What Makes Me Smile in India

Often when living in a developing country like India you feel surrounded by terrible and devastating images and experiences. Often, these experiences are most shared. Now, I'll share some of the things that makes me smile.

Among the things that makes me love living in India are all the colors! It is very colorful, with orange, pink, bright green, deep blues, yellow, red and purples. The people dressed in colors of the rainbow makes me smile.

One day driving up a hill on the highway, I saw an auto-rickshaw driver pushing a transportation bike rickshaw- the biker was just spinning forward without having to work. Great teamwork.

A young street girl child hugged me on the street, out of the blue. It made me smile, but it was also very sad...


Playing with the kids at work.

The Traffic

When you smile at someone and they smile back

Random kids trying to speak English with me on the street

Eating Chocolate

When the auto-rickshaw driver that drives me to work every morning sings happily while driving

Sitting on the Balcony looking at the people, seeing new things every day.

Learning new things

Skype Dates

Getting used to that we share our food during lunch time - it's almost like a feast,

Maybe what makes you smile right now, is that photo of myself  I included...

Everyone can make a difference - it all starts with a simple smile.

Pass the Peace.

Agra

Agra - Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal, photo by author.

This weekend was filled with memorable experiences.

Friday I went back to the train station after work, because my plan to go in the morning was defeated by a flood outside my flat. Back at the train station to reserve tickets from Agra, I told the seller that I only needed tickets back, because I will just get an unreserved ticket in the morning. He looked at me curiously, asking; Are you going all by yourself? I said, yes, I'm meeting my parents in Agra. For some reason he suddenly became more willing to get me on a train with a reserved ticket. I really appreciate his efforts as I reached Agra Saturday morning after three hours on the train, having passed over 30 people finishing their private morning rituals on the train tracks.

Agra itself was a charming place; with donkeys, camels, buffalos, holy cows and monkeys.

Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal was build because of love.  

It's very beautiful and peaceful there. 

These children just ran in-front of my camera because they wanted their photo taken! It was a lot of fun.
All photos by author.

Pass the Peace.

Lessons Learned through Experience

An eventful evening trying to reserve train tickets to Agra ended with reminding me why you should pay attention to the Auto-rickshaw driver.

Train tickets and why to book in advance 
This weekend the plan is to meet up with my parents in Agra. I figured it would be an easy task to get tickets, not thinking about that the train might be all booked up just days before departure. Instead, I've started to think that everything will be all right, so no rush. Oh, boy did I learn more than one lesson about living in Delhi today.

First of, when wanting to reserve a ticket, you cannot purchase this in the same booth were you buy tickets to be used right away. Another side to this is that the reservation office is not even in the same building as the ticket booths! After some questionings, asking for directions I finally reach the Reservation of ticket office, where they tell me I have to go to another New Delhi Railway Station instead to get the foreigners quota! Finally arriving there, I arrive too late and since I'm not a tourist, but live in Delhi - I cannot get the foreigners, or better put, the tourist quota either.

This means that I'll just have to get a normal ticket, and apparently according to other people's accounts: fight to get onto the train. I guess I will just have to use my elbows, sleeking myself onto the train. I've done a lot of observations of that happening when people go on and off the metro. If I just go back to my junior high school day roots of pushing and shoving I will be just fine. I'm excited about the adventure to get Agra.

Important to know how to wake up auto-rickshaw drivers while driving on high ways 
On the way back from the Railways station, around 8pm; chatting away with my friend we notice the auto-rickshaw driver has shut his eyes closed. We're in the middle of the high way, with crazy Indian traffic and the driver is not opening his eyes! He's fallen asleep while driving. I touch his shoulder trying to wake him. No, use at all. I end up having to use force punching him in the back to wake him up. He slowly wakes up and starts staring hard at the road.. I stare him down the whole way back, having to tap his shoulder again before arriving safe home. We told him to go home and get some sleep.. I have heard that drivers drive in looong looong shifts without any sleep, perhaps he had done that - or perhaps it was something else.

Lessons learned today:
1. Reserve train tickets in advance, more than two days...
2. Always pay attention to the auto-rickshaw driver to ensure he does not fall asleep while driving.

Earthquake in New Delhi

I was hanging out with some friends at my flat, when suddenly the ground starts shaking followed by load sounds. It turns out it was an Earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale according to the Times of India.  Not knowing much about earthquakes, I'm reading up on what to do in an earthquake.

And then as a contrast, when closing the balcony door to go to bed I saw a cow dragging a wagon with two men relaxing just wandering down the street. I wonder if they will sleep in that moving wagon all night... 

Terror in Delhi

Before I moved to India I was worried about terror attacks. Then only days before moving there Norway was hit by a terror attack and suddenly non of the countries I've lived in, or were going to live in were free of terror.

Today, it happened again in India, but this time I am actually in the country and the city where it has happened. A bomb exploded in one of the reception areas of the Indian High Court. This terrorist attack as the Indian Home Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, called it, killed at least 10 people, wounding more than 60. But it's not about numbers, it's about real people with stories.

Humanizing the issue working towards a world where we view strangers 
as our friends, not our enemy. 


These victims of terror were the mother of a child, husband to his wife, brothers, sisters, best friends, grandparents, daughter and son. They were people with stories, hopes and dreams. They died today for a cause they perhaps did not even know of, or did not support. Again, as with the victims of terror in Norway, lets their lives not be lost in a terrorattack in vain- let's remember these people as people with dreams and hopes, as a best friend, and let us instead work harder towards a just and peaceful world, where the solution to disagreement is not war, not terror and not killing or violence - but dialogue.
Let their lives not be gone in vain, let this lift your spirits even higher to why you work towards a world were we all can live with tolerance and solidarity of one another. Let this be yet another eye-opener to why you should believe in everyone can make a difference, one step at a time. Work towards a just and peaceful world for all, start today.It can start with something as simple as a smile. 

Pass the Peace. 

Beautiful Fabric - brings brightness to a sad day for some

The Autorickshaw Ride Home 

I enjoy the rides home from work, being able to reflect on what I have learned while the crazy New Delhi traffic is blasting around. All the beautiful colors people wear makes me smile. Usually the images I see consists of mothers and children holding hands, bicycle rickshaws and many many men, men holding hands, and sometimes a radical woman and man holding hands. Along the side of the highway people are laying around sleeping, on what seems to be the same spot every day, someone is taking a piss off the road. This has become normal to me now.

New Images which introducing me to the usage of bright colors on sad days. 
Surprisingly today, I saw a line of men throwing flowers, orange flowers ahead of them. With the speed of the auto I soon saw what they were throwing those beautiful flowers at; it was a homemade casket made by bamboo holders was carrying an obvious dead body draped in bright dark pink and yellows. The men, 15-20 of them, young men perhaps in their 30s, were mourning the loss of that person wrapped in happy colored fabric on a sad sad day. My thoughts are with them. My thoughts are not only in India and those mourning the loss of a loved one, my thoughts are also with the refugees from Somalia who are trying to escape the drought and starvation. Every day 10 children under the age die from starvation in the refugee camp Kobe. 

Pass the Peace.

From the Balcony I see

Another protest? 

Hearing loud voices of chanting I went to my balcony thinking it's another protest outside in the market. Instead one of the neighbors are watching a movie with the volume high. 

Wanting to make a difference - one soda at a a time.

Standing on the balcony, enjoying the fresh air after a rainy day, I saw a teenage boy rolling his tray of sodas. I caught myself wishing I could buy all his sodas, just so he could sell them.. 

Norwegian(s) in india

Figuring out Indian living - one day at a time 

After being in India for over a month I've started to settle in. Every day I learn and figure out new things big and small; such as where to buy white cheese, where to buy chicken to cook, how to get a hotplate stove, where to get drinking water, how much you should actually pay the autodriver to get to work, what food to bring for lunch to share and where to buy the much needed additional fan because I underestimated the September heat, among other things. 

My parents arrived this week and brought Norwegian brown cheese and Norwegian Milkchocolate. Naaam, I'm on a pink cloud right now. It was like a little piece of Norway was brought to me. After having lived alone for a month it is nice to have some company at the flat and it's so good to see my parents again after more than six months. I guess it's a part of growing up and wanting to live and work abroad - you cannot see your loved ones every day. Therefore I am really going to enjoy having them here with me.