Friday, October 30, 2009

A Home Away From Home

My husband and I were recently talking about how easy or difficult it will be for us if and when we choose to go back home to Delhi. Of course, there are the good things, being near family and friends, feeling more at home in the city, but there are definitely going to be issues.

We can hardly imagine water or electricity being an issue for concern any more. Americans are completely taken by shock if there is a blackout. Tap water adheres to very high sanitation standards and is completely safe for drinking, but these folks still buy bottled water. We drink from the tap, but in Delhi, is there any telling what the bottled water may be contaminated with?

I am now used to cars stopping for me when I want to cross the road. I get a bit of a surprise when we visit the Boston city area or New York City, because those are more disorganized in terms of traffic and pedestrians wait for the traffic to stop. But they are still way more organized than Delhi. Yesterday, my husband had to wait for seven minutes to cross a red light and he was agitated at being stuck in a traffic jam. Both of us have been stuck in Delhi traffic jams for about an hour at time.

It's so clean and cool over here that I find it easy to go without taking a second shower at night or dusting the house for a week. I found those things rather difficult to do in Delhi.

And of course, I will miss the huge Barnes & Noble bookstores (An average store is about the size of an average Shopper's Stop in Delhi. They let you sit right there and read peacefully for as long as you want.), which are something of heaven on earth for a person like me, the huge variety of restaurants with international cuisines - Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Indian - whatever you can ask for.

But, of course, nothing beats buying books off the pavement in Connaught Place, eating roadside chaat and shopping for trinkets at Janpath, does it?

1 comment:

Shanky said...

Not sure about Delhi, but a lot of the stuff you mentioned for Boston are true with Hyderabad.
The city has a host of book stores (some of them as bug as 5 floors of a building), that function exactly like Barnes And Noble. In terms of Electricity, Water, Traffic and Cleanliness - some things are just not to be in this land.
I would report another change that I had noticed changing in India, that seems copied from US. Thats about Cineplexes. Single screen cinemas hosting 800 ppl etc. are just something of the past. Nowdays, there are the multi-plexes (four-five screens in the same space as there used to be a single hall) opening here and there. What probably is still different is the control cineplex owners hold over the entry and exit. In here things are still very controlled (and way more crowded) around what screen you get into than it is in US, where nobody cares as long as you buy the ticket for at least one movie.