India

As a severe lover of meat, I was told that when I go to India – the number one country with the highest percentage of vegetarians at 42% that they occasionally eat chicken but they do not eat beef. In many Indian states, the slaughter of cows is already illegal, making it difficult to buy, sell, and, as a result, eat, beef. And I wanted to know why.

After my first few days of study at the Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts it was fairly obvious that the two educational systems were completely different. At BU I would attend maybe 4 hours worth of lectures within a week; whereas here 4 hours of lectures is a typical day.

Pune is full of smiles from the local people, some even wave at the BU students with all the happiness and excitement on their faces. We tried to capture some of the smiles on the way to Laxmi Road in Budhawar Peth, one of the common commercial localities in Pune.

Having lived all my life in the materialistic and consumer orientated West, I have always understood money to equal happiness. The more I have, the happier I will be. This is what we are prepared for in school and university: study hard, so you can get a good job to earn loads of money.

On Saturday 16 April we set off on the four-hour journey from Pune to Mumbai. Also known as Bombay City, Mumbai is a densely populated city, with over 12 million people on India’s west coast. Our first stop was Asiatic Society of Mumbai Library.

The first moment I stepped into Mumbai I was fully aware that the British Empire ruled this country for just under 90 years but I wasn’t fully aware of the impact that it had.

The landscapes of Maharashtra alone could depict the contrasts that are ever-present in India. As with the inner districts, the outskirts of Pune show grand, tall buildings and a few mansions, with a distinct oriental style.