Week 1: Context

The site itdependsexpalinmore =

It depends: Most of my questions have the answer “it depends” when I ask what I think are basic questions.  But CONTEXT matters.  This is a situation where you realize our education system taught us not a damn thing about one of the largest countries in the world.  India has 1.2 billion people with 22 official languages and according to Census of India, the total number of mother tongues spoken in India is 1652.  So there is a lot of “it depends.”

Explain More: That is what I either say out loud when someone is explaining something or what I am thinking in my head.  Explain more can also means: “what?”  “You lost me.” “I have no idea what you are talking about.” etc. etc.

I am writing this blog:

1. Because I will drive Smritika crazy if I am always verbalizing what I am thinking.  This allows me to filter my thoughts one more time before saying things out loud (which all who know me knows I need to do from time to time)
2. Update the people I love dearly about what life is like out here.

FOOD: Some of the best food I have ever tasted.  Fruit is incredible.  Below is me eating a mango. Every morning I get a coconut delivered to my door.  Hard to describe all the foods I have eaten thus far but will continue to send pictures with names.

GOING TO THE BATHROOM:  It’s one of those things that is on our mind when we arrive to a new place.

TRANSPORTATION: AUTOS, TRAINS AND UBER

Most of the time you take an “Auto” which looks like this:

A video clips of what it looks like when you are in the backseat.  This is not that busy for Mumbai standards.  Traffic is no joke out here.

TRAIN: This is me riding the equivalent of the CTA.  You can buy a “first class” ticket which costs something like $1 and has less people or a second class ticket which is like the equivalent of 20 cents. For women you ride in a separate car if you want. A video of what that looks like from the window.  I wanted to show you how many people were on the train but not yet comfortable filming strangers.

 

When you are tired and just want certainty you can always take Uber.  That shit works really well here.

RELIGION: India has a lot of religion going on.  I can’t even begin to understand all the layers to this.  The main ones are Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.  To commemorate Easter thought I would give you some words of wisdom I found on my walk to work the other day: a large church with some saying we might see in Chicago.  Sorry to the Jews but Passover is not really a thing out here.