Petty Whinings

*Note: I wrote this around two months ago and never posted it until now, so it’s a bit dated*
Before coming to India, I got a lot of advice about what to expect. From these, I concocted a vision of Delhi as some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland where child beggars clog every street corner and wild dogs are constantly nipping at passerbys’ ankles. With that as my reference point, the adjustment has been much easier than I expected: I don’t find Delhi particularly overwhelming and have been able to fairly well handle the many saddening parts of living in the developing world. Yet, as I think is the case for most ex-pats, there comes a point at which I find myself profoundly missing the US and the customs I’ve grown up with. And at these moments, I can get pretty annoyed.

This is especially true when attempting to do things that would be easy in the US, but prove impossibly difficult here (e.g. getting proper tools from a hardware store); in these moments, I find myself wanting to shake my fists in the air and yell “INDIA!!!!” in the most Shatneresque manner I can muster. These situations always end up the same way: I go somewhere, my sparse Hindi makes it difficult to communicate with the provider of the service in question, and despite persistence, I get something quite different from what I wanted. A few months ago, I tried to buy train tickets to go to the Taj Mahal . They sell tickets in two groups: general boarding, which you can buy anytime, and “tatkal”, which are slightly more expensive, but are only become available two days prior to departure. I needed to buy tatkal because I hadn’t planned well, and attempted to convey this to the ticket seller. When hearing me ask for that, he asked in a shocked voice, “How do you know about tatkal?”… and despite knowing what I wanted, then proceeded to sell me the wrong, non-tatkal ticket, which meant I wouldn’t be able to get on the train. I was pretty bitter when I had figured it all out after getting home.

But by far the thing that irritates me the most, and where I’ve really had to learn to repress my blinding rage, is what happens whenever there is any sort of queue at a business. Rather than waiting ones turn in order of arrival, people simply push to the front, completely disregarding the laws of non-line cutting that American schoolchildren have inculcated in them. Sometimes this is funny: in metro stations, there are employees to herd you into single-file lines beside the doors so that you will not block those exiting the car and will proceed in an orderly fashion. And everyone follows their orders at first. But the second that the door opens, everyone breaks for the doors, and you have to body-check your way past those trying to exit into the train car. But it is good practice at being assertive, and I’ve learned how to effectively elbow line cutters out of the way. Plus, blindly pushing my way into a train car is a great way to get out some of the built up anger from work!

In some ways, these experiences have lent me perspective on the ways I’ve changed in the past few years. My past selves would have simply waited around and let everyone cut me in line or knowingly let autorickshaw drivers rip me off. A part of me is saddened by this, as it means that some of the other-centeredness in my thinking, where I was willing to put the welfare of others above my own, has been lost, and this is one of the virtues I most value. But on the other hand, I would be completely ineffective if I were not willing to be more assertive: heck, I couldn’t even make it through a grocery store line if not for aggressively positioning myself so that old ladies can’t cut me! It’ll be interesting to see where I fall between my sharper elbowed and mellow selves upon returning to the States, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get cut in line a lot less!