We had quite a final day in Delhi....
Maulin and I woke up early and I missed another morning of exercise. I do miss working out, but we keep on saying that Orissa will give us a lot of space and time to get our bloods pumping.
We started off getting stuck in traffic and getting lost in the northern area of Delhi for a long time. Lots and lots of traffic + Indian streets = hours of driving and honking. Also, the rains of the season finally poured in while driving looking for our destination. That means quite a lot of heavy rain for about an hour.
We were on our way to the Delhi School of Economics to meet up with economics Professor TCA Anant, thanks to one of our leads from the previous day's meetings. It was our last last-minute meeting in the city before we head out to the field, and we were not really sure as to why we were bothering to meet the guy. But surprisingly, it went really well, and we had some great insights from him on our project and fieldwork in Orissa.
On a side note: The campus is placed in the older, skeezey area of Delhi. Things around the campus are a mess, and it is rather slummy. However, the campus itself is gated in and quite lovely in comparison. And there were a lot of lush trees spotting the campus. Again, another retro building.
Afterwards, we hit another long line of traffic, and I consequently fell asleep in the back of the cab. We then stopped at the State Bank of India and waited for probably over an hour for Maulin and Molly's traveller's checks to get reimbursed. It was a very, VERY silly bureaucratic system where papers were signed, resigned, new papers emerged, photocopying, etc. It reminded me frustratingly of French bureaucracy, actually. We then got stuck in even more traffic on our way to south Delhi.
We thought we were being driven to the Lotus Temple, but instead we found ourselves magically at this place called the Delhi Haat (pronounced "haht"). Deborah had mentioned it to us the night before, but we all had the assumption that it was similarly to the bazar, or at least a mall. Not so at all. It was like a small warehouse full of textiles, shoes, paintings, carpets, sarees, punjabis, bangles....ivory and marble statuettes...you name it. Cottage marketing at its finest, for India at least. You walk in and feel like you are crammed into the backroom of some large department store, attached to their warehouse. Colors saturated my eyes while I struggled to figure out where it began and ended.
This place is government-ran, which means that there is no commission and prices are fixed. This means that it actually was a bit cheaper to buy things here, particularly for foreigners because they are constantly overcharged in the haggling markets. It's a way for the GoI to promote tourism & culture and consumerism in India, I suppose.
So my team and I are ushered into a backroom with some salesman. We are sat down on some couches, he sits down in front of us, and amazingly spends FOUR HOURS (4 hours!) with us, showing us every possible fabric quality and color that they had to offer. He opened up bags of punjabis and pashminas and we all pointed at what we wanted and didn't want. And then we short-listed our piles of options. And then we tried on a size, and the on-hand tailors took our clothing and catered them all to our sizings for free.
Meanwhile the salesman was getting us tea, coffee, and other drinks. He even got my teammembers beer, while I sipped 3 bottles of Fanta. For hours and hours we laughed and looked and touched and laughed more. Our driver finally came in to find us because we were there for so long. Families of Indians came in and out as we sat there. Surprisingly, few foreigners were in the whole place the entire time we were there. The salesman finally coaxed me into singing in the room for everyone. The servers all stopped to listen. A bit awkward for me, but everyone seemed to really like it, including my team.
We all ended up coming back with bags of really amazing sarees and shirts and scarves.
It was probably the best shopping experience I have ever had in my life. And I don't even like shopping!
After the great trip to Delhi Haat, we were rejuvenated and excited and babbling in the car with our driver. He finally drove us to the solemn (and surprisingly not-so-tourist-fully) Lotus Temple, which is a Baha'i temple. It looks like a lotus, go figure. It's 25 years old, and really stunning! We walked the nice esplanade there, and stared at the beauty in front of us. Really great building, kind of looks like the Sydney Opera House, only more spiritually inclined.
Oddly enough, on our way up to the temple, we were stared and pointed at by all of the Indians walking around us. We were stopped by a lot of groups of people to have their pictures taken with us. I'm serious. People were almost standing in line, like we were the attraction instead of the temple.
Taking our shoes off, we entered the silent temple. It was hot! Well, that makes sense, it was marble, after all. Really pure and white and simple, and lovely. I walked in and sat down for a mini meditation in the temple, and what an experience! The heat made me feel like I was in a sweat lodge again, and I began sweating profusely. I was feeling amazing and got really clear while in the temple.
By the way, we hadn't eaten anything since 9am that morning...
So we shuffled our way back to the cab, and hit our long line of traffic for the umpteenth time of the day. An emergency hospital break had to be made, and we pulled over to a nice gas station and grabbed some snacks to take with us on the flight to Orissa in the morning.
We got back to the hotel and had a nice dinner. Our flight got pushed back 2 hours, so now we only have to wake up at 6am instead of 4am.
We are now packed and ready to go to Orissa!!!!
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