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MUMBLINGS December 15, 2005
India is a tremendous country with a population of 1,
200,000,000, which they expect to grow in the next ten years to 1,500,000,000.
China is said to be 1,500,000,000 at present, but India will eventually exceed
China because they have birth control and India doesn’t.
Until the last year or two, I had no interest in visiting
India because of the thoughts most Americans have about the country. That is;
it is a dirty, filthy, place with poverty everywhere and sacred cows on the
streets. One of the first things I learned upon arriving in New Delhi was that
Americans have false information about India. Even though highly populated, the
Indians are energetic, polite, clean and hard working. There is a lot to be
admired about them.
The false idea that everyone wore turbans is not correct.
There is a small division of the Hindus called Seik. Our driver was one and he
wore a turban and the reason being they do not believe in ever cutting their
hair. They wear turbans to cover and keep their hair in place.
Also we saw very few women with their faces covered with
veils. However, they did wear long dresses and I never saw any female with
pants. Some of them are attractive, polite and apparently have good morals.
Amazingly, practically everyone there speaks English. In
fact, English and Hindi are the two legal languages in the entire country.
However, there are about twenty-seven different languages spoken in the various
areas with over 200 dialects. Hindi and English are the only two that are
spoken nationwide.
As to the sacred cows, the streets are not full of them,
although you do see one occasionally. True, the Hindus do not eat beef or
pigeons, but they do eat pork. Interestingly, there are a lot of water buffalo
in the country… some on the streets, but they are not sacred and the
Hindus do eat them, as well as keep them for work animals and milk. Their milk
is thicker and richer and their meat is cheap and tough.
One of the most interesting sights, particularly in the
cities is the traffic. It almost scares you to death to ride in the streets
because cars and other traffic is darting in and out. For example, you see
people walking, bicycles, motor scooters, motorcycles, tri-bicycles with three
wheels, that carry two people like a taxi. Also, there are elephants, camels,
water buffalos, cars and trucks, but amazingly the traffic moves along nicely
and we did not see a single accident, which to us seemed miraculous. Instead of
stop and go signs they have runarounds, big circles which people dart around,
and do not have to wait on traffic lights. Hearing a lot of horns I mentioned
this to our driver. He said to drive here you must have good horns, good
breaks, and good luck.
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