Again in Delhi

In India, I've come to prefer rail travel to buses, but as there are no tracks to McLeod Ganj, I booked an overnight tourist bus back to Delhi. The trip was supposed to take twelve hours, but due to two flat tires, one while the bus sat parked during dinner and the other while we were driving through a town the next morning, we arrived eight hours late. On the bus ride, I met Aruna, an American who came to India to study yoga. After the interminable bus ride, we agreed to meet up for dinner after checking into our hotels.

In Delhi for the third time, I found an entirely different experience. Aruna and I explored further parts of the city that neither of us had yet seen. On Wednesday, we took a rickshaw to a neighborhood in west Delhi called Patel Nagar to see a film called the Namesake, about an Indian family that has emigrated to the United States and the issues that their firstborn son has fitting his identity into both his traditional family and community and American culture. The film is primarily in English and was quite good. Seeing it here in India gave me a much greater appreciation for the cultural differences. The movie is filled with subtle (and not so subtle) cultural juxtapositions, not all of which I would have understood before I came to India.

On Thursday evening, I accompanied Aruna to a devotional service by Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, who is known as Amma, the hugging saint. I'm not sure "service" is the right word, but I don't know one more appropriate. Amma has followers from all parts of the world--the devotees in attendance were mostly Indian, but I saw quite a few Westerners as well. The type of yoga that Amma practices sees song and music as the path to devotion. After a ritual where most of the attendees sat on the floor with a small candle on a leaf in front of them, the event organizers set up chairs and everyone sat and listened to Amma and her companions on a stage sing and play. Aruna found a seat close to the stage and I listened to the mesmerizing music for about an hour before hunger got the better of me and I sent in search of a restaurant.

In addition to those outstanding excursions, we also looked through quite a few shops, saw India Gate and explored the beautiful park that runs east from India Gate to the Parliament building. One of our grand discoveries was the Metro. After seeing the Namesake, Aruna and I decided to try returning to central Delhi by Metro if we could figure out how. As it turns out, the Delhi Metro is not only straightforward, but also cheap, clean, fast, and convenient.