light that's activated by the swipe of a card. Plus I suck at pool. Like really suck. But it was fun to watch the table next to us, populated by the same group of men who you find in every pool hall no matter where you go, hollering and competing and frighteningly good shots. Bowling was also an experience; I have never in my life bowled bare foot, but apparently it vastly improves my game! Trouble is the lanes were bowed so I kept veering left and right. No, really! I'm not just blaming it on the equipment!

And of course I ate some amazing food. Bengali at Oh! Calcutta, festival food at Divya's house, and I loved and survived the Wibs sandwich. I also survived the taste of my own foot after calling Varun's lungi a towel (ps, Mathur, your patience in that moment was most appreciated), but thankfully there was plenty of beer to wash that down.

I'm looking forward to getting back to Bombay, as restless and relentless as it was. The people were cool, the pace was infectious, and I would love to spend the day cruising Marine Drive for the hell of it. Plus there's the sea, which makes Delhi feel that much more landlocked. But I'm happy to be back in Delhi working and creating a sense of home. I'm a nomad with a soft spot for a place to call home, what can I say?

Though I've only been working a few days, I have to say, working in my office is quite funny. For the most part each of us sits at our respective stations plugging away at whatever needs to get done, but once in a while the place erupts into what closely resembles a French farce.

We need IT so we call. IT rushes downstairs just in time for the head honcho to need my boss's attention immediately. I get kicked out of my boss's office. IT has to wait, feet tapping, watch being checked, until someone else from IT comes wandering by for something completely unrelated. I remember that I needed IT for something else that can be taken care of while we're waiting for my boss to be done with immediate-needs head honcho. Head honcho leaves the office just in time for my neighbour to need my boss, so the two of them get into it over details of the issue, both IT people are looking at me, some unsuspecting coworker comes by for some extra files so the secretary has to sneak into the spat that's happening, and all I can follow are the few English words dropped here and there.

To make matters more interesting, when I exclaim "I need to learn Hindi RIGHT NOW!" they reply, laughing, with "oh honey, we're all from the Punjab--Hindi won't help you here!"

And then we all return to our desks.

Had lunch today with a few of the ladies at the Bikaner down the street. Four young women, some in western clothes, some in selwar and kameez, marching down the street to Jashwant dodging traffic and talking men and babies. We even stopped for ice cream on the way back. You know, it really is the little things in life.

Today I felt it. I was watching the sun go down from the taxi and I felt myself getting that first tiny toehold on my bearings. For the past little while I've felt uprooted—justifiably--and without much place, but for some reason today that's started to turn around. Maybe it was the Mithas. Or maybe it was the soccer.

Friday night a bunch of us got together and packed the Russian restaurant in Anand Niketan. And by a bunch I mean seven. And by packed I mean we took up two of the four tables. The food was amazing, though I'll be damned if I can remember what any of it was called, but the vodka was better. We sat around and talked shop and India and slowly got drunk under the watchful eye of the tall dark Russian owner. Then we all piled into a taxi and an ambassador and street-raced our way to the Australian bar. Despite all of my valiant attempts we did not manage to change the music, but we still had a good time. I met all kinds of people—Americans, Bolivian yoga instructors, Aussies (no really?) and Indians—but again, I'll be damned if I can remember what any of them were called. I'll have to go back next Friday and hunt out some familiar faces.

Saturday Malti, Mahreen and I took ourselves out for the most amazing desert at Magique in Garden of the Five Senses. What a beautiful setup! To my fellow Victorians: take the Mint's lighting, put the restaurant outdoors, and then make the setting less brick and more Greek pillar. The only issue we had with the place was a group of scantily clad expats. I mean ladies, put some pants on! Really!

Mahreen and I after a late night of girl talk (read: girls talking about boys) got up for an early morning massage. Maya comes by every Saturday and Sunday to Malti's house, and by extension Mahreen's, and gives massages for 50 – 100 rupees. Mahreen speaks Hindi, so between the three of us we learned that Maya has four kids, two boys and two girls, and they live in a one-room flat in Delhi. Rent is expensive, 1500 rupees a month, but between Maya's massage business and her husband's work as a courier they make enough to get by. Life as an expat can look glamorous, but for the great majority of the city's inhabitants things are tough. No less fulfilling, as evidenced by Maya's massive smile, just more difficult.

And to top off the weekend, I responded to a random invitation on yuni net to come out and play soccer with other happily inexperienced women at the Siri Fort sports complex. Two Americans, one German, two French women, and yours truly kicked a soccer ball around for a total of forty-five minutes, didn't keep score, and got so sweaty you could have wrung us out. What a blast! We even picked up a few Indian players, Atria and Manoj, who happened to be doing yoga on the field we found. We've committed to returning next Sunday for more soccer. Hopefully some training this week will allow me to run the field a little more instead of relying on my usual trick of throwing my body haplessly in front of the ball.

Oh and my Hindi is improving! Slowly. But it's improving. Sonu the taxi driver taught me a few new words and Maya had me reciting the days of the week while she worked out the knots in my neck. So it's a toehold on my bearings, but it's a lovely little toe.

because we always think that somehow this time it'll be different.

and sometimes it is.

I've realized recently that, when you spend a long time in one place, it becomes really easy to surround yourself with people who all think the same way you do. Save some minor differences in opinion and style, the people with whom you associate can all become quite similar.

There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with this. It helps build community and a sense of security, and it's nice to know that if you're feeling unsure about something you've got folks around you who can support you in a belief or a decision.

The flip side, though, is that all this sameness can be a breeding ground for, well, more sameness.

Even in the Foreign Service, where people work all over the world and are constantly moving from one country to the other, it's easy to surround yourself with common-thinking people. The community itself is really small despite it's global spread; everyone seems to know everyone else by person or by association, and thanks to communications technology you can stay in contact with small knots of friends you made in one country that has since split off to different parts of the world.

Again, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. It's heartbreaking to have to leave close friends every few years and no amount of email or web chat can replace face-to-face contact. But there is a danger to these close-knit communities; remaining friends with the same people can prevent opportunities to make friends with people from vastly different backgrounds with completely different ways of thinking.

I left Victoria and I miss it terribly. The city was home to me, my close friends were and still are incredible, and I was part of an active, opinionated, and passionate community. Ah! I miss Victoria! But it was also very, very comfortable. Nicknamed the "Velvet Rut," the city can trap you with it's natural beauty, art, markets, activists, restaurants, and easy access to some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. I stood on a beach near Tofino with Naomi, stared into the sea and said "Why am I leaving? What am I doing?" Her response was perfect: "What everyone needs to do."

So I've shaken things up. I've moved across the world to a place that's vaguely familiar but still conceals more secrets and stories than I can possibly imagine. I'm still surrounded by many of the comforts of home and some comforts, like an empty 40 foot pool on a Saturday morning, that I couldn't even imagine back home. I've made friends with Canadians who embody three of my favourite adjectives--active, opinionated, and passionate--who totally rock my world. And I've met expats from all over the world who are involved with all kinds of cool projects and organizations.

But I think it's time to get back into the local scene. The best stories I've heard from friends who have travelled have always included a healthy mix of expat and local characters. And as uncomfortable as it can be when opinions and ways of living clash, if you're open to it, it's the best way to learn.

Cheers to learning.

I was in an auto on the way to the market when I noticed them. They were sitting in the grass in the middle of a manicured roundabout; she upright, the child crumpled in a heap in her lap. Even from a distance I could see her sigh as she wiped the child's tear-stained face with the end of her dupatta.

Every Thursday evening, the men of a family that has been singing for a hundred and fifty years gather in the heart of Nizamuddin Market in South Delhi. They sit in a huddle facing a shrine devoted to Delhi's most famous Sufi saint, Nizamuddin Awlia, drums and harmoniums in their laps, and play and sing for hours. Some songs are odes to Nizamuddin himself, others are devotional songs, but all are sung with equal passion and verve.

Getting to the qawwali singers is an adventure in itself; the market is made up of three- and four-storey buildings on either side of narrow lane ways lined with shops, and often the buildings come together to form a canopy over the alley. Shops offer everything from gold-threaded blankets to prayer books to soft leather boots, and the shop keepers themselves are rarely quiet. Beggars who have trouble walking due to things like broken or missing limbs line the streets outside the narrower areas; those with more mobility, like women with small babies, walk the lanes with the shoppers and devotees and never hesitate to approach tourists.

But the atmosphere upon reaching the site makes the journey well worth it. Worshipers gather under a canvas tent propped with stripped, thin tree trunks to listen and pray, some sitting cross-legged, others standing. Men as slight as the tree trunks move through the crowd with large flag-shaped fans that they use to cool the audience, and if you pay them 10 rupees they'll make sure to come back and pay you special attention. A short bearded old man in a long white kurta and white cap conducts the scene more than the musicians; he directs newcomers to gaps in the crowd so they can sit down, keeps the line of men offering prayers to Nizamuddin moving, and quiets the rowdier members of the crowd. No one openly questions his authority and he returns every Thursday to make sure the evening runs smoothly.

The singers sing and the musicians play with a lack of self-consciousness rarely found in the West. Years of experience and family tradition have honed their skills. Many of the songs are driven by a beat that makes people bounce in their spots on the floor; they're lead by a keening soloist and then crescendo when the whole group joins in. Others are quiet and cause the crowd to hush as much as a crowd like that can. And if you look around you can see mouths moving silently—or not so silently—along with the words, mostly the mouths of old men and women who have heard these songs since before they can remember.

The qawwali singers are a tourist attraction as much as they are a religious ritual. Foreigners dot the audience in various states of comfort or discomfort; some men fully adopt the wardrobe and don kurtas and crotched caps, and some women opt to keep their heads covered while others refuse to wear a shawl. Muslims pride themselves on hospitality, so foreigners are often given first priority when spots on the floor open up.

Modern inventions that seem commonplace elsewhere seem incongruous in the scene. So many men in white kurtas and caps, women in bright saris and shawls, gilded tombs and age-old songs lull you into a sense of timelessness, as if somehow this place could be transported to any time and still look mostly as it does in this moment. But the tomb is lit by chandelier; children and adults film the singers on cameras in their cell phones, and one singer who leads many of the songs finds his pitch with the help of a hearing aid.
Signs on rooms that say "Ladies not Allowed" are reminder, though, that despite modern conveniences, some things still have not changed.

As a recent university graduate, the question I ask of myself most frequently is "what the hell am I going to do with the rest of my life?" Truthfully though, that question has long been a sleeping dragon in some cave at the back of my head that wakes up every so often to breathe fire all over what was a relatively inconsequential week. Now that dragon is awake and feeling frisky. I've been forced to make friends with it. Aside from some smoky burps now and again, our relationship is actually quite stable.

But I digress. To help me answer my question, I've started researching how others answer it for themselves. Working in Human Resources at the High Commission has proved to be an incredible resource. I get to watch the whole process, from posting and advertising jobs to signing the papers at the end that say "you're hired!" Right now it's the initial stages that have me the most transfixed, particularly the drafting and submitting of the prized resume.

Now, as a Canadian, there are a few things about resumes that I've come to take for granted. One, if you need help drafting one, there are countless government and school-related programs geared toward helping you to create the resume. Two, they're all formatted in a similar way with clear headings, dates, and explanations to help guide a potential employer through what could be a long and crazy list of previous occupations. Three, they're typed.

In India, most of those pre-set expectations are thrown out the window.

One of my daily responsibilities is to open the mail when there are large competitions going on. I have to admit, it's one of my favourite activities. Some resumes come in looking relatively "normal" by my standards. They're typed up with a cover letter and all the relevant details in neat font at the top and a signature at the bottom. But maybe that resume came in a bright orange envelope that's lined with block-printed fabric to ensure it doesn't rip in transit.

Other resumes are handwritten in the most painstakingly careful cursive on plain paper and yet somehow the lines are perfectly straight.

I even received an application on a postcard.

In Canada, one common worry amongst people my age vying for jobs is that their resume will look like everyone else's, that their cover letter will be a repeat of the previous twenty-something recent grad's cover letter: "I'm a hard working, quick learning, team player with great people skills and wonderful written and oral communication skills. Am willing to suck it up, kiss ass, and sling coffee for set period of time without complaint or talk of raises or promotions." Our usual solutions to such worries are things like fancier paper, discreet and tasteful graphics self-consciously placed in the top corner, a brief discussion of our personal interests, blah blah blah…

In India, because there are so many more people vying for jobs, all self-consciousness has been tossed in favour of bigger, bolder, and generally more badass. Some resumes come entirely in bold font; important points are underlined so the reader is sure not to miss the finer details. Others wax poetic about their skills and achievements to such a degree that this self-deprecating Canadian heart has to take a step back a bit and go "whoa." One applicant attached a series of photos of himself with important Indian government officials and prominent figures to prove his status and comfort with the up'n'ups while another included a bafflingly detailed 10-page glossy research project he'd done on Canada.

If there's one thing my brief stint in Human Resources has taught me, it's that if you're going to be shy and hesitant about getting a job here, you're just not going to get one.

That's one of the reasons my dragon and I are on such good terms right now. As it turns out, the dragon is much happier breathing fire for me instead of on me. I'm going to take some of my Canadian reserve and store it in that back cave somewhere, do some research on where I'd like to spend some time working while I'm here, and then get out there and spread myself around a bit. That is, once I've finished reading that stack of books on my desk… and working on that art project I started… maybe I can bribe the dragon into giving me a few more weeks. You know, just to make sure I'm really settled in.