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Okay, so I think this time around, I’m only going to post the stories I most want to remember and talk about to this place to make life a little easier for ya’ll. The rest I’ll just keep to myself and have pictures of and crap like that.
As for the culture of India…
The first thing you notice – unfortunately – is how incredibly dirty the place is. There’s just trash everywhere that you look, and the more people there are, of course, the more trash there is. Walking around a city street isn’t too bad, but if you look to your left, just over that four foot fence beside you, you’ll just see a heap of trash with chickens and dogs rummaging through it.
Bathrooms are pretty shocking. First of all, public urination is totally the norm for dudes. I mean, people will literally get off their motorbikes on the sidewalk, walk two feet to the grass, and go for it. Otherwise, a lot of people just hang over bridges or riverbanks for anything else. If you go into a bathroom, there’s just a hole in the ground with a rock over it, and you slide it away and do your thang. There’s no toilet paper, so you have to use your hand and then just wash your hand. This really is why it’s offensive to do anything with your left hand in India.
You eat with your right hand and ONLY with your right hand.
Tons and tons of people have the third eye adorned on their forehead at all times. It’s not like some dress-up thing that America latched on to and distorted. They really do it, almost every day, especially Hindus.
Everyone speaks at least a little bit of English, and many are quite good.
There’s a direct link between how much English you speak and how much money you make.
There’s a direct link between how much money you’re born with and how much money you die with.
The contrast you can see in a single image is pretty unbeatable. On a single city block, you can find a double-doctorate household with two kids going through private universities and two cars that they own, and then two lots down you find a dirt floor thatched roof village that houses ten families in the same amount of space.
Water is incredibly unsafe and dealing with it is a big part of Indian life. Thankfully bottled water is pretty damn cheap – two liters of bottled water goes for roughly $.40.
Upper middle class families have a maid. Rich families have five maids.
Parents will do ANYTHING for their children until they’re age like 30 or so. Basically until the kid is old enough and in position to take care of his parents instead. I mean, if a kid wants to go to a university and the parents don’t have enough money, they’ll sell the house and the car and take a loan to make it possible with no questions asked.
The clothes they wear are seriously beautiful and always provide a stark contrast to the ugly city settings, or a nice complement to the incredibly gorgeous countryside.
There’s somewhere between 25 and 35 major languages in India, but Hindi is the main native link language, although English is possibly the most powerful language.
First is mom, second is god.
Third is cricket. There’s a guy named Sachin who’s like 5’4” tall and he’s the country’s hero. He’s the best cricket player that’s ever lived. When he plays within India, everyone hates him except for his own team (Mumbai?). When he plays for India in international competitions, he’s a god, and people literally cry when he finishes batting.
You hear roughly 99% Indian music in daily life. It’s pretty cool. Lots of neat instrumentation and thumping beats.
The poverty is CRUSHING, man, holy crap. I thought I’d seen poor people in America. But no. I’m willing to say that even the single poorest person in the USA is better off than a significant percentage of India’s poor. Why? Because they have water. Just for example.
It’s a safe place. Murder is extremely rare unless it’s religiously or politically motivated. Other violent crimes are pretty rare as well.
Most people think America is pretty great. I guess that kind of makes sense. America’s definitely more comfortable than India in a number of ways, but we’re also much less sustainable and if everyone lived like America, we’d all be in a heap of trouble. They also seem under the impression that all Americans carry large bills on them at all times and have huge houses and huge cars. I guess that makes sense considering the kind of Americans that can afford to come to India.
There are a LOT of beggars. It’s impossible to tell if they’re legitimate though, or if they’re run by Indian mafia groups (which is a significant number of them). In generally, it’s basically just better to give to aid organizations and let them take care of it, so I didn’t give to any beggars.
In general, everything is incredibly incredibly cheap. A three-course meal at a perfectly nice restaurant will run you something like $2. A four-hour bus ride costs about $.60 and a three-hour taxi ride costs $20. $20 may sound like a lot compared to those other two, but think, How far would $20 get me in a taxi in New York?
Politics is cool, dude. There are like 7,000,000 different newspapers and 3,000,000 languages and perspectives and people read them ALL.
People are always way older than they look. Find someone that looks 21? He’s 28. Indians also think Americans look incredibly old for their age. See a that kid that looks like a typical American 20 year old? Indians would guess he’s 25 or 26.
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Okay, I think that’s about all of that I can do. But that was like 900 words so that’s not bad, right? That’s like four pages double-spaced.
Peace out.
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