I’m wrapping up a week in India, where I facilitated leadership development for an inspiring group of women leaders. Every day, I was asked, “Is this your first time to India?” And every day, I answered, “No, this is my third trip to India, but my first trip to the Delhi area.” This weekend, I made a short side-trip to Agra. I’ve previously traveled to Bangalore and Kolkata (aka Calcutta). So I’ve been exposed to four cities in India. Really, that’s not much, considering the size and vast diversity of this country.
A few vignettes from this trip.
The Metro. I encountered two queues to enter the Metro, one for women and one for men. I’d seen this previously in Indian airports, where same-gender personnel perform security pat-downs for the respective queues. But why were there two queues here? It turns out that due to security concerns there are metal detectors and pat-downs to board the Metro. These precautions were cursory – are they really deterring any bad guys (or gals)? Still, the experience made me think of an article that I read in The Atlantic which imagined how life could be changed by terrorism, including security inspections for public transit. Having passed the checkpoint, I rode the escalator up to the platform. The station near my hotel is the end of the line, so I walked right onto the first car and I had my choice of seats. After a couple of stops, the car was filling up, and I was wondering if I was the only woman on the Metro. Soon the car was jammed with men. I was the only woman in the car and I felt conspicuous as a female non-Indian. Eventually I changed Metro lines and at the transfer point I made a discovery. On the platform was an area marked with a pink line and the words “ladies only.” It turns out that each Metro train has a ladies-only car. From that point onwards, I rode with the ladies. I’m sure the gents on the first train were wondering why a lady was in their car. If one of them had guessed that I wasn’t local (not a hard guess, since I don’t look Indian), and therefore didn’t know about the ladies’ car, it would have been nice for them to offer the suggestion.
A glimpse of rural life. All my time in India has been spent in urbanized areas, so during my side trip to Agra, I asked my guide and driver to take me through a village on the outskirts of the city. This required a call to the tour company boss, who was reluctant, but eventually agreed to let the guide and driver take me for a quick look. Impressions: People and animals (buffalo, goats) living together in courtyard houses…little children everywhere, many toddlers with clothes covering only their tops…older children sitting on the grass in front of the school building with the instructor talking to them…older people lying down or sitting in out of the way corners…men cooking something in an old pot over an outdoor fire in a circle of rocks while under their canvas tent strung from a tree they watched TV (I have no idea what they were using for power). I didn’t take a single photo in the village. I was apprehensive about offending someone and I also didn’t want to treat people as objects to be photographed (bad enough that I was looking at their lives just for the experience of doing so).
Indian railway. The train cars look quite prison-like, with bars on the windows. The lowest class of cars has no assigned seats, and the cars are positively jammed with masses of Indian humanity. It made me think of train cars packed with people en route to concentration camps (horrible image, I know, but that’s what came up for me). I was booked in a first class car with an assigned seat and air conditioning. The smell on the platform was strong with fresh urine and other human odors. The toilets on the train open up directly to the tracks, which explains the aromas. On my trip to Agra, an older gentleman shared my compartment. He sat in rock pose on the upper bunk and meditated for a while before he laid down and went to sleep. On my return journey, it turned out that the Indian fellow sitting next to me did his MBA at UCLA in 1971…small world…
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