Ramblings

I was just haivng a conversation about my how my expectations for India have lined up with my experiences so far.  I figured I might as well share it with all of you while it is still fresh in my mind.  I'm not sure if what I'm saying makes any sense at all, so feel free to completely ignore this if you so desire.

India has been much less a shock than I expected it to be.  Talking to people in the States I got the impression that I was going to step off of the plane and feel like I had stepped into a different world.  That, for the most part, has not been true.  I have seen things here that I would never see in the US.  I've seen people picking through trash dumps on the side of the road.  I've seen people bathing in the river.  I've seen cows walking down the street.  I've seen barefoot (young) teenagers working on a construction site. 

At the same time I've seen and done any number of things that were no different from what I've seen and done at home.  I've seen an office full of white collar workers come into the office everyday and do the exact same work that I do in San Francisco.  I've been to a suburban mall and walked past the Subway in the food court.  I've eaten lunch at a nice Chinese restaurant.  I've drank (very bad) coffee at a coffee shop.  I've slept in an enormously comfortable bed at a 5 star hotel.

The thing about India that has really struck me is not the poverty, it's the sense that half of the country is in the 21st century and half of the country is in the 19th.  There is poverty in the States.  Anybody that has walked the streets in San Francisco or Seattle know that, but somehow it is different than the poverty here.  I'm not sure how to describe the difference other than to say in the States it feels like a portion of society just couldn't keep up to the pace of the race, here it feels like they were never even told that there is a race.