A friend asked me what she should tell someone going to India for the first time. As I thought over what kind of information I should give her, I realized there are so many things I wish I'd been told before my first trip to India. Make or break kinds of things. I now understand that hubby did the best he could; viewing your home through a foreigner's eyes for the first time is difficult. Even after three visits he still struggles to foresee the impact something might have on me. But he's getting better.
Anyway, without further ado, and in no particular order (meaning read the whole thing), I present to you a list of "the shit I wish I'd known."
1) Whatever you think the weather will be, it won't. If you think it will be cold, it will be 90 degrees. If you think it will be hot, it will be in the 50s. India thrives on defying your expectations. Weather is just one of many ways.
2) The clothing you would take to travel pretty much anywhere else is completely useless in India. I wear jeans all of the time, so I took them to India. They became stretched out in a matter of minutes and never returned to normal size. I took long shorts, thinking surely knee length would be conservative enough in hot weather. Wrong. I even had a few sleeveless shirts, though not tank tops. Good enough, right? Nuh uh. The less white skin on display, the better. Now when I go there, if I could get my hands on a burqa I would wear it. Though young women are beginning to wear more and more western clothes (and more and more revealing clothes), a good rule of thumb is to dress two or three times more conservatively than they are. It just makes life easier. Nothing that shows any amount of leg, short sleeves are mostly ok, and never ever anything that showcases your chest or butt even just a little.
3) Your shoes will be destroyed; don't wear anything you actually like. See next point:
4) India is hella dusty. Unlike anything I've ever seen before. I've been behind trucks carrying a load of dirt that's just blowing right off the back and still never seen as much dust and dirt as there is in India. And there is trash all over the ground and people spit, pee and poop right where you're walking. Your feet will be permanently dirty. Black dirty. You won't even recognize your feet at the end of the day. And whatever shoes you were wearing will be the same way. You have to leave your shoes at the door anyway, so who cares how cheap and ugly they are? I have twice now thrown shoes in the trash after wearing them in India. It's just easier.
5) Poverty is in your face. This isn't a Sally Struthers infomercial. This is walking down the street outside an expensive American chain store and passing a family living beside the road in a tent constructed of tattered cloth collected from the garbage with their clearly malnourished naked two year old playing in the dirt and the wife washing clothes in the gutter. It will break your heart into a million little pieces. And it will break your heart even more when you realize you have become accustomed to seeing them and hardly react anymore.
6) Indians are kinda racist. And extremely classist. All that caste stuff you learn about in school and think surely they don't think like that anymore? Yeah they still think like that. And are very open about it. And many of them (that I've been exposed to at least) see nothing wrong with it. The common reaction is shock, followed by disbelief, culminating in a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Though like with the stages of grief, each individual is different.
7) They will stare. A lot. Some in such a creepy way your skin will crawl. No, there's nothing you can do about it. They don't seem to notice if you shoot them dirty looks (even though they're staring and can't possibly have missed it). Yelling at them just makes you look like more of a freak. Walking away doesn't matter because there will only be others to stare at you. The quicker you get used to it, the less frustrating your day to day life will be.
8) They are incredibly pushy and impatient...but also incredibly slow. The best recent example I can give of this is when we arrived at the Cochin airport from Sri Lanka. Once through immigration, we had to go through one more metal detector. Everyone ran to be first, pushing and shoving, elbows flying. It's the crush of Times Square on New Year's Eve, but in this case everyone really is willing to take you out if it means getting even one spot ahead. But once each person fought their way to the front of the line, they stopped. Putting their bags on the belt took eons. They would pause in front of the detector and gaze around. Walk through at a snail's pace. But once through, it was back to the frantic pushing and shoving because they needed to get their bag off the belt before you for no particular reason. Everything is like that.
9) Showers are rare. A proper physical shower is even more rare. Showering over the toilet or taking a bucket bath are the most common options. I can clearly remember my first bucket bath...walking into the room to find a giant bucket with what resembled a two cup plastic measuring cup inside. (Rough guide: fill the big bucket with water, use the small one to pour it over you. I have no tips for you, as I still really suck at doing this.) If you're lucky enough to have a shower head, don't forget to use the weird rubber thing hopefully found in the corner of the bathroom to sweep the water toward the drain when you're done.
10) Do NOT, under any circumstances, drink the water. This is possibly the most important thing I can tell you. It's also something most people probably already know, but here's the dirty secret you probably don't know: don't drink the bottled water, either. People collect the plastic bottles from the trash, refill them with tap water, and sell them again. They're even so crafty as to glue the seal back together, making it nearly impossible to tell if its been broken. This is most likely how I spent two weeks sick as a dog on my first visit. Boil your water. I don't care if you have to use one of those things people have in dorms for making Ramen. I don't care if you have to bring that thing with you from the U.S. Just find a way. Keep it at a full boil for at least one minute. I boil a big pot of water in the evening, let it cool overnight, and fill bottles in the morning.
11) You are not going to hear all the formal niceties you do in the U.S. One of my first questions for hubby was how to say "please" and "thank you" in Hindi. He told me there are no words for that. I've learned there actually are words for that, but I've only seen foreigners use them. To me, those words are a huge part of respectful interaction. In India, they're irrelevant. If you use them and the person doesn't react in any way, don't worry. They did hear you, they just don't know what to do with it. My father-in-law finally explained to me that there is no need to say these things because they are happy to give you everything you need and expect nothing in return.
12) Touch the feet. I knew people touched the feet of their elders. I had no idea what it meant, but I knew it happened. I didn't realize how much you have to do it, even to people you don't know. It's a show of respect meaning, essentially, you are like the dirt on their feet. Sexy right? I'd seen my husband touch his grandfather's feet but he never touched his aunt's. Apparently, that's just him being childish. You touch everyone's feet, unless they're younger than you or inferior to you in some way (see the previous statement about class). The foot-touching also has a more casual aspect that may actually be more important (especially if you're just traveling and not in the midst of Indian family). When you bump into someone, "oh sorry" or "excuse me" is not gonna roll. You don't have to actually touch their feet. But reach in that general direction with your right hand and then touch it to your chest. I see this most often on trains, when someone sitting inside trips over the other person on their way to get up. Touch the person's knee, touch your chest. This is so ingrained in people that they do it without even realizing they've done it. And what's funny to me is that they don't actually appear to care that they've just run over someone, they just do it out of habit.
13) Indians seem incredibly rude. But they're not. They may push and trample you and blatantly stare and leer at you and talk shit about you to your face (they have the equivalent of a southern woman throwing in "bless her heart"...apologies to my non-southern readers), but they will also welcome you into their home with no notice or introduction and feed you and clothe you and give you their bed.
Anyway, without further ado, and in no particular order (meaning read the whole thing), I present to you a list of "the shit I wish I'd known."
1) Whatever you think the weather will be, it won't. If you think it will be cold, it will be 90 degrees. If you think it will be hot, it will be in the 50s. India thrives on defying your expectations. Weather is just one of many ways.
2) The clothing you would take to travel pretty much anywhere else is completely useless in India. I wear jeans all of the time, so I took them to India. They became stretched out in a matter of minutes and never returned to normal size. I took long shorts, thinking surely knee length would be conservative enough in hot weather. Wrong. I even had a few sleeveless shirts, though not tank tops. Good enough, right? Nuh uh. The less white skin on display, the better. Now when I go there, if I could get my hands on a burqa I would wear it. Though young women are beginning to wear more and more western clothes (and more and more revealing clothes), a good rule of thumb is to dress two or three times more conservatively than they are. It just makes life easier. Nothing that shows any amount of leg, short sleeves are mostly ok, and never ever anything that showcases your chest or butt even just a little.
3) Your shoes will be destroyed; don't wear anything you actually like. See next point:
4) India is hella dusty. Unlike anything I've ever seen before. I've been behind trucks carrying a load of dirt that's just blowing right off the back and still never seen as much dust and dirt as there is in India. And there is trash all over the ground and people spit, pee and poop right where you're walking. Your feet will be permanently dirty. Black dirty. You won't even recognize your feet at the end of the day. And whatever shoes you were wearing will be the same way. You have to leave your shoes at the door anyway, so who cares how cheap and ugly they are? I have twice now thrown shoes in the trash after wearing them in India. It's just easier.
5) Poverty is in your face. This isn't a Sally Struthers infomercial. This is walking down the street outside an expensive American chain store and passing a family living beside the road in a tent constructed of tattered cloth collected from the garbage with their clearly malnourished naked two year old playing in the dirt and the wife washing clothes in the gutter. It will break your heart into a million little pieces. And it will break your heart even more when you realize you have become accustomed to seeing them and hardly react anymore.
6) Indians are kinda racist. And extremely classist. All that caste stuff you learn about in school and think surely they don't think like that anymore? Yeah they still think like that. And are very open about it. And many of them (that I've been exposed to at least) see nothing wrong with it. The common reaction is shock, followed by disbelief, culminating in a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Though like with the stages of grief, each individual is different.
7) They will stare. A lot. Some in such a creepy way your skin will crawl. No, there's nothing you can do about it. They don't seem to notice if you shoot them dirty looks (even though they're staring and can't possibly have missed it). Yelling at them just makes you look like more of a freak. Walking away doesn't matter because there will only be others to stare at you. The quicker you get used to it, the less frustrating your day to day life will be.
8) They are incredibly pushy and impatient...but also incredibly slow. The best recent example I can give of this is when we arrived at the Cochin airport from Sri Lanka. Once through immigration, we had to go through one more metal detector. Everyone ran to be first, pushing and shoving, elbows flying. It's the crush of Times Square on New Year's Eve, but in this case everyone really is willing to take you out if it means getting even one spot ahead. But once each person fought their way to the front of the line, they stopped. Putting their bags on the belt took eons. They would pause in front of the detector and gaze around. Walk through at a snail's pace. But once through, it was back to the frantic pushing and shoving because they needed to get their bag off the belt before you for no particular reason. Everything is like that.
9) Showers are rare. A proper physical shower is even more rare. Showering over the toilet or taking a bucket bath are the most common options. I can clearly remember my first bucket bath...walking into the room to find a giant bucket with what resembled a two cup plastic measuring cup inside. (Rough guide: fill the big bucket with water, use the small one to pour it over you. I have no tips for you, as I still really suck at doing this.) If you're lucky enough to have a shower head, don't forget to use the weird rubber thing hopefully found in the corner of the bathroom to sweep the water toward the drain when you're done.
10) Do NOT, under any circumstances, drink the water. This is possibly the most important thing I can tell you. It's also something most people probably already know, but here's the dirty secret you probably don't know: don't drink the bottled water, either. People collect the plastic bottles from the trash, refill them with tap water, and sell them again. They're even so crafty as to glue the seal back together, making it nearly impossible to tell if its been broken. This is most likely how I spent two weeks sick as a dog on my first visit. Boil your water. I don't care if you have to use one of those things people have in dorms for making Ramen. I don't care if you have to bring that thing with you from the U.S. Just find a way. Keep it at a full boil for at least one minute. I boil a big pot of water in the evening, let it cool overnight, and fill bottles in the morning.
11) You are not going to hear all the formal niceties you do in the U.S. One of my first questions for hubby was how to say "please" and "thank you" in Hindi. He told me there are no words for that. I've learned there actually are words for that, but I've only seen foreigners use them. To me, those words are a huge part of respectful interaction. In India, they're irrelevant. If you use them and the person doesn't react in any way, don't worry. They did hear you, they just don't know what to do with it. My father-in-law finally explained to me that there is no need to say these things because they are happy to give you everything you need and expect nothing in return.
12) Touch the feet. I knew people touched the feet of their elders. I had no idea what it meant, but I knew it happened. I didn't realize how much you have to do it, even to people you don't know. It's a show of respect meaning, essentially, you are like the dirt on their feet. Sexy right? I'd seen my husband touch his grandfather's feet but he never touched his aunt's. Apparently, that's just him being childish. You touch everyone's feet, unless they're younger than you or inferior to you in some way (see the previous statement about class). The foot-touching also has a more casual aspect that may actually be more important (especially if you're just traveling and not in the midst of Indian family). When you bump into someone, "oh sorry" or "excuse me" is not gonna roll. You don't have to actually touch their feet. But reach in that general direction with your right hand and then touch it to your chest. I see this most often on trains, when someone sitting inside trips over the other person on their way to get up. Touch the person's knee, touch your chest. This is so ingrained in people that they do it without even realizing they've done it. And what's funny to me is that they don't actually appear to care that they've just run over someone, they just do it out of habit.
13) Indians seem incredibly rude. But they're not. They may push and trample you and blatantly stare and leer at you and talk shit about you to your face (they have the equivalent of a southern woman throwing in "bless her heart"...apologies to my non-southern readers), but they will also welcome you into their home with no notice or introduction and feed you and clothe you and give you their bed.
