A Bit of the Life of a Hindi Student

Sunday, November 29, 2015. New Delhi. It has been 10 days since I last blogged. Mostly I have been studying Hindi. I go to class five days a week for between 3 and 4 ½ hours plus a half hour lunch break. It takes me about an hour depending on the time of day to get there and about the same or a little more to get home. Then usually I spend at least an hour doing homework. This is in addition to the half hour or more I spend doing Hindi vocabulary in the morning using an app. So I am busy and also exhausted. Hindi twists my brain and taking the Metro twists my nerves. It is almost always crowded and sometimes it is very crowded. It costs a little more than twenty cents one way. If it all gets too much, I take an auto rickshaw for about $2.50 to $3.00. The ride is terrifying but sometimes I just can’t take the press and the shoving in the metro. Getting in and out at rush hour is the most frightening. You are pushed along in the crowd and have very little capability of determining your own direction or speed. I am getting better at it, but some days it is still too much. Well, I have been having a little fun. (Actually, Hindi classes are fun—there are four students and the students as well as the teachers (three in rotation) are great.) A week ago, I went to Safdarjung’s Tomb. It comes perilously close to the “if you have seen one minor Mughal tomb you have seen them all” category, but the grounds are large and well maintained, the tomb is larger than usual, and it has the distinction of being the last important Mughal building. Few people visit it so it is a calm oasis in Delhi and I enjoyed my time there. Then I took an auto rickshaw to Habitat Centre which is nearby. They have art galleries and hold music and dance concerts. I went to a couple of galleries. The second one had a group show by women. I lingered there and one of the women asked me to to speak into a camera for a video they were making about the show. When I came in and was looking at the first woman’s work, I was near a table where several of the women were talking so I talked about the importance of community in making art. Then another woman started talking to me and when she found out I am a performer she asked me to collaborate with her. I have emailed her since and told her I can do nothing until I am done studying Hindi. Then, if I will be in Delhi for a while, I would very much like to talk with her. I received an email from my traveling this companion this morning. He hopes to know in a week whether he can come to India for two months with the reasonable expectation that his brother will be alive when he returns. If that is the case, we will start traveling as soon as he gets here. All of this uncertainty has been a little wearing, but I am doing well. I bought three scarves yesterday as a way to compensate. They are more expensive than I usually buy but they are beautiful. It isn’t quite cold enough to wear them yet, but it soon will be. For more fun, yesterday morning I took a walk run by conservationists through the ruins of a predecessor city of Delhi, Jahanpanah, the city of the second Tughlaq sultan. It is obscure. The entrance we went through had no signs giving its name. It would be difficult to visit without a guide to lead you through the ruins and up and down the dark and narrow stairs. The history goes in one ear and out the other, but the ruins themselves are evocative and one ends up on the roof of a three-story building that would give a good view of Delhi if the air weren’t so bad. (Last night I thought were was a fire in my hotel because I smelled smoke, but when I opened the door I realized it was just the cooking fires outside the hotel—my room is not hermetically sealed.) At the beginning of the walk, we went by the unsheltered tomb of a 14th century Sufi saint. It was being cleaned by someone from the adjoining village. There were both Hindu and Muslim offerings at the shrine. This is usually the case with the shrines of Sufi saints. The walk ended at a 14th century mosque. It was huge and was built as a thank offering for something but I cannot remember what it was. We climbed up to the top of that and were terrified by four boys probably aged 6 to 12 who climbed to the tops of the domes and then jumped from one to another. If parents only knew what their children were doing. Oh, my Thanksgiving. I went to class in the morning, had a very good pizza with a friend in the afternoon, and then the two of us went to the most popular Sufi shrine Delhi in Nizamuddin, one of the seven urban villages in Delhi. Begumpur where I was yesterday is another, and Paharganj where I am staying is a third. They keep cows and other animals and the atmosphere is markedly different from the rest of Delhi. The shrine was very crowded because it was Thursday night and there was qwali, Sufi singing. Again I was on a guided walk and we were about 20 so getting through the crowds was not pleasant, but the atmosphere in the shrine was intense and moving. I have been there twice before in the day time. At night, the shrine was transformed. We stood or sat and listened to the musicians while being fanned by large green fans. The man with the fan on our side was old with a long white beard and gave a very convincing blessing. This afternoon I plan to go on another guided walk through the ruins of another early city. This evening will be devoted to Hindi. Tomorrow morning, Monday, my week will start all over again.