A Welcoming Place, and Pace, of Life
-Contributed by Matthew Dippold, International Relations Student
“You are our first customer and this is auspicious, so pay
whatever you like,” the manager said. I had ended up there on the
recommendation of a friendly waiter in the restaurant below. If I liked coffee
he said, I should go upstairs where there was a newly opened cafe with a great
view of town. Two hours later I had enjoyed one cup of coffee and made four new
friends.
That experience was emblematic of my summer in India, where,
thanks to the South Asia Center, I had the privilege of participating in the
American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) summer Hindi language study program
in Jaipur. Known as the ‘Pink City’, Jaipur provided a great location for the
program as a bustling city of more than 2 million encircled by hills in the
desert. The classes at AIIS focused on reading, writing, speaking, grammar,
listening comprehension, vocabulary building, and culture. I was continuously
impressed by my dedicated and outstanding teachers and by my classmates, who
came from universities from all across the United States.
While classes and homework occupied much of my time, some of
the best learning experiences were from practicing my Hindi as I navigated the
streets, shops, and markets. While I had studied Hindi, and India’s economy,
politics, and history at Syracuse, in Jaipur I experienced the vibrancy of
India that no statistics or books could show me. Visiting shops turned into
learning opportunities, where even armed with passable Hindi and previous
bargaining experience, I proved to be a novice among the ‘master of the poker
face’ shopkeepers, who always had the uncanny ability of making me believe that
I had gotten the better side of a bargain until I found out later that I had
paid well above the ‘local’ price. Some of my favorite memories were drinking
chai and speaking with my tailor Shanti Lal, who would talk about his life
growing up in West Bengal before he moved to Jaipur, about how he got started
in tailoring, and about his family. Time and again I had experiences where I
was expecting to run an errand quickly in the same way I would in the States
that instead turned into an interesting hour long discussion with the shop or
business owner about anything and everything, including India, the United
States, and life in general.
The opportunity to live and study in India was personally
enriching while enormously beneficial to my graduate studies and future career.
Before leaving my pleasant conversation with the staff at the newly opened
cafe, they took my photo, had me sign my name and my country of residence in
Hindi on a piece of paper, and told me they would post the photo and
information on a bulletin board to show future customers. I hope to get back
there one day to see it.