Why I love India

Because everything is completely different than what I am used to. Habits, buildings, clothes, food, there is hardly anything that I can compare to Europe. A trip to India shows you a completely different world, and in the end you fall in love with it, and can’t help wanting to come back. I think that everyone should visit India at least once. One of the reasons for this is that it opens your mind and makes you realize many things (positive and negative) about your life that you never thought of before.

So let’s go step by step. Habits. In India people eat with the right hand (and not the left, only the right); in Europe this would be totally out of mind. However, if you think about it, isn’t it natural to eat with hands? How many times as children we tried to eat food with our hands and our mums reproached us and taught us to use cutlery? I always feel like a child when eating with my hand, and I feel a bit mischievous, as if I was doing something forbidden but I didn’t know why it was forbidden.

Take shoes off when entering a room or a house. Isn’t that a perfect way of keeping away all the dust and dirt from outside? However, I must confess that I still prefer not to walk around with bare feet, so I always wear socks. A few days ago I visited a house where there was a lovely little girl of 1 year. She really enjoyed playing with my socks, and after a while another guest made me notice that probably it was the first pair of socks she had ever seen!!! Funny! People usually wear sandals here..

The first time I visited India I was totally thrilled by the hindù temples. They are an oasis of peace and silence, similarly to the European churches. However, they could not be more different from churches. They are usually beautifully carved to the smallest detail and the gods are represented with colourful statues that would make Canova shiver. There are often flowers, offerings to the gods and a background of spoken prayers that make the atmosphere magic.

And sari. Oh my, how beautiful saris are! They are probably one of the most difficult clothes to wear but they also make every Indian woman look amazing. It is an 8-meters long piece of silk or cotton that has to be folded several times and then wrapped around the body. Every day at school I am amazed by the beautiful designs that the teachers wear, and by the elegance with which women wear them. If I wore a sari, I’d trip over it all the time or I would get it caught somewhere and it would unfold! But Indian women, they seem born into saris. They even drive scooters and run after a bus wearing a sari!

Food, food, food!! All sorts of yummy curries and mixes of spices. A main course should always come with rice or Indian bread. I’m not a fan of vegetables but here they cook them in so many different ways that I often prefer them to meat (who knows me knows that I usually prefer meat!). Something that still amazes me is that when you are invited to an Indian house, they usually serve you a plate full of all sorts of amazing food, but the hosts don’t eat anything. I imagine that it is their pleasure to see you eating the food that they made. So different from my culture, where food is shared between hosts and guests.