Why I Love Living in India 2.0

We have now lived over two years in Delhi (not counting the 2-3 months per year that we flee it). We recently decided to stay until spring of 2010, and then we're out of here to Who-Knows-What-and-Where. Are we crazy?

Some days two more years in Delhi seems like eons; other days I feel panicked that I've barely wrapped my brain around it or seized all the opportunities to learn and grow. I made a list the first year we were here about what I love about Delhi, partly to talk myself into liking it. I've again been asking myself lately why we are staying in this place that often makes us want to tear our hair out, so it's time to try the list again:

1. I can wear pants to church! If you're Indian, dressing up for church means either wearing a sari (six yards of fabric wrapped around you with a halter-top blouse, unless you can convince a tailor to make it otherwise) or a salwar kameez (a long tunic top with pants that resemble MC Hammer pants from to 80's and a long scarf called a dupatta draped around your neck). I've recently gotten into wearing the salwar kameez gig, and it's fantastic! I can sit on the floor with kids without any worries about exposing myself, those Hammer pants are fantastically comfortable, and if I need to wipe up any kid emergencies, I've always got my dupatta handy. Add to that the delight and amusement of the members seeing me dressed like a native, and it's a win-win situation (this picture isn't me, by the way!).

And it's not just the pants. The flavor of Church is different here too. Since the Gospel is relatively new and there's a scarcity of people, resources, and time, we've learned what the essential elements of Church are. And we've gotten better about letting everything else go--no complicated visuals or handouts, choosing to do seminary but not mutual in our little branch, learning to accept that a hastily-prepared talk or lesson is okay when coupled with inspiration. Those are some lessons I really needed to learn.


2. Our new driver Anil. Having a driver seems like a grand idea, but it took us 11 tries to find someone that doesn't frustrate us more than help us (read more details than you ever wanted to know about the old drivers here). But now that we've finally found one we like, you can't beat the convenience of having someone to drive you around while you read stories to your kids in the back, to park you car, to clean your car, to pick up the dry cleaning, to take kids home after a youth activity so you can get home to your own kids, etc.

3. The Food. I love Indian food. Yummy. I love the fresh roti (flat breads), the raitha (yogurt relish), the curries (love that spicy tingly flavor on my lips), the paneer (fresh tofu-like cheese), the fresh lime sodas (sweet and salty is such a sensory delight), mangoes, lychee fruit, okra from our garden. Hungry yet? I love it that Rich and I can walk to the New Friends Community Centre on date night and choose from a dozen or more amazing and affordable restaurants with ambience--Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, North Indian, South Indian, and McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Dominoes if we miss America!

4. Our Garden and the Mali (Gardener).
Isn't this guy so Zen? In addition to the good karma I think his countenance brings our household, I love having a gardener that only costs $20/month and enjoying the fruits of a garden that I didn't have to slave over (or fail over, which was as was often the case in Texas with babies). Our grapefruit tree produced about 70 grapefruits this year, which turned out to be the Pulsipher adults' and kids' favorite daily breakfast habit. Delicious!

In the spring/summer we get to watch the wonder of our two banana trees producing bananas. First it's a huge purple bud (which in the South, they pull off and eat) which soon opens up to reveal little flowers that eventually turn into bananas. Amazing. Then the whole giant tree falls down and grows up again that tall in a year. Now our grapefruit tree has yummy fragrant blossoms and all over town there are these gorgeous orangey-red blossoms on a tree whose name I hope to learn (anyone know its name??). I also love to go down the street and buy a bunch of flowers for next to nothing and brighten up my house with their color and smell.

5. Margaret and Poojah.
These wonderful women help keep us sane and alive. Some days it's a real drag having Margaret and her daughter Poojah around ALL THE TIME, often just sitting in the kitchen, but really it's so nice to have someone else do most of the cleaning and cooking so I can focus on other stuff. And when the kids don't like the dinner that Margaret has made, at least I'm not the one who has slaved over something nobody wants to eat! I don't miss the cleaning AT ALL, but I do miss cooking lately, so I'm starting to do a bit more. Still you can't beat the consistency of dinner on the table every weeknight, even if you decide to spend the afternoon at the pool and come home hungry. I also love having Margaret babysit our kids every Friday night so we can go on a date even if we forgot to plan ahead and call a babysitter.


6. The People.
I meet so many interesting people from all over the world and all over India every day. Recently I spent a few hours with a friend of mine Serena, who is from Thailand but has a British mother and an Indian father. It was fascinating to hear her life story, to visit her home and see all her Buddhist religious shrines all over her house and taste and smell her yummy Thai food. I've met and formed friendships with people here from Australia, Korea, Romania, Holland, England, Finland, Japan, Spain, Germany, Israel, Scotland, New Zealand, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Canada, Egypt, etc. And so many have such interesting jobs with aid organizations or government jobs or media organizations. The downside of this international crowd is the transiency. The other day I looked through my contacts on my cell phone and discovered that about half of the contacts no longer live in India (and I've only had my phone for a year!). But I think the fact that we all know most of us aren't here for long, and the fact that many of us are in crisis mode, makes us become better friends faster. Hopefully that means I'll keep in touch with some of these friends long after we've all moved on. Above (center) is my good friend Lesley from Scotland who recently moved with her family (including Isaac's good friend Kara) to France. We miss them!


7. Musikgarten is a Hit!
A few years before we moved here I shifted from teaching piano lessons to teaching group music and movement classes to preschoolers. I was really excited about the curriculum I was learning to use, but I had a really hard time getting enough students to get my studio off the ground. Here in Delhi there is a shortage of such extracurricular activities for small children especially, and the word-of-mouth network is amazingly powerful, so I have no trouble getting students. In fact, my only problem is turning them away so I don't get too busy doing it. I now have 5 classes I teach on Wednesdays with a total of 30 students I teach in my home (so we still have no living room furniture). I really love teaching my own kids along with their classmates in three of those classes (though it's not always easy). I also love the opportunity it gives me to have in my home every week interesting people from all over the world I wouldn't meet otherwise and give them something that enriches their family's lives.


8. Church Makes Us Stretch.

Being a member of the Church in India has been wonderful for us. It has tested, and thereby strengthened, our testimonies. It has given us a crash course in so many callings and leadership experiences that we may not have had otherwise. It has taught us how to do the best we can with what we have, and not get stressed stress over mediocrity and simplicity. I'm now teaching Seminary (sort of like a Bible study class) to the youth/young adults and find it so rewarding and inspiring to teach the Gospel to new converts and potential converts and see it through their eyes. It's refreshing to teach a group so thirsty for truth. I am also the secretary of the Young Women's organization, and am learning to not get too upset when no other leaders show up and I have to wing it. I help in Primary unofficially off and on, and have really gained a testimony of how simply teaching the Primary music pretty much gets the whole Gospel message across, even to children who barely speak English.

Rich has learned buckets and loads of stuff through being a branch president, and I marvel at his stamina, diplomacy, and leadership as he fills this calling. And now some inspiring reflections from Rich on this topic:

I was feeling quite discouraged in my calling and about staying in India one Sunday when I heard a talk by President Taylor in District Conference. He started talking about pioneers, and having heard a thousand people come in and tell the local members what great pioneers they are before, I was expecting more of the same. But instead he chose to talk to us foreigners, saying "I honor you from overseas who have left your friends and your families and the comforts of home and have followed the Spirit of the Lord to be here. You are pioneers." It was always the local members who were supposed to be the pioneers, but it had never occurred to me before that we too could qualify for such distinction. It made me feel ready for another two years.

9. The Travel & Extended Family Time.
One of the cool bonuses of moving overseas with a big corporation is that they provide an allowance for us to travel home once a year. Because we live in a hardship country, we are also required to leave the country for a rest and relaxation trip for at least a week once a year, and that is mostly paid for. It's really nice to have a dedicated time each year when we just go home to America to spend good quality time with all of our loved ones (and stock up on peanut butter and children's medicines). We feel so blessed to have visited Mom and Dad Gurney twice in New Zealand--and this last time to have Brandon meet us there during our visit was blissfully happy. We've discovered that on our big trips halfway around the world that it helps with jet lag to stop somewhere in the middle and run around site-seeing for a few days. This ends up not increasing the airline ticket much, and we've loved our short trips to Copenhagen, Rome, and Bangkok. Add to that the weekend trips we can take in this amazing country, and we really count ourselves pretty blessed to live halfway around the world from our families.

10. Quiet Havens--Lodi Gardens, Tuglaqabad & Our Home (okay, not quiet, but a haven). Delhi is loud, dusty and smelly; but to know the sweet, you must taste the bitter. Once Rich and I were walking in a fairly residential area around 9 pm. He suggested we count how many seconds before we heard a horn honking (mind you, supposedly you aren't supposed to honk your horn in residential areas at night but instead use your lights to communicate). The highest we got in our counting was 6 seconds. On any given day, if you're paying attention, you will probably witness 5 men urinating on the side of the road nonchalantly. I find dust inside even tupperware containers at my house, stepping in cow manure is a common occurence, and if you get a cold it becomes your constant companion for a few weeks because the pollution is so bad.

Because of the oppressive nature of all of this, we keenly feel the contrast when we enter the havens of Lodi Gardens, Tughlaqabad, and our home. Lodi Gardens is a huge park with 4 tombs from the 16th century that Lady Willingdon decided to landscape into a beautiful garden when the Brits occupied Delhi. There are beautiful plants and trees, birds galore, and smooth sidewalks the kids can zoom along on their bikes and scooters. The tombs are gorgeous and though the park is often crowded with people, everybody is calm and happy there. And you can't hear horns honking or smell or see any garbage. Lovely.

Tughlaqabad is a huge abandoned city from the 12th century with enough greenery and hills and stone steps to climb that I can almost imagine that I am hiking in Zion National Park, my favorite childhood family vacation spot. It's one of the few places in Delhi where I feel a measure of solitude.

And lastly, I am so grateful for the haven that is our home. Thanks to the guard at the gate, the high walls that surround it, and the massive amounts of money Rich's company spent to ship our things here and buy us power backup and modern appliances, we can escape the sensory overload and confusion of Delhi in our comfortable home and take a deep breath before venturing out again.

11. Free Home Delivery.
Nearly everything from grocery stores to furniture shops to tailors to McDonald's make house calls and can deliver whatever you like right to your doorstep free of charge. Gotta love that. Especially if you can communicate your order successfully over the phone and get it delivered at the time it was promised!


12. The American Embassy School.
Among international schools, this one is rumored to be one of the best. We love it. There is such a nice sense of community there, the teachers are great, the facilities perfect. The population is diverse and you can't beat ice cream cones at lunch everyday! The picture above is Isaac's assistant KG teacher Ms. Jain with some of his classmates, including one of Isaac's best friends Alina, from Russia.

13. Pulsiphers!
If we did not live in India, we would not have the unique opportunity to host David and Dawn Pulsipher and their six kids for five months. Nor would we have had the chance to entertain other relatives who would not likely have come without the draw of David and Dawn & Co.--Aunt Nancy, Becca & Nathan, the Harmers, Dawn's sister and her nephew. David and Dawn have always been some of our favorite and most-admired cousins, so we were thrilled that Delhi is difficult enough to navigate and housing so expensive that we could have the honor of sharing our house with them.

It is delightful to share our Indian world and discuss it with these very academic, reflective, and Christlike relatives (and we're not just talking about the adults--Andrew, Elizabeth, Jonathan, Michael and Grace are fun to share reactions with as well). While they've been here the count on our little Mormon Utopia Compound has been 24! Definitely a full house. Our children have formed lasting friendships with all of them, and we will forevermore think of the Pulsiphers more like siblings than cousins.

Before they came, I felt in a funk of sorts (no pun intended, though the feeling is characteristically "Funky")--not sure of my place and purpose in India, yet terrified to think about going home to America where there's so many unknowns. Their arrival came at a perfect time, and having them in our home has made me feel more connected to America and family than I've felt in a while. There's nothing like hot breakfasts and real syrup every morning, and scene-by-scene re-creations of Star Wars movies to get us back in touch with our homeland! I'm not sure if we would have decided to stay if we had not enjoyed this grounding visit from our cousins--for better or for worse! Dawn especially has been such a great friend and example to me. She has been endlessly tolerant of my chaotic life and mind and so gently taught me so many things about leadership, motherhood, homemaking, routine and tact. I'm dreading their departure in two weeks, but we plan to visit them in Rexburg soon!

14. Never a Dull Day. Nearly every day yields an interesting story, even if being the main character in the story was horribly frustrating or confusing or maddening! And lucky you, you get to read the stories and see from afar how the Cutler characters are faring in this weird world.

I just re-read my list from 2006, and it's pretty much the same, just more fleshed-out now (and long-winded). It's good to remind myself why living here is a good idea for the moment. Thanks for reading if you got this far. Now book your ticket to come visit this fall/winter to give us another boost when we'll surely need it. Frequent flyer miles are available for your use if you promise to bring us peanut butter and chocolate chips!