The Holiday Spirit

Hello all! I hope you are enjoying flipping through red and green magazine pages stuffed with cookie recipes, hearing those catchy Christmas tunes over and over, and not going anywhere without seeing a pine garland and lights. I haven't been experiencing too many of these things, in fact, the only sign of Christmas I had seen up to today was a street vendor wearing a pointy red and white felt hat. I'm not sure he was even aware of the holiday connection. He may have only been wearing it to keep warm. It does get pretty chilly here- especially at night.
I have made the switch from sleeping in the spare bedroom of the orphanage to living like a queen in the sixth-story apartment of a Western-style Indian family (the bathrooms come complete with toilet paper). I took the early bus from Jaipur to Delhi on Thursday. I told the conductor I needed to go to Girgaon- a satellite city about 30 km southwest of Delhi's center. The bus slowed down and threw me and my luggage off on the side of a dusty highway. I was swamped by cycle rickshaw drivers smacking the seats of their vehicle as a demanding invitation to sit down. The conductor said (translated through my new multilingual friend I was lucky enough to sit next to on the five-hour drive through the desert) my final destination was an hour's drive from where the bus was dropping me. I figured I would grab an auto at the bus stand, but ran out of ideas when I was let off. I repeated the address over and over, but only received puzzled looks and more seat-smacking. Not about to turn an hour's drive into the entire afternoon, I ignored the cycle rickshaws after receiving blank stares when I yelled, "does anyone here speak English?!"
Finally, there came a blessing in black eyeliner. A heavily-makeuped woman was passing and I desperately asked her for help. She put me in a cycle rickshaw, told me the price, said something to the driver, and was off just like she came- in a cloud of dust from the street. I was too thankful, especially after learning that the apartment was actually in walking distance from where I was. The poor driver didn't know what he was getting himself into. He was five inches shorter and half my weight peddling me, and my three bags uphill. I gave him more than double what he asked, especially because he had trouble finding the place.
I was greeted with a tray of tea and cookies by a guy I mistook for being a family member. Turns out, he is the servant who has been cleaning my room and cooking my meals everyday. The family is out of town (returning this afternoon), so I have been here alone.
Yesterday I had another adventure getting to Delhi for some sightseeing. The buses that supposedly come every five minutes showed up once in a half an hour filled to the brim with bodies. Luckily, I met a college girl also headed to Delhi, who threw me into a share cab as it slowed near us. It dropped us in South Delhi, so I took a not-so-crowded bus to Old Delhi to hit the major tourist spots. I saw the Red Fort (a lot like the Agra Fort- big, ornate, and utterly majestic) and Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India. There were prayers going on, so foreigners couldn't enter, but I got to see hundreds standing up and kneeling down in unison to a croaking voice blaring from the speaker system. On accident, I found the nice part of Delhi, where well-to-do Delhites dress in Indo-Western fashions, shop at expensive stores, and eat at funky cafes. I grabbed a paneer tikka roll at a back-alley barbecue stall and had delicious dessert at one of these cafes. I was seated with another American woman teaching in Punjab who was indulging in real cheese after going months without it. We spoke about our experiences in the country- mine in the south and hers in the north. She is living in Amritsar, famous for its large Golden Temple and conglomeration of Sikhs who pray there. I want to visit this place and may do so in my last few weeks here.
Getting home from Delhi was relatively easy. Prakash, the servant, made me a great home-cooked meal and I read myself to sleep.
This morning I decided to see Gurgaon, which consists of a busy main road stacked with fancy apartment complexes, spaceship-like malls, and numerous cinemas. Unlike Chennai, Delhi, Kerala, or any other part of India I have seen, Gurgaon's streets are mostly filled with personal cars, not auto-rickshaws or gas-guzzling Ambassador monsters. It seems like people get around by driving themselves, or taking cycle-rickshaw for short distances.
Walking around mall number 1 was very strange. Tim McGraw twanged in the background about his lover at Christmastime while I peered into shops selling beautiful pashmina scarves and sari material. Young urbanites in "this is only cool in India-" style Western clothes speaking rapid Hinglish (Hindi-English) on their cell phones sipped mocha frappes and loitered around the fake Christmas tree in the lobby. I wandered past the fifty-three people cleaning the already-spotless floors in a confused state. Once again, I felt like I had gone back in time. In this case, I was in a land where shopping malls were the new, cool thing, and every part of them from the food court to the Christmas carols were a novelty. Malls number 2, 3, and 4 were just the same. I caught myself singing aloud to "I caught mommy kissing Santa Claus" in the bookstore. Oddly enough, as my voice rose, they changed the song right in the middle to one I didn't recognize. Hmm.
Gurgaon is really a hyper-modern metropolis with all the latest fads. I asked Amrita, the girl who helped me get to Delhi, about the good restaurants here. She replied, "we really like McDonald's and Pizza Hut." I cringed.