It's my third morning in Delhi but already it feels like I've been here forever. So far, the smells and sounds of India remind me of the smells and sounds of Mexico. The congested streets with honking cars & motorcycles and the smell of burning wood used to light fires, all remind me of Mexican cities. It doesn't look or smell just like Mexico but the similarities are sufficient that I feel at home in Delhi.
The night I arrived, I was exhausted from having waited for two hours for my baggage at the airport but stepping out into the streets of Delhi felt so natural in a way that European cities never have that effect on me. I love Vienna but I still remember stepping out into the streets and feeling as if though I had arrived in a completely alien world. Eventually, it felt like home but always when I have returned I feel like an outsider.
I was worried that I'd feel that way in India. I worried that I would feel too much like an outsider and that I'd feel lost in this new culture. While I do feel that way to a certain degree, the feeling is more akin to the one I feel when I go to Mexico. It's home but not home. It feels uncomfortable but not too uncomfortable. It is welcoming but skeptical of me. It is feeling out of place but of belonging somehow.
There are differences, however. At a glance, people in Mexico and most of Latin America deeply value beauty and appearance—not that Indians don't but for many of them it doesn't seem to be high on their list of priorities. I was talking about this with Dave. Dave thinks that it's because in countries like Mexico and the United States, physical appearance is put on display whereas in India it is not. Women here are discouraged from wearing short skirts or revealing clothing. They do not show off their legs or their cleavage or most of their bodies actually. They do not feel pressured to take great time and pains to groom themselves the way people in the United States or in Latin American countries feel pressured to do so.
Similarly, men have no incentive or pressure to go to the gym and pump iron until they are rippling and bulging with muscle. Despite the India media and Bollywood movies which encourage the Westernization standard of beauty, the people on TV and on film seem so far removed from most Indian's every day lives that they feel little pressure to build up muscles and show off legs. Given the effects Westernization and industrialization are having in cities like Delhi, I wonder how long this will last.
A couple of weeks ago a former Venezuelan beauty queen died due to a cosmetic procedure—she was getting her buttocks filled with silicone. Instead of staying in the rear area, the silicone traveled to some of her organs and her brain ( I think) and killed her. An extreme example, but cosmetic surgery is frequently encouraged in Venezuela and other Latin American countries as a way to achieve beauty. It doesn't really seem to be something that is encouraged in India. As a result, it seems at first glance that Mexicans—especially the middle and upper class Mexicans and pretty much all Americans, are more physically attractive than most Indians—at least if you go by the Western standard of beauty. Granted, I have only been to one city and I've only been out in about the city for a couple of days, so I may be entirely wrong in this observation but it's interesting to me at least that the first thing I noticed was how attractive or unattractive people here are. It makes me wonder what that says about me.
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