I Will Survive (in India)

I spent pretty much most of New Year’s day chundering my guts up. ‘Same as every year then’ said one of my mates a few days later, as I hopelessly clung to my laptop praying the dongle would hold out long enough to have a decent Facebook chat. ‘No, you don’t understand. I’m fighting for survival here!!! Hello? HELLLOOOO??’ But the icon on the top of the screen indicated my connection had been lost. My friend was gone…

ILLNESS

On New Year’s Eve 2012, I contracted some ghastly stomach infection. My New Year was spent desperately fighting to stay alive. After about 6 hours of vomiting and two very LARGE, painful injections ON MY ASS – no sooner had I thought – thank heavens, its almost over… the diarrhea began. I knew I was in trouble. I don’t remember much after that because I passed out in the toilet. I spent the first week of 2013 in a clammy semi-unconsciousness…

You see, while many of you were cosying up to your log fires watching Home Alone with a box of Quality Street this Christmas, I, my dear readers, have relentlessly and tirelessly been trying to preserve my own life. Yes, A Little Piece of Joy touched down on mother India’s soil on 18th December.

At this point many of you may be imagining me skipping around in my flip flops and visor, fanning away the tropical heat and eating papaya’s in the shade of a leafy mango tree. WRONG – it wasn’t hot at all. It wasn’t even warm.

In fact I made the terrible discovery that most of northern India is fucking freezing this time of year! ‘It’s c-c-colder than bloody England.’ I blubbered as I snuggled up in my 5 layers, wooly hat and ski socks in a feeble attempt to attain some of my own body heat. And that’s just when I was in bed.

The possibility of me catching pneumonia was highly possible as the houses in India are not built for the cold climate. But pneumonia was just the beginning. What about contracting some colourful tropical disease? Typhoid, malaria, hepatitis c, polio, tetanus…

Illness was one concern but nothing compared to the dangers that faced me and my fam as we embarked on dum dum dum THE OPEN ROOOOAAD…

THE BIG DRIVE

It took 13 hours for us to drive from Delhi to the city of Allahabad on the 22nd December, where we would be spending Christmas and New Years with my grandmother.

Because of the dangers of traveling at night (because we might be attacked!!!) we had to start at 6am. The mist was so thick we could barely see two feet in front of us – I don’t know how my uncle did it looking back.

For those who don’t know…

Indian roads are a DEATH TRAP. The rules are there are no rules. Cross junctions are the most stressful because people just drive toward you from EVERY ANGLE. I spent most of the time clinging to my mother, my eyes tightly closed listening to Lady Gaga and praying for dear life: I’m too young to dieeeee.

Driving through small settlements people just walk right in front of your vehicle.

‘Aren’t they afraid of getting hit,’ I asked my mother.

‘No because if we hit them all of the town’s people will crowd around the car and lynch us’.

‘Fair enough,’ I replied. Inside I was shitting myself.

Oh yeah on the way we also hit a deer. A MOTHER FUCKING DEER. It turned out the roads had cut through the poor buggers migration routes and poor ol Prancer bared the brunt. Feel really sad about it to be honest but someone was going to die on the trip. I was just thankful it wasn’t me.

I’M SCARED BECAUSE I’M A WOMAN

I’m just going to say how it how I see it: India is NOT a safe place for women. I arrived in the wake of the Delhi Gang Rape case. For a little re-cap: a young physiotherapist was mercilessly raped by six men on a bus in front of her helpless boyfriend early one evening. She then had her stomach ripped open with a hooked metal rod before being dumped on the side of the road. When she went to hospital she barely had any intestines left. She died 13 days later.

Okay, I say to myself, this sick shit can happen anywhere, yes? WRONG. ‘Women are raped all the time,’ my uncle exclaimed as we sat down for dinner. This was my first night in Delhi. I suddenly didn’t feel so hungry.

‘Their bodies are just found dumped on the roadside,’ he continued, ‘but often they are from very poor communities so no-one ever writes about it’. Sexual assault is so frequent that the tubes have ‘Women Only’ carriages to try and enhance the safety for women on public transport.

Was I scared of being raped? Yes. I was. REALLY. I have never experienced actually fearing sexual harassment and violence so intensely as I did on this trip.

In India, if a woman is assaulted, the blame will be put on her, not the man.

Bollywood, in my opinion, has a lot to answer for. I mean it seems entirely disconnected with the majority of the population and culture it apparently ‘represents’.

I observed countless film posters of sexy, half naked chicks plastered all over India’s towns and cities, yet simultaneously this is a culture that tells women that if you dress anything like the movies you deserve to be raped. In fact, in a country where an article was published in the paper on ‘20 Reasons Why the Police Believe a Woman Deserves to be Raped’, can you blame my apprehension???

This poster of 2013 Bollywood flick Inkaar was slapped on a humungous billboard on a main road in Old Delhi.

A few meters down the same road is a sign advising women to not walk the streets in this area after 6pm. Is it just me or does something not add up here?

Bollywood just seems to generate an underlying, dangerously volatile, sexual frustration within its homeland community, especially amongst young men, as it insists on pushing sexualized content into a culture that subordinates women on a day to day basis.

In fact, after the Delhi Gang Rape some of the responses from officials included the suggestion that, to avoid rape happening in the future, women should ‘wear coats when out in public’. Coats???? WTF man! That’s the answer to this rape epidemic? COATS!?

The thing is, often in the West we feel removed from this violence and the atrocities made against women in other nations. You might think: ‘hey it’s not my problem’ and go back to your Starbucks and Cosmo.

Well maybe I don’t have that luxury. It is my problem. I worry about my female relatives in India. I’m worried about my aunties and my cousins and my mother who is over there at the moment looking after my grandmother. And I have never felt so helpless in my life.

END NOTES.

I don’t think it was the culture shock that was difficult. I loved the food, the history, the architecture. I could adjust to the cold. Washing myself with a bucket and scoop. It’s all fine.

I like to imagine I’m a bit like Lara Croft when I am put outside my comfort zone. But seeing a street dog with its vital organs trailing from its backside, a women waiting a bus stop – acid scars covering her unnaturally eroded face, 50 people crammed onto a 30 man carrier trying to get home after work….

It turned out I wasn’t the only one fighting to stay alive. Amidst adverse poverty and extreme challenges the people of India have a strong will to survive, and on my trip I discovered that I too had that powerful innate desire. The desire to keep going at whatever cost. Not to give up. I will survive…

Have a great week peeps!

x

p.s. in case you want to read more on women in India…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/23/why-india-bad-for-women

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21038775

Tags: Bollywood Delhi Gang Rape India Travel Women

Categories: Adventureland Fire me up baby! Rant