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.