Food, glorious food!

My favourite Indian foods are:

·         Kadai chicken

·         Afghani chicken

·         Egg curry

·         Butter naan

·         Aloo paratha (paratha stuffed with potato and chilli)

·         Aloo tikki (street food. Fried potato cakes)

·         Pani puri (street food. ‘water balls’)

·         Chole bhature (street food. Chickpea curry and fried bread)

·         Curd (similar to natural yogurt. Eaten sweetened or with salt and pepper)

·         Kheer (Indian rice pudding)

·         Jalebi (street food. Sweet fried batter)  

We don’t really get many opportunities to eat western food so our western ‘treats’ include:

·         Cheese slices (the plastic stuff you put on burgers)

·         Sour cream and onion crisps

·         5 rupee lollies (Ice lollies...for 5 rupees)

·         Biscuits

·         Toast

Our local corner shop owner must really love us!

Being tourists in our spare time

When we aren’t working or napping, there is nothing we like more to do than to take some time out to be tourists. Some of the places we visited are:

·         Markets: Jampath, Chandi Chowk, Sarojini Nagar etc. Markets are a great place to spend the day even if you’re not looking to buy anything; they are lively, there’s always something going on and the smells will make your mouth water. You may not intend to spend money but you will, you’ll be hungry and sparkly things will catch your eyes, plus  the stall owners will make everything seem so much more tempting by calling out advertisements “For you I give best price” “HEY ladies, buy necklace! So pretty” or just using downright flattery “You are very nice, very lovely. Please buy”

·         Lotus temple: a very strange place. As far as places of worship go it has a very strange atmosphere, it’s cold, empty and everything echoes. To make it even stranger, we were given a leaflet explaining the beliefs and views of the creators of the temple. I’ll leave you to do your own research here though.

·         Dilli Haat: Our favourite hangout. A craft market with great food stalls and often live events including music and we even went to Indian Comic Con there!

·         India Gate and the presidential gardens: The first area of un-littered grass we’d seen and of course we made the most of it and like to spend many a free afternoon sleeping on this grass.

·         Humayans tomb

·         Akshardham temple: a great place until we found out that a colony had been displaced to build it.

·         Lodi gardens: one of my favourite places to nap in the sun and de-stress.

·         Gurudwara Bangla Sahib: Beautiful temple with a huge pool with fish in the courtyard. A nice taste of culture.

Wedding crashers

One of our national volunteers invited us to her cousin's wedding; of course we agreed, Indian weddings are said to be incredible!

Humour me for a second and imagine this: you’re a celebrity. Every step you take seems to trigger a series of camera flashes. Teenagers are filming your every move on their phones and mothers hand you their babies to hold. EVERYONE is staring at you in awe. This is what it felt like walking into the wedding and no, I’m not exaggerating!

Trying not to notice the crowd of people following us, we settled down for some food. The food was incredible, rich spicy curries, mountains of rice and so many kinds of Indian bread, it was a world away from our plain vegetable curries and chapattis every night. After eating we all decided to have a look at the bride and groom, sat looking very bored on their throne-like sofa on stage for all to see. I did feel a little guilty that we were attracting more attention than them mind. We then had to circle round the bride and groom to be photographed (I’m sure they’ll look back at their wedding photos and think...who the hell are those foreigners again?)

After this I went to get a drink. I had been gone no more than 5 minutes but when I returned I found that the dance floor had been cleared, the Indian music had stopped and been replaced with ‘In Da Club’ by 50 Cent and my fellow British volunteers had been made to dance for everyone. I had two options; go and join my friends on the dance floor or linger amongst the Indian guests gawping at them. Of course I chose the latter. The people around me didn’t seem to understand why I was laughing so much but they seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much so all was well. I felt a firm grip on my forearm as one of the national volunteers guided me through the crowds, rounded up the other volunteers and escorted us out of the building. After about half an hour of trying to leave but being held back by people insisting on photographs with us, we were finally on our way home. I won’t lie, fame isn’t all it’s made out to be...

My 2nd and 3rd weeks at school

One of the issues with having a garden project is that when it rains, no work can be done. During these past couple of weeks, there has been heavy rain and flooding so progress in the garden has been pretty minimal. Despite the rain we managed to start the heavy work in the garden. Our first task was to uproot some ‘lal kaner’ plants from one area of the garden (planted by previous volunteers) and replanting them in a corner of the garden imaginatively named the kaner area. We had a small group of kids helping us, openly displaying a genuine eagerness to help which was really nice. These kids also just seemed fascinated by me and my ungraceful demeanour “Jessdi you are strong like man”. At home I would probably take being likened to a man as an insult but I decided to take it as a compliment this time.
Once the rain cleared up, our gardening sessions started to get back on track. Though we work with the Teach For India fellows, we work with both the TFI and the non TFI classes. This highlighted the contrast between the two different groups of kids. The children in our sessions were naughty little buggers but great fun too. I don’t know what it is but I always get on better with the cheeky kids.

We are now regulars at the local nursery and the staff there are not so fussed about me anymore, I still have no idea what’s going on there mind. My current most used phrase is “can you translate please”. On the plus side we now have new plants and some of our other volunteers came to school to help us plants them. Progress has started!

Another world...just around the corner

It’s more than 2 weeks into our trip now and a few of us decided to go out and explore our neighbourhood a little bit more, to get to know the area better. We were walking around, surrounded by the usual sights; small stalls selling fruit, waste everywhere and countless stray dogs sleeping on the roofs of abandoned cars. We turned a corner and the skyline was taken over by ‘Select Citywalk’ mall. It had been mentioned to us in passing that there was a mall nearby but this was not at all what we expected. This huge complex looked like it should be in the centre of a large city in America, not surrounded by wasteland in Delhi. As soon as we stepped inside we instantly realised how dirty and scruffy we were. It genuinely felt like a different world! Compared to where we were living this felt like pure luxury, for a moment we forgot where we were living and that we were visiting on a development programme. It was very surreal to say the least.
“I feel like I could eat my dinner off this floor, it’s probably cleaner than our plates back home”
We stepped outside and were back to ‘normality’, surrounded by street kids trying to put their hands in our pockets and clambering over piles of waste to get back to our apartments. To many, this is considered a symbol of ‘the real India’; the closeness of the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ areas, they are literally on each other’s doorstep.

“Oh god I think I’ve got Delhi belly”

As the title suggests, I’m not well so I’ll keep this post short.
I have travelled a fair bit in the past but have never really been ill on my travels...that is until now. So far I have spent a lot of my time feeling under the weather, in the first few days I came down with the cold of all colds and I hadn’t even left the hotel yet. Since then I have been down with ‘Delhi belly’ quite a lot. I have now had 2 visits to the doctor, including 2 surprise injections (the surprise being that the injections were to go in my bum cheeks!) and have now been diagnosed with having a bacterial infection in my gut. I’m not entirely sure what this means but my medication seems to be working so I can’t complain. On the plus side people keep telling me I look good i.e. I’ve lost weight...

My top 10 Indian ‘customs’

These are not necessarily actual Indian customs, just ones that I have experienced whilst in India.

1. If it is your birthday you must feed everyone cake and in return they will smear cake all over your face.
2. You must not touch books or paper with your feet.
3. Some people refuse to eat meat on Tuesdays.
4. If a song starts playing you must stop what you are doing and sing along whilst performing the entire dance routine (you must know full dance routines to all songs)
5.  If food is offered to you, you must take it and eat it, no matter how full you are.
6. You are not complete without an Indian name, mine being Jaswinder Kumar Singh.
7. You must touch the feet of your elders to show respect (a difficult one to understand for those of us with foot phobias...).
8. As a woman, it is not safe to travel without a man with you (compromises had to be made between the Indians and the 7 strong minded British female volunteers).
9. If you meet a friend of the opposite sex in the street, you must refrain from hugging (no matter how pleased you are to see each other) and shake hands.
10. If you forget anyone’s name there are 4 names you can fall back on: Bhaiya=man/boy older than yourself, Didi=woman/girl older than yourself, Uncle=older man, Auntie=older woman and Chotu=Children.

Getting around

Without a doubt, the most iconic form of transport in Delhi is the auto rickshaw, or auto for short. Autos also happen to be my favourite way of getting around. After finding an auto that is willing to take you where you want to go and haggling (though it often feels more like arguing) from the ridiculous tourist prices you’re sorted. Autos are fast due to their ability to fit through alarmingly small gaps in traffic and for some reason traffic lights don’t seem to apply to them. Another advantage, as explained by a rather enthusiastic auto driver, was the ‘natural air conditioning’ due to the open sides which is great on a hot day but not so fun in winter.

Another great way to get around in Delhi is the metro. Now, I don’t mean to sound over the top but the Delhi metro is by far the best underground system I have ever used. It’s spotlessly clean, smooth, fast and seemingly always on time. Very impressive.

One of the stranger ways of getting around is by cycle rickshaw. Sounds fun right? If you like watching people suffer then I’m sure you’d love watching a skinny little man panting while trying desperately to pedal a rickshaw with 3 not-so-skinny Brits in the back. Obviously there was a small element of fun but overall I found myself just feeling guilty and paying the drivers ‘too much’ to make up for it.

My 1st week at school

Monday 28^th January: my first day at school. After an early start (school starts at 8am) I met the three Teach for India fellows: Tarun, Vatsala and Preetika who I would be working with for the next three months and then got straight to work on my project. I am a firm believer that being thrown in at the deep end ‘forces’ you to adapt quickly to your environment and, for me, it is the best way to work. Luckily, that is exactly how my time at school began; in our first gardening session 100 kids turned up in the school courtyard, I assumed there had been some sort of mix-up but I was assured this was perfectly normal. Between myself, my counterpart and one of the TFI fellows we handed out the tools, including pickaxes (yes, pickaxes!) and got straight to work.

 Though I spoke no Hindi and the kids spoke very little English, I somehow managed not only to keep my groups under control but also formed strange little friendships with these kids, especially the cheeky ones (I wonder why...). I quickly learnt that controlling a group of rebellious kids isn’t all about shouting, though it often involves a little bit, it’s about allowing the kids to be themselves and in return they will respect you and your authority. Well, that’s the theory anyway. Before long I was no longer just Jess, I had transformed into ‘Jess didi’ or ‘Jassydi’ for short. This may sound a little dramatic but I suddenly had this popularity I’d never seen before, everywhere I went, kids wanted to shake my hand or play with my hair and I had this magic pasty skin that turns red if you press it (this would keep the kids entertained for hours on end if they had their way and it didn’t hurt so much), everyone knew my name and wanted to talk to me, I really did feel like a completely different person.

As well as gardening sessions, we also helped out with English lessons where I took the opportunity to learn a little Hindi. In my first week I learnt: Big=Baṛā, Small=Chōtā, Boy=Laṛakā and Girl=Laṛaki (Sorry about any possible spelling mistakes). During our first week at school we also visited the local nursery to get some ideas of which plants we wanted to buy for the garden. This was an interesting experience to say the least; I was stared at rather a lot, nobody spoke English and they all seemed very confused as to why this white girl had come to their nursery. I get the feeling that these are looks I’m going to have to get used to during my trip but I can’t wait for my school project to really get under way!