A Sensory Experience

Before I left New Jersey to come to India, I would have dreams at night about what it would be like to walk the streets of New Delhi. I tried imagining some of the things I would see, the smells that would go up my noses, the different sounds of languages I didn't understand or vehicles whizzing by. It took a little while to get around, and it might sound a little self-explanatory, but I came to the realization that over the course of a normal day in Ann Arbor or New Jersey, I would typically identify my surroundings based on the different senses that we use everyday, touch, smell, sight, sound, tastes. Things that we take part in everyday, like the food we eat, the places we live, the people that we see, they are all part of how we identify with everyday normal life.

So obviously, a lot of these things changed when I arrived to India. I've only eaten meat several times (I would eat it basically every meal in the US), people's external appearances are different, and there are dozens of languages that I haven't the clue of what people are saying (including people trying to speak English sometimes).

On this note, I saw this post from a blog of fellow working for Acumen Fund and starred it earlier this year in my Google Reader in hopes of being able to test it out should I be able to come to India. It's from a guy who is working in Hyderabad (south India) and he learned of an activity where one records the sounds of the city in the early morning to get a taste of what life is like in that city. To my disappointment, I don't have anything that can record sounds (unless I carry my laptop around with a microphone hooked up) - but as I was walking home from work the other day, I thought about all the sounds that were going on around me that I would never hear in the US. If I could record the sounds of a walk home from work, I would hear all these unique and interesting sounds that reflects a lot of what you would see regarding life in India:

• a screeching horn every two seconds
• the sounds of men riding bicycles howling a phrase (literally howling, and I haven't found out what they're doing yet)
• barking from one of the masses of stray dogs
• sweeping of brooms from people cleaning the streets
  
• children smacking balls around with cricket bats
  
• the nasal engine of an auto-rickshaw
• languages that I can't decipher whatsoever
  
• ...probably another horn or two.

You can find his post here.