University of Louisville
Students visit an elementary boarding school for girls and meet with the principal, center, during on-site field study for the India International Honors Seminar trip.
Culture Shock on a Delhi Street
by Patricia ElizaBeth Pollock, '04
Communication and Political Science majors
Fine Arts/Photography minor
There we were, riding down a busy street in Delhi on our way to see the Rajghat, when I saw something that will stay with me for a lifetime. (The Rajghat is where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated in 1948.) We were traveling in an auto-rickshaw, a three-wheeled covered motorcycle that has a two-person bench in the back and one driver. Suddenly the smooth trip slowed like a traffic jam. I peeked my head into the front part of our carriage to see that we were stuck, at a turtle's pace, behind none other than an elephant slowly stomping his way down a four-lane street of downtown Delhi. It was in that moment that I experienced one of the best forms of culture shock.
This is what India was like for me, something new around every corner. After studying the history of a place, you konw the facts, but you don't get a real feel for what it's like to be there. The air is thicken in India with the leaf burning pollution and there is a thin layer of dirt all around. But it was beautiful and so romantic to wake up in such a different world every day. For part of our two-week trip we stayed in the palace of the former King of Dhrangadhara. Every morning, I woke up early to climb to the rooftop and watch the vultures perched in the tops of the trees. And there were peacocks running wild all over the palace grounds, never letting me get close enough to touch them, but always hanging out long enough for me to be in awe. It was perfect, like a fairy tale. We rode carts pulled by camels into the sunset as villagers and their small children ran behind to see our strange pale faces.
One day, while in Delhi, a friend and I looked up to see a half dozen monkeys jumping from tree to tree, some of them with infants hanging on tightly to their bellies. They made their way up and down the neighborhood avoiding the heavy traffic of the streets below.
During the international India Seminar, Honors Program director Dr. John Richardson undertook a challenge even greater than heading up the University Honors Program. The group loaded up in camel carts in Dhrangadhara at the palace.
The seminar class was called "Royalty in Indian History," taught by Dr. John McLeod of the history department. Dr. McLeod, quite an expert on India, is skilled in speaking one of the numerous languages. In the classroom we toured ancient India, learning who came to power and how. We read about the motivations of the former kings and were educated on how these kings faced giving up their titles upon the democratization of India in the 20th century. It was so interesting to learn about people like Shah Jahan and visit some of the places that were built under his command.
We visited the Taj Mahal in all its glory and various forts and palaces built
hundreds of years ago. We ate exotic foods and wore Indian clothes to get a
better feel for the culture. When taking Dr. McLeod's class I had no idea how
amazing it would be to see all of these things first hand. I saw a desert for
the first time, the Little Raan, and got to experience an outdoor toilet with
nothing but thorn bushes to shield my bare bottom from the people traveling
the streets nearby.
It's hard to name the most beautiful or exotic thing I saw while in India. I could say that it was the evening that we watched hundreds of women washing their clothes in a river. It could have been watching the sunset, from a Jeep window, over the desert. I might even say that my favorite moment was when some of the young men who were with us in Gujurat to look after us captured a baby sheep and goat for us to play with. (Thank you Anu and Deepak.) But I don't really know. I do know that we wouldn't have been able to take this trip without the University Honors Program seminar class and Dr. McLeod. Thank you, once again, for making this period of my life the best so far.
