Death is ever present

I apologize for the delay in posts. I have been keeping busy. Additionally, I am starting to become less and less surprised by what I see and more used to my surroundings.

That being said, some interesting things have happened:

Walking up the five flights of stairs to Liz's apartment, we passed by one of her neighbors with a recently shaved head. Liz complimented him on his haircut, but he just looked to the ground sadly and informed her that he did it because his brother had just died. (shaving one's head is a Hindi tradition when a close member of one's family dies.)

I finally rode the train. This was quite an interesting experience. The train is divided into 1st class and 2nd class men's and 1st and 2nd class women's. The women have their own cars because groping and rapes have been problems on trains, so this is a way to mitigate those occurrences, though they still happen.

I, for obvious reasons, was unable to ride on the women's cars (nor did I want to). Every girl I have spoken to about their experiences in the women's cars was a tale of scratching, biting, yelling at other women for alleged seat stealing, and general cattiness, so even most women prefer to ride in the men's cars. The second class men's cars have older seats and are predominantly standing room only. One can immediately recognize the second class cars because they constantly have 10-20 men hanging out the doorways (there are no doors on the trains); men often also ride on the tops of trains for the thrill of it. Men still hang out of the doors on the first class cars occasionally, but the cars are generally filled with businessmen winding down (or starting) their day. They take cat naps, relax, read the paper, etc. -- normal train stuff. All cars, however, regardless of class, male or female, jump off the train the second it starts pulling into the station. The same happens when trains arrive. People skip across train tracks, hop on already moving trains, etc. just to catch that train.

The reason I am describing the boarding and getting off practices of the trains is that 5-6 thousand people a year die because of the trains. People fall off the top, fall out the doors, get hit while running across the tracks, etc. It is very sad but a little ridiculous, considering that during rush hour trains come every 3 minutes, so there really is no need for the rush. Additionally, once they're off the train people walk at a leisurely pace.