Scaffolding, Beggars and Jesus - 3

Last year, I went to India! This is part 3 of my (mostly unabridged) account that I wrote while I was over there. If you like to start at the start, there are some previous posts that cover the first three days of my journey. Since I wrote a lot of stuff, I'm posting the stories in installments. Also as a disclaimer, as the trip went on and I got progressively more tired, my writing became less and less cohesive, and more of a stream of consciousness... so I'll try and fix it as much as possible to make it readable! Not that anyone really reads this blog haha :P I needed to type up all my notes though anyway...
In the last installment, I left off just after our arrival in Agra (we were going there to see the Taj Mahal of course... why else?) Personally I wasn't particularly interested in going to Agra just to see it, but it was something my dad wanted to do, and also apparently it's an 'essential' thing to do when you visit North India... so that's where we ended up going on Day 4. (And by the way, if I write stuff in [...] brackets, it means I'm adding it now as an afterthought). Anyway! Without further ado, here are some more stories from India...

Day 4 - Tuesday 27th September 2016, Agra/Delhi

This morning we got up early, before sunrise, to see the Taj Mahal [as a random sidenote, in case you were curious, Mahal isn't actually pronounced mahaaaaaaal, but rather more like mehel] . At the place where we bought tickets, we learned you couldn't bring any food in, and I gave the rest of our packet of biscuits to a man who I think was a beggar, sitting on the ground. He smiled.
'Thank you madam,' he said, and he waved to me as we drove off in the bus a few minutes later and smiled again.

The place you buy the tickets, and the man who got half a packet of biscuits is in the shot too.

So, the Taj Mahal? Very big. Pretty cool, I guess. A man showed us where to take good photos from, and when we wouldn't pay him he walked away muttering 'that's not fair!' [he hadn't mentioned at all beforehand that his advice wasn't free... tourist scams :P] We went around the Taj Mahal for a while, then looked out over the Yamuna River for a while, then came back to the Coral Tree Homestay after buying a fridge magnet and a little elephant carved from stone [souvenirs, naturally].

 A mischievous creature, which stole someone's apple when they weren't looking...

 Sunrise at the gate

And  of course, the star attraction... scaffolding!

There were lots of monkeys at the Taj; at one point a gang of them were chasing a terrified skeletal little cat across the grass. We came back to the Coral Tree after seeing the Taj Mahal, which I mentioned already [haha handwriting + memory skills there], and then we went out on a tuktuk to the Agra Fort. it was very hot there, although the architecture was interesting. Then we went to a clothes shop, which was expensive, so we went to another where I bought a patiala suit [the long shirt and baggy pants with a scarf that young women often wear in India, especially in the North] and a cushion cover with the Taj Mahal on it for Mum.

 Somewhere in the Fort in Agra

You can actually see the Taj Mahal from the Fort too, in the distance

We came back for lunch, and then I talked to two young women in their twenties [who worked at the homestay] while they put mehendi [henna] on my feet. I can't remember the name of the girl doing the mehendi but she was 21, had three brothers and three sisters, and lived with all of them as well as her parents and her grandmother! The other girl, Usha, was 27 and came from Shimla in Himachal Pradesh [a state right up in the North of India; it even snows there in the parts near the Himalayas]. I've discovered, as I somewhat expected, that I find the people, and talking to people, much more interesting than architecture. Usha only spoke one language - Hindi - and it was amazing to be able to speak and be understood by her.

Mehendi - traditionally only worn at weddings, but hey! One has to comply with tourist stereotypes

I love speaking Hindi, because I can talk to so many more people and hear so many more stories than other people who come to India and only speak English. God has given me a love for languages, and inspired me to start and continue learning Hindi. I'm glad that He did. When you talk to someone in their mother tongue, you talk to the 'real' them and not the image they might present to tourists. Perhaps then, people would be open to hearing about Jesus from a foreigner if the conversation was in Hindi; but really it is up to God to open someone's heart. Anyway, I love Hindi. I love God. We'll see what happens from there!

 [As a side note, in my limited understanding of a complicated issue, Christianity in India is generally associated with British colonialism - and especially recently with the growth of Hindu Nationalism and the widespread support for the BJP political party (which is quite nationalist). Christianity is viewed as a negative foreign influence, and many Indian Christians face persecution because of this. Evangelism from foreigners in some cases can do more harm than good, as it can reinforce the popular (although false) stereotype that foreign Christians 'force or trick Indian people into leaving their cultural heritage to join some foreign religion'. However, there are still technically more Christians in India than there are people in all of Australia! Anyway, as an open Christian myself I realised, as I began to understand Indian culture more, that it is important to be wise in sharing Jesus in a culture that unfortunately sometimes tends to associate Jesus with arrogance and oppression by white people. It is a good start at least to break down stereotypes, even by simply showing the love of Jesus in everything you do. And also to realise that it is not always up to you to save the whole world in the next 24 hours, and to ask God to lead you and grant you wisdom! This was an idea that was only just beginning to develop in my mind at the time, and I still inwardly cringe at my naivety every now and then. Anyway, back to the story!]

We relaxed for a while in the outside lounge, talking to our fellow homestay guests: the mother and daughter from New Zealand, and also a mother, father and two daughters (13 and 17) from New Zealand too. After they left, Dad went for a walk to the ATM and I fell asleep on the couch outside for a while. Then we said our goodbyes to the lovely people who ran the homestay, and took a car to the train station. I had a good conversation in Hindi with our driver (I think his name was Krishan Gopal or something. He was from Agra and four children: a daughter and three sons, the youngest of whom was four years old). He showed us a photo (while driving) of his youngest son. We arrived at the station and caught our train back to Delhi, eating some food on the train; I listened to some music on my laptop [okay so I may have brought my school laptop. Dunno if I was really supposed to... but I gave that one back a long time ago anyway!]. Most of the seats around us were filled with an Australian group from Sydney [all wearing bright polo shirts with the name of their trip printed all over it, too. They seemed to be discussing social media, and who liked who, and who's girlfriend did what? etc. It was like being back in school...]

A view out the train window between Agra and Delhi

Chaos ensued when we got off the train [back in Delhi], as we tried to look for a restaurant called Comesum outside the station where we would meet our driver to the next place we were staying. It turns out there were two Comesum restaurants [at opposite sides of the station too haha], and eventually we found the right one. On the way we were fought over by rickshawallahs. A little girl in a faded purple anarkali suit [traditional Indian dress] came up and tugged on my sleeve.
'Didi,' she said, and 'Bhaiyya,' for Dad. She was holding out her hand and looking up imploringly, motioning eating, saying 'das rupaye...' [das rupaye means 'ten rupees'. Also, 'Didi' means big sister, and 'Bhaiyya' means big brother]. Later on, as we were getting into our car, a thin woman in a sari approached us, holding a baby. She asked for some money to feed her baby, calling down blessings on me and my suitcase and looking up to the sky, then pinching her baby's thin cheeks to make it cry. As we left I asked her 'maaf kijiye' [forgive me], as I couldn't help her.

We drove through the streets and highways and stopped in traffic. A little boy with a bunch of balloons came up, asking for das rupaye. He rubbed his tummy and looked up questioningly. His friend did too. I could not do anything for them [and all the travel advice constantly repeats not to give to beggars, despite what your feelings may compel you to do], so after a while they moved on, and so did the traffic. We eventually arrived at Maya's Nest, a homestay in a Colony [a district where middle-class people live - they had an armed guard I think, outside the boom gate of the district], in a building up several flights of stairs. We had dinner here with Liz from the Netherlands, who had cycled with her boyfriend around Kyrgyzstan and was now in India for six weeks. Our host Asha was very hospitable. She had some strong opinions about things, especially when she heard we'd been on the Salaam Baalak Trust walk [see 'Adventures in India - Part 2']. She also had some very strong opinions about religion and politics and Indian history. But she was a good hostess, and looked after us very well, like a mother [Maya's Nest does mean mother's nest after all]. Liz's boyfriend joined us for a while but he couldn't eat much because of a toothache. After dinner we all talked for a while, and then went to bed.



And so ended the fourth day of our adventure, and the last day of being just another bunch of tourists in the Delhi-Agra section of the tourist triangle. Thank you for reading thus far! Stay tuned for some more adventures, of the less touristy kind...