My First Week in India

I should not have packed socks. As I sit here, 7,500 miles away in Gurugram, India, my home of one whole week’s time, that is my only regret. I packed fifteen pairs of socks, mostly fun ones so I could switch it up every week, yet, in my time since arriving in India, I have worn none. My shoes sit lying abandoned, while my sandals have picked up all the miles.

This comment may seem out of the  blue, but to me it signifies something larger than just the fact that I was totally and completely wrong in assuming what my daily footwear would be. It indicates that, once more, I am back in a part of the world where I feel I can lead a life that creates the most meaningful impact.

You see, I am here in India on a program known as the Borlaug-Ruan International Internship, an effort of the World Food Prize Foundation (based in Des Moines) to connect students like myself to world-renowned experts in the field of food security and global development through research. My placement is at the S M Sehgal Foundation, where I have been working with their food and nutrition department on a vitamin A initiative which will be led in a number of rural villages. Forwarding the goals of the World Food Prize Foundation, this will be my topic of research as my internship progresses, and my area of expertise as I, too, try my hand at solving the world’s crises one step at a time.

After that brief dive into the nitty-gritty details of my internship, I would like now to lighten the mood with a few tales as I reflect upon my first week since leaving the United States. Already, there are too many stories to tell and not nearly enough time to do so:

I could recount my eight-hour layover in Finland, where I explored the streets of the capital by visiting an art museum and the astounding Helsinki Cathedral, getting unironically taken for a Finn at every stop I made. I could write in vivid detail about the first time I experienced the roads here in Delhi, how a car’s horn is honestly more important than its steering wheel, and where the street signs and lines on the pavement are but a mere suggestion. Perhaps a thorough exposé on the relevance and historically mind-bending ruins of 700-year-old Hauz-Khas is in order, wherein I recount everything I learned from the signs I read on the evening I explored the ancient structure with a new friend.

…or maybe, just maybe, I could focus instead on the smaller moments that have made my worldview wider since arriving. The moments of joy, confusion, laughter, learning—that is where it is at, that is why I travel. These small moments are what make a day full, what make a night’s rest rewarding, and it is by sharing these moments that writing home becomes a task well worth the while.

These moments include everything from learning to say “यह स्वादिष्ट है - yah svaadisht hai,” this is delicious, to Ram, the cook and groundskeeper at the Foundation who has taken such good care of myself and the other interns to throwing up after my first meal here in India because I had not yet realized that my malaria medication makes me sick when taken on an empty stomach. It includes the first night that I arrived here and somehow surmounted jetlag to go out with my fellow Foundation interns, watching the sun set over unfamiliar and spectacular species of trees in the park nearby. It includes the little girl who introduced herself in Hindi as my friends and I booked an auto rickshaw back to the Foundation from the mall just last night.

These small moments are what tie together my experience here—what settle neatly in my mind as the memories I will take home with me. I appreciate you all for your time in reading this rambling tale of my first week in India, and hopefully, I have at least successfully answered the question of “Where in the World is Isaac Vosburg?”

Stay tuned for next week’s edition, and thank you.