Discovering India through Shyam

by Maria Florencia Curi (Argentina)

Making a local connection India

Bells, vendors, and horns, was the melody with which we lived a couple of months in the foggy and noisy Delhi. The airport in the city is quite large, and it was difficult for us to get out of the paperwork. It was our second visit to the city and we had hired a car with a driver to tour some cities. The doors outside the airport opened to present hundreds of people waving posters fervently in search of their passenger. After touring several faces and posters we found ours, there was Shyam who welcomed us. We wanted to eat something, and our destination was not Delhi, but we continued traveling to the city of Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We suggest you stop somewhere, we didn't want anything extraordinary, just something that would take away our hunger. At that time he makes us an offer, timidly tells us that he should go to look for clothes around his house and offered us dinner with his family. We did not think much, it was a nice gesture, and we accepted the invitation, wanting to meet new friends. He communicated with his wife and warned that we were 3 diners, and we were traveling home, it took us about two hours to arrive, as time went by, the noisy saturation of vehicles diminished, we began to enter different neighborhoods, until that everything began to get a little darker, and open. With the Fer we looked at each other with bewilderment when we entered some stone and dirt roads, until the road disappeared and became a field completely, it was already night, in the distance you could see some light bulbs that barely illuminated a hamlet very humble. That was where the vehicle stopped, Shyam told us to get off the vehicle, and please do not take pictures there. While we were walking towards his house along narrow paths, we contemplated some wooden planks that prevented us from stepping on the mud, some children in the street who greeted us, some young people who crossed something in Hindi with Shyam, and did not take their eyes off us, we advanced a little more through small corridors until we reached a small wooden door that had once been blue surely. We were met by his wife, a young, pretty girl, dressed in a beautiful sari. The room was extremely small, there was hardly any room for a double bed, where we sat and against the damp and bare wall there was a boy and a girl sleeping. From a second floor, by a very narrow and long staircase that we did not know, there came down our hot dishes. And they told us to eat, they were typical of India, and that they clearly stung more than 10 putaparios together. Once we finished, we waited for Shyam to finish putting together his bags and gathering everything necessary for the 15 days we had left together and he away from his family. He washed his hands on a tap on the floor right there where we were. I can't know what was going on in Fer's head, but I can imagine it. That feeling of injustice, uncertainty, existential and unbelief, and once again, we have everything and sometimes it seems that nothing reaches us. When we left there, we made it very grateful, we didn't know how to do it, but we did our best. The road to the vehicle became relentless silence. La Fer did not speak until the next day, what I had felt my first days in India with a girl who asked me for water, was what she felt that day with Shyam's family, that lump in my throat that compresses you crying and despair over so much injustice. The days we shared with Shyam were wonderful, every doubt we had was cleared by our new friend. We talked about everything we wanted, he told us everything he knew about Jainism and the difference with Hinduism and Buddhism, we began to learn about religion, politics, customs and reasons for being from India. And that's how we met Shyam and learned about him and his land.