Adventures in India

[Bene505]

Reposted from anything-sailing.com by request... I was in India last week.

As you know, I'm in India this week. It is amazing. It's midnight in the hotel here and right next store they are building a building -- right now.

There are buildings going up all over the place.

My friends in IT are saying that since December the job market unfroze and it is now difficult to retain employees because they can leave for 50% pay increases. (And when they leave, it is a common practice that they have a couple months to accept a job offer, so employees really have a bargaining advantage and often show up for the first day of work and then are go to a different job the next day as they realize they want one of their other offers instead.)

People here in Mumbai (Bombay for you Brits) are energized. In Chennai we saw lots of people hanging around. Here it is like everyone is moving.

And guess what? I mentioned to our taxi driver that I wanted to try driving one of the auto-rickshaws that are everywhere. 10 minutes later he pulls up to an auto-rickshaw driver and a few minutes after that I'm driving one, under very close supervision by the owner/operator.
Here's an unrelated photo from the net, to show what I'm talking about:


Those things are very sensitive at the wheel. The tiniest pressure on the handle bars and it turns with a little bit of a careening, unstable feel.

A hired car (real car) is $35 for 9 hours, for both car and driver, so you just get a car to wait for you outside of work. I tipped our driver 250 Rupees (sp?) which is about $5, or about half what a typical rickshaw driver makes in a day, before paying for gas and other expenses. According to our host, a bus boy in a restaurant makes about $140 a month. So my co-workers here have a personal maid and someone to wash their car for them -- and yet they still bring their lunch to work every day. Think about that. People are cheaper than buying sandwich.

Anyway, I have video of one of our taxi of driving in traffic. If anyone is interested in seeing absolute madness, let me know and I'll see about uploading them when I get back. People drive and weave at speed with mere inches of space - both when driving parallel to another car and when cutting off another car in traffic. You'd see people (young and old) crossing the street within inches of traffic whizzing by them as they make their way across the street. Horns are used constantly by everyone.

In all this madness, the median inthe road was being painted with vertical yellow stripes. This lady was painting them on, with a co-working standing next to her. No lane shut down, no orange cones or cans, no big truck to provide protection, no police car watching for speeders-in-the-work-zone. Just 2 ladies a few feet from a rush of fast cars. Amazing.

Other observations. I now understand why the India employees back home wash their faces in the sink in the bathroom. In India, that's what you do. So it's a cultural thing.

Work hooked me up with a kit full of small bottles of pills, with everything from anti-malarials to Cipro, instructions on what to do for about 32 different symptoms, and even a "to whom it may concern" letter explaining to any authorities what the pills are all about. They also hooked me up with shots (Hep A, Hep B and Polio) and pills (Typhoid). Pills because the Typhiod shots have mercury in them as a preservative, and since I have a child with very severe autism (who got it right after getting shots), my getting that shot would feel like putting a gun to my head. So pills for that one, thank you.

Anyway, I'm not sick, knock-on-wood. So something must be working.

Making this sailing related, I brought my West Marine (rebranded) medical kit into work before the trip, and let the nurse go through it and check it out. I did it for her, so she could see what sailboats carry, but she instantly started dividing-out the pills that had expired. If the pills are over 6 month out of date, you throw them out. (That's something to add to the winter checklist everyone.) And you throw out K O Pectate (spelling?) right away, since it turns into an acid. Ironic, huh?

Regarding malaria, there seems to be one or two mosqiotos everywhere. You'd be in a small conference room inside an office and there would be one flying around. And they seem to be tolerated there, no one tries to kill it. Only exception was the cab driver, who swatted the one that got into the car with us. They are trickly little buggers too. Both times I saw a mosquito in my hotel room (on different nights, in different hotels), I swatted at it, missed and then could never find the little bugger. Wily.

At least the mosquitos don't look big enough to carry you away - not like the ones in the midwest U.S. -- and they aren't in high numbers, at least here in the cities.

Regarding service, it's amazing. If you are outside the hotel waiting for a car, and you finish the water bottle you are drinking, someone on staff will walk over to you and take the garbage from you. You sit at the breakfast table, with food from the buffet and the staff will come by and rearrange the things on your table to help you - during your meal. You want something, you just ask. You walk with 10 feet of the counter in the lobby and a staff member asks if you need anything. When you check in , the guy who did the check-in walks you up to your room. At the office, when you ask where the batroom is, you get walked there. I thought it was for security purposes but its to make sure you have no diffilutly going 50 feet around a couple turns in the hall.

I could write about the rules. Apparently rule are more like guidelines. That's part of why the traffic is like madness.

Regading poverty...In the US, there are poor parts of town and rich parts of town. It's by sections of the city, and often one neighborhood is "on the other side of the railroad tracks" from the other part of town. In India it's building by building. You see the nicest place right next to cardboard-looking hovels. You see nice cars in traffic, right next to auto-rickshaws driven by people with no shoes. It's a more dramatic contrast than Mainesail's LED light tests.

There's more to write, but I'm stopping now. I have tomorrow afternoon free so I may walk around. Part of what I'm writing about with the great service is probably because I haven't really left controlled environments yet. It's work-taxi-hotel-work-taxi-hotel-restaurant. I'm told I'll enjoy it more if I bring an Indian with me. I probably will just so I stay clued-in and can ask questions about what I see. I may go see the Taj hotel where the recent bombing was. I stand out a bit here. Just a bit. Apparently the vikings didn't get this far south.

I may write a completly different write-up after walking around tomorrow. In this land of contrasts, that would be more consistency than surprise.

Not sure if I'll get to the local yacht club or not.

Cheers,
Brad
And for the geeks, Verizon works but only the cell phone part. The Droid doesn't get data service. Internet is about $20/day in your room.

[Bene505]

2nd installment...

That was an amazing trip.

(Alex this will get a little bit sailing-related in a little while, if I can write enough tonight to get to that part.)

I worked a short day on Friday. It was a holiday and there was one outfit that we needed to talk with. They came into the office to meet with me, but also their regional boss was visiting (I'm guessing it wasn't really me, but they did take a good chunk out of their day to meet with us, so I'm pretty happy about that.) I can't say enough about the professionalism and service that I saw in every person I met with. Suffice it to say that they work hard and they work for long hours. Friday's meeting really zoomed-in on all the things we covered on the previous day in Mumbai. It was extremely worthwhile. There's no doubt in my mind that the benefits of this trip justified the cost 10 times over. (And I like to keep things pretty inexpensive for the company.)

Between meetings and jet-lag, I got back to the hotel and crashed every night. I never ordered dinner once. (On the advice of my brother-in-law who is a very picky eater, I packed some bread, peanut butter and jelly. This meant that I never had to wait to eat, and saved a lot of time not sitting in a restaurant or waiting for room service. That made a big difference in being able to crash almost as soon as the work day was over.) I actually never paid for a meal, or a drink or anything - not counting the breakfast buffet at the hotel, which came bundled with the internet access so it was a pretty good deal.

Before I get to the walking around part of the trip, I wanted to show the view out my hotel window. Yes there was a nice pool (and I managed to take a short swim in it once). Notice the construction. They are building both buildings and an elevated highway right past the hotel. The amount of new construction was simply amazing. It was everywhere. I almost suspected it was part of some stimulus package or something. But I think that it was simply real. (Someone correct me if they know otherwise.)



Here's some shots from a window of the office building. Note the view of the city, and the construction around the office building. Construction was everywhere. Each picture pans to the right from the one before it.



Another building up on the hill.


Flattened area up above, for the next building.


Still panning to the right, but now on the ground near outside the building.



So with the workday over, I set out with Ramdos, our driver (as a quasi computer guy, that name was REALLY easy to remember). We went to a few places. The plan was to see the REAL India, so I wanted to see 1) a temple, 2) a slum, 3) the Gateway To India (BTW the Taj Hotel was nearby, where the recent terrorist incident was), and 4) a market to buy some presents for my family.

I left my coworker at the hotel. He was staying for the weekend and didn't have the same desire to sight-see on Friday afternoon.

First stop was one of the main temples in the area. I gave my camera to the guard at the entrance. No one else had cameras, they weren't allowed. He tried to get me to talk to one of the other guards nearby, for me to give them my camera. They looked like they were on their break and didn't want to deal with it. So the first guard helped me out. He seemed honest enough and I had been impressed with his countrymen the whole trip. If the guard at one of the main temples wasn't honest, then we are all in trouble, right? (I tried to give him just the battery, but no good.) (The $179 camera was worth more than the $140 that the servers at lunch make in a month.)

It was a temple to the "main deity" as was explained to me by a local. As I walked up the the temple, the vendors along the street tried to sell me some shoes. I took a quick look, perhaps more out of curiosity. They had a pretty decent array of shoes and sandals. Now my sneakers are in pretty bad shape, but I still refused, and kept moving on...

Well, I was wrong. They were telling me that I couldn't go in the temple with shoes on. But another tourist said that the offical shoe-storage place was further up the street. I got there and the cost was 1 Rupee (about 2.5 cents) and you got a "coat check" type of tag. I bough some flowers from a little lady that was very helpful for 10 rupees (about 25 cents). This was for the temple in some way. About the time I was taking my shoes off, Ramdos surprised me by joining me. He had found a parking place nearby. I asked him if he wanted to join me. He was very helpful. From then on I asked Ramdos to join me.

You go into this room and everyone touches the threshold of the entrance with a finger, in order to cleanse the soul. The room is maybe 100x100 feet with a high ceiling. In the center is a small (20x20 feet) room with a lower arched roof, inside the big room. You stand in line then go into the arched room. There's a wide (20x10 feet) area in front of a waist-high (20 foot) wall that's a couple feet thick. Behind that wall is a structure with the image of an elephant's head (10 inches high) prominently centered in the forefront. You go up to the alter (standing 5 people deep) and give your flowers to one of the 2 or 3 priests there. IIRC the priests had a basket or something for collecting them.

Now I'm not Hindu, I'm a Christian, and I remember something in the old testament about God being a jealous God. It didn't seem right to make an offering so I gave my flowers to Ramdos and he contributed them. Then Ramdos backed up and prayed until he was shoo-ed away by the guard/official - in about 10 seconds. I was realizing, looking up, that even this is under God, a part of His world. (Maybe Hindus think it's the other way around.)

In any case, I felt that spiritual feeling that you sometimes feel. It is a profound feeling.

We left past another line where they were giving out small chips of coconut and small pieces fruit (each about a cubic centemeter). We made our way back and got our shoes, and I collected my camera from the guard. I thanked him profusely and I think he appreciated it.

It was a holy day, I think for a different deity. Even so, we were through in about 10 minutes from start to finish. Ramdos said that on some days it take 2 1/2 hours. And they were setup to handle a big line if needed.

Walking back down the street there were new cars that were allowed past the initial roadblock. I hadn't noticed them before. New cars (and only new cars) are allowed to be blessed. The cars had a streamer of flowers across them. One owner had the hood up and was in some way getting the engine blessed, I think. I wasn't allowed to take pictures in sight of the guards, so I waited until we were outside of the roadblock and took this picture. It looks like the motorcycle got a wreath of flowers. Maybe it's new too.



A couple of small kids begged us for food or money and we told them we had chocolate back at the car. They followed us a couple short blocks to the car. I broke open the bag of Hersheys Kisses that I brought for that occasion and gave them each a few. Then off we went.

Next, my driver took me to one of the biggest slums. My plan was to give out Hershey's kisses (chocolates) to the kids there. I was very nervous. You know, scared. I wasn't afraid of getting attacked, heck we were having a serious conversation a couple hours earlier about whether it would be possible to pick up on of the Rickshaw cars. But I was really nervous none-the-less. I tell you the only reason I did it was because that's what I planned to do and I didn't want to back out.

Anyway, Ramdos took me to the biggest (or one of the biggest) slums. I was part way out of the car, about to walk into the heart of in when he said to wait, that he would take me to different place. I closed the door and we drove to another place. Ramdos has some wisdom, we went to a very small slum right near a road.

Here's what the living conditions were like. First, the shacks. They were 2-level, so these folks maybe weren't as bad off as some of the other hovels that you'd see right along the road. (I just realized that a little while ago, looking at the pictures.)



Here is a man cooking on a couple of wood-fired "stoves".



And now the very nervous moment. I started out by giving a man there my camera to film it and got wrapped up in what was happening, I actually forgot about the camera and would have left without it, if he had not come back up to me to give it back to me. I had already given some chocolate out, prior to the filming.

Please realize before you judge here, that the film has a slow frame speed, it was a lot more intense that that. I'm grunting in oder to communicate, scolding a child for grabbing, trying my best at crowd control. I sound like a complete idiot, but the noises where all I had to work with, and you can't see in the flim each time an older child tries to grab the chocolate away from a younger one, as I was handing it over. (I noticed no stealing once it was delivered. Even in these poor conditions, the young kids respected property.) Anyway, toward the end I resorted to pointing to the specific child that was to get the chocolate.

You'll see I was trying to teach one of the bigger kids to help hand them out (lime green shirt at 3:37). I was checking to see if he was keeping them or not.

You'll see Ramdos in a green collared shirt, we exchanged nods and I tried to keep in visual contact. He was ready to pull me out of there toward the end. He was worried about the bigger kids getting aggressive (MORE ON THAT AFTER THE FILM, KEEP READING AFTER THE FILM) and I was trying to take cues from him, for he was watching out.

Finally, the best part was not on film, at the beginning when I did a card trick for the littlest kids. (The trick that someone used to get out of KP duty in Korea. Great trick, ask me to show it to you sometime.) It was fun, even though their ratty old deck made it nearly impossible to do the trick.

I know I seem like an a$$ for asking someone to film such a paltry effort to spread some treats around. Realize that I'm not really prepared to help out these people in a big way. I was really nervous at first. I think the ragged cards they were playing, and the initial interaction really helped. This was a country not like mine, I was doing something I had never even *heard* anyone doing before. It seemed like a good idea back at home anyway, and I was going to do it. I feel the nervousness even now as I type. By the time I handied the camera over, I was much more relaxed. I wish I could do more for them.

I gave to the little kids first and worked on up from there. There was no way I could give a piece of chocolate to everyone. It was a bit tough to know which ones had already gotten a piece. I'm pretty sure all the smallest kids got a piece. Pretty sure.

None of these kids have ever set foot in a school, nor will they ever.

Click here to see the video. The file is 19Kb in MPeg-4.

(CK - if you have an AVI to MPG4 converter, let me know. The shareware one I have only converts the first part of the film for free, and the AVI file is too huge to share.)

When the chocolates were all gone and the cameraman gave me my camera back, I did my best to get him to the side of the crowd so I cold tip him. I didn't give him nearly enough, I realized afterward. He was saying something about that when I got pickpocketed. A man reached into my left pocket, took something out and RAN!

Now I had all my money in that pocket as well as my drivers license, credit cards, and Price Club membership! I ran after him, dodging around people (including maybe a pregnant woman). I grabed him hard by both shoulders and stopped him, turned him and grabbed him by the shirt front. I just about lifted him off the ground with my left hand, while proclaiming to those around that this man had just stole from me. I took my money out of his hand (a 100 Rupee bill) and the other locals started slapping him on the face while I held him up. He was a weasel of a man. At that point Ramdos was pretty insistent that it was time to get in the car, which he had brought up right next to me. (And my left pocket was pretty exposed while my left hand was busy holding that guy up. And that slapping crowd wasn't made up of little kids.) I got in the car and away we went.

Ramdos said very eloquently that the little ones are great but when they get older they are trouble. Even before my heart rate came back down, I knew that it was worthwhile. All my money was accounted for and I got a little adventure out of it too.

(Sorry all, part 3 is going to have to wait until another time. Next installment: the harbor, Ramdos' boss, the festival market, another huge market, maybe even the 747.)

Regards,
Brad

[JohnRPollard]

Brad,

The video was fascinating. Who was that creepy guy handing out candy to the little kids? I was half expecting him to pull out a puppy dog and clown suit, too. And you're telling me, he then went on (off-camera) to rough-up some of the impoverished locals after cheaping out on the tip? Must have been the proverbial "ugly american."

Just kidding. Seriously, what an amazing "trip report". Well written -- you really conveyed the essence nicely. India's rise is very impressive, and it appears the juggernaut is still ongoing.

India is an intriguing place. We regularly hear how India is the "world's largest democracy", with the United States being the second largest. I've always accepted that as a given, with their immense population (pushing 1 billion).

But reading your trip report and seeing these slums -- I'm left wondering what portion of the population actually participates in the democracy? Did you get any idea as to whether the residents of these slums participate at all? Do they vote, and do any candidates campaign for their votes? In other words, is the "slum vote" a block that some go after? If so, what kind of promises do the candidates make to them to gain their votes, and how measly those promises must be if the slum residents continue to live in squalor year after year, election on election.

Slums aside, this is a country with which I hope we remain on good terms. They are going places.


P.S. It sounds like you encountered "asian tiger mosquitoes". They are nasty buggers.

[smackdaddy]

Wow! Great write up Bene. I look forward to the next installment.

Thanks for sharing.