Author: Emma Chelsvig

Location: Chennai, India

Perhaps this has been the most striking facet of India for me. During the final two weeks of my time in India, I traveled to the north with my parents.  New cities brought plenty of new challenges—challenges which would first lead me to search for a sense of normalcy.  But just as I did in Chennai, I found myself sinking into each city that we toured.  With an open mind and help from local guides, my habit of judging things at face value subsided.  New dimensions of the cities were revealed, and I witnessed a portion of the depth that is found in India.

On our first day in Varanasi, my family and I blindly walked through the alleyways that run along the Ganges River.  The narrow and dark alleyways twisted and turned like a labyrinth, only to display a new set of shop keepers, residences, and cows that looked identical to the ones around the previous corner.  The alleyways were incredibly disorienting.  Furthermore, they buzzed with blankets of flies and reeked from cow patties that lay scattered along the cobblestone pathway.  However, within 24 hours, Varanasi had me hooked.  In the dingy alleyways were these nooks that were bustling with life and notable activity.  If you were to turn the correct corner and peer past a rickety wooden shutter, you would see a man weaving a sparkling silk sari on a hand loom.  Around the next dark corner might be a man sitting cross-legged on a ledge with a large metal cauldron before him.  Peek inside the doorway beside him, and you would enter into this man’s quaint café that sells the city’s tastiest handmade lassi.  While the alleyways initially overwhelmed my family and I and provided us with uncertainty, they soon exposed the wealth of incredible life that exists within India.

A similar experience occurred in Delhi.  My parents and I walked through the hectic and tangled mess of Old Delhi.  The narrow streets were crammed with parked scooters, vendors frying up samosas, rickshaws holding their snoozing drivers, and pedestrians navigating around the traffic.  But tucked away in a deserted corner was an underpass.  A guide led us through this pitch-black passageway—one that only locals would be able to find—and after walking through, it we emerged onto a series of thriving alleyways.  The alleyway that we entered onto held shops that were selling intricately adorned fabrics to eager women.  Here in these alleyways, we arrived at yet another dimension that existed.  Who would have thought that another layer of life was thriving within the hectic roads of Old Delhi?

In India, there have been constant surprises—it never ceases to amaze.  When I first arrived I was bombarded with noises, odors, and colors whirling around me.  Now that I have journeyed to multiple cities in India, I have learned that the country is even more intricate and multi-layered than it presents itself to be.  Hidden in dark and forbidding corners lay passageways that open onto bustling lives.