Thoughts on Contemporary India

Greetings,

A week hardly does justice to a place as large, varied, and storied in amazing history and culture as India is, but that was all we had, and so I planned accordingly. Only the very brave or woefully naive undertake an Indian vacation completely on their own, and so within a few weeks of launching preliminary research I'd (Jennifer leaving all arrangements to me on this trip) zeroed in on a private tour group that came with a long list of satisfied customers from across the globe, a few of whom I contacted directly by email, just to be sure.

The tour group, Trinetra Tours, turned out to be an amazing find. They came up with the Delhi-Tiger/Game Preserve-Jaipur-Agra, seven-day itinerary, furnished us with a van, a talented driver, varied and welcoming hotels, and a knowledgeable guide at every stop. They also met us, and later dropped us off, at the brand new Indira Ghandi International Terminal in Delhi, just completed for the recently concluded Commonwealth Games. Indeed, it was the getting to and returning from India, the only part that Trinetra didn't organize, that proved the most problematic in our overall expedition. One thing is for sure: The Evans family will never be taking Air India again!

And how was India? Amazing, complex, rich, poor, serene, bustling, ultra-modern, ancient, Hindu, Muslim (and Jain, Sikh, Buddhist ...), anglophile, or Hindi-speaking, or both, high-tech, menial, and much more. "Contrast" is a word that constantly describes India and all that is Indian.

We found Delhi almost overwhelming. I had left there 37 years previously, which is to say 10 million inhabitants ago. Although we spent a good chunk of one morning driving around my old neighborhood, we couldn't find the house. Too much had changed, and I couldn't get my bearings since the field across the street from where I thought I'd remembered living - then an impromptu cricket field that doubled as a pyrotechnical display lot during any Hindu holiday, festival, or wedding - had disappeared.

In a similar rapid evolution, when I took Jennifer and the boys to see the school my sister and I attended in late elementary and middle school years, I found a place again all but unrecognizable. The field locations and sizes indicated that it must be the same campus, but each building had been completely redone, and the campus, like the city, had dramatically increased its building density, its in-fill. Everything looked vaguely familiar yet wholly dissimilar to what I'd envisioned. Logan, true to form, jumped right into a recess game with kids his age, on the very same field where a Presidential Fitness Test during

my 6th grade PE class first gave me a nascent sense of athletic identity. It remains a wonderful institution, and, to a person, each adult we briefly chatted up had great things to say about the school. Yet Delhi, at 14 million folks officially and probably more like 16 million unofficially, is beset with all the attendant problems of any city that might be located in a country not yet 65 years old undergoing such rapid change. The vestiges of the British Raj and the Moghul Empire remain and still variously define, but Delhi is so rapidly, sometimes painfully, changing that urban planning must be a huge challenge at every turn.

One of the best unintended consequences of our tour hinged on Trinetra Tour's inability to get us first-class rail tickets out of Delhi. Instead, we were accommodated on the world's largest rail system, with 1.5 million employees, in the next class, and in the sleeper section, even though we, unlike most, would not be taking the train to its Mumbai (Bombay) terminus 1400 km down the track. The sleeper car we found ourselves in those four hours provided a rich, largely unadorned tableau of upper middle-class Indian life. We were the only non-Indians on any of the cars the boys and I walked through, and yet at every turn individuals and families were happy to see us and were especially friendly toward the boys. If Istanbul is remembered by Logan and Hayden for the cheek tweak, then India has become equally legendary for the hair pat. Many folks, young and old, gave the boys a loving tap on their blond heads, with more than a few quite eager to crowd them into spontaneous family photos. At the Taj Mahal Logan was so highly sought out for group pictures that I thought it would be hilarious to set up a stand and rent out the boys for just this service - "Here's the picture of Shah Jahan's unparalleled homage to love, and, oh yeah, here is our adopted American son..."

In the end, we saw the Moghul triumphs in Delhi, Jaipur, and, of course, Agra, and soaked up whenever we could an increasingly ubiquitous middle- and upper middle-class contemporary Indian culture. I was astonished at the scope of change made largely possible by arguably the world's largest middle class in easily its largest democracy. India was indeed abuzz, having just hosted the Commonwealth Games and then, just a few days prior to our arrival, a lengthy (by US presidential standards) visit by President Obama. It was not difficult to notice that India is ascendent, excited about its future, especially in IT and related fields.

Yet it was also easy to see an India often challenged by mostly unchecked population growth and a natural environment struggling with omnipresent and consequent human pressures. Interestingly, most of the Indians we spoke with acknowledged the role of the British in their current success. Three generations of humanity later, and counting, can make the heart grow fonder, as can beating them in the Commonwealth Games. But it is also unescapable that 200 years of British influence has left defining treasures and practices, in education, transportation, law, government, and many other contemporary Indian institutions, and many Indians are now grateful for this legacy. I found this especially interesting, my family having originally moved to Pakistan in 1958, barely a decade after India and Pakistan were essentially wrenched apart at their very birth as nations and weaning from the British, and a time still quite raw and recovering from some of the more unfortunate aspects of protracted colonialism.

Most of all, Indians undoubtedly compromise one of the largest and fastest growing English speaking populations in the world, which doesn't do US interests any harm, and may end up doing quite a bit deal more. Certainly, President Obama wasn't there just to further open up the trade channels, regardless what the papers and websites say. My guess is that China was Topic A of discussion, with P.M. Singh and Pres. Obama acknowledging that now is as good a time as any to be particularly in tune with each other. Pakistan, and by extension Afghanistan, remain nettlesome for them, and India's imbroglio that is Kashmir remains a sticky point for us, but China's regional/global aspirations are so unambiguous by now to all those paying attention (which those two leaders certainly are) that an Indian/American rapprochement was perhaps inevitable. Necessity begets alliance. We will see what becomes of all this, and how our two countries increasingly collaborate, or not, in the future, but it was certainly a momentous time to be visiting a country that plays second fiddle less and less for anyone and has arrived as a serious geopolitical power in this world forever being redefined.

Thanks for reading, David