There are a lot of ways to make friends in foreign countries. Cups of tea, buckets of beer, shared hookahs, swapped hook-ups, shots, shots, shots, or a common interest in the elegant art of origami. You just have to stick to the cultural norm when making friends with locals, so in Bagar, most of the aforementioned possibilities are prohibited. What is allowed, is a cold drink. You might recognize a cold drink by its more Western name, soda. Cold drinks are called cold drinks here because, well, duh, they are cold and you drink them. Also, nothing else here is sold cold besides cold drink, meaning that cold drinks have a monopoly on temperature! I think that is positively brilliant advertising. Cold drinks are kind of expensive here (around 20-25 rupees, or about 50 cents)so technically you don't get them that often. This is what someone told me the first time I had a sweet drop of processed American sugar. "You won't get this very often." I glugged with saucer eyes, not wanting any detail to pass me by. Who knew the next time I would get to consume 12g of sugar in one sitting?! I can't remember who told me that, but he was clearly lying, because I have had more cold drink in five weeks in India than I have had all year in the US. It seems that everytime we leave GDL, there is a sun-kissed opportunity to sit back, relax, and chug down some bubbly ambrosia.
There are several kinds of readily available cold drink in Bagar: Fanta, Miranda (knock-off Fanta for you traitors), Thums Up (Coca-cola but without a 'b'), Sprite, Limca (tastier Sprite) and Mountain Dew. Everyone has their favorites. Sahil likes orange soda, just like Kel, Pankaj prefers Thums Up, and Deepak lives and dies by Mountain Dew. I myself have never been that big of a soda drinker, but as long as we're sharing, I quite like Diet Coke. The thing is, there is no 'diet' anything in rural India, so I have worked my way through the shmorgesboard of carbonation, to come to a very, very important realization. I am a Mountain Dew kind of girl. I never thought this could happen! I don't think I've ever had Mountain Dew before coming to India (+2 for globalization), and I was appalled when the sickly, alien-colored liquid was poured out in front of me. This conclusion happened naturally, probably the most organic thing to ever happen to Mountain Dew. After Sahil-bossman pranked me, he must have felt a little bad about it, as he offered to buy me a cold drink.
"What kind do you want?" he offered gently, diplomatically listing all the flavors.
I didn't even have to think. "Mountain Dew," I replied, with an assertive nod of the head.
This has brought my relationship with Deepak to soaring new heights, as we now have something very concrete in common. Deepak really loves Mountain Dew. When he assumes his North American personality "Robert," who lives in Can-AH-duh, is married to Angelina Jolie and fathered Barack Obama, he always makes sure to describe, in detail, the amount of Mountain Dew he drinks on a daily basis. It's a lot. I don't have the heart to tell him that if he drank twelve liters of M.Dew every day, his child Obama would be toothless and his beautiful wife Angie would most likely weigh 400 pounds. I am now worried that I might return to the US sans teeth, several hundred pounds heavier, emitting an eerie green glow from my skin.
Really though, my favorite thing about Mountain Dew is the slogan, emblazoned in a hip font in lime-green across the bottom of the bottle. "Darr ke aage, Jeet hai." This roughly translates to something along the lines of "Only after fear is there victory." I keep drinking Mountain Dew in the hopes of deciphering this Foucault-esque message. Does this mean that I am scared of the Mountain Dew, but once I've drank it I will feel victorious? Or is Mountain Dew supposed to help me overcome my fears? And why do you have to be scared of something to experience victory? That sounds like awfully pigeon-holed logic, no? A quick website search led me to the explanation of Mountain Dew "inspiring consumers to look beyond their fear and take up challenges that the brand threw at them." Well. Maybe I'm just old and boring, but I'm fairly certain the only challange Mountain Dew has thrown at anyone is a complete dental rehaul.
Conquering my fear, in the name of victory.
Deepak enjoying the Dew!
Getting Stared At:
This is the most unfortunate of constant characters, infinitely more uncomfortable than the heat or lack of toilet paper. I hate getting stared at, anywhere in the world. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to realize that someone's eyes are scanning my entire face and body. There is no accurate and reliable source for the number of people out there with X-ray vision, after all. I knew coming to India that people would ogle, particularly in rural areas. I'm white, and I'm rather obviously a girl, which leads many people to the question of "What is that white girl doing here?" Evidently, the most logical way to unpack this loaded question is by staring at me until their eyeballs dry up. "Aha! I have no more tears left. She must be interning at the Piramal Foundation, doing social work. Fantastic. Now, I can look away."
This past week has been particularly difficult. Almost all of our time has been spent out in the field, sitting at a table in the middle of a busy street, where practically everyone who passes by happens to be male. And there I am, being pale, sandwiched between three Indian co-workers and handing out business cards. Some people are polite about it- a quick glance through heavy-lidded eyes, and then they move on with their lives. Other people are a little more abrasive. People stick their heads out of bus windows, rickshaw drivers slow down, motorists completely disregard the road, and everyone does not one, not two, but at least a half dozen double-takes, if they aren't already walking past with their head completely revolved at 180 degrees. People come up to the Mobile Naukri table and just stare at me, as though I was some albino crocodile or an exotic bird. I am neither, and I defiantely raise my gaze to match theirs, to say "I am human, just like you. Now look away please." Sometimes this works. Other times, people misinterpret this as an invitation: "Hey, despite your unibrow and ill-fitting pants, I think you're cute, and since I am a white girl, and correlation equals causation, I am a loose woman. Yes, please, come and stand close by me and ogle some more! Here's my number."
I try not to let it bother me. I am in a foreign country, and I knew coming in people were going to look at me. At least I'm not blonde. Harsh though, gets very upset about it. I think he doesn't want us Penn interns to think that all Indians are weird drooling stare-mongers. And I most certainly don't- the majority of people who I have had conversational interactions with have been extremely polite and friendly. I think though, that it would be a totally different experience if I were a boy. Beyonce understands this; she wrote a nice song, "If I Were a Boy." She should add a lyric that goes, "If I were a boy, I could go to semi-rural Indiaaaaaaaaaa, and people wouldn't stare at me like they were at the zooooo-OOOOO-ooo."
maybe if you are sans teeth, several hundred pounds heavier, and emitting an eerie green glow from your skin then they won't stare so much!
ReplyDeletei also get the crazy eyes, 180 head spins, leaning out buses. and the general male-male touchiness in india makes them approach me physically too! there's a culture of staring and standing around and watching.. we amurrcans need to lose out sense of private space, because it doesn't exist in the eyes of most of the world. they're super curious (i convince myself there's no malice) and its nice they don't feel they have to resist their curiosity. but all that's easy to say when you don't have 7 people standing around silently staring at you.