Connaught Place, New Delhi
Delhi receives me gracefully. I arrive with no complications on Air India,
my airline of choice. A non-stop 15-hour flight of 3 films, some audiobooks,
some work on the computer, 3 meals, some dozing, and I am in India. A friend close to the diplomatic corps has
carried a piece of luggage for me and meets me at baggage claim. We leave the airport, he in his VIP car, and
me in the Fulbright van. The Fulbright
guesthouse has flooded in the rains, so I will be staying at a hotel.
A day later, I am at the Fulbright campus, tucked away neatly
on a street facing one of the spokes of Connaught Place. The orientation is a
packet, some conversation, some fact-checking about me. Then I run off to the
US Embassy for a tour, and a presentation on how to stay safe in India. I comment that his hints are true for any
city. The fear factor and paranoia of the rich is apparent in his talk.
The thesis of the presentation is that Americans are thought
to have more, so people will try to steal from them/us. I wonder if the police officer knows that a
1000 sq. ft. apartment in Delhi starts at INR20,000,000, which is about
$333,000. I wonder if he knows that there are more millionaires in Bombay than
in any American city. Anyway, it is
true: Americans are perceived as rich to
Indians. Some of this is because we
don’t hide our wealth. As a society, we leave our valuables on display in our
homes, and we wear our nice jewelry on the streets to show our status, and we
travel with lots of stuff. This makes us
look wealthy.
What makes us wealthy, really, is that we have the freedom
to think and to explore. We can study what we want. We can travel. We can talk
with people of other creeds easily. We can even sleep with them, marry them. We
can do business as we please, stealing from the world without much consequence. As Americans, we are assured that we can make
mistakes on our bodies and have society pick up after us, in the form of
medical insurance. We can make mistakes and explore our own dim-wittedness with
little consequence. But what really
makes us wealthy is that we have the freedom to make our dreams come true, once
we find them.
So, I sit and listen to the officer quietly as he drones on
about the dangers of Indians and hands me an emergency card to flash in case of
danger. At the end, I politely exit the locked room and follow him out. He cares for my safety: that is the main
message I choose to take.
As I leave the grounds, I notice that the US Embassy has
encroached on a huge amount of land in the prime real estate of Delhi. I wonder
what their rent is for these hectares, all behind tall walls. There is a huge fountain, fancy grounds, lots
of walkways and buildings.
Next stop: a meeting with the Executive Director of the
India Fulbright program. A fellow grad of UPenn, I meet Adam an hour late due
to traffic and Embassy timings. He lived in India during college and learned
tabla in Varanasi. He is very good friends with one of my good friends. He is
deeply devoted to higher education and cultural exchange. He loves Delhi life. We chat and I share with him about Ayurveda
and my goals for the upcoming year. He
likes to know each of the awardees. I am sure I will see him again. With that,
the India briefing is done and I go back to my room.
Professor Jha calls to welcome me to India. He is the Dean
of the Faculty of Ayurveda at BHU. He brings greetings from another Dean at a
school in Delhi and a Principal from Bangalore, both good friends of mine. Jha has seen the articles which have suddenly appeared in all
the newspapers on Sunday and Monday about my arrival at BHU. His warmth and
enthusiasm light up my jet-lagged heart.