Into India: From Delta to Dust

India reminds me of nowhere I've been, and everywhere at once.

In high school I sat bent over a desktop screen watching Jab We Met, my initial contact with Bollywood. What caught me was an iconic scene – that of a train speeding away, and the protagonist (Kareena Kapoor) rushing to jump on. Years later, when I arrived in India, I hit the tarmac racing through customs, baggage claim, to the next gate. My runaway train was my connecting flight to Pune.

A view of the hills in Pune, India.

In the baggage claim after customs I paced around the ramp, which stopped and started sporadically. I thought about the freakish hailstorm in the Chicago airport that had delayed my transatlantic flight by nearly two hours. We had regained forty minutes on the way to Delhi, although I doubted that I would be able to get to my connection in time. The next flight wouldn't be until the next day.

Although I was exhausted, having only two hours of sleep under my belt, as soon as my suitcase slid out from the baggage shoot I transformed track runner. Dropping off my bag at the domestic flight rechecking station, and with the helpful airport guide, I power walked through glamorous tax-free (but still over-priced) shops to my gate. I can’t even remember the gate- number.

I made it, last minute. A few minutes after reaching my gate, I was on my way to Pune, "Oxford of the East."

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Night overshadowed the city. I had been travelling for over 24 hours. Still, my baggage had a long way to go, and wouldn't arrive until the next day. Outside the terminal a cacophony of cabs and rickshaws assaulted my airplane-sanitized senses. Deb and Ma helped me organize my baggage predicament, and soon all three of us were on our way to the suburbs.

A popular shopping street near SGS Mall.

There are over two million people in Pune. Many workers are attracted to the blooming industry hub, families to the plethora of universities. If you ever wanted to eyeball the population, it wouldn't be difficult to get a close estimate. Buildings in the inner city seemed to have cropped up spontaneously, toppling over each other. In all directions residential flats fly up, construction sites sprawl towards the mountains. It wouldn't be wrong to call India a developing country in this respect – it is developing, and fast.

Adjacent to the high-rises are historical structures. Old decayed houses, a church with neon lights. Tropical plans akin to palm trees line the roads, which themselves brim with helmet-less motorbike riders, fiat cabs and rickshaws. Apart from the new spaces there are some familiar faces – McDonald’s, KFC. There are tech shops next to vegetable stands. Temples and churches and a military neighborhood. At night the city pulsates with life and color. The temperature is only 80 degrees, and even with the humidity it feels great. 

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Living in the Pune suburbs you can hear the sound of the conch shell. A bell clanks from the local temple early in the morning. Behind the wide dirt plots and skeleton flats, there are shanties – the construction workers makeshift abode. Reading the Times of India, I skim through headlines of yuan devaluation in China, political spats, a terrorist attack in northern India from a Pakistani lone wolf, a short spiritual excerpt from Speaking Tree.

I lounge near the open window, glancing occasionally at the figures below, motorbikes gliding down the dirt road. My body will adjust to the time and food quicker than my mind can adapt to the new names and languages. In this household alone, there are three excluding English. But being so far from the delta is something I've done before. For now I’ll just wait for the dust to settle.