One Thousand Words

Somebody Please Explain This To Me

We spent last weekend on a campsite just outside the Himalayan hill station of Shimla. The scenery was fantastic, and it was a nice change from the hectic pace and heat of day-to-day Delhi.

Sharing our campsite was a group of three young men. They were friendly people, offering to give us a lift when they drove past us on our trek in from town. I saw nothing out of the ordinary about them; in fact they seemed the type I would be friends with back home. They parked their car not far from our lodging and disappeared from view, presumably enjoying the outdoors just like us.

Later that evening, we left our campsite for another walk up the road to watch the sun set over the mountains. As we passed their car, we discovered the boys had returned from their activities. And ... they were dancing.

Not just dancing. Grooving.

They barely paused to acknowledge us as we walked past, and in fact were not embarassed whatsoever about being caught mid-boogie. One of the men said hello, but that's about it. In a country where blondes are routinely asked to be photographed and where conversations with strangers are commonplace, it was almost a little disconcerting to feel so ignored. At the time, I figured they had just... wanted to dance.

We continued on to a two-storey platform in the woods which afforded a treetop view of Himalayan foothills. In the fading light, we sat in blissful silence soaking in the beauty of our surroundings. Until, of course, the sound of a Hindi pop song came drifting down the road, and the same car of three gentlemen hurtled to a stop below us.

We assumed the boys had come for the same vantage point as ourselves, and so prepared to share the view. It turns out, however, these boys were not interested in scenery. They opened their car doors, turned up their stereo, and ... continued to dance.

This went on for about five minutes. They danced to a song or two, then turned off their radio, got back into their car, and drove away.

We never saw them again.

Can someone give me an explanation for what on earth just happened?

A Pain in the Side

For the past few weeks, I’ve had a little visitor.  He’s very close to me and has come with me a long way at my side, but I’m starting to think it might be better if I make him dead.

No, I’m not talking about my American boyfriend, who is also in Delhi for a few weeks but who I like infinitely better.  The visitor I want dead is more of the single-celled variety, and I can’t even remember the first time we met.  We may have been together as long as I’ve been in India.  He has, however, caused me great distress, especially when my weekend plans involve overnight bus trips to Shimla on a Volvo Coach. 

The relationship isn’t really working out for me, and now I think it’s about time for it to end.

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There are all sorts of truisms when it comes to international travel: Don’t drink the water.  Don’t get into a land war in Asia. Wear sunscreen.  Don’t feed the monkeys.  It’s not until you actually have a monkey physically reaching his hands into your jacket pockets for a snack that you realize, this is real.  And there’s a reason that gentleman half a mile back was trying to sell you a monkey stick.

That’s the gist of the lesson imparted by the kindly doctor it took me all of $15 and a little whining to meet.  “Madame,” he said.  “You’re in a tropical country.”  I expected him to elaborate, but instead he gave me a genuine smile and made a list of foods to avoid from now on.  I had been diagnosed with a tropical country.  And salad.  Lesson learned.

I’ll feel better tomorrow, I’m sure, and there are always more lessons to be learned.  Like, for instance: Don’t step in any puddles if it hasn’t been raining.  That’s a whole other story, and probably a few more doctor’s visits, too.

Higher Learning

Recently, I've been working with one professor to map content for a forthcoming custom book. Wherever nothing matched I suggested he indicate as much with the usual acronym we use in the US for "Original Material".

I got back the grid and saw "OM" written all over it. Then, I realized: I'm in India. Back home, it's an acronym. To this prof, it's a word.

He probably thought I was a complete nutcase. Sigh.

Sweets for the sweet

After much research, Indian desserts have been placed into one of two categories:

1)       Delicious.

2)       Wet.

This weekend we made a stop at Halidram’s in Old Delhi for a paper dosa and dal.  (A paper dosa, for those who haven’t seen one, is longer than the size of an arm and hilarious to eat.  That’s a whole other post.)  Afterwards we postponed the 100-degree heat by browsing their exhaustive candy counter.  Your correspondent was put in charge of choosing the best cap to our meal, given my high level of experience.  The possibilities were virtually endless.

My personal favorite are the laddoo, little balls which (I think) are made from some sort of flour, sugar, butter, maybe milk, maybe nuts, and maybe other things.  I am certain that they taste exactly like biting into a big chunk of brown sugar.  A little gritty, sometimes a little gooey.  Not as gooey, though, as burfi, which is close to an unbaked granola bar: all sorts of bad-for-you ingredients just mooshed together.  Certain kinds of burfi are so rich they’re like fudge.  Halwa comes close to burfi, but it’s usually served warm. 

After much deliberation, I chose a few laddoo and we muched happily away.  Then, I turned to the desserts we didn’t choose.

First, I pointed out the gulab jamen.  From the outside, gulab jamun look very much like laddoo: little balls of dough.  They are, however, wet.  Eating a gulab jamun feels like eating a munchkin soaked in water.  Next to those were channa toast.  They look like bruschetta, but be careful!  Try to eat it with your fingers and you’ll have liquid sugar running down your arm before you can say “al dente”.  But it's most important to steer clear of the deceptive desserts, like the silver-wrapped fudgey ones whose underbellies hide a pool of syrup.  I should have known the first time I ordered one and was handed a spoon.  They are delicious on top, drippy on bottom.  The thought of it still makes me shudder.

There are rumors, however, of certain fancy restaurants who will serve gulab jamun doused in sherry, lit with a match.  It is my hypothesis that, truly, all wet desserts deserve to be set on fire.  I have to admit, though, a flaming wet donut may not be as bad as a cold wet donut.  Further research will be necessary ...

Notes from the Twilight Zone

It seems that since I haven't been signing on to my work email from my home server, I haven't been told I should change my password.  I can access my account here but have no administrative authority.  That prompt would have only reached me in the US. I went so long without changing my password, however, that the password expired.  Catch-22!

I can't get in anywhere.  Not Webmail, not Outlook, nothing.  I've been away from the States so long they think I've stopped working entirely.

So, I'm having one of the biggest learning experiences of my career and yet my personal data is listed as home, inactive.

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Meanwhile, my credit card company saw an action on my statement originating in Delhi and decided to, helpfully, panic.  "We have reason to believe," they said, "That sensitive information has been used by someone abroad.  Please forward any correspondence you may have received from any corporations in India."

According to their computers, my personal data has been ranging far and wide, overactive.

Where in the world am I?

In a Pickle

Your correspondent was fed a green chilli pickle today.

"Pickle" in India is very different from the Stateside variety.  As a kid I used to buy a giant, juicy pickled cucumber every evening at summercamp, and manage to finish only about half before feeling stuffed.  Indian pickle is more like what we call "relish", and it's made with a number of different ingredients (all of them pungent and/or "flavorful").  This morning, I had sour mango pickle for breakfast with my parantha.  I will probably have ginger pickle with dinner.  But green chilli pickle...?

"Try one!" I was urged as we sat down for lunch.

I glanced around the table and noticed a conspicuous absence of curd, or yogurt--India's dairy of choice--and grimaced.  "I think I'd better not.  I wouldn't have anything to cool off with."

Everyone smiled understandingly, and nodded.  Yankee taste buds, after all.  No match for Indian chillis.

A few minutes later, we were joined by another editor, who briskly helped himself to a pickle.  (I should note that, in most cases, I will take a whole spoonful of pickle as part of my meal.  This editor, no slouch when it comes to spice, took a single chilli, about half the size of my pinky, for himself.)

"Try one!" he urged, holding out the jar.

I repeated my curd excuse, but he gestured to the parantha on the table and motioned for his wife to spoon me some dal.  "Just roll it up, like this, And take small bites."

Gamely encouraged, I did as I was told.  My tastebuds survived, for the most part, but apparently the look on my face was such that several concerned editors practically catapulted over the table at me.  "Do you want a Coke!?! Do you want water!?! More dal! Smaller bites! Smaller bites!!!"

ADVENTURE!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

In honor of the patron saint of Ireland, your correspondent will now drive all of the snakes out of India.

... Oh.  Oh dear.

On second thought, maybe I'll just wear green.


(PS - If you think this snake was big, imagine the size of the one we didn't see.)

A list of things which become suddenly dangerous when combined with Delhi's electricity delivery systems

 - Refrigerator.  You think your yogurt has been kept a continuous temperature.  It has.  It's been ninety degrees all afternoon.
 - Automatic kettle.  The kettle switching off does not mean the water has boiled.  It could mean it's been zapped by a power surge at an inopportune moment.  Your water isn't sanitary.  Enjoy your Delhi-belly.
 - Laptop charger.  Imagine lying in bed one night, half-asleep, when you hear a small "pop" and see a flash of light.  For one bleary moment, you think someone has taken a picture using one of those old-timey camera flashes.  You then realize that you're in your hotel, alone, and that pop and flash had just come from your wall socket.  From the plug leading to your laptop.  You now have a ruined night's sleep, and a ruined hard drive.
 - Alarm clock.  If yours plugs into the wall, you will wake up to blinking 12:00 12:00 12:00 at least once a week.  In this situation, check your watch: it will be invariably be half an hour after you were supposed to report to work.  Enjoy the traffic.
 - Mosquito zapper.  Just when you thought it was safe to sleep in a t-shirt and shorts... now you're itchy and you've got malaria.
 - Treadmill.  Not only does the treadmill timer run a good thirty seconds slow, power shocks and surges mean that, sometimes, your runs go like this:  run run run run run run run run run... run. ... ruuuunnn.... ruuu- RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN! run run run run. Ruuuuuuuu- RUN!

New Mother Nature Taking Over

India switched seasons without me really even knowing about it.  Apparently Holi is the weekend which initiates a sudden, dramatic rise in temperature, from innocuous seventy-five degree days to a light bake closer to ninety.  The thing with the heat as of late is that it's not as muggy as I'm accustomed to, so even ninety-five degree days aren't particularly unpleasant.  It's manageable if you can only stay out of the sun.

As I'm reminded, though, the temperature has only risen twenty degrees Fahrenheit these past few weeks.  We have another ten or twelve degrees to go ... in Celsius.

Even while clambering for shade, I was startled today to hear someone talk about "summer".  On your correspondent's personal calendar, summer isn't meant to start for another two or three months--in fact, long after I've returned home to Boston.  We're both from the same hemisphere, so it's not a latitudinal thing.  It's just that the months I would call "summer" are spent in India under the downpour of the monsoon.  So, that warm part of the year, the nice time when everyone should be fanning themselves next to a tall drink of something cold - this is it.

It's a funny thing to think about, that different cultures have different calendars.  Changing seasons are something you normally take for granted.  Honestly, though, did I really expect Indians to have any concept of "Fall"?  It's not like trees in Delhi would ever change color and lose their leaves.  By the same token, what could I possibly know about monsoons?  Best of all... you call that "winter"?

You know what they say: when in Rome.  I've retired my jeans, invested in lots of loose-fitting linen, and have resigned myself to the incoming low simmer ... whether I'm ready for it or not.

It's a Jungle Out There

When I saw the first calf walking along the highway by its mother's side, a little part of me panicked.  All of my Croswell, Michigan farmer-girl instincts kicked into high gear and I wanted to shelter that calf, wall it in, give it grain, and keep it safe from harm.

Here's the thing with animals in India: they are everywhere.  Most of them, though, don't seem to belong to anybody.  In fact, I'm not sure on the details, but I think cows in particular are not supposed to belong to anybody.  Dogs, cats, cows, pigs, goats, peacocks, monkeys, and God knows how many others roam the streets as casually as squirrels do back home.  After a while you get used to it.

The thing is, I was raised to raise animals.  Back in the States, I worked on a farm throughout my childhood; my livestock come tagged and penned.  If one of them gets a cut or a sore, it is soaked in epsom salts or coddled in a sick-stall or bathed in the middle of the night when the fever gets too high.  I used to routinely trudge into the black-darkness every night to give this year's pair of petting calves a bottle, and yes I was patient when the damn things pushed me around they were so greedy for milk.

Watching the animals in my Indian neighborhood is a little like watching human society in minature.  There are more of them here, population-wise, and they generally fend for themselves, and every so often you come across one with a gimpy paw or a bent talon and you know survival is just a little bit tougher for that animal today.  It is a fact: life is cruel.  Not much is going to change for that little guy until he either heals, learns to deal, or... well...

On the other hand, one episode sticks out in my mind.  Visiting a stepwell in Rajasthan, I was thrilled to see a giant flock of parakeets flitting and zooming around, chirping up a racket.  Our impromptu tour guide, an Indian gentleman named Rasul, explained that the birds stayed because someone gave them grain every morning and night.  We consider them lucky, he said.  If they were to go away it would be a bad sign.

Sure enough, discarded bits of seed littered the ground outside the stepwell.  I see the same thing in random places across town--in parks, near shrines.  Despite their huge numbers, the human poverty, despite everything: India's wild animals aren't always, well, left to the dogs.

That is, I think, a little comforting to know.

Observation of the Day

Going to an Indian bazaar is like shopping on ebay in person.  Except that prices go incrementally down, not up.

Not a Statement I Make Lightly

Last weekend, I discovered my favorite ruins in the world: the Qutab Minar complex.

It's worth nothing that these photographs come from the oldest mosque in India, built in the 1100's.  Note the mixture of the Hindu lotus flower winding behind the arabic letters in the last photo.

Phenomenal, right?

Flickr photos here.

My Time to Shine

Apparently one of the local radio stations has been running the same early-morning show for years.  The DJ will cheerfully ask listeners to phone in and answer the question, "How late are youuuu for work today?"

Punctuality is not one of the central tenants of Indian life.  How could it be?  Between the absurd traffic jams, the every-man-for-himself queuing system, the sheer number of other people you have to navigate around, precision needs to go out the window in the interest of keeping sanity.

The morning commute was particularly snarled today, and we found ourselves sitting for twenty minutes not half a block from your correspondent's office.  Surrounding the car were young people peering through a fence into a crowded mass blocking the front entrance of a nearby auditorium.  As it turns out, Indian Idol was holding tryouts in our neighborhood, and thousands of people had turned up to audition.

To accommodate the giant influx of aspirants the Indian traffic police had helpfully closed one side of the road. As we've learned, a closed road in one direction only invites drivers to plow into oncoming traffic, and today was no exception.  It was when JP wedged us bumper-to-bumper--and by that I mean front bumper to front bumper--with another Ikon that we decided to walk.

Blonde girls anywhere in India never escape attention.  Two weekends ago, when driving through Jaipur, we saw a blonde at the side of the road and were amazed--she practically emitted a glow, she stuck out so blatantly.  We made it into the office, but our stroll was far from casual.  When we finally made it up the elevator, a large group of high, high-level executives were milling about the reception area, and they had all seen us schlepping through the early-morning heat trying to elbow past crowds of Future Kelly Clarksons.  We were late even by Indian standards, which led several international CEOs to joke we had stopped to tape an audition ourselves.

Now how's that for a first impression.  I doubt it's the kind of fame Indian Idol was hoping to inspire.

The Wonder of it All

Any day which begins at 5 am by serving langer at a Sikh gurudwara and ends at a Sufi Muslim festival listening to qawwali singers is one day well-spent.


They're not the kind of experiences where one can take pictures, but these memories will last a lifetime.

Elephants... They're Not What You Expect

Something they don't tell you before you go to India: when they tell you to feed the elephant, where do you put the food?  In its trunk?  In its mouth?  Do you have to wait for it to take it from you?  What do you do in this situation?


Watch and learn.

Language Games

I had my first author conference call today for the adaptation I've been handling as a development editor.  The professor is based in Bengaluru, near the southern tip of India in the state of Karnataka.  My boss and I sat together in a conference room sharing a speakerphone, listening while the professor's assistant dialed us in and summoned him to the line.

The professor was in another meeting, so his assistant blurted out a string of other-language unintelligibles and put us on hold.  While soothing jazz played over the intercom, I turned to my boss and conversationally asked, "What did he just say?"

My boss shook his head like, What a question.  "Oh, I have no idea.  He was speaking in his native tongue."

I had been assuming that because what I'd heard wasn't English, it had to have been Hindi.  It was then that I remembered there are twenty-two official languages spoken in India.  That doesn't even count the unofficial combinations.  I find myself reading signs without realizing, that loopy non-roman alphabet isn't even devanagari.  I could be looking at a third (fourth, fifth, sixth...) language without even knowing it.

Here I was proud of myself for buying groceries in Hindi.  Arre wah.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It

I'm still in touch with my manager from the US, and it made me smile to receive this article about a Columbian teacher traveling the countryside by donkey to bring books to village children. Biblio-burro!

Yet, her email referenced ebooks. It made me stop and ask: What's the connection?

She replied, these days the big conversation is about ebooks.  Apple released their iPad, and Penguin immediately produced a platform for it.  As textbook publishers, we're exploring new ways to deliver content online.  As a result, it's funny to realize that so much of the world's population has no access to books of any kind.

Though I've been keeping up with the evolution of the Kindle-Nook-iPad-publisher melee, I've been surprised how little I've thought about ebooks since arriving in India.  My initial assumption is that there would be a huge market for them here, since the IT sector is so dominant and the population so literate.  That doesn't seem to be the case, however.  Instead, their print industry seems to be doing fine.

Take, for instance, their newspaper industry.  The American newspaper is dying a slow, gurgling death, where the Indian newspaper industry is flourishing.  India has 62,000 newspapers circulating in the country, and more are opening every day.  They don't compete with online newspapers to the same extent, given that high-speed internet is less an attractive commodity in India than, say, mobile phones.  Companies probably benefit more from placing an ad over a telecom network than on a website (and they know this, which is I why I get at least five SMS ads per day).  With fewer market offerings for online reading, to get their news fix Indians turn to paper.

If only our publishing industry had such a readership!  Maybe it could have saved the Detroit Free Press!

Who knows if there will be a tipping point, though.  We're starting to see more schools become interested in online learning, which means the Internet game may be opening up.  I think it says a lot about a culture, though, that even without fancy iPads and gadgets, reading is so popular.  I hope those children in Columbia grow up to say the same.

The Less Said about Delhi-Belly, The Better

... and that's that.

An Ode to My Driver

I read The White Tiger over a year before I came to India, and at the time it made absolutely no sense to me.  It's the story of a boy who uses his wit and cunning to rise from poverty into a plum job as a driver for a rich family in Delhi, then from driver to rich businessman (though not without committing a few heinous crimes).  A big deal was made in the book when he was promoted to driver.  At the time, it had seemed like an incongruously big deal.  That, as I said, was before I came to India.

My driver is named JP, and he's sitting in the front seat right now while I merrily type away.  JP is skinny and quiet, and doesn't have as much English as I'm told he's supposed to have, but after a few weeks of shuttling me back and forth from work every day he's beginning to come out of his shell.

The first time he drove me to work, I thought the arrangement was like a typical cab ride.  At the office, he handed me a card with his name and phone number and pointed to the parking spots across the street.  At this stage, everyone and their mother had already handed me their business card, so I thought nothing of it.  It was a big surprise to learn that I was supposed to call him at the end of the workday, and that he would be waiting to take me home -- eight hours after putting me at the front door.  This was no ordinary cab.  I officially had a driver.

Last week, he broke the morning's silence as we were sitting, engine off, in another Noida traffic jam, to say, "Volt.  Tata.  1 lakh rupees."  He pointed to the oddest looking little car I had ever seen and, sure enough, I found out later it would cost only 10,000 rupees -- roughly $2,000.  JP, I should mention, drives his Ford Ikon like a dream (altho he sometimes stalls out on the steep driveway leading up to my office).  In the mornings I often come out to find him polishing the car tip to toe.

Half the time, he knows the drill better than I do.  When I needed to register my visa, some complicated arrangements were necessary to coordinate how I would get to the FRRO, how I would get in touch with my lawyers, how my co-commuter would get into the office.  Two drivers arrived that day, one for me and one for my colleague.  I tried to communicate the instructions I'd been given but sort of floundered a bit until JP just head-wobbled, gestured me into the Ikon, and patiently shuttled me everywhere I needed to go.  Even when I was confused about the finer points, for instance, trying to send him away under the impression his work was done, he would head-wobble his assent and then still be exactly where I needed him when it was time to head to the next office.  I don't question JP anymore.

I need to reread The White Tiger because I find myself thinking a lot of it now, especially on issues like what it takes to even land this gig.  In India, competition is fierce and a job is a job. This gives rise to specialized occupations we would find superfulous back home - for instance, our residency has a mali, or cook, who brings breakfast and tea every morning.  When I tried to be helpful and clear my own plates at the start of my visit, he looked horrified and promptly chased me away.  There's a certain order you don't disrupt.  Though I could do it myself, if I made my own breakfast, how would my cook eat?

Here I'll introduce my favorite thought experiment: "Would This Work in Nebraska?".  It's my experience that most things in India, no, would not work in Nebraska.  Without the sheer numbers and with stronger institutional welfare services, Americans have more personal mobility. With fewer people in the neighborhood, it feels wrong to suck up so much of the talent pool on something like buttering toast.

India doesn't have that luxury.  I am certainly not about to brew my mali out of a job, no matter how quickly I want my tea. So many people have mouths to feed, and even a cab ride can't be taken for granted.  I can naively hope that someday, like in The White Tiger, people will be given to rise.  It's a difficult wait, though.  For today, the best I can do is let JP take the wheel, be kind, and leave a great tip.

Pink City, Pink Lady

Your correspondent spent the weekend in Jaipur, known as the "Pink City".  Founded in 1727 by Jai Singh II, painted pink to "welcome guests", Jaipur is now part of North India's "Golden Triangle" which makes it a busy hub for tourists, trinket-wallahs, and Rajasthani thalis.  And it's no exaggeration - it really is pink.

The Jawa Mahal - "Palace of Winds" - meaning windows

This was the weekend for Jaipur's yearly elephant festival, so there were plenty of "jumbos" wandering through town on their way to the parade.  The parade itself was an interesting experiment.  Two lady announcers had to simultaneously describe the proceedings, keep the afternoon moving, maintain order, and offer philosophical musings on what it means to "walk like an elephant".  Eventually, so many tourists got tired of standing behind the railings that they just walked right onto the stadium grounds to get pictures close up.  The poor ladies simply announced, with great aplomb, "We are trying to maintain order ... but the parade is now chaos ,,, and life is often chaos, so I guess we should just enjoy it."

Surrounding the city are a number of forts, peering down from scraggly, arid mountains.  We stopped by the Amber Fort for the panoramic view and to marvel at the various courtyards.  Rajasthan's desert climate was especially evident looking out over the countryside, not least because of the heat from standing on a hilltop in the sun.

Our guide was a lovely gentleman who made sure to take us to a nearby Krishna temple as well, which ended up having even more beautiful stonework than the fort itself.  Then, he did something you are 100% never meant to do: he fed the monkeys.

The day after the festival was Holi, and celebrants were certainly - let's just say - exuberant.  It's appropriate that your correspondent returned from the Pink City literally pink, herself.

Painted pink in the Pink City... That jacket used to be black.

My flickr pictures are up here.