by Miriam Snodell

Sometimes when walking down the street,
A strange rank odor my nose does meet.
Feces, smog, and trash, to spare,
The aroma of India in the air.

Pungent and rich, the taste fills my mouth;
I swallow the food, and it starts to head south.
A slow burn caresses the back of my throat,
On fire without water, I’ve been pleasantly smote.

Horns honk and bellow and throw out a tune;
From dusk til dawn, and midnight til noon.
Though I really don’t mind, things sometimes get hairy;
I occasionally want to ask — “Is that absolutely necessary?”

My angry hair whipping all over my face,
The rickshaw accelerates in that everlasting race
I wonder if the engine should be shaking like this;
These adrenaline-producing rides are something I’ll miss.

A million faces fly past my eyes,
A million hungry looks, a million wordless cries.
They don’t have the hope, they need something more.
Colorful clothes disguise a hopeless and hurting core.

A feeling that came from my deep down inside,
An emotion that be described as both deep and wide;
I fell in love with this country, right at trip’s start,
It’s a foregone conclusion: So much for guarding my heart.

Miriam Snodell is a student at Union University, serving among South Asian peoples with her summer.

By Kate Taylor

I cross the street and wade through a crowd of people and parked motor scooters into the entrance of a popular-looking Indian restaurant. An air-conditioned section in the back is cool and quiet. At the table, I scan the menu full of indecipherable combinations of consonants and vowels like aloo chaat and palak paneer. Our Indian friend rattles off orders for all of us and Miriam and I sip on custard-like drinks that taste of caramel and almond.

The food arrives and we swirl the sauce and rice on the plates together with our fingers, devouring spicy red and yellow foods as quickly as our hands can carry it to our mouths. Delicious!

The restaurant manager comes over and, in accented English, asks us about our meal. Apparently satisfied with our enthusiastic replies, he turns away and throws back a “Bon appétit!” over his shoulder.

India is constantly surprising me. Just when I think I have fallen into the rhythm of things, a misplaced beat, like a French phrase, knocks me off like an amateur drummer.

I am easily thrown off by the cows that wander the city streets and the indiscernible head bobbles that could mean yes, no or anything in between. When I try to bobble my head, it comes across more like a squirming two-year-old or the awkward first steps of an African tribal dance. I feel unsure of myself as I traverse the landscape of a culture so removed from anything I have experienced before.

Traveling abroad can be trying, exhausting and uncomfortable but our God is God over all cultures, languages and peoples and it is His desire that every man should hear the Good News. His Word crosses the borders between countries and the barriers of peoples’ hearts because His disciples sacrifice their lives to take it there.

Pray for the lost people of South Asia who are living life without hope in a Living God. What are you willing to sacrifice? How are you going to live your life in order to see all peoples come to Christ?

While India can be exciting, jarring and more than a little confusing at times, I am grateful for the experiences I am having here and for the ways I see God at work.

Kate Taylor is a student at Union University, serving among South Asian peoples with her summer.

By Miriam Snodell

In some cultures, the lines on the road are significant. In those same cultures, the government posts speed limit signs. It is culturally offensive to overuse one’s horn.

In India, it is not uncommon to see a large truck barreling down the center line of a main road (with a heavy load riding uncovered and precarious in the back), sporting a “Honk Horn Please!” sign painted across the rear bumper.

And don’t worry, everybody will respect the sign. In fact, there is so much respect for the sign, that a road without honking is probably a road without traffic.

Rickshaws are an easy form of transportation in India

One of the frequent users of the road is an interesting little auto contraption called the rickshaw. I am confused as to why this ghetto motorized Indian three-wheeled vehicle is referred to as a two-wheeled Chinese human-powered carriage, but hey, who am I to judge?

An Indian rickshaw is a sort of cheap taxi, with room to comfortably fit three in the back (although, this is not to say that more cannot be forced in). The wonderful thing about this tiny taxi is that, although it is larger than the average two-wheeler, it is small enough to dart dangerously in-between implied lanes and shoot across several lanes of busy intersection traffic.

To call the average Indian’s style of driving “opportunistic,” would be erring on the side of politeness. And to say that smaller vehicles drive more safely because of their likelihood to lose in an accident — well, that would be false too.

Like eating live bugs, or bathing naked in a river with 200 of your closest native friends, being a passenger in a rickshaw is a cultural experience.

Miriam Snodell is a student at Union University, serving among South Asian peoples with her summer.

By Miriam Snodell

Nine girls unload out of a tiny taxi-van, clown-car style. They duck into the pouring rain, laughing at the memory of their Indian driver playing Justin Beiber. A fellow native passenger with the foresight to pull out his video phone has a golden upload ready for Indian YouTube.

Memories of the Biebs and “Baby” quickly get washed away in the torrential rainfall, as several city blocks separate the girls from their final destination.

I am one of these girls, and I am laughing just as hard as any of them as we hold hands and run across the street, water from puddles splashing up as high as our shirts. Our shoes squelch ominously underfoot, and I am keenly aware of the complete lack of traction on my worn out flip-flops.

Indians take time to peer curiously through car windows and stop dead on the sidewalk, clueless as to why a pack of dripping girls would be doing what they were doing. Apparently, it is worth the extra dampness to see such an unusual sight.

I have hopes that at least one of these Indian bystanders witnessed me running headlong into a sign, cartoon-style, because none of my friends did. I would like to blame the rain for obscuring my vision, but I’m pretty sure I have just been blessed with a complete lack of spatial awareness.

Less than five minutes later, we encounter a short flight of slippery, downward stairs. Heroically, I take the steps solo, not wanting to hold somebody’s hand and bring them down with me.

In case you were wondering, sitting at the bottom of a flight of stairs is just as humiliating as you think it is. But still, humorous.

Nine girls stand dripping in the lobby of a hotel, not quite so breathless from running that they cannot continue laughing. “Dry fabric” is an unknown concept, and “dignity” is a thought long abandoned. The rainy season has come. Welcome to monsoon summer.

Miriam Snodell is a student at Union University, serving among South Asian peoples with her summer.

Photos by Miriam Snodell and Kate Taylor

By Kate Taylor

I watch a thousand colors flash by through my half-closed eyelids. Green, more vivid than emeralds. Orange as a fire’s flame. Deep crimson, like the petals of a rose in full bloom. The heat of midday and the humidity of monsoon season leave Miriam and me exhausted. We sit mesmerized, watching the hustle and bustle through the plate glass window.

India is a nation full of life and color. Colors drip from the roadside fruit stands, the arrays of spices and the rich fabrics like paint from the palette of a master artist. The people, with their henna-dyed hair or painted hands, bobble their head back and forth in a manner I am not sure I will ever master. They are young and old, rich and poor, the beautiful artwork of a Master Artist. These are the faces of a nation we have already come to love.

Kate Taylor is a student at Union University, serving among South Asian peoples with her summer.

By Miriam Snodell

My French is okay. My Chinese would keep me from starving. And, I can say “hello,” “thank you” and “not too spicy,” in Thai.

Apparently, I’m not a linguist.

However, my Thai has taught me something very important: Knowing how to say “hello” and “thank you” pleasantly fools me into thinking that I’m a native. The real locals know that I’m deluded, but they usually kindly play along.

I will be honest, I was a bit panicky for the first few hours of my India trip, realizing that I was almost completely without language in an entirely new and foreign country. All I had was “Namaste,” and I was too afraid to use it, for fear that it meant something less kosher than “hello.”

It didn’t take me long to sort that out, thankfully, and before long I was throwing “Dhanyavaad!” [dahn-yeh-vhaad] (“Thank you!”) out there like a pro. By the time I learned “Hello, my name is __________,” I felt in my heart that I was pretty much a Hindi prodigy. And what does every prodigy need, to spread the wealth of their brain matter? That’s right. A student.

My traveling companion, Kate, is a comparative beginner in the Hindi language (my five-day head start in the country has been a real asset for my verbal communication skills). I have begun to school her, using my complete mastery of the vocabulary and sentence structure. She, in turn, has shown me her own prodigious ways, by speaking English to taxi drivers in an Indian accent. I can’t even begin to think how proud her parents will be when they hear.

With these words being said, I have concluded in my mind that our India travel together will be both educational and entertaining. Two college students, three weeks, four cities, one country. We have no guarantee of washing machines anywhere, and that fact alone will make our journey an adventure.

Miriam Snodell is a student at Union University, serving among South Asian peoples during her summer.