Ghandi, Bollywood and a McVeggie To Go Please
Trip Start
Aug 09, 2007
1
64
95
Trip End
Ongoing
Delhi,
India
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
We found ourselves back in the big city and decided to take a chance to do some shopping before we left. They have some emporiums that are fixed price that sell items from all the different states in the country. That sounded great to me! No haggling. Feeling lazy, we hired a cyclo to take us to them and he oddly agreed to the price we countered with pretty quickly. We should have been suspicious then but on we went. He took us to a store that said "Emporium" on the outside but once we got inside I was pretty positive this wasn't the State Emporiums. We walked back out and the cyclo was still there. We told him this wasn't the Emporium, the place we paid him to take us to and he agreed it wasn't and that he would take us now (he gets commission for taking us to these stores). So, on we went to the next one and low and behold, again, it wasn't the Emporium. Jeremy pretty well told the guy off and we heeled toed it to the right ones. Ah, the joy of being back in Delhi. The real Emporium was lovely to browse around with no pressure and no haggling.
We came around the corner to a McDonald's and were amused with their menu. No beef whatsoever on the menu. The choices were vegetarian, chicken and mutton sandwiches. We decided we needed to try the McVeggie and see what it tasted like. Not having had McDonald's sandwiches in a long time it was a funny experience. They had 3 different vegetarian options and we chose the plain old McVeggie. It was just exactly the same taste of the McDonalds we remember. The bun, condiments, fries, etc. The patty itself was okay and tasted like the inside of a samosa (potato and peas). So, that was that.
We had wanted to see a Bollywood movie and went to the theater. The only movie showing was Sarkar Raj so that made the choice easy. It was quite amusing and of course we couldn't understand anything they were saying except for the occasional English word they would throw into their Hindi. The gist is a mafia type movie over the dispute of building of a power plant in a village. It was really hilarious acting. It was like every scene was a plot turner and revelation. Constant dramatic music and close-up shots of the actors faces with surprised/deep thought looks. The theater was quite nice, had assigned seats, a waiter during intermission and only cost about $3 for the both of us. This was a new release too. The only annoying part is that the locals have no problems talking on the phone during the movie and there was always at least 3 people chatting on the phone and phones ringing during the movie. Funny the different tolerance we have for things.
We ended our last day in India with a visit to the Gandhi Museum on the location of his martyrdom. It was a very moving, amazing museum. It is housed in the place he stayed for his last 144 days alive, which was spent in Delhi trying to bring peace between Muslims and Hindus. He vowed not to leave until his country was united. The museum takes you through his life with stories and pictures display, has paper-mache scenes from many important moments from his life, tons of different artwork of Gandhi and an amazing multimedia museum like we have never seen before. You can walk the path of his last steps as he was headed out for his evening prayers and a marker marks the spot where he fell. What an amazing life and amazing person. We could only wish for more Gandhi's in this world.
Our plane headed out at 1 a.m. and 24 hours later we found ourselves back in Chicago!
