in which i see the qutub minar and yell at an indian man about consent

Our friend Gabe fell out of a tree a few weeks ago and bruised some bone in his ankle and has been on crutches ever since. He's getting the cast off on Monday, and he should be totally fine. It's just sort of a hassle to crutch around New Delhi, especially since sidewalks aren't really a thing here. He and Sarah called me around 1PM and asked if I wanted to join them at the Qutub Minar, which I did. I arrive there an hour later, and I see Gabe standing there on one leg with Sarah. He looks at me and simply says, "I left my crutches in the auto." This is problematic because Gabe cannot walk without crutches right now. He can hobble and he can hop, but walking? Not so much.

Sarah and I went to the ticket counter, leaving the immobile Gabe under a shady tree, and we asked if they had a wheelchair. If you are traveling with a handicapped individual, you will be glad to know that you can get a wheelchair at the Qutub Minar if you need one. In fact, there are many ramps to facilitate the movement of said wheelchair. But cobblestones complicate the whole matter.

We were a sight to behold. One gringo in a wheelchair being wheeled around by two gringas in floral print dresses. There were definitely some curious stares, but there were also some photographs. The three of us were looking at someone's tomb, and a man comes up to Sarah and me and asks, "to take a picture." We both assumed he meant to take a picture of him and his family so Sarah said, "Sure!" And then he tried to shuttle us into the photograph so that we could be in a picture with him. We shook our heads and said no as soon as we realized the misunderstanding.

Another man came up and asked to take a picture, to which I firmly responded, "Nahi!" There were some surreptitious picture takers and some who weren't so sneaky. Gabe, Sarah and I were standing by an iron pole, which does have a deeper significance that I read about on a sign but can't exactly remember right now, and this man, who is standing no more than four feet away, just snaps a picture on his phone. I sort of lost it at this point and just walked up to the man. Sarah told me after the fact that she and Gabe sort of turned away in embarrassment.

"Show me your camera. You just took a photo of us. Show me your camera. Show me the photo. Show me the photo. You took a picture! I saw you just take a photograph of us."

He was pretty sheepish, and at first pretended that his phone didn't have a camera. I kept on insisting though. And when I finally got him to show me the pictures, he said something along the lines of, "No pictures of you. Here. Look." At which point I grabbed his phone and started scrolling through his pictures. Lo and behold, there was a photo of me and Gabe and Sarah. It wasn't a picture that we happened to be in. We were clearly the subjects, with me in the middle, flanked by Gabe and Sarah.

"Delete it. I'm not moving until you delete that photo. Delete it!" He deleted it, and I know he deleted it because I watched him delete it. Then I walked away, wheeling Gabe with me. Gabe's response to my outburst was along the lines of, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

In retrospect, this was maybe not the smartest move on my part. I just want to know what these guys get out of taking photographs of us. Are they going to take them and show them to their friends? Tell them stories about how they totally hooked up with us or something equally absurd? Or are we really that much of a novelty? In any of these cases, it makes me entirely uncomfortable to think that someone is taking my picture without my consent. It makes me feel like an object, like I'm as much of an attraction as the Qutub Minar itself.

But the Qutub Minar was still really cool. I took a lot of pictures of crumbling ruins and intricately carved stone. I did not, however, take photographs of people without their consent because, as we've learned, that's inappropriate and makes people uncomfortable.

let's talk about holi

"Casual Tisching, post-Holi" -- a gem from Spring 2011.

The first time I heard about Holi was during my freshman year at Tufts. I went away for a weekend with the Tufts Democrats (because I'm a hip, social activist type...or just a nerd), and when I came back, my roommate and quite a few of my floormates were coated in colorful pigment. All I could get from them was, "Holi! Colors! On the Rez Quad! Just now! Indian festival! Blah! Did you see how cool my shirt looked?! Look at the cool Holi pictures that are up on Facebook!" During my sophomore year, I made it a point to partake in the festivities, led by the Indian student organization on campus. Once again, I didn't really know what it meant except that it was an excuse to take a nice, long break from studying for midterms to throw colors at each other. My boyfriend and I took a picture on my laptop in Tisch, post-Holi, to show to the world how cultured and colorful we were. (I should also mention that I sort of hated the whole thing. I liked being covered in colors, but I hated how every time I blew my nose for the next week, my snot was a mixture of purple and red from the rang. But, hey. A good Facebook picture is a good Facebook picture, you dig?)

Now let's fast-forward to a year later. I'm in India for Holi. No more of this janky Rez Quad business; I've moved into the major leagues. I woke up, excited to get out there and get my color on. But let me tell you something about Holi in India. It is serious business. First and foremost, the streets are empty. The market's closed. You can barely find an auto-rickshaw, when they're usually driving around in packs of five or six. Second, there's this ominous feeling when you walk down the streets because all you see is patches of pigment thrown on the sidewalks. You know someone has been there, but you don't know where they've gone and you don't know when they'll be back. It's nerve wracking. This is what I imagine a zombie apocalypse to feel like --

The usually bustling Lajpat Nagar Central Market on Holi.

And what have we all learned from zombie movies? When the zombie apocalypse is approaching, you stock up, and you stock up quickly. The only vendors that were on the streets were selling water guns, so Sarah and I grabbed one each and filled up. We then, cautiously, made our way back to our homestay. On the way, we had to dodge water balloons dropped from the roofs of the buildings surrounding us. I even saw a father, carrying his baby, with a water gun in hand. Sarah and I, unfortunately, did not come out unscathed. Some old man with a great white beard came up to us as we were buying water guns and smeared some green pigment on our foreheads and gave us a big bear hug, which was equally slimy. On our walk to the market, Sarah got hit with a few water balloons, some good squirts of a water gun and an egg to the right thigh. I got a water balloon to the right side and the back of the neck, in addition to an egg on my left butt cheek.

And then, war began. Children throwing pigment. Fathers on rooftops with sons and daughters, chucking water balloons. Big kids jumping little kids, rubbing dye in their hair and faces. Total chaos --

It was way aggressive. I'm still scared to go out onto the streets. In fact, Sarah and I went to the ATM and I had to literally growl at two teenage boys to get hell away from me with the rang, or pigment. They got dangerously close, but I scared 'em off. There was also a couple of grown men who were harassing us and threw a bottle of water on us. That was just uncalled for, honestly.

I'm now sitting in my room while the rest of my host family is napping. Our host sister says that once you wash the pigment off, you wash away your energy too and you just need to take a nap. But, much like last year, I need to buckle down and study for a midterm. Miree Hindi bahut karab hai. That's fancy-talk for, "My Hindi is really bad."

Today's been fun, but I already have enough trouble when I walk down the mean streets of Delhi. I get cat-called on the regular, so I really don't need to be worrying about getting a water balloon thrown at me or staining my clothes with potentially toxic chemicals, too.

Happy Holi! Right?!

look, ma!

I've been in this country for about a week now, and I'm only starting to get my bearings. We're starting to fall into a routine, which is definitely a good thing, but I'm worried that the routine will totally be shaken up next week though because we'll be taking an excursion to Aligar. Even though we're finding our groove, it's not exactly easy. Our schedule is, in a word, intense. Hindi is taking over my life. When I signed up for this program, I sort of considered learning the language like a cherry on the top of a public health sundae. But right now, it seems that all I'm spending my time on is having my host mother dictate sentences about khana, which means "food," so that I can write them down only to be completely incapable of repeating them to my teachers at school. Our classes have been running over the listed schedule by a couple of hours in some cases, and I come home from the program center totally drained.

But today we got our things together, dragged ourselves out of the house and made did some real tourist stuff. We went to India Gate! And we took pictures! So look, Mom! I'm doing some cool things here, I promise!