So this is technically my second day in India and I feel a lot less of a culture shock than I thought I would feel. It reminds me a lot of certain areas of China, specifically Xinjiang province.
When we were flying over Delhi, at first my thought was "oh wow, big buildings" but then it became about the smaller buildings. And then about the big houses. And then about the smaller houses. And then I fixated on the huts, the hundreds of huts dumped together on one block, housing how many hundreds of people, I couldn't even begin to guess.
It was remarkably easy getting out of the airport. It never ceases to amaze me how generally universal the whole airport ordeal is: customs, security, ridiculously long waits for your luggage.
I found Rajan, my coordinator easily enough, he had a sign with my name. We hopped into his car - on the left side, I might add - and started heading towards the city of Delhi. Honestly, I didn't pay that much attention to the scenery as I couldn't get over how much like bumper cars it felt, sitting on the driver's side without driving.
We've spent our afternoons exploring the general area around us, managing to find a Baskin Robbins! And it looks and tastes exactly the same as it does in Canada.
And today we made horrible pasta with tomato sauce for Rajan and his wife. The only thing we could find in the 'grocery store' (more like a convenience store) was a massively large can of pureed tomatoes and a small can of Ragu pizza sauce.
We ended up boiling the water with a bit of onion and garlic and added half the can of pureed tomatoes with the whole can of Ragu sauce and way, way too much pasta.
The whole thing was ridiculously bland. Not just by Western standards (which is remarkably dull compared to the wild, spicy, exotic tastes of genuine Indian food) but by every standard in the world.
We were embarrassed.
Very, very embarrassed.
I'm not even sure how we ended up agreeing to make the pasta for them, and honestly, if I wanted to go about making Western food for other people, it wouldn't be through half a can of pureed tomatoes, a can of pizza sauce, and two bags of macaroni pasta.
Nah, I'd go with a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich.
PS when I say "we" I'm generally talking about myself and the other Canadian that I met in China last year. We kept in touch over the months and decided to go on another adventure together.
No comments:
Post a Comment