Most of our last day in Delhi was spent at New Delhi's
Domestic/International Airport. It was new and to pass the time we
both read books; I read "Superfreakanomics" and highly
recommend it to anyone. There was a sign that promised free internet,
but one had to have a cell phone to use it because they text you the
code and that code only lasts for 1 hour. A nice lady let me borrow her
flashdrive encoded wifi receiver, but before we could blog her airplane
arrived and that was that. I mentioned this once before, but to know
India is to know that the cultural is paternalistic and heavily male
dominated.
It is also a culture stratified between classes, or castes, which, because of democracy has been diminished, but is very much alive and kicking, despite what the local upper-class will tell you. There is a middle class emerging here, but it will be decades, maybe longer, before they are any kind of percentage of the population. Over 60% of the country makes $1,000 a year or less, and because I don’t have the statistics available for the rest of the break down I can’t tell you how the rest shake out but I will say that the well-to-do make up about 10% and the rest fall somewhere way below that.
The reason I write about these things is because I like to educate others and because others ask me to explain many of the cultural caveats of foreign countries while we travel; however, I also bring this up because of what we experienced on the airplane, but I will return to that in a moment.
In India, only the rich/upper-class take planes while traveling to other parts of India. India is a land filled with train tracks laid down by the British and they are and have been the main mode of transportation for over a hundred and fifty years. Indians love their trains and they cost next to nothing to cover huge swaths of area. For example, from Delhi to Mumbai by train in a first class compartment with sleeping quarters would have been about $50 a ticket, or half of that for a non-A/C compartment. While our same day flights to Bombay (they call it Bombay still here in India, not Mumbai) were three times as much. Of course we did not care about $150 same day ticket prices to cover a stretch of land that is roughly the equivalent of going from Colorado to Minnesota for such a great price, but only the rich would do such a thing in this country. Side note: in Agra our chauvinistic taxi driver that Annie just loved, said, and I quote, “When I see you I see rich!”
We could have saved the money and taken the overnight 17 hour train ride, but we had saved over $500 a ticket already by flying into Delhi instead of Bombay (the others in our group flew directly to Bombay), which meant we were way ahead on our budget and had planned to spend that money elsewhere. Therefore, we boarded our plane with all of us rich folk (because here we truly are rich) and got a bird’s eye view of how the 1st tier or the top caste treated those purportedly beneath them.
We paid $4 extra to sit in exit row seating because it usually gives you all the leg room you want, but because it is exit row seating you are always asked by the airline if you are willing to jettison the emergency escape hatch outside the aircraft in the event of an emergency, per FAA guidelines. The stewardess will ask you this question every time and you must answer “yes” or “no”. If you are not willing you will be seated elsewhere.
We were all asked the question, but the guy in front of us was talking on his cell phone, which he’d been asked to shut off but refused to do. When asked, he stopped the stewardess and told her he was talking on his phone. She politely asked him to shut off his phone per FAA guidelines and with an arrogant huff he gave her the “yes” and continued talking for another minute. She waited patiently and then began her speech about the emergency exits, while he said, “Of course, of course… yes, yes, yes.”
By this point, I wanted to slam his head into the window and teach him some manners (this is my Achilles’ heel and frequently lands me in bad situations), but I refrained. I hate to see anyone abusing the help and it is worse when it involves some form of male domination and it didn’t help that when lots were cast in life, this guy got the short end of the douche-bag straw.
I would be guilty of an over generalization if this was my only example, but sadly it is not. The lady next to us would not open her bag of nuts with her own hands but snapped, “You open them” to the stewardess.
One cannot mistake the air of Indian-money here, as their clothing (like ours) sets them apart; that is, when you see them, which is only rarely. The poor may be angry at times at their condition, but they are incredibly humble and their humility is evident everywhere you go. The opposite is also true for a large part of the rich. Culturally, it is how things have been here for thousands of years. The castes separated them and those on top were superior and those on the bottom were equally inferior. The system is self-perpetuating and mirrors social-Darwinism in that it goes something like this: I was born into money; therefore, my karma is good because I was born rich as I could not have arrived at the highest caste level if my karma was not good or if I had led a bad life in my previous existence; hence I am superior and your bad karma landed you in the socio-economic situation you currently find yourself in and that is why you are inferior. You obviously were a rotten degenerate in your former life.
How can one argue against illogical constructs based in circular reasoning?
Last night, as I was blogging outside our hotel, a wealthy young lady could not get her log-in information correct on the computer and rather than deal with the situation in a normal and respectable manner, she proceeded to berate the staff and then she descended into a tirade, cussing at the young man until she felt he was thoroughly humiliated. Then she got up and demanded he fetch a cab for her, which he promptly did.
Ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you I would have confronted that person if we had been in the States, but here I always try to remember I am in a foreign country with different cultural standards and beyond any of that, I try to act like an ambassador of my country, my people, my religion, and even my college (because they footed most of the bill for my part of this trip and even gave us $1,000 to spend in the slums on the children). Therefore, I try to keep my mouth shut, although I also tend to get inoculated from keeping my mouth shut, which probably means I’ll be blogging about this subject again in the future.
From Bombay, one of the poorest cities in the world and home to many of the kindest as well…
It is also a culture stratified between classes, or castes, which, because of democracy has been diminished, but is very much alive and kicking, despite what the local upper-class will tell you. There is a middle class emerging here, but it will be decades, maybe longer, before they are any kind of percentage of the population. Over 60% of the country makes $1,000 a year or less, and because I don’t have the statistics available for the rest of the break down I can’t tell you how the rest shake out but I will say that the well-to-do make up about 10% and the rest fall somewhere way below that.
The reason I write about these things is because I like to educate others and because others ask me to explain many of the cultural caveats of foreign countries while we travel; however, I also bring this up because of what we experienced on the airplane, but I will return to that in a moment.
In India, only the rich/upper-class take planes while traveling to other parts of India. India is a land filled with train tracks laid down by the British and they are and have been the main mode of transportation for over a hundred and fifty years. Indians love their trains and they cost next to nothing to cover huge swaths of area. For example, from Delhi to Mumbai by train in a first class compartment with sleeping quarters would have been about $50 a ticket, or half of that for a non-A/C compartment. While our same day flights to Bombay (they call it Bombay still here in India, not Mumbai) were three times as much. Of course we did not care about $150 same day ticket prices to cover a stretch of land that is roughly the equivalent of going from Colorado to Minnesota for such a great price, but only the rich would do such a thing in this country. Side note: in Agra our chauvinistic taxi driver that Annie just loved, said, and I quote, “When I see you I see rich!”
We could have saved the money and taken the overnight 17 hour train ride, but we had saved over $500 a ticket already by flying into Delhi instead of Bombay (the others in our group flew directly to Bombay), which meant we were way ahead on our budget and had planned to spend that money elsewhere. Therefore, we boarded our plane with all of us rich folk (because here we truly are rich) and got a bird’s eye view of how the 1st tier or the top caste treated those purportedly beneath them.
We paid $4 extra to sit in exit row seating because it usually gives you all the leg room you want, but because it is exit row seating you are always asked by the airline if you are willing to jettison the emergency escape hatch outside the aircraft in the event of an emergency, per FAA guidelines. The stewardess will ask you this question every time and you must answer “yes” or “no”. If you are not willing you will be seated elsewhere.
We were all asked the question, but the guy in front of us was talking on his cell phone, which he’d been asked to shut off but refused to do. When asked, he stopped the stewardess and told her he was talking on his phone. She politely asked him to shut off his phone per FAA guidelines and with an arrogant huff he gave her the “yes” and continued talking for another minute. She waited patiently and then began her speech about the emergency exits, while he said, “Of course, of course… yes, yes, yes.”
By this point, I wanted to slam his head into the window and teach him some manners (this is my Achilles’ heel and frequently lands me in bad situations), but I refrained. I hate to see anyone abusing the help and it is worse when it involves some form of male domination and it didn’t help that when lots were cast in life, this guy got the short end of the douche-bag straw.
I would be guilty of an over generalization if this was my only example, but sadly it is not. The lady next to us would not open her bag of nuts with her own hands but snapped, “You open them” to the stewardess.
One cannot mistake the air of Indian-money here, as their clothing (like ours) sets them apart; that is, when you see them, which is only rarely. The poor may be angry at times at their condition, but they are incredibly humble and their humility is evident everywhere you go. The opposite is also true for a large part of the rich. Culturally, it is how things have been here for thousands of years. The castes separated them and those on top were superior and those on the bottom were equally inferior. The system is self-perpetuating and mirrors social-Darwinism in that it goes something like this: I was born into money; therefore, my karma is good because I was born rich as I could not have arrived at the highest caste level if my karma was not good or if I had led a bad life in my previous existence; hence I am superior and your bad karma landed you in the socio-economic situation you currently find yourself in and that is why you are inferior. You obviously were a rotten degenerate in your former life.
How can one argue against illogical constructs based in circular reasoning?
Last night, as I was blogging outside our hotel, a wealthy young lady could not get her log-in information correct on the computer and rather than deal with the situation in a normal and respectable manner, she proceeded to berate the staff and then she descended into a tirade, cussing at the young man until she felt he was thoroughly humiliated. Then she got up and demanded he fetch a cab for her, which he promptly did.
Ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you I would have confronted that person if we had been in the States, but here I always try to remember I am in a foreign country with different cultural standards and beyond any of that, I try to act like an ambassador of my country, my people, my religion, and even my college (because they footed most of the bill for my part of this trip and even gave us $1,000 to spend in the slums on the children). Therefore, I try to keep my mouth shut, although I also tend to get inoculated from keeping my mouth shut, which probably means I’ll be blogging about this subject again in the future.
From Bombay, one of the poorest cities in the world and home to many of the kindest as well…
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