Saturday in Delhi

Yesterday, I had my first day of work at the Public Health Foundation of India. We started the day with my boss explaining the vision of PHFI as well as laying out some guidelines regarding my work and how it would be playing out over the next seven weeks or so. There are a couple of American interns here and overall the people working in the office are relatively young, so it was reassuring to be able to interact with people in a relaxed and joking way. I got to meet Dr. Srinath Reddy, which was a goal of mine coming in. Dr. Reddy is the president of PHFI and is someone I have followed since earlier this year because of his work not only in PHFI but also in the public health field. I would have to say that after one day I'm definitely looking forward to working here at PHFI over the next seven weeks or so.

After work, I decided to avert jet-lag by buying a map and trying to walk back to my office (I had been driven home by my boss' driver and was assured that my apartment was walking distance). When I heard "walking distance" I was definitely thinking something like "down the road" or "around the corner." It took me about 30 minutes to get back to my office (after taking a 30 minute detour in the wrong direction). To get back home, I decided to give the auto-rickshaws a try. They are these three-wheeled green and yellow bug looking vehicles that screech along the road with nasally horns. Even though I had been feeling slightly apprehensive toward getting into any sort of motor vehicle after my first taxi ride from the airport, I decided to give it a try because walking around Delhi is probably just as dangerous, if not more. The ride was filled your typical near-hits and close calls, but that's driving in Delhi, right?

Today I got a chance to sight see a little bit with one of the interns at PHFI. We met up a bazaar type place called Dilli Hat in south Delhi. I was told that this was one of the must sees of Delhi because it has a food court area with eats from nearly every state in India. We had lunch from a store that sold food from Uttar Pradesh, one the states in the northwest that is very close to New Delhi. Afterwards, we got to check out the Qutb Minar, which is the tallest brick minaret in the world. It was cool being able to check out a symbol of Indo-Islamic architecture. I got a chance to talk to some people around the area, who were very interested in my friend and I because we were foreigners. The brief conversations we had brought back a lot of memories from when I would walk the streets in China. I got to meet a child and his brother, who I think were homeless and were going around offering shoe shines. I also got to meet a couple of guys who loved American culture, especially Keira Knightley. We exchanged little things back forth, trading English phrases for Hindi ones. They even wrote their names in Hindi in my notebook. I showed them my Hindi name in return (डेविड ली). Coming back, we hit the rains came which conveniently cooled off the weather, which is another sign that monsoon season is here!


People fighting through the rain