On our taxi ride from the New Delhi train station to our hotel, I saw two McDonalds and a Baskin Robbins, and far fewer rickshaws, bicycles and livestock. I realized throughout the night that I had left something magical, mythical and surreal in the old fortified cities, the death and life of the desert and the tribal villages of Rajasthan. Delhi is metropolitan, full of cell-phone touting 20-30 somethings, women wearing jeans (!) and upper middle class spending their money on NYC-priced drinks and fancy dinners at hotels. They've even got a metro system that's clean, easy, with great security, a countdown to the next train, etc. Maybe, I think this was the right place for Joseph to leave and go back to New York, an ease of transition. I had to lose my travel companion today and I'm working myself up to do this alone now.
2 comments:
hey man....it sucks to see so much western/american/english influence sometimes. but i hate to admit that i'm fascinated by the ____ version of it: in this case, indian. did you happen to see the mcdonald's menu? i'm sure it's different, but still the irony kills me. i had a roommate from Delhi once tell me that McD's are as popular in Delhi as Starbucks are in nyc. that true? god! literally! i feel like no country is immune to us/england. like when the only communication i have with a 16-yr-old girl from europe is a fallout boy song. (then again, who can communicate with ANY 16-yr-old girl?) or when i hear germans use an english word "handy" for cell phone, i start to wonder where things were lost in translation during it's journey over the atlantic. maybe someone german dude got really drunk one night, forgot the name of his mobile device, and said, "wow this thing is really...han...hand...HANDY!" forever branding that word into the german dictionary. oddly enough, you'd have to translate "handy" for the english speaker.
do you think you like traveling not to see how differently people live, but rather how similarly?
I didn't see that many Micky-D's but I didn't see much of Delhi, honestly. I mostly stayed in a slightly wacky area, like NYC Chinatown and just chilled on the rooftop cafe for 4 days so I could finally collect my thoughts and relax a bit. (PS. This internet place I'm in is blasting cheesy American pop music)
I have mixed feelings about all this western influence I've been seeing. Sometimes I wish we would just let them be and not damage their culture, but so many rickshawallahs here have reminded me "America is a rich country", so it also seems important for a rich country to help a poorer country but there are many ways to do that, so many of which are insensitive to the way they live and end up over-consuming their resources. It's so complex, I don't have the answers. I'm just trying to understand more about our world, as I know you are. Definitely, India is for you.
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