Our First Full Day in Delhi 7/20/19

Top row: Joya, Debika Mashi; Bottom row: Debika Mashi’s mother

Saturday, July 20, 2019

After breakfast, Ajit Uncle helped us pop in our SIM cards to our iPhones and drove us around the city. The Kumars live in a neighborhood called Hauz Khas, which is not too far from where our apartment will be in Vasant Vihar. We saw our neighborhood and new apartment from the outside. It seems to be hidden by some tall flowering trees, giving us even more privacy. It’s not too far from the main road, making it easy to find and give directions. We will live in a part of Vasant Vihar called D Block, so Ajit Uncle also showed us the nearby D Block market and C Block market, where we saw fruit stands, ice cream shops, and chemists (pharmacies).

Next, he drove us to AES, our school. The school is surrounded by tall walls and security because it is related to the Embassy, but what we did see was a massive campus, stone buildings, and beautiful landscaping. Across the way, we also saw the American Embassy, which we’ll sometimes be going to to visit the Embassy Club.

Some other notable things we saw were the large mall, Dilli Haat-a large market with changing artisans every few weeks, the Prime Minister’s Home, and many other embassies. 

What struck us so much is how green Delhi is. It’s especially lush right now because it’s monsoon season which means that it rains most days and temperatures are cooler in the high 80s, low 90s but it’s quite humid. There is beautiful greenery everywhere in the city, with lush lemon trees to bougainvillea. 

Joya’s Birthday

At night, we celebrated Joya’s birthday! The house was decorated with balloons and streamers to celebrate her 18th birthday, about a month before she heads off to Columbia University for college. We enjoyed some delicious Indian food including flaky parathas, a Bengali staple—a shrimp dish in yellow curry, a chickpea dish, Chicken 65, rice, chocolate cake, mango cheesecake, and rice pudding, which is auspicious. 

There were about fifteen people who came over to celebrate, among them including:

• A man from Delhi who went to undergrad in Louisiana, grad school in Chicago, and lived in the East Village for over 15 years
• That man’s mother in law who worked at Bronx High School of Science for 15 years and now lives in Massachusetts teaching high school English near Springfield
• A young man around our age who just produced the second season of the Netflix show Sacred Games and is about to start work on the movie version of the book The White Tiger
• Debika Mashi’s mother, whom I remember from her visiting New Jersey multiple times while the Kumars lived there. She tried to teach me and Vikram Bengali as kids but I never studied and quickly stopped. I wish I had learned!
• Debika Mashi’s childhood friend and the mother of the Sacred Games person, who remembered me from when I visited her home 11 years ago when I came to Delhi.
• Many others…

It was a special welcome to Delhi, and so nice to know that we have the Kumars and this community here.

Jet Lag Update

We woke up at 6:30am, which we loved. Around 2pm, I was sleepy and took a nap, and Jake joined about an hour later. We meant to sleep no more than 1-2 hours but accidentally slept until 6:30pm, just in time for the party! It allowed us to last until around midnight last night, and gave Jake the opportunity to watch some baseball!