Reflections of India

India

The word evokes such different emotions and thoughts. The Hinduism that influences so many peoples lives. The smell of curry and refuse that sinks into your pores. The poor mothers begging on the street with their babies, the rickshaws that try to run you over. The fantasticly glamorous Bollywood films that completely entrance you.

I’m so glad that I’ve been able to experience so many different things while in Chennai for such a short time. On our last day in port, Laura, Brian, Greg, and I went to Spencer’s Plaza to do our shopping, since we really hadn’t had time earlier. Spencer’s is a mall, but it’s not just clothes and shoes, it’s got lots of Indian rugs and tapestries and figurines too. And you can bargain with the shopkeepers there. You have to. They know that we were Americans coming from the boat, and inflated their prices. If you bought on the first price, without knowing what other stores were charging for the same thing, you were being majorly ripped off. We got blankets, and pashminas for the people back home, you’re all going to love them! I bought myself 2 at least, they’re so nice.

That afternoon we went to see a Bollywood film. We weren’t sure how it would be, considering the whole movie is in Hindi and we don’t speak a lick of it. But you really don’t have to understand the words, because the actions take care of most of the interpretation, although there were times when the whole audience was laughing and we didn’t know why. It was funny to see the main characters suddenly break out into song and highly choreographed dance. From what I understand, the main guy was an orphan that got taken in by a family, and then the parents get shot in an armed robbery. The boy gets sent to jail because they think he did it and 20 years later he gets let out. He then gets caught up in a drug underworld trying to find the parents killer. In the meantime, he saves the girl that took him in 20 years ago that he hasn’t seen since then. They fall in love, but it’s complicated because he has other things to do. The whole movie is shot like a 3-hour music video, which is pretty great. I’m going to have to buy the movie on Amazon when it comes out so I can find out what they were actually saying!

When we tried to get back to the ship, we had a heck of a time finding a rickshaw driver who would take us for a reasonable price. They all knew we were leaving that evening and were trying to fleece us one last time. It’s really upsetting to have everyone thing you’re made of money and try to rip you off so much. We were all talking about it that afternoon, how you’d go to buy a bottle of water and it would cost the Indian in front of you 10 rupees and you 30. Or we’d go to a museum and the sign would say “Indians: 10 rupees, Foreigners 250 rupees.” 100 rupees is like US $2.50. We’d get in the rickshaw and our Indian parents would tell us not to go for more than 20 rupees total and the driver would try to get us to pay 200 rupees each! It’s just very exhausting to constantly have to put up with this. I don’t know how foreigners living in the country deal with that every day. Five days was more than I could handle.

I’d love to come back here; I’m just going to need to sleep for a long time before then!